Corruption Officer (9 page)

“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 work
week 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,’ I thought to myself,
‘Got it!
 
I could always sneak out
through the visitor’s area because they have their own entrance that allows
visitors to come and go.’

So, I makes a b-line straight to the visitor 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 his surroundings, today he’s blood,
tomorrow he’s crypt.
 
Then he turns
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 tells his family that he took
on four C.O.s
and won.
 
Then you have the
“Imposters.”
 
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 one
being fucked, than they’re not gay.
 

I walk by shaking my head and grimacing at the thought of
such a lifestyle, not at the fact that they’re gay but because of the high rate
of diseases that comes around in here.
 
Then they go home to their unsuspecting families carrying that stuff
with them.
 
I walk up to the Officer’s
station through a long corridor that has chairs 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 which leads to the
visitor 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
visitor floor where you hear nothing but loud conversations from multiple
visitors and inmates.
 
Everybody is
talking loud so that they can be heard.
 
I walk by and say what’s up to a couple of Officers that just by seeing
me
in their area 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 and see the inmates.
 
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 compliant
from a female visitor, “Why can’t he have these pictures of me?”
 
The male Officer responds while skimming
through them again and again, “Mam, 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 and normally another Officer would let the
flicks in but they would never make it to the designated inmate.
 

I try and make my way through the hustle and bustle of this
area.
 
I finally get the attention of the
Officer with the keys to let me out when I get a tape on my shoulder and 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, 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 assiened to me eerea,”
she smiles and says, “Come wit me now.”

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

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

“Anything, Cap,” I said.

My thoughts were, ‘Just let me get the hell up out if
here.’
 
When we get to her office, I see
another female Officer sitting at a desk filling out paperwork and off to her
left sitting in the corner was a young Black female holding a baby and rocking
it back in forth.
 
The girl was hysterically
crying.
 
She then screams out at me,
“Please, Mr. I won’t do it again!”
 
The
baby reacts to her screaming and starts to cry.
 
The Captain then says, “Me need you to woch ‘er for one sec-con while de
Officer
writes
‘er report til 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 and then
answer, “I don’t know.”
 
She then stands
up and grabs my arm with the baby dangling in her other arm and pleads to me,
“Please don’t let them take her from me.
 
I swear I won’t do it again.
 
I
swear.”
 

I usher 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
visitor 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 babies thigh into the diaper.
 
I noticed that the female Officer is telling me all of this all the
while not looking at me but at the young girl in total disgust.
 
She goes on saying that those moves from the
inmate raised a red flag and she had him and her escorted off of the visitor’s
floor.
 
After having the inmate searched,
drugs were found in between his butt cheeks as he was attempting to commit an
act called boofing.
 
Boofing is when an
inmate secretes a hidden item from inside of his rectum.
 

After searching the girl nothing was found but the baby was
crying loud and appeared irritated.
 
The
Officer remembered the finger going inside the baby’s diaper and searched the
baby finding two more bundles of drugs stashed inside the diaper bringing us to
the point of where we are now.
 
All the
while the story was being told, the girl held her head down in shame.
 
I knew what was going to happen next but did
not want to say out loud that the girl would be arrested and that the Child Protection
Agency would take the child.
 

At that time the Captain returned with the authorities and
the theatrics began again.
 
The girl
jumped up and started crying, continuing to hold onto 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
business like attire and that’s when the girl began yelling and screaming and
struggling to reach for her baby.
 
The
Police then 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 lead out on display, the loud visitor’s room became a library
as everyone stopped talking and parted like the Red Sea to allow the shame
parade to walk pass.

When they left, I hurried up and scooted my ass out through the
door with them.
 
I went to the front
entrance of my jail, got my weapon from the arsenal and was like a blue blur
getting to my van.
 
Once inside, I started
it up and did my ritual, reaching inside my glove compartment and grabbing a
small bottle of liquor, so that I could wind down and reflect on the happenings
of the day.
 
As I sipped, I thought,
‘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 Officer’s 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 could think of
that would prompt someone to risk their life like that.
 
I put the top on the bottle that I was
sipping and put it between my legs as I pulled up to the Security Correction
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 it 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 female
should have told her man that if he really loves her that he would not have her
risk herself and their baby just to bring that shit inside the jail for him.’
 
She was a cute female 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 blow job on the visitor’s 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 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 homies 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 I.D. 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 I
hear, “Boy, you gaining weight?” from behind me.
 
When I turn around I am 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 like I always did 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 Brain, 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 said, “That
boy just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.”
 
Then, she turned to me and said, “I know your momma sho’ is proud of you
the way you turned out and I am proud of you too.”
 

“Thank you, Ms Daniels,” I said.

The elevator opened up on her floor and before she got out
she said, “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 turned and looked at me and I could see that she was tired and
worn down with him going in and out of jail the way he did.
 
She stepped off of the elevator and before it
closed she said, “If ya happen to run into him, could you 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” I said.

Then she walked away and yelled, “You
be
good now, ya hear!”
 
The elevator closed
and went to my floor.
 
Me
feeling like shit was an understatement.
 
I thought, ‘How could I have let this happen?’
 
And trust me when I tell you that half that
bottle of liquor was gone before I stuck 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 went to my room.
 
Once inside I get comfortable and continue to
finish the rest of my bottle.
 
I can
still hear her on the war-path about my lack of attention to the cleanliness of
her house.
 
I sat there and thought 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 and am about to yell back at her
through the door.
 
I was about to say,
‘Listen here woman,’ but then I thought better of it and rationalized that even
with the gun I had, I stood no chance against the “Birmingham battle cat from Alabama!”
 
It would be straight suicide.
 

I fall to 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 back then yells as she walks
away, “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
sits
there for a moment and stares at her through the door
as if she was standing there and could see me.
 
I then open the letter that I see is from my baby momma and at that
moment things just got worse.
 
It was a
court order to pay child support.
 
Damn.
 
I sat there drunk, lying back on my bed with
the letter on my stomach with my eyes half closed.
 
My windows were wide open and I did not hear
a peep, I mean no gun shots, no Police or fire truck sirens, no nothing.
 
Even my moms stopped beefing.
 
I got up, put my gun on my mini-table and
started taking it apart to clean it because as far as I can remember, it’s
always quiet before the storm.