Scenes of Prison
35. Francisco’s Remarkable Display
“F lipping out” is an unusual event in our prison that I have witnessed from time to time. It occurs when pressure builds up in an inmate’s mind until something in his self-control snaps, and he acts out in a violent, grandiose, destructive display of temper. When I think of flipping out, Rusty comes immediately to mind.
Rusty was an inmate l met soon after I began working in our Disciplinary Segregation Unit. There was nothing remarkable about him. He had been in a fight and was waiting for his disciplinary court hearing. He was about average in most respects, and one day, when I delivered his breakfast tray to his room, he seemed out of sorts. He seemed to be in a foul mood from the moment I woke him up, and we speculated that a phone call or a letter he’d received from home the previous evening had upset him. He fumed all morning alone in his room, pacing back and forth and muttering to himself, and the noon meal did nothing to calm him down.
By early afternoon, Rusty had left his room, and he was outside for his exercise hour with a few other inmates. We had not yet built individual exercise cages in our Segregation yard, so the inmates could freely mingle with each other. We knew Rusty was a powderkeg, so we kept a close watch on him.
Rusty paced back and forth across a small patch of the pavement. Through the windows, we could see him speaking, but there was no one nearby to listen to him. It appeared that he was talking to himself, or perhaps, he was talking to an imaginary person none of us could see. He was definitely working himself up into a rage, and the other inmates gradually moved as far away from him as they could. The more he talked, the faster he walked back and forth, and he was beginning to get loud. We were starting to get alarmed. The other inmates were watching him closely, too, and keeping their distance.
Suddenly, he flipped out. He shouted and rushed at the inmate nearest to him, and he started throwing wild punches as fast as he could. All the other inmates scattered. It all went very fast, and we jumped into action. But before rushing to the scene, I watched enough to witness the most remarkable display of boxing I’d ever seen.
Rusty had attacked a young, athletic inmate named Francisco who moved quickly and gracefully as Rusty threw wild punches and lunged at him. The younger inmate never turned away from Rusty, and he slowly backed up as he faced him. Francisco had raised both of his hands and extended his open palms toward Rusty, so each punch Rusty threw was met with an open hand. It seemed as though each of Francisco’s palms had its own radar and could meet each flying fist in the air before it could strike him. With each blow, Francisco took a small step back to maintain an arms-length distance between them. Rusty’s blows did not land, and they did no damage.
Rusty quickly wore himself out, and that’s when I arrived on the scene. I was the first to arrive. Rusty was still fighting, but he was tired, and Francisco had no interest in fighting.
I stepped to Rusty’s side, and I shouted as loudly as I could “STOP FIGHTING!” right next to him. Immediately, Rusty dropped his hands to his sides. Francisco stepped back and allowed me to concentrate on Rusty.
With a wide, sweeping motion of my arm with my index finger pointing at the ground, I said in a booming voice, “Get down on the ground!” I quickly repeated this movement and this command even more emphatically before Rusty had a chance to comply: “GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!!”
Down he went.
“Get on your stomach!” “GET ON YOUR STOMACH!” I commanded.
He rolled over.
“Arms behind your back! Get your Arms behind your back!”
He did that, too.
I knelt beside him and grabbed both wrists. By this time, security officers were arriving, and they put handcuffs on Rusty’s wrists and led him away.
I had stopped a fight by myself and gained control of a violent, flipping out inmate using nothing but voice commands. Until I grabbed his wrists, I hadn’t touched him. I couldn’t believe it. I was very lucky. I never tried to do that again, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone else ever trying to do it either. Still, it was a nice memory of something very unusual that I had done, and no one had gotten hurt.
Rusty was taken to our Control Unit. He finished his disciplinary segregation time there, so I didn’t see him again, and I never learned what had been bothering him so much that day.
Rusty received a misconduct report for fighting, and Francisco, the inmate that Rusty had attacked, was also written up for fighting, but I testified on Francisco's behalf at his hearing, and all the charges against him were dismissed.
Discussion
- Voice control is under appreciated. Try acting out the scene described in this chapter. Can you make your voice boom for another person?
- How does it make you feel to speak with such authority?
- Try being the prisoner. How do you feel when someone is speaking to you in this manner?
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