I t was a typical Wednesday morning in the Disciplinary Segregation Unit. We had served the breakfast trays and picked them up. We were running the inmates out of their rooms one-at-a-time to the shower rooms, and we were also running them out to the exercise yard. Four inmates at a time could shower, and six inmates at a time could be outside, one for each exercise enclosure we had in our yard. Inmates called these enclosures cages. The weather was beautiful.
The previous day, Tuesday, had been a visiting day. Tuesday is the one day of the week when family and friends had the opportunity to come to the prison and visit segregation inmates in our Visiting Room. By Wednesday morning, inmates in the Segregation Unit were anxious to pass on the latest gossip they had learned from their visits, and those who hadn’t had visits were anxious to learn the latest news. Who’s been shot? Who’s been arrested? Who’s been released. Any major battles amongst the gangs. Any spectacular crimes? How about romantic pairings? Whose wives and girlfriends have found new romantic interests and with whom? Who is pregnant? Who has died? Anyone snitched to the police about any unsolved crimes that they’d committed?
There was always a lot of gossip to share on Wednesday, and when they ran out of facts, they made up drama of their own, so people could take it back to their rooms and occupy their long hours of confinement.
Mid-morning, I went out onto the compound to begin escorting inmates back to their rooms. I would take one inmate back to his room and then bring one out to fill the empty cage. I had handcuffs, leg irons, and a come-a-long chain with me. Oscar occupied the first cage.
There was nothing special about Oscar, so I was a little surprised when I opened the hatch on his gate, announced it was time to go in, and he refused to come to the gate, so I could put on the handcuffs.
“Well, you have to come in,” I said. “We’ve got lots of other inmates who are anxious to get outside.”
“You’ll have to put them in the other cages,” he said.
I tried a little gentle persuasion. “We have to keep on schedule or we won’t be able to finish yards today, and the other inmates will be angry.”
It didn’t work.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “I’m staying outside until I want to come in.”
“Oscar,” I said, “you have a direct order to come to the gate, be put in restraints, and return to your room.”
I used the language of our Inmate Code of Offenses which lists refusing direct orders as a rule violation.
“Well, I refuse,” he said. “What are you going to do about it? Put me in jail?”
Oscar found this last remark to be quite amusing, and he chuckled. Other inmates in neighboring cages were watching and listening closely, and they chuckled, too.
We had a problem.
Our unit can only function if inmates cooperate with us. The prison can only function if inmates cooperate with us. Without inmate cooperation, the prison functions would quickly grind to a halt.
I left the yard and went to my supervisor. He listened, and then he went out to the yard himself.
“If you don’t come out of the cage on your own, we will drag you out,” he said.
“Go ahead,” Oscar answered. “I don’t think you can do it.”
My supervisor turned to me:
“Bring in everyone else, and don’t bring anyone else outside.” Then, he left the yard and returned to his office. Soon the yard was deserted except for Oscar.
Security officers in Nebraska are organized into ranks like the military, and at LCC, there is always a lieutenant in charge of the security officers for that shift. The Lieutenant for this day was the next person to appear at Oscar’s cage to try to get him to come in, but he continued to refuse.
Oscar’s refusal to comply had obstructed our Unit’s functioning, and it triggered a routine response that our security officers rehearse at the Training Academy much more frequently than they actually employ at the prison. The response involves a forced-cell-move team that uses force to gain compliance. Oscar was about to meet them.
The Lieutenant returned to his office and selected five people to muster and get ready for action. When they were ready, they came to the Unit and went out to the yard.
Five of the biggest, strongest men we had in the guard force that day gathered at Oscar’s gate. They were suited up in protective clothing with pads on their knees and elbows and flak jackets with padding and reinforcement surrounding their bodies. They wore helmets with plexiglass shields covering their faces and heavy gloves. Their boots were heavy and black. One of the officers carried a clear, plexiglass, curved shield that was approximately four and half feet tall and a couple of feet wide. One of the officers stepped up to the gate and spoke to Oscar.
“This is your last chance. Come to the gate and put on restraints and come in from the yard,” he said.
Oscar didn’t respond or comply or move. He had retreated to a point opposite the gate when he saw the team arrive, and he stood with his back against the chain link fencing with his arms outstretched to the side.
The officer who had spoken to Oscar now picked up the shield and held it in front of him and faced Oscar. He was the biggest, and he looked like the meanest. The four other officers lined up behind him in a single file, each one extending his right hand to grasp a strap on the flak jacket of the officer in front of him. I was stationed at the gate.
The officer in the front of the line grasped his shield tightly and said to me, “Open the gate.”
I quickly swung the gate open, and the team rushed into the enclosure as a unit as if they were connected to each other. Oscar stood perfectly still like a deer frozen on the highway staring at oncoming headlights, his arms outstretched to each side. The team accelerated as it neared Oscar. The lead officer aimed his shield squarely at Oscar’s chest, and Oscar, who had not moved, was now facing the oncoming unit with his back against the fence.
Wham!!
The whole cage shuddered with the impact. The lead officer’s shield slammed into Oscar with a force that reminded me of smashing a mosquito against a wall. The shield curved inward toward Oscar, so he was pinned tightly against the fence and couldn’t move anything. Both of his arms had been extended to his sides when the shield hit him, and as the lead officer pressed the shield against Oscar, his two arms sticking out from the sides of the shield resembled insect appendages sticking out from the sides of a fly swatter twitching slightly.
The four officers following behind the lead officer quickly peeled off, two moving to the right and two to the left. The officers in the second and third positions each grabbed an arm. The officers in the fourth and fifth positions each grabbed a leg. When all four officers were in control of their assigned limbs, the lead officer relaxed his pressure on the shield and gave a simple command:
“Go!”
With this command from the lead officer, all five officers jumped into a well-coordinated sequence they had practiced many times at the Training Academy. The two officers on Oscar’s legs pulled them out from under him, and he dropped to the ground, flat on his back. With another command, they flipped Oscar onto his stomach and moved his arms behind his back. The shield was no longer needed, so it was put aside, and the officers quickly placed restraints on Oscar’s hands and feet.
As this was occurring, the lead officer moved to Oscar’s head and held it against the pavement. While the restraints were being applied, the officer holding Oscar’s head decided to turn his head so he would face to his right. As he turned Oscar’s head, I noticed that he did not lift his face off of the pavement. Instead, he continued to press down as he slid his face sideways across the ground left to right. I winced as I watched it, and I wondered if he would have gravel from the pavement ground into his skin, gravel that would need to be dug out of his face later on.
Finally, they dropped a spit hood over his head and tied it around his neck, and they lifted him to his feet. With one officer on each arm, they walked Oscar out of the cage and off of the Unit. He would be going to the Control Unit with a host of new scrapes, bruises, and charges.
Soon, our Unit’s functioning returned to normal. We resumed running yards and demurred in reaction to inmates’ repeated questions about what had happened to Oscar. All they knew for sure was that he had refused to come in from the yard and was now missing.
A couple of weeks passed, and Oscar returned to our Unit. He had been a model prisoner in the Control Unit, and they needed his room. Oscar had nearly completed his disciplinary segregation sentence, so they decided to let him finish it in our Disciplinary Segregation Unit on C Unit.
Oscar was glad to be back, and he was eager to get out to the exercise yard where he could visit with other inmates and see the blue sky once again. On his second day with us, it happened that I escorted him outside to the exercise cages, and I asked him why he had refused to come in during his last stay with us.
“Oh, I just wanted to see what would happen,” he said.
“Well, it’s not like we didn’t warn you,” I said. “What did you think was going to happen?”
Oscar shrugged his shoulders and smiled. I was a little surprised by this answer, and it occurred to me that this curiosity to “just see what would happen” might have led him to shrug his shoulders at danger at other times in his life and invite similar catastrophic outcomes. It seemed to be a very painful way for him to learn life lessons, and I thought we might chat about it for a while.
I tried to express some ideas that would get a conversation started, but he wasn’t interested in talking with me. He turned to the other inmates on the yard and struck up conversations with them. I also looked closely at his face. I was looking for scratches or places where gravel might have ground into his face under the skin, but I saw no evidence of any injury.
An hour passed, and I returned to the yard to begin running in the inmates and replacing them with others who were waiting to come outside. I first went to Oscar’s neighbor, a young athletic inmate named Rivera. As I unlocked the hatch in his gate, he made no move to come to the gate and put on handcuffs. I spoke to him, but he said that he wasn’t coming in.
“Oh, no,” I thought. “Not again.”
This time I used different reasoning. I told him that he was coming off the yard even if we had to drag him out. He looked me up and down and said, “I don’t think you can do it. Come on in, I’m ready. Try. I can take you.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “You misunderstand. I won’t be fighting with you. We have a specialized team of big, tough men who love to fight. They do all of our fighting for us. They’ll come in this cage and squish you like a bug, and then they will drag you out, and then you’ll spend a few weeks in the hole.”
I looked over at Oscar.
“It’s the goon squad,” he said to Rivera “and that’s exactly what they will do.” He nodded to Rivera knowingly.
Rivera looked hard at Oscar. I guess he was sizing up Oscar and trying to decide if he should trust him. There was a long pause, then Rivera walked to the gate and put his hands through the hatch so I could put on the handcuffs.
Oscar looked on approvingly.
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