I went before several boards over the next couple of months, each for a different early-release program. The reason for denial was always the same: “The seriousness and the nature of my crime.” I realized that the judge can recommend anything but it’s up to the people in Albany to decide what’s going to happen to you if you’re incarcerated in New York City. I began to see some white inmates who were former corrections officers get the sex offender program, which would send them home early. This made me upset. I tried to sign out and take the risk of being housed in general population. In general population I could get some type of programming that would qualify me for Work Release. But I was always denied, with the excuse that no one can sign out of Oneida’s Protective Custody Unit. I fought back by writing the superintendent of the jail, and Albany, questioning why the white ex-CO sex offenders get to sign out and receive programming, but the black ex-CO drug dealer has to stay and do all his time when he qualifies for every early-release program that’s available.
I started documenting everything that was happening, from my denials to the names and numbers of the protective custody inmates who got to sign out. If I was ever asked to back up my claim of discrimination I wanted to have some credible information.
There was one situation when an inmate in protective custody was granted permission for Work Release. He was a relative of one of the people who decide who could or could not stay in protective custody. The inmate was white, and he was an ex–corrections officer. Now I was sure that Albany discriminates. I couldn’t see it any other way. I was a CO. He was a CO. I was a safety risk for the facility. He was a safety risk for the facility. The only difference between the two of us was that he was white. I wrote his name and numbers down so that I could have that as an example for the lawsuit that I was about to file. I chuckled to myself, because when I was a CO I remember hearing inmates threaten to sue the department over their rights being violated or abused and now here I am trying to do the same thing. I never cared if they threatened to sue because I knew how difficult it was and most of the time the inmate, who made only seventeen cents a day, was too broke to pay for processing.
—
Some time has passed and my days are becoming routine. I begin to lift weights but I’m really not into it. I could care less about coming home all muscled up.
Occasionally I’ll sit and talk with a few inmates. One day I’m talking to Paul and he begins to tell me about his wife, who he met on the visitors’ floor. He tells me that he was on a visit with a family member and she was up there seeing someone with a girlfriend of hers. He says that they stared at each other the whole visit and that when the guy that her friend was visiting went to the bathroom, he went to the bathroom also and gave him his address to give to her. They’ve been together ever since. He says that they have two babies and that in the other jail he was in he managed to get her pregnant twice while having sex on the visitors’ floor. Then he says something that throws me for a loop. He tells me that last year they took a vacation together, that they went to Hawaii and had a good time. I raise my eyebrows in disbelief, because he’s here on a sixteen-to-life bid and has already served twenty-eight years.
He has me wait right where I am while he goes to the pictures to prove it. When he returns he opens up a scrapbook and shows me the pictures. He starts to narrate what happened on the trip, where they slept and all that. I take my eyes off the photos and look at him to see if he’s serious. He is. While he is talking, Jason, the hate crime codefendant, who’s sitting behind him, looks at me and waves his hand under his chin indicating I shouldn’t say anything. Jason mouths to me that if I do Paul will want to fight. I look at the photos one more time to make sure that what I am seeing is the real thing. All the while Paul is talking nonstop about the trip. Then Paul gets up and says, “I’m going to show you the year before when we went to California.” Then he gets up and leaves. At this point I know Paul has some serious mental issues. He is believable, but when you look at the scrapbook all you see are pictures of him and his wife cut out and pasted on a photo of Hawaii. Before Paul comes back Jason whispers to me that Paul lives and breathes for these pictures, so please don’t get him started by telling him that he didn’t go to these places. I laugh and get up to go to the bathroom. I look back at Jason and say, “Yeah, okay.”
Then all of a sudden someone from behind me has put me in a choke hold. I struggle with my attacker and try to loosen his hold around my neck. We both fall to the ground and I manage to get loose. I stand up and see that it’s a new inmate who has been here only a couple of days. We are both breathing hard and he’s now blocking the doorway. Then he goes into his pocket and pulls out a shank. I can see in his eyes that he is high. He keeps mumbling to himself, repeatedly saying that he has to do this. I have no defense for the knife, so I take a stance and prepare myself to try and grab the knife before he can cut me. Before he’s able to attack, COs bust through the door and grab him. They’re trying their best to wrestle the knife out of his hand, but it seems like this inmate is a little too strong for them. Finally they manage to pry it loose and handcuff this crazy muthafucka.
By this time I know the routine. I’m already lying on the floor with my hands behind my head. They cuff me and take me back to my cell and lock me in. I sit there thinking about this second attempt on my life. At the same time I hear officers outside in the corridor talking about how high that inmate was. I start to remember how many times I’d gotten inmates high just like that while I worked the seven-to-three tour. I’d go home after my shift and the incoming officer had to deal with a high and crazed inmate. Little did they know, the inmate was high from drugs I supplied. For the very first time my actions then were staring me right in my face. A lot of people—inmates, officers—could’ve gotten hurt because of what I did for several years.
As I’m reflecting on everything I come to one conclusion. God is punishing me for my actions, not only for selling the drugs but for everything. For the way that I was living, period. For the way that I treated my mother, my kids, and the people who were around me. For the way I sexed some of my fellow officers’ wives behind their backs. Everything. It just seems like I’m now paying for all the wrong I’d done. After a while I go to use the bathroom. I have no tissue, so I go to the window of my cell to get the attention of the officer on duty. I call out to him and ask if I can have some tissue. He waves me off and keeps walking, then yells back, “Wipe your ass with your hand!”
CHAPTER 58
NEVER AGAIN
“Oh, baby, don’t stop, don’t stop!”
I’m in the parking lot of Rikers Island and I have a female CO riding me in the back of my van. I’m grinding myself deep inside her when her cell phone rings. She reaches for it to see who it is. She says to me, “It’s him. I have to answer.” She doesn’t dismount. I wait until she starts talking to her husband, then I start to grind inside her some more. She hits me on my chest for me to stop. I don’t and it starts feeling good to her. Her eyes roll back in her head and she drops the phone and begins to say my name over and over again. “Oh, Heyward. Oh, Heyward!” Then it becomes just “Heyward! Heyward!”
I open my eyes and realize that I was dreaming. I was still a CO in the dream. I have a grip on myself that would make a boa constrictor proud. Even more embarrassing is that a CO is standing in the window of my cell shining a light on me. He’s laughing and waving his hand back and forth. He tells me to get dressed and informs me that I’m needed to move some property. I get up, wash my hands, and throw on my greens. It’s the middle of the night and I’m wondering what inmate property has to be moved right now. The officer tells me to follow him. We walk over to the next floor, to the unit above mine. He orders me to bag up all the inmate’s property that’s in cell 3. All this seems kind of strange, so I ask him, “Why am I doing this now in the middle of the night?” The CO says, “The inmate just hung himself and we need his stuff packed and inventoried.” I stand
there for a minute in the doorway of this tomb looking around and taking in the view. I begin to pack the inmate’s stuff. I overhear the COs in the corridor talking about the inmate just being some young punk who couldn’t do his time and took the easy way out. Then one says to the other, “Hey, look at it this way, he beat those charges.”
That comment made me furious. Inmate or not, this person was a human being and even if he was to live the rest of his life in prison he still deserved a little empathy. I continue to clean and pack his cell. I start to reflect on all the inmates who I came into contact with when I was a CO. We made decisions that landed us in a system that controls us. That’s the main ingredient of jail: control. Naturally, when we become adults we own our actions. We decide whether we’re going to make a right turn or a wrong turn. If our actions go against the laws put before us then it is determined we must be controlled. That’s where jail comes in. It not only confines you physically, but it confines your choices. No longer can you eat, sleep, and drink when you want. No longer are you a free citizen.
Some feel that jail is modern-day slavery because of the way inmates are treated. I beg to differ, because even though inmates get beaten unjustly sometimes and they are forced to do things against their will, those inmates, before getting locked up, decided to do wrong. Slaves did not have such an option. When you break the law and get caught, you put yourself at the mercy of an unfair court system and corrections officers who, at times, have the power to be judge, jury, and executioner. And the legal system puts considerably more effort into governing inmates than it puts into governing the behavior of corrections officers. This creates an atmosphere where the few rights an inmate has often get violated but there is little justice for them.
As I finish packing the deceased inmate’s belongings, I also think about other inmates who may feel like taking their life is the only way out. Jail can do that to you.
Prison should be feared at all times. As corny as it may sound, prison should be thought about every time a person thinks about doing something wrong. Now I know incidents happen that sometimes unjustly land someone in prison. Things like wrong-place-wrong-time can’t always be avoided. But at all costs, jail should be avoided. Jail is not a badge of honor. There is nothing glorious about being controlled. No one is invincible inside these walls. I’ve witnessed even the toughest person get backed down and beat. For every person out there that thinks he’s tough there are, at minimum, thousands of inmates that will prove to him otherwise.
I drag his belongings out of the cell and I vow to myself that once I get released I’m never coming back here again.
Months pass and it’s time for me to be released. I’m thankful that I had only a twenty-month sentence. I know it could’ve been much worse. The day before my release a CO hands me a letter from Albany, and when I open it, I read that they are now granting me Work Release. I shake my head. All along I could’ve gone to Work Release and all the talk about my being in protective custody and the serious nature of my crime was just crap. Albany just didn’t want me to get out early. I guess now they can officially say that they gave me Work Release so it will appear that they don’t discriminate. At this point I’m over it anyway. I fold the paper up and put it away so that when I look at it again it’ll remind me that never again will I come back to this place.
EPILOGUE
When I get home, I’m greeted by my son, who has now outgrown me. His cell phone rings and it’s my mother checking to see if he has seen me yet, because everyone is awaiting my arrival.
I enter the apartment and I’m greeted by my mother, who holds me tight for a very long time, and the tears just start rolling down her face and mine. All I feel is the unconditional love that she has for me. I can also feel the pain that I’ve caused her. I know that as usual I owe her a debt that I can never repay.
The next day I report to my parole officer. He gives it to me straight, letting me know that I have an uphill battle ahead of me. He tells me that jobs are tight, that we’re in a recession, and that I have a felony conviction as an ex–law enforcement person and that I lost a city job. He tells me that as a part of my parole conditions, it’s mandatory to get employment, and if I fail to do so I can be sent back to prison. I take in everything he’s saying. I’m positive, because I know that I will do whatever it takes to make things right again. If I have to work two fast-food jobs, I will. It don’t matter. All that matters right now is that I’m home and here is my second chance.
While I was in prison, I had my mom apply for a job on my behalf. They sent her a letter back stating that I qualified and when the hiring process would start. When my parole officer sees the letter he tells me that he might have to stop me because the job was a good one, which means that I could get back on my feet sooner rather than later, and thus start selling drugs again. Isn’t a parole officer supposed to encourage you to get a job and get back on your feet as soon as possible? Besides, I don’t need a good-paying job to sell drugs again. Nevertheless, he lets me go to the orientation and that’s when I find out just how the prosecuting DA did me dirty.
My charges were attempted drug sale in the third degree and bribery receiving in the third degree. When an employer looks at my application, he will see the more serious charge first, the drug sale charge. In this day and age, with that charge, an employer may be willing to take a chance and give me a job. However, once he sees the bribery charge, the employer may scratch his head and figure that the normal Joe Blow standing-on-the-corner hustler is not going to get that type of charge. So the employer is now prompted to ask me what kind of position I held that would put me in a position to be bribed. Once I tell him my story, trying to be truthful and not lie, my interview is over. So that was the last dagger that the system gave me: Let’s make it hard for him to get employed again and maybe he will slip up again and land back in prison.
Long story short, that didn’t happen. In fact, to show how good God is, upon completing my parole obligation, not only did I land a job, I landed another city job with a pension and benefits. Today I walk around as an example to let people know that you can bounce back from anything, and just because you went to jail, it’s not the end of the world.
ADDENDUM
HOW TO PREVENT A CORRUPT CORRECTIONS OFFICER
1.Perform random strip searches on officers as they enter the facility, or at least randomly pat them down. An officer will think twice about bringing in contraband if the threat of a random search looms.
2.Perform random locker searches and make sure they’re on the same day as the strip search. Once again, you want officers thrown off guard and unable to predict when a search will take place.
3.Make it mandatory that officers who man the front gate post are from another jail. Also, use a supervisor from another jail to oversee what happens at the front gate. This helps eliminate camaraderie and favoritism among officers as they enter.
4.When an inmate housing area is being searched by a drug dog, make sure the dog also sniffs out the officers’ station. This will prevent an officer from hiding contraband inside the officers’ station if an officer knows a search is coming for his or her housing area.
5.Randomly send officers down to the inspector general’s office for questioning even if the officers are not accused of anything. Have the inspector general ask them about the jail. Notify officers at roll call so that they know that they will be questioned. Officers will say anything in a confidential setting with pressure coming from the inspector general. Officers will be cautious about doing anything illegal if they know that there is a chance another officer will give them up.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Heyward was born and raised in New York City’s Polo Ground Projects in Harlem. At the age of nineteen, he joined the United States Marines and became a decorated war veteran by serving in Desert Storm/Desert Shield Operation in 1990–1991. After receiving an honorable discharge he served as a New York City corrections offi
cer, working ten years at Rikers Island. In May of 2006 Gary was arrested and convicted for selling drugs throughout the jail. During his incarceration he developed a passion for writing and penned his memoir, Corruption Officer. He was released in 2008 and currently works for the city of New York.
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Copyright © 2011 by Gary Heyward
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