Corruption Officer

by Gary L. Heyward

  Bryant gestured for me to come over and sit with them, so I did. The first thing that came out of her mouth was “How does it feel to be the talk of the jail right now?” I asked her what she meant.

  “Come on now, you know everybody heard about the smackdown!” she says.

  “Oh,” I say, and shrug as if it was nothing.

  “Yep, they’re gonna use you, big man, you and aaaall yoouur muskels!” CO Z. Jones chimed in.

  They laugh.

  “Seriously, you better be careful, because you may be getting props right now but when shit hits the fan a lot of times you’re gonna find yourself by yourself,” Bryant says.

  I ask her what she means and she says that now that they see that I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty they’re going to be calling on me to handle inmate problems without it being an alarm.

  “Watch and see,” she says, “every time they want to handle an inmate and keep it on the low, these supervisors are going to be asking you to take a walk with them.”

  I just looked at her and said, “Hmm,” as if I was listening to her. Truthfully, my mind was still on what just happened with Biz. She went on, not realizing that I was half-ass listening to her, and said, “I am telling you”—she raised her eyebrows—“these muthafuckas be running around here smacking these mates up until they run into one that’s a scrapper and fights their asses back. Then they really put the beats on them and the mate winds up in the clinic with one of the staff that ain’t a part of the team and ain’t just gonna put down in their report that the inmate quote unquote”—she made the gesture with her fingers—“slipped in the shower. Then at the hospital all kinds of questions start to pop up, like how his jaw, ribs, and arm got broken from one fall? Then investigations are launched. And don’t let the inmate be smart enough to remember one of y’all’s badge numbers and name. You know some of y’all ain’t smart enough to take your shield off or at least cover it up before y’all get into some shit. You’re going to find yourself sitting down with the rest of the so-called goon squad trying to get the story together so that everybody is saying the same thing. A lot of times it’s nothing and y’all get away with it because an inmate’s family may not have money for a lawyer, but the few times that they do and can follow up with a lawsuit”—she pauses, then says—“it becomes every man for himself and you’ll find yourself by yourself standing in front of a judge fighting for your job or worse, jail time.”

  At this point, she saw that she had my full attention. She saw the seriousness on my face. I mean the scared seriousness. My face went from “Big Hey putting in that work” to “Uh-uh, wasn’t me. I wasn’t there.”

  “Don’t get shook nooooow, niggy!” she said.

  They laugh again.

  “I really don’t think that you have anything to worry about, because how many of these dumb muthafuckas actually smart enough to put that lawyer and bail money away ahead of the jewelry, the cars, and the bitches?” she said.

  I look at her like I don’t know.

  “Besides,” she continues, “everyone knows that as a CO in here, we’re like God.”

  I look at her with one eyebrow up, questioning what she just said, and she explains.

  “Listen, if you get into some shit and you got a real muthafuckin’ supervisor, I mean one that came up through the ranks, that didn’t get put into position by way of a family member that has pull, that is an officer’s supervisor, your ass is good. That kind of supervisor will know what to tell you to write in your report. That kind will know who to get to sign off on anything that we say happened in an incident, use of force or whatever. We have the power to manipulate the system and can get away with just about anything up in here.”

  While she’s sitting there with a smirk on her face, I say, “God, huh?”

  “Yep. We control these inmates’ lives,” she says. “They can’t eat, shit, or wipe their ass without us giving them permission.”

  Then she looks at me with one eyebrow up and says, “Me, in particular, I like the fact that as a woman I get to tell a black man what to do and if he doesn’t do it I can get his ass kicked at will.”

  They laugh and smack hands. Then Jones says, “Once they come through those doors we decide whether they’re going to live in this bitch or whether they are going to fuck around with one of us and die up in this piece. Now, if that don’t make me God up in here, then I am one of his cousins.”

  CHAPTER 19

  VISITORS

  “All days report! All days report!” I heard someone say as I walked to the front of the jail.

  It was the end of my tour and all I wanted to do was to get out of this funky joint. As I got closer to the exit, I noticed that a hard-nosed female captain had taken a stance blocking the door with a podium. This meant that she could see any officer trying to leave without reporting to her first. She would check to see if she had any post open for mandatory overtime before the officer could leave. Corrections officers work on a four-day workweek with two days off. Today was my last day of working four days straight. Now it was my weekend. Since today was my last, I was a prime candidate to be stuck with overtime. Fuck that! I had to find a way out. Think, Gee, think. Got it. I could always sneak out through the visitors’ area, because they have their own entrance that allows visitors to come and go.

  So I make a beeline straight to the visitors’ area, and once I get there I see the usual, a bunch of lying-ass inmates preparing to go see their loved ones. You have the Chameleons, the inmates who blend in with their surroundings—today they’re Bloods, tomorrow they’re Crips. Then they turn Muslim during Ramadan, in order to get some of the good food they have.

  Then you have Balboas. These are the ones who come to the visits with black eyes and bruises from constantly getting their ass kicked by other inmates, yet tell their families that they took on four COs and won.

  Then you have the Impostors. These inmates come on the visits faithfully to see their wife and kids every week. You see them hugging and kissing their loved ones and reassuring them that everything is okay, but on the flipside they are really being housed in the alternative-style housing unit, aka the “Homo House.” After conversing with some of these inmates, I found a lot of them to be delusional, because for some strange reason they feel that if they’re the ones doing the fucking and not the ones being fucked they’re not gay. I walk by shaking my head and grimacing, because I know some of these men are living a gay lifestyle here in jail and after their sentence will go home to their unsuspecting wives or girlfriends as if everything was normal.

  I walk up to the officers’ station through a long corridor where chairs are lined up on each side with inmates who have changed out of their clothes into gray visitor-floor jumpsuits. I nod to the visit officer for him to press the button and unlock the sliding door that leads to the visitors’ floor. He acknowledges me by raising his eyebrows and giving me a look like, “Don’t let the captain see you.” I nod back like, “I got you.”

  The door slides open and I walk onto the visitors’ floor, where you hear nothing but loud conversations. Everybody is talking loud so that they can be heard. I walk by and say what’s up to a couple of officers, who already know what I am up to. I slap them five and keep it moving as they hit a switch that opens another sliding door that leads down a flight of steps to where the visitors are preparing to come up to the visitors’ floor. When I get down there it is chaos, as usual. You see the hustle and bustle for lockers by the visitors. You have the little kids running around unattended, and you hear the occasional complaint from a female visitor, “Why can’t he have these pictures of me?” The male officer responds, while skimming through them again and again, “Ma’am, you’re nude.” She sucks her teeth in disgust, snatches the pictures, and calls him a hater. I chuckle, because he’s a good officer. Normally, another officer would let the flicks in but they would never make it to the designated inmate.r />
  As I’m making my way through the area I finally get the attention of the officer with the keys to let me out. Then I get a tap on my shoulder. I hear someone with a strong Jamaican accent saying, “Wheeerre ya tink ya goorin, Mr. Eerwood?” I knew it was the captain even before I turned around. I had to think fast.

  “I was checking the doors to make sure that they were locked. We don’t need no one slipping away, Cap,” I said quickly with a smile.

  She folded her arms and stood back with this don’t-try-and-play-me look.

  “Ya wooden be try-yain to pull a Hoooudini in me eerea, wood ya, Mr. Eerwood?” she said.

  I give her the I-am-busted smile; then she says, “Me know dis ta be true ’cause em not assigned to me eerea.” She smiles and continues, “Come wit’ me now.”

  Then she grabs my hand and leads me toward her office.

  “Me need you to do me a feerva if ya want seek pa-sage tru me eerea,” she says.

  “Anything, Cap,” I say. Just let me get the hell up out of here.

  When we get to her office, I see another female officer sitting at a desk filling out paperwork, and to her left, sitting in the corner, is a young black female holding a baby and rocking it back and forth. The girl is crying hysterically. She screams out at me, “Please, Mister. I won’t do it again!” The baby reacts to her screaming and starts to cry. The captain says, “Me need you to woch er for one sec-con while de officer writes er report till me get back.” She steps out of the office and the girl continues to scream and cry, holding her baby tight, asking me, “What are they going to do to me? What are they going to do to my baby?” I pause, then answer, “I don’t know.” She stands up and grabs my arm, with the baby dangling in her other arm, and pleads, “Please don’t let them take her from me. I swear I won’t do it again. I swear.”

  I motion for her to sit back down, then I gesture for her to calm down. She sits and starts rocking again with her baby held tight. I go over to the desk and the officer starts to fill me in on what happened. She states that while she was patrolling the visitors’ floor she noticed that this young lady and the inmate kept passing the baby back and forth to each other, which most times would be normal, but then she noticed that every time the inmate had the baby he would stick his finger between the baby’s thighs into the diaper. I notice that the female officer is telling me all this while looking at the young girl in total disgust. She goes on, saying that those moves from the inmate raised a red flag and she escorted the couple off the visitors’ floor. The inmate was searched, and drugs were found between his butt cheeks. He was attempting to commit an act called boofing. Boofing is when an inmate secretes a hidden item inside his rectum.

  The officer searched the girl and nothing was found, but the baby was crying loudly and appeared irritated. The officer decided to search the baby and found two more bundles of drugs stashed inside the diaper. While the officer is telling me the story, the girl holds her head down in shame. I know what is going to happen next but can’t bring myself to admit it to the girl. She is going to be arrested and the Child Protection Agency will take the child.

  When the captain returned with the authorities, the theatrics began again. The girl jumped up and started crying, continuing to hold on to her baby, but to no avail, because there would be no mercy here. The police took the baby from her and handed it to a woman dressed in businesslike attire, and the girl began yelling and screaming and struggling to reach for her baby. The police wrestled her down to the ground and put handcuffs on her and then the baby started to cry and to reach for her. As she was led out on display, the loud visitors’ room became a library, as everyone stopped talking and parted like the Red Sea to allow the shame parade to walk past.

  CHAPTER 20

  RIDE-OR-DIE CHICK

  When they left, I hurry up and scoot my ass out through the door with them. I go to the front entrance of my jail, get my weapon from the arsenal, and am like a blue blur getting to my van. Once inside, I start it up and do my ritual, reaching inside my glove compartment and grabbing a small bottle of liquor so that I can wind down and reflect on the happenings of the day. As I sip, I think, What was that chick thinking? I mean, what did she think was going to happen if she got caught? I shake my head as I pull out of the parking lot and get in line with the other officers’ cars trying to leave the Island.

  Was it worth it?

  Was that love?

  Is that what being a ride-or-die chick is all about?

  Now what?

  You in jail.

  He in jail.

  And the baby is now being handled by strangers for the time being.

  Your man, that you were bringing the drugs to, is now going to be hit with more charges, so it’s safe to say he will be doing more time.

  Maybe she did it because when he was home he held her down and whatever he was doing for them landed him in jail. That’s the only reason that I can think of that would prompt someone to risk her life like that. I put the top on the bottle that I am sipping from and put it between my legs as I pull up to the security officer assigned to search every vehicle that leaves the Island. Since I have a minivan he looks inside and signals for me to keep it moving. I pull off, grab my bottle, and unscrew the cap with one hand and start sipping while I drive across the only bridge on the Island leading to the other side. I think to myself, Some people don’t have their priorities right. That girl should have told her man that if he really loved her he would not have her risk herself and their baby just to bring that shit inside the jail for him. She was cute, too. Normally, these inmates find an ugly or fat female or a female with low self-esteem to bring it in for them. They lie to them with promises of being with them when they come out, conning them to do anything from bringing in stuff to the occasional blowjob on the visitors’ floor. I sip some more while driving with one hand and imagine one inmate sitting there with his moms visiting him and another inmate right next to him getting head.

  I hit the highway and make it around to my block in no time. I stop by the local liquor store to get another half pint, then proceed to walk to my projects. I tuck my bottle inside my pocket before I pass my homeys standing on the corner, because, you know, the liquor store always gives you those distinctive black bags with the gold flowers on them, a dead giveaway in the streets. Negroes won’t have proper ID but they will always have a cup for a drink. I say, “Whatup,” and breeze to my building. When I get to my building I go to the mailbox to get the mail. Then from behind me I hear, “Boy, you gaining weight?” I turn around. I’m stuck. It’s Ms. Daniels, Biz’s mother. She comes over to me in her usual way with her arms extended for me to give her a hug, the same way we’ve done since I was a kid. I hug her and try to keep a straight face. We get on the elevator together and she starts to talk, asking me where my moms is and about them singing in the choir this coming Sunday. She is not facing me when she’s talking, so she can’t see me with my elevator-please-hurry-up face.

  Then she goes where I knew she would. She starts talking about Brian, Biz’s real name. She tells me that he had gotten in some trouble in his assigned jail and that they transferred him to another one. Shaking her head, she says, “That boy just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.” Then she turns to me and says, “I know your momma sho is proud a you, the way you turned out, and I am proud of you, too.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Daniels.”

  The elevator opens up on her floor and before she gets out she says, “I hope that my baby ends up over there where you work at because I know that you will keep an eye on him for me and make sure that he is safe so that I don’t have to worry so much about him.” Then she turns and looks at me, and I can see that she is tired and worn down with him going in and out of jail the way he does. She steps off the elevator and before it closes she says, “If ya happen to run into him, could ya tell him that I love him and that I am here for him but I am getting too old and I don
’t know how much longer I can take this.”

  “Okay, Ms. Daniels.”

  Then she walks away and yells, “You be good now, ya hear!” The elevator closes and goes to my floor. That I am feeling like shit is an understatement. How could I have let this happen? And trust me when I tell you that half that bottle of liquor is gone before I stick the key in the door. I get inside and drop the mail on the table for my mother, and without even looking up at me she starts in.

  “You ain’t take out the garbage when you left this morning and you left those dirty dishes in the sink again. Boy, I am tired of cleaning up behind you!”

  I just put my head down and go to my room. Once inside I get comfortable and finish off the rest of my bottle. I can hear Moms on the warpath about my lack of attention to the cleanliness of her house. I sit there and think that that’s the problem with the families of officers: They don’t ever think about the type of job that we do or think about the type of day that we might have had in our line of work. I am well sauced up now and all my emotions are about to boil over. I stand up, about to yell back at her through the door. I am about to say, “Listen here, woman,” but then I think better of it and rationalize that even with the gun I have, I stand no chance against the Birmingham battle cat from Alabama. It would be straight suicide.

  I fall back onto my bed and ask myself if it can get any worse than this. Then at that moment, she opens my door without knocking. I look at her like, I could have been naked! She flings a piece of mail at me and slams the door, and as she walks away she yells, “That was slid under the front door when I came in, and besides, you ain’t got nothing I ain’t seen before, boy!” I sit there for a moment staring at the door as if she is standing there and can see me. I open the letter to see it’s from my baby momma and at that moment things just get worse. It is a court order to pay child support. Damn. I sit there drunk and lie back on my bed with the letter on my stomach with my eyes half closed. My windows are wide open and I do not hear a peep. I mean no gunshots, no police or fire truck sirens, nothing. Even my moms stops beefing. I get up, put my gun on my minitable, and start taking it apart to clean it, because as far as I can remember, it’s always quiet before the storm.