Pelican Bay Riot (5 page)

I made it through and after not seeing the sun for almost a month it was like coming out of a cave. The sunlight was so bright I couldn’t see at first. I squinted against it at the end of the Sally-Port where the vines of razor wire topped fence were. It opened and we walked the same path I’d walked when coming back from my appeal. I looked up at the tower where home plate would have been and tried to figure out how Damon and I were going to talk to the Whites in the gym. I asked the lead Gooner, Torrez on my left, “Can you let us talk to the gym inmates?” Torrez responded, “Which one?”

I knew he wanted me to put someone out there he could add to his gang file, especially if something happened, that was about to. I said, “It doesn’t matter, as long as he’s a White man.” Torrez said, “We’ll see what the Lieutenant says.”

We made the turn to building’s 3, then 2, then 1 where the stands for the baseball game would have been and turned almost a full circle from building 6 to where the program office was. I looked at the gym to the left of it, almost directly across from the building we were in. At the end of the gym the walkway stopped and a parking lot opened up for all the prison guards and staff to park. We stood in front of the program office and could hear the noise of the gym. One hundred and forty inmates had to get along on bunk beds with people farting and snoring right next to each other and only a half a dozen toilets and a few pissers. What a nightmare. It was about to get worse. The Program office door opened and a Lieutenant let us in and escorted Damon and me to a room.

Damon and I sat down across from a grizzled old black Lieutenant with a name plate- Spinks. Trigger and Psycho came in next and sat down in chairs next to us leaning forward so their handcuffed hands had room behind their backs. Spinks said, “I’m opening up yard in a couple of days. Are there any unresolved problems you guys need to iron out?” I stared straight at Lieutenant Spinks like the rest and wondered why he was bringing us in? There had to be a reason. It came. Spinks said, “I heard there might be a problem looming over the exercise bars.” T-Bone won. There was nothing I could do to avoid it. I heard Trigger say, “No problems.” Spinks looked directly at me, then Damon and I both said in unison, “No problems.” Spinks looked suspicious, like he knew better. He cocked his head to the side and said, “Okay, I’ll take you at your word.”

Hearing that pissed me off even more, what was I going to say, or rather whine about, that we got worked and dictated to and now we are just going to bend, until we are bending over? I asked, “Can we go tell the gym?” Spinks said, “Sure.” Then looked at the Gooner- Torrez behind us and said, “Escort them to the gym.” Torrez said, “I asked them who they wanted to talk to and they wouldn’t give me a name.” Spinks smiled and said, “They don’t want you to log it and then take the person to the Hole- Ad-Seg the next time you do a gang sweep. They aren’t stupid. Just have the tower guard pick one like we usually do.” The Gooner Torrez nodded his head and said, "Let’s go."

On the way out of the program office Trigger chimed in, "Hey Torrez can we go talk to the gym?" Torrez said, "Which Mexican?" Trigger laughed, "The gym tower knows how we do it." Torrez walked us over and kept pushing Trigger, "How do you do it?" Trigger said, "The gym inmates see us outside. It isn't a puzzle." Torrez just nodded his head; he was always fishing and trying to make a name by writing down all the names of prisoners who seemed to have influence. All he was doing was taking even those who were peace makers with influence and burying them with shot caller status in a dark hole where they couldn’t keep peace.

The gym was about the size of two full basketball courts and walking past the first part we all heard some Mexicans inside working out. They were following a leader who instructed in Spanish to the others replying in Spanish. Then the bullet proof glass next to the double doors came into view. Twenty feet inside the gym bunk beds started and two rows could be seen. Each race had a look-out from a bunk somewhere down that line to look for opportunities to speak to inmates from the buildings or to see when the Gooners were on their way or a myriad of other reasons. I saw Blockhead’s giant head immediately. We joked with him in the past that he had a Jack in The Box bobble head. We loved him at over 50 years old and from the High Desert area in the Inland Empire, California. He was another drug addict raised in the desert and California’s prisons but he had a conscience with honor and dignity. I studied his scrunched up face and knew he was having problems in the gym as a leader for the White race. He came to the door immediately.

Trigger already had a Mexican leader, a young gang banger from Artesia L.A at the other opening to the double doors ten feet away. I heard Trigger talking to him in Spanish. Damon and I huddled up with Blockhead in a small circle and Blockhead spoke first. “The Chicans are trying to bully us. They are changing which shower we can use and making up all kinds of other rules in here.”

All I said in the huddle is, “We are about to take flight on em so when you hear the alarm either get your money or be ready for them to attack.” After those words left my lips I broke a foot away from our huddle to lighten the situation and started having regular, loud enough conversation for the guards in the tower and on the floor at a podium twenty feet away to hear. “We are coming off lockdown. I guess its time to play on the workout bars.” A minute of filler conversation later Torrez said, “That’s enough. Let’s get you back in your building.”

We walked the track back almost full circle and I started studying our tower. Two guards were standing their watching the escort. One had a block gun. No big. I was leading the way and thoughts crept into my mind that I was being obvious. The reason I wanted to be in front was my first thought was that I would get un-handcuffed first. Then I realized it wasn’t a guarantee. Whoever was the closest to the Gooners would get un-cuffed first. I slowed down and let Trigger and Psycho catch up to me and Damon. I huddled closer to Torrez to start some pseudo conversation. We got to the gate and waited for it to open. While waiting at the gate to the Sally-port, the vestibule opened.

Torrez and three other Gooners didn’t offer any freedom from the handcuffs after the gate opened and I wondered if we would make it back to our cell in cuffs. Torrez scooted in front of us and stopped at the Sally-port and pulled out his keys. I was caught off guard and didn’t get in position first. Neither did Damon. Trigger got his cuffs off and I looked at his scarred thick knuckles while Psycho got un-cuffed next, then Damon, then me.

Trigger and Pyscho started talking to Torrez and that gave me room to get into the vestibule. There weren’t any guards inside the building. They were all in the tower, watching, waiting and wondering. I made it half way through the vestibule with Damon right behind me and stopped and looked back. I walked back as if I wanted to talk to Torrez right when Torrez shooed Trigger away so I turned with him on my rear right behind me and started walking again. I heard the vestibule we just walked through start closing and looked up at the tower through the glass. The guards were watching us. I slowed so Trigger would walk into me and he slowed and didn’t bump me. I forced myself to look like I had been pushed and jerked my body forward, then planted and turned and lunged fast and hard. I punched a backpedaling Trigger and felt Damon fill up the rest of the narrow width of the corridor. Trigger and Pyscho regrouped with a barrage of ineffective punches.

I heard the tower hit the alarm button and everything other than the fight left my mind. My punches were beating Trigger’s and I felt and saw his face bouncing backward and crowded him. I was hammering his face with right left piston combos and felt the side of my head take Psycho’s punches for a second as I buried Trigger in the corner where the vestibule closed moments ago. Trigger went down under my barrage but popped back up and ran at me in a tackle that temporarily took my balance. I regained my footing and again reached his chin and eyes with a longer reach and sped up the velocity of right left straight combinations. The sound of a block gun pierced my adrenal survival bubble, “BOOM!” and I realized gas was burning my eyes.

The sound of the vestibule door opening came next and I bear hug-grappled Trigger in tight to me to turn him where I needed him. It gave me a chance to see Damon still fighting Psycho. I looked up to again to see the guard in the tower pointing a gun at me. I couldn’t tell if it was another block gun or rifle and kept Trigger in the line of fire as much as I could and felt the blast of pepper spray from my right. The Gooners were in the vestibule spraying pepper spray and yelling, “GET DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!”, and I dove toward them on my stomach. Trigger came after me but was met by a torrential amount of pepper spray and blindly fell to the ground. I stomach crawled in a circle to face Trigger and saw Damon on the ground in the middle of the vestibule. He was painted orange from pepper spray and it looked like Psycho was done fighting and laying flat on his stomach near the inside of the building. An army of guards from other buildings were at the gate and rushed in. I felt a number of them stand on my lower body, back and the back of my neck while my arms got yanked behind me and up for handcuffs. A swarm of new guards arrived and I felt a few swings from Billy clubs hit my shoulders to make sure I was done fighting. I watched guards handcuff Trigger, then Damon, then Psycho.

There were over 20 prison guards with the 4 Gooners keeping Damon and I separated from Trigger and Psycho. Then the gym alarm went off. I felt a couple of guards force me to the ground and got down on my stomach again. The Gooners adapted and stayed to watch us while the other guards ran to the gym. Watching them run it was a joke how out of shape they were compared to the inmates. The noise from one block gun exploding after the other filled the air, with repeated microphone enhanced yelling, “GET DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!

The gym warriors weren’t stopping. We heard yelling, screaming and war noises from the combatants. It sounded like thunder, than another block gun, then the microphone, “LIVE ROUNDS COMING NEXT!”

The action kept going for another minute with two live rounds fired. We stayed on our stomachs for four more hours while over 50 guards and Gooners negotiated 16 Whites and 50 something Mexicans to the Hole-Ad-Seg.

A few minutes later we were lifted up and walked to the Sally-Port gate. On the way to the Hole-Ad-Seg I thought about things. Since we handled the war in the vestibule, nobody else could see the action. That should make it easier for Popeye to iron things out with the newest Shot caller for the Mexicans. I knew he wouldn’t bend, so we might be seeing him, or hearing he was in the hole with us in the coming months. Then I thought about how the U.S War on Drugs was just building bigger criminals where drug diseased souls were being bred into displaced alienated souls who survived by violence where in prison it seemed the only way. Lately, I always ask God, what should I do, my answer from Him is to write about it. As the hour glass turns, these, are the prison days of our lives.

Lock Up Diaries

Chapter 1

The state bus had 42 California prisoners in it bouncing with every bump on dilapidated shocks. I, who answered to B.J, was like the rest of the prisoners fighting for a more comfortable way to sit handcuffed at the wrist to waist chains with feet locked at the ankles in more chains. The constant grinding noise from the moving chains combined with the sound of the squeaking shocks, this was our symphony of destruction.

I was stationed in the last row scrunched in next to a Black man. Behind me in a steel cage were two Transport Prison guards. I didn't have to look again to know they were sitting in an almost standing position, one with a block gun and the other with a rifle. The rows of inmates in front of me sat two per seat, some leaning forward resting their heads on the seat in front of them. At the front of the bus before the driver and his copilot another steel cage had another prison transport guard standing facing us with a block gun hanging from a shoulder strap constantly barking orders.

"No talking...Keep the noise down..." Then, "We are 15 minutes from your next P.O Box."

I knew our new P.O Box was the mailing address to a somewhat less tense Level 3 & 4 California Prison than we had just come. This one was on the other end of California on the border of Mexico. I heard this prison had temperatures that reached 120 degrees, with the asphalt concrete track on the yard sealing in that heat and amplifying it to 140 degrees. The prison’s nickname- Sent-to-hella.

The prison we left 10 hours ago was a volatile environ full of Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit kick-outs. Inmates that had finished their isolated SHU terms, some for 5 years or more, these men were processed into the highest security level 4 as a de-escalation phase. I was in that prison on the specific yard the SHU released prisoners landed. Seeing muscular White, Brown, Black and Asian men walking slower, with looks on their faces like they had just come from a meditative place, you could see they were trying to make sense of things and adapt. It looked like they were almost where they needed to be, but not quite. It was like the released SHU inmates had been to the end of the tunnel and instead of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow they had found the Truth; it only held a dark bottomless pit of lonely frustration and emptiness.

The California Prison Union and other Criminal Justice and Political voices termed the Pelican Bay SHU, the worst of the worst. It was more like the strongest of the strong willed. Maybe the most misguided, or the most lost, definitely the voiceless. It is always the wrong thing to try and take the soul away from a human. I often wondered if someone besides me would figure out that if we would take that strong will and direct it in more positive direction rehabilitation would be possible. Processing out of the SHU into a prison yard where other prisoners hadn't seen the end of the tunnel and still thought there was gold there made the prison population’s political landscape a struggle for influence where pride becomes the issue in a fight for power to control. I thought about how that comingling of power seekers caused the worst riot in Pelican Bay’s history. Seeing it firsthand a few months ago left visuals my mind wouldn’t stop analyzing…