December 2, 2024 • 54 mins
Former special investigative agent Steve Hansen joins us to shed light on a career filled with intense experiences and unique insights into the world of federal corrections. From his humble beginnings in a small Iowa town to navigating the complexities of federal prisons, Steve's story is one of dedication and resilience.
Steve's career journey is nothing short of remarkable, marked by significant events like the volatile "Crack Law Riots" at Greenville. Discover the challenges he encountered while managing federal medical centers dealing with mental health issues among inmates, and the intricacies of transitioning into investigative roles.
Beyond the bars, Steve's story doesn't end with retirement. Instead, he shares his inspiring transition into an overseas role, where he applied his investigative expertise in Afghanistan, contributing to US peace efforts. His narrative emphasizes the possibilities awaiting those in corrections post-retirement, urging professionals to pursue fulfilling roles that maximize their hard-earned skills.
To contact Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hansen-634129122/
Click here to buy one of the books by Host Michael Cantrell -
Keys to Your New Career: Information and Guidance to Get Hired and Be Successful as a Correctional or Detention Officer http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DFWYSFMK/ref=nosim?tag=prisonoffic05-20
Finding Your Purpose: Crafting a Personal Vision Statement to Guide Your Life and Career http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BW344T4B/ref=nosim?tag=prisonoffic05-20
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In more than 28 years of corrections, I have used or
supervised Pepperball hundredsof times.
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about the versatility andeffectiveness of the Pepperball
system.
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With the ability to transitionquickly from area saturation to
(00:24):
direct impact with thenon-lethal PAVA projectiles.
Pepperball provides me with arange of non-lethal options for
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To learn more about Pepperball,go to wwwpepperballcom or click
(00:45):
the show notes below.
Pepperball is the safer optionfirst.
Okay, welcome back to the PrisonOfficer Podcast.
My name is Mike Cantrell.
Today I get to interview notonly an exciting guest but also
an old friend, so I'm lookingforward.
We haven't got to sat down inseveral years together and
(01:06):
talked, so I'm looking forwardto talking to him and having
this conversation about whathe's seen and where he's been.
Steve Hansen he's a retiredspecial investigative agent for
the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
He's got over 25 years ofexperience at various security
levels and different supervisorypositions.
He currently works securityoverseas and we'll see how much
(01:30):
of that he can talk about andhear about what life after
corrections is like.
He's a good friend of mine andit's a pleasure to have him on
the podcast.
Welcome, steve.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thanks, Mike.
Thanks for having me on theshow.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Absolutely well.
Thanks, mike.
Thanks for having me on theshow.
Absolutely.
I'm excited not only to toshare some of your stories with
people, but you know we worktogether for several years and I
miss, uh, I miss sitting downand we used to talk a lot.
So I'm I'm excited about havingyou on here, very excited.
So I always if I know you'velistened, but I always start off
the same way I like to hearabout where people came from, uh
(02:09):
.
So if you could tell us youknow, tell me about where you
grew up, what that was like inschool and stuff before you took
that jump off into uh, I knowyou went in the military, so
what did you?
Where did you grow up at?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I grew up in a small town in Iowa called Palo, Iowa.
I graduated from Cedar RapidsKennedy in 1986.
Originally I was going to go tothe University of Iowa.
I had enrolled, knew where Iwas going to live and all that
stuff, and then I ended up beingdiverted into the Air Force.
Basically.
One of my friends asked me togo to the Air Force recruiter
(02:47):
with him.
We both went, he decided not togo and then I ended up going.
So that was kind of ironic.
So my first assignment was theVandenberg Air Force Base,
California.
And I did a year there and Iwent to Comaso, sicily, where I
(03:11):
met my ex-wife and we had achild.
Then I got sent back toVandenberg.
The marriage fell apart,divorced.
When I got out of the military,the initial thing was I was
going to use my GI bill, but Ihad a kid to support, so that's
how I ended up in corrections.
(03:31):
It was right after a desertstorm.
The job opportunities were notthere.
However, the United StatesPenitentiary Lompoc, california,
was hiring, so that's how Istarted off my career.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, so what was your MOS when you were in the
air force?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I was a security specialist.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Okay, so you were doing law enforcement type stuff
then.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Absolutely.
We're guarding the missilebases.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Ah, okay, so a lot of security.
Were you dealing with anycorrections?
Did you see corrections at thatlevel, that level, um, while
you were in the air force?
I did not I did not uh strictly, uh cop out in the missile
fields okay, so any did you knowabout corrections before you
(04:18):
apparently saw that lompoc washiring?
Was there anything that led upto that?
Did you know anybody thatworked in corrections?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
uh, to be honest, the way I got interested in it was
I got uh, stop lost.
Basically, you know, duringdesert storm I got extended nine
months and during that ninemonths I was taking college
courses and it was all lawenforcement related, of course.
And one of the recruiters fromthe prison came and talked to
(04:47):
our class and he brought out allthe you know cool boxes, shanks
and was telling us all the warstories and I thought that was
pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, so how quickly did you get hired and picked up
at Lompoc?
Hired and picked up at Lompoc.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Oh, I got out in August and then I started
November of 91.
Oh, wow.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So I was unemployed for like two months yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
There was like three of us that all got stop-loss
together.
We all started around the sametime.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Am I thinking of the?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
right.
Two of us made it out of acareer though?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Was Lompoc fairly new in the 80s, or am I thinking of
a different California fan?
No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Lompoc's the old one.
No, lompoc's been around sincethe 1950s.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Okay, let's settle this right here, because I've
been around since the 1950s, so,okay, so let's settle this
right here, because I've beenaround the Bureau for years.
Okay, is it Lompoc or is itLompoc?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
The locals pronounce it Lompoc.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Okay, I usually say that wrong and some people take
a lot of offense to that, andthen others you know it doesn't
matter.
So yeah, we'll put that outthere for everybody.
It is Lompoc, okay, lompoc,okay, I say it wrong, it's
Lompoc.
I'll get that right.
So tell me about that first day.
(06:19):
I mean you hadn't been incorrections before, you hadn't
been.
I'm assuming you hadn't been tojail very many times up to that
point.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I had not.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So what was it like, walking in and hearing that door
slam?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It was kind of intimidating my first day.
It just sucked, you know,because I was the new, the fresh
meat.
The inmates knew that, so theywere talking back to me quite a
bit and I, you know you'reunsure of what you can and
cannot do.
And the thing is, though, withcorrections, you know, once you
(06:53):
get through that first day, eachday gets easier once you
develop a rapport with theinmates.
Uh, you know, all mycommunication skills I developed
over my career comes fromLompoc, having to deal with
maximum security inmates thatyou know, especially from the
California area.
They didn't really appreciateadult supervision, so to speak,
(07:20):
so you had to be able to talk tothose guys to be able to get
them to do what you wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah, so in some ways , one thing I think we have in
common is, you know, I grew upin the Midwest also, and then
when you go in, especially workin federal prison or moving
around and going to thedifferent areas, you're exposed
to a whole different, well,different, cultures, different.
You know, we don't have the asbig a gangs in the different
areas.
You're exposed to a wholedifferent, uh, well, different
cultures, different.
You know, we don't have the asbig a gangs in the Ozarks in
(07:50):
Iowa, uh, so what was some ofthat like, getting used to?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
That was a culture shock, total culture shock.
Uh, you know, my town of 550,you know, was 550 white people,
you know.
Yeah, so you know military,obviously I was around
minorities and differentcultures and stuff like that.
But then when you get to prison, where you're dealing with East
(08:19):
Coast West Coast, we had abunch of Jamaicans, we had
Haitians, we had, you know know,every ethnic group.
Uh, I mean the mexican mafiaand the aryan brotherhood, you
know, sure, uh, it was, it wasyeah, and even, um, even with
the different cultures.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Now, I mean, especially when you get into
those heavy gang cultures,that's something that was just
foreign to me.
I mean, there's a wholedifferent thought process than
working, you know, in themilitary or whatever, with
someone from a different culture.
That's a gang culture out there.
Their views on criminality,their views, they have a
different criminal moral set.
(09:01):
So, that kind of blew me away.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, it absolutely was an eye-opener and everything
was so based on race out there.
You know, like, say, you weretrying to release somebody out
of segregation, you would callthe housing unit and you'd
literally ask them do you have awhite cell available?
Do you have a black cellavailable?
Do you have a Hispanic cellavailable?
And if you didn black cellavailable, Do you have a
Hispanic cell available?
(09:27):
And if you didn't have aparticular race to put the guy
that you wanted to kick out ofsegregation, they stayed in
segregation until the openingcame up.
It was just.
It was just.
It was weird to me, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, yeah.
So what was, what was some ofthe things you saw out there,
anything that really stillstands out in your mind?
I mean, that's a bigpenitentiary.
It's been known as a violentone for a long time.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, the violence was amazing.
I remember, in the first sixmonths of 1993, we had six
homicides, I shouldn't say sixhomicides, there's probably four
homicides and then two drugoverdoses, you know.
But you know, six dead inmatesand uh, you know, it was just,
(10:12):
it was chaos.
You know, we lost our warden,had transferred in, he'd been
there like nine months and thensuddenly he's gone again and uh,
then they bring in the cleaner,you, you know the big boss
warden, and he comes in and he,you know, fixes everything, I
shouldn't say fixes everything,but tries to.
We've got to run itoperationally again.
(10:34):
So yeah, some of the violence.
I saw some of the violencetowards me.
You know, I've been chased withshanks.
I had a guy make a homemade gun, homemade zip gun, and he shot
me.
So, uh, he actually made threeof them.
He hit me the first one, thesecond one, uh, uh, missed me,
(10:57):
went right by my face and then,uh, you know, finally got away
from him.
So yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I started at Leavenworth and you know that
was considered a big-timepenitentiary.
But I can't imagine.
You know we just had AdamDennis on here.
He worked at the CaliforniaDepartment of Corrections for
you know, an entire career andwe talked about the fact that
the West Coast is where a largeportion of the gangs in the US
started.
(11:29):
So being in a federalpenitentiary on the West Coast
in California, I'm guessing thatthat puts the level of violence
you're dealing with at a wholenew level.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, yeah, you know it was.
The prison pretty much was ranby the aryan brotherhood and the
mexican mafia, which they had atruce.
So we also, you know, we're incalifornia and la was 120 miles
down the road, so we had, uh, ahuge population of crips and
bloods and, um, you know,various street gangs.
(12:04):
You know ser, serenios andNortenos.
Well, I guess we didn't haveNortenos in there, but the
Serenios.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And it was just.
You know, we had some TexasSyndicate in there.
Texas Syndicate, those weresome violent guys.
I saw them during the middle ofa mainline.
They were doing some internaldiscipline and they had
contracted out with theGuamanians.
We had about a handful ofGuamanians and they attacked one
(12:34):
of the Texas Syndicate guys andstabbed him 67 times right in
the middle of the corridor.
They wanted everybody to see.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Right yeah.
So what do you think in thefirst couple of years?
Is your brain going well, thisis a career.
Or are you starting to think,well, maybe I need to look
another direction?
I mean, what were your feelingsoverall for that career?
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Overall, I am a Midwest boy through and through
and my whole thing was I wastrying to get back to the
midwest at any type of prison.
I actually put in for atransfer to leavenworth, you
know, okay, uh, not knowing howstuff worked, you know, I was
like I wanted to go toleavenworth and rochester and
then, uh, at the time they wereopening up peekin and Greenville
(13:22):
and Pekin was the closestinstitution to Iowa and I really
, really wanted to go to Pekinbut my captain knew somebody
that was going to Greenville, soI ended up transferring to
Greenville after two and a halfyears at Lompoc, okay, so I've
been to Greenville.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
That's quite a change .
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yes, yes, dramatic.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I'm guessing you rested a little bit after that.
I did?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, it was.
You know it's kind of ironicthough.
You know I was involved in somuch stuff at Lompoc, but my
first large-scale disturbanceyou know where we lost the
institution was at Greenville.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Oh, you were there.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I was there, absolutely that night.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
That was the Cracklaw riots.
Yes, tell me a little bit aboutthat for people that don't know
.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Well, anyway, october 20th, I remember I was working
October 19th, I was supposed tohave the 20th and the 21st off
and I was working, that it was aThursday night and like at 930
in the morning or 930 at night Iwas working evenings.
All the inmates were likerunning to the TV room and I'm,
(14:42):
like you know, checking it outand up on the CNN they were
showing.
I can't remember whatinstitution had gone up.
There was like six or seventhat had gone up that Thursday
because they had overturned the,or they hadn't overturned the
weight disparity between thecocaine and the crack cocaine.
(15:03):
Basically, it took like 100grams of cocaine equaled like
one ounce of crack cocaine.
So it was.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
And cocaine was considered.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Cocaine at the time was considered more of a white
drug and crack was consideredmore of a brown or black drug in
the poorer areas.
So there was a bunch of tensionin the country at that time,
especially in the prisons,because of that disparity.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Right, and so, for the first time ever, we were
going to lock down theinstitution.
So they called in a bunch of usfor overtime.
I asked to work in the housingunit I'd been working all
quarter and they're like no, youneed to go over to H4, which
was the one next door.
So I'm like, okay, uh,ironically, the, the, they
kicked off in the prison or atthe housing unit that I was
(15:53):
working that night.
So, right, uh, so I, I,everybody in there got, you know
, I literally watched as, likesix or seven staff members, you
know, got ran out of thebuilding, you know bloodied and
bruised and you know stuff likethat.
So you know, they, I'mliterally trapped in the other
housing unit.
(16:13):
We're trapped in the middle ofwhat?
The offices.
We didn't have keys to thefront door, those were out on
the compound and then,eventually, after they contained
H3 was the one that went up onthe A and the B side they let us
out.
The disturbance control teamwas, you know, activated and I
(16:36):
was going to go in with them andI was going to have all the
keys to the doors.
So we get ready to go in.
After we negotiated negotiated,I mean, you know broke the
window through through the, the,the phone into them and they
gave up because I mean, what arethey going to do?
They're trapped right and uh.
So we pull them all out and wego in there and there's no doors
(16:57):
.
They had broken every door inthat housing unit.
They stacked all doors.
They were wooden doors at thetime and they'd stacked them in
the middle of the housing unit.
It was like $1.8 million worthof damage.
It was impressive.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, so you guys ended up having to put them on
buses and send them other places, or how did you manage them
with no doors?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
on them.
We worked till well, I workedtill, worked till what?
Six o'clock the next morningand all we did was we were the 4
.
4 pm count did not clear tilllike 4 am.
So, uh, we started, we movedinmates to the gymnasium, we
moved inmates to food serviceand then we started putting them
in segregation.
(17:41):
So we went, we had a capacityof I think it was 144, and we
were running at like 40 at thetime.
And by 4 am.
By the time I got off, we wereat capacity 144.
And then the buses startedcoming the next day Leavenworth
Springfield.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Marion, and you've got how many years in at this
point.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I had three and a half Wow, and I was one of the
veteran guys.
You know, because it was abrand new institution.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Do you think that had anything to do or do you think
it would have went off, nomatter who was working there?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
No, it would have went off, no matter who.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Okay, yeah, cause it was.
It was a national thing morethan a institutional thing.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
When they opened up Greenville.
You know we're right outside ofSt Louis, so we had a huge St
Louis population and most ofthose guys had come from Memphis
, so they all knew each other.
You know it was a really tightcompound as far as the inmates
Interesting the inmatesInteresting.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So still looking at this as a career after three and
a half years in.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah, I absolutely was.
That was the point where Idecided that I wanted to be a
lieutenant.
You know, I wanted to be incharge of a shift.
You know, I wanted to be theone running to the emergencies,
taking charge of the emergencies.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Um yeah, that was uh.
Had you seen some goodleadership?
Was there some people that youwere working with, who I mean?
You looked up.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, I had some really good leadership and some
really bad leadership, yeah,yeah, but I've seen some bad
good leadership and some reallybad leadership.
Yeah yeah, but I've seen somebad leadership too.
It was like, if that guy can bea lieutenant, I can be a
lieutenant, you know.
Absolutely, we had greatlieutenants at Lompoc, great,
great, great guys.
You know guys that you would,you know you literally went to
(19:41):
battle with on a daily basis.
You literally went to battlewith on a daily basis.
And I got to Lompoc or I got toGreenville and we had, you know
, staff from all over the agencyand, uh, you know guys that had
been, you know, made Lieutenantfrom a camp or a low you know
which hadn't dealt withpenitentiary inmates or you know
, inmates misbehaving like on ariot scale, so uh okay, so yeah
(20:05):
I thought it.
You know, if they can be alieutenant, I can be a
lieutenant so yeah, so now you,now you're looking at being a
lieutenant.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So where are you uh what are you putting in for?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
uh well, I was putting in once again I was, I
was trying to make my nine atpekin.
Pekin was like my dreaminstitution, my whole career.
Okay, up and up until, and upuntil thompson, you know I
always, I've always wanted to bea lieutenant or a captain or
something at thompson or at atpekin uh-huh uh, but I'm at, I'm
(20:37):
at greenville and, uh, I getasked to go to mylon to make my
nine at mylon.
well, I wasn't going to turndown a promotion.
If you're specifically askingfor me, I'm going to go.
They were like give us twoyears and we'll get you where
you want to go.
I'm like, okay, I canabsolutely do that.
(20:58):
I went up to Milan and brandnew nine lieutenant, I'm living
on the reservation.
It's a low and I'm absolutelymiserable.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Right, not much going on.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
No, no, nothing was going on.
You know literally justfighting inmates every day about
.
You know do rags and you knowillegal hats and stealing out of
the food service.
That's all it was Right.
There was no violence, minimaldrug issues.
There was a lot of dirty staffbringing stuff into the inmates.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Interesting.
Because, uh, so was there a lotof work release up there, am I
right about that?
Or a lot of them workingoutside the institution?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
We had the same inmates that I was yelling to
take their hat off in the chowhall.
They would be outside, you know, fixing my air conditioners, or
if I had a leaking sink in myhouse, they would be the ones.
So it was different, it wasawkward.
So I remember my son.
(22:12):
He was out, it was in the falland the leaves were falling and
he's out in our side yardplaying football and uh, I go
out there and he's like throwing.
It was like this, uh, it waslike a duct tape, tube, plastic
tube.
And he's like throwing it.
It was like this, it was like aduct tape, tube, plastic tube.
And he's like throwing itaround and I'm like what you got
there?
And he gives it to me and itturned out it was marijuana that
(22:35):
they were trying to introduceinto the, into the, into the
institution.
Yeah, and it was a huge amountof marijuana, man, I mean Wow.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
that's something I've never done is like I need to
leave.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I need to leave my island you know, yeah, that's
something I've never done islive on the reservation for the
the people that don't know earlyon in the, especially the
bureau of prisons, um, it wascommon for them to build housing
.
Uh, you know, the warden wasalways going to live on the
reservation.
A lot of times an AW, anassociate warden or a captain
(23:13):
would be required to, and thenthere would be different levels
of hopefully, you know somelieutenants or something like
that, and then officers wholived on the reservation.
Usually those houses were builtand maintained by the inmates
and they paid a subsidy for rent.
But the reason was, you knowwe're talking, you got to think
(23:37):
back to 1930s, 1940s, you know.
You didn't just have cellphones, you didn't just.
It wasn't as easy to get aholdof everybody.
So having people that liveright there at the institutions
was always considered a plus,and some of that still exists in
the Bureau of Prisons.
For those that don't understandthat, I've never lived on the
reservation, but what's thatlike?
(23:59):
Never getting away from work.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
It's a grind.
Yeah, you, yeah, you want toget away and you can't.
But I mean also, you know, Iknew as a nine Lieutenant that I
was only going to be there for,you know, a year or two you
know at that time.
Basically, you, you know once,once, once you made your nine,
(24:25):
you you're 11 within two yearsand generally it was always at
another spot.
So I was just like, okay, all Igotta do is suck it up.
Okay, yeah, I decided to timeto go out of my, get out of my
island, uh.
So I was uh putting in for my11 and uh, immediately, both
(24:45):
marion and and Rochester wereinterested.
Marion was moving in threelieutenants.
However, I don't know if youremember, but they used to have
three moves a year, so they hadalready used one of them.
So I was going to be the thirdguy.
I was going to be the first guypicked, uh, picked up after the
(25:07):
fiscal year, so after October,uh.
But then Rochester, you know,they still had move money, so
they picked me up.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
So tell me about working at Rochester.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Well, rochester was a prison hospital, so that was
another thing that was totally,totally foreign to me.
You know, corrections, custodywas not running stuff there,
medical was Psychology was butuh, you know, there'd be times
(25:52):
where you'd lock an inmate upand then, uh, within an hour,
the psychologist, psychiatristwould let him out, so yep
because they're not responsiblefor their behavior, because you
know of their mental health, orthey have alzheimer's, you know
Sure.
It was an eye-opening experience.
There was no gang issues there,which was cool.
(26:12):
I mean, the vast majority ofthe inmates were low security
and you know, the max custodyguys that we had and even the
out custody guys that we had,you know, they were really sick.
I mean, we were like the endstage liver disease.
That's where they sent allthose guys, those guys that they
were really sick.
I mean we were like the uh, theend stage liver disease.
That's where they sent allthose guys, those guys that had
destroyed livers, cause we wereright outside the Mayo clinic.
(26:34):
You know, in Rochester, that'swhere the inmates went.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, Working at FedMed.
I saw a lot of the same.
Working at FedMed I saw a lotof the same thing.
You know, federal medicalcenter in springfield, missouri,
is kind of considered uh,downtime for guys.
I mean, even if they werepretty big hitters and gangs and
stuff uh, you know, everybodywas trying to get healed up or
trying to get healthy.
So they kind of called a truceand we didn't have those type of
(27:01):
problems.
But we had plenty of otherproblems like you were talking
about.
How much mental health doesrochester have up there?
We had plenty of other problemslike you were talking about.
How much mental health doesRochester have up there?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
We had an entire building of mental health.
I think there was probably 180inmates between the two floors
and then we had the seclusionunit, which is basically the
segregation for the mentalhealth guys.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That's when your communication skills came to
bear, didn't they?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yes, exactly, it's kind of tough talking to a guy
you know who's convinced thatthe CIA is in the walls and you
know, please, lieutenant Hanson,make them shut up, you know?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
okay, okay, I'll do it, thank you, thank you, and
it's a fine line because youknow, like you said, I've I've
walked in a cell with a mop, uh,because a guy thought his walls
were bleeding, and I'll mop thewall and then he's fine.
But the next time you dosomething like that you might be
playing too far into his mentalhealth problem and he'll go off
(28:04):
on you, and so it's tough toknow what the right thing to do
is, especially with those guys.
Yeah, we had one inmate.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
At what point did you start thinking about uh
investigations?
When did that start interestingyou?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
To be honest that that uh, when I was at
Greenville I spent six months asthe phone monitor and I got the
bug.
Then I was always interestedthere.
But then as a lieutenant you'vegot to learn how to be a
supervisor so it kind of gotpushed to the background.
And of course, being the SISlieutenant especially at
(28:50):
Rochester where we had an SIAyou know it was a matter of
seniority I had to do your timeup.
You know working SR1, working.
You know swings and mids andall that stuff.
So, eventually I got into theSIS shop and, yeah, I loved the
investigations.
I mean, that was right up myalley.
(29:13):
You know.
You know it's cool knowingeverything that's going on in an
institution.
You know what the inmates aredoing, what the staffs are doing
on some levels, you know who's.
You know who's shoplifting,who's beating their wife, who's
getting drunk downtown.
You know what inmates hasissues with another inmate, what
(29:35):
staff members are dirty, youknow, or looked at bringing
stuff in.
So yeah, I really truly enjoyedit.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Tell me if I've got this right.
You know, at the FederalMedical Center I noticed, you
know, like we talked about theykind of.
You know it's kind of a trucearea, they're kind of laid down,
they're trying to heal up andit's not necessarily that the
inmates would snitch, but it wasa lot more comfortable um uh
(30:08):
arena to have discussions withinmates and you could learn
stuff even outside of yourinstitution that you wouldn't
learn at a, at a full blownpenitentiary.
Uh, was it kind of like that atRochester?
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Absolutely.
Uh, you know it was, it was uh,it, you know I was weird.
For me was like, you know,having like the nurses around
who generally cared about theinmates, cared about their
health.
You know, because you didn't,you didn't have that at the
penitentiary level, you know,you didn't even have that at the
medium level or the low level,you know, and, but this was all
(30:45):
about like the mentally ill guystrying to get them to function.
This was all about, you know,this guy has prostate cancer,
let's get him healthy.
And so the inmates were a lotdifferent too.
You know, it wasn't so usversus them, it was more.
It was a much more relaxed area.
(31:06):
You know, you could talk tothem, you could talk to them,
you could reason with them,except for the mental health
guys.
It's a very easy area tocultivate snitches, very, very
easy.
Right it was easy time there.
No-transcript Right Becausethey didn't want their easy life
(31:51):
to be interrupted.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So one of the things that I guess and it still gets
to me, I still talk about itwhen I train correctional staff
working in the SIS shop, thething that always got me the
worst is you become intimatelyknowledgeable about dirty staff
and how that happens and howstaff manipulation happens and
(32:13):
the amount of it that goes on.
Talk to me about some of whatyou saw, because you were in
there a long time ininvestigations.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, yeah, for Rochester, I mean, a lot of it
was.
We had a lot of female staffwould run off with the inmates,
(32:44):
so to speak, and generally itwas.
You know the inmates wouldidentify, be bitching,
complaining about theirsignificant other, you know, and
they and they would hear stuff,you know, cause sometimes you
don't even think that theinmates, you know the inmates in
there, but you don't think he'slistening cause he's like
working, he's cleaning, whatever, but they're picking up
everything.
So they would take runs at themand eventually, you know, they
just wear them down.
(33:04):
So we had one staff member shedidn't even make it to Glencoe
before she was tied up with aninmate and as somebody that had
taught her IF class, you know, Iwas offended.
I was like, because she cameback, she's like, oh, I didn't
know, she tried to break up withthe inmates.
Like, oh, I didn't know thatthat was the wrong thing to do.
Like, yes, you did know it wasthe wrong thing to do.
(33:34):
We beat you over the head withthat in training.
Yeah, yeah and yeah, it's all.
I mean.
There's always something elsegoing on in their life.
You know, husband's being mean,boyfriend's being mean, um, you
know, and then this person is,you know, waiting on.
You know can't, can't wait tosee him and telling them how
good they look and you know howsmart and pretty they are.
Stuff like that Stuff they'renot getting at home, they're
getting from the inmate and theyjust, you know, they just don't
(33:55):
see it as manipulation.
And then, next thing, you know,you're bringing stuff in and
sometimes it leads to even morethan that.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Sure sure, even more than that Sure, sure, the.
Um, I guess the hardest thingfor me to get used to going from
penitentiaries to the medicalcenter was that familiarity and
it's caused just like you said,there's nurses that care,
there's psychologists that care,psychiatrists that care.
They have to do their job witha level of empathy and that
(34:26):
automatically puts them in aposition to where the I guess
the line is not as wide there asit is for maybe a correctional
officer who's always got thatarm length distance and uh.
So yeah, I saw a lot of thatand it was disappointing.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, I know.
Uh, a big shock to me was I wasprobably three, four years in
my Rochester.
I spent 12 years in Rochesterand we had an inmate who had
been on suicide watch forliterally years and the nurses
had worked with him so hard andthe psychologists had worked
(35:03):
with him and the psychiatristsand he's on psychiatrist and
he's on suicide watch, he's onsuicide watch and then finally
they let him off suicide watchand within a week he killed
himself and the nurses were justthey were crying and I was like
that was just unbelievable tome, you know.
But then, looking at it on ahuman level, I get it.
(35:24):
You know, they were invested,they thought they had gotten him
cured to where he didn't wantto hurt himself and then he hurt
himself.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Sure, yeah, tough, um .
So what are I mean we?
We talked about you knowmanipulation and stuff.
Did you have any other, I guess, memorable?
Um, you know cases and stuffthat you worked on.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Oh yeah, I mean, we had a nursing assistant that she
literally got caught having sexby another staff member with an
inmate.
They worked 6 pm to 6 am, atlike 7 o'clock.
The charge nurse was likelooking for her.
(36:09):
She was a nursing assistant, soshe goes looking for her and
she goes into the it was like ashower area and she you know,
the lights are off and thecurtain is drawn she turned on
the light, throws back thecurtain and there they are
having sex.
So wow, and then, of course, Icame in at midnight that night,
(36:31):
you know, and that's all.
That's all.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
What the whole institution was talking about
was that, you know so, and itaffects the whole institution
when things like that happen,doesn't it?
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah Well, the inmate , you know, he was like I didn't
do anything wrong, you know,because we're we're putting him
in the hole, you know, and hewasn't going to go to the hole.
I mean, he's a big dude man hewas.
He was well over 300 pounds andhe's like I'm not going to the
hole and like, yes, you are.
So, uh, he, he refused to cuffup, so we had to use force on
(37:05):
him and, uh, we ended updislocating the shoulder right
in front of her.
She's like looking at like, ohmy god, you're hurting my lover,
type of stuff.
It was a weird, weird night.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
What a mess.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
You're at Rochester for 12 years.
What's your next step?
Speaker 2 (37:29):
My next step was they opened up AUSP Thompson.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
That's where we met.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
That's exactly where we met, so I would have retired
out of Rochester, except theyopened up Thompson, which was
literally two hours from where Igrew up, and I lateraled down
there as the specialinvestigative agent,
investigative agent so, and then, as you know, there we had all
the trials and tribulations ofjust trying to get our, you know
(37:57):
, maximum security inmates.
Sure, sure that took three,four years yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And I haven't talked about it much.
Thompson was a was a prisonthat the state of Illinois built
in 1999 and never funded it toopen, so it never held more than
just a few camp inmates.
And then in 2014, I think, thestate of Illinois gave it to the
Federal Bureau of Prisons, andso that seemed like a really
(38:28):
great idea at the time.
You know, we thought we werejust going to go in there and
open up this prison, but theprison wasn't built up to the
Federal Bureau of PrisonStandards, so a lot of us spent
a lot of time learning aboutcontracting and building new
fences and how far digital.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah, they were wired for dial-up internet, right,
right.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, it was phone lines, you know.
Know they didn't have stuff forcomputers and printers and
scanners and all the stuff weuse today.
So it was quite a.
It was quite a job getting thatup and going and but once we
got it going it was running good, uh, when I rolled out of there
(39:11):
.
I know it's had some problemssince, but we did have a really
good crew of people workingthere at Thompson when we opened
it up.
I learned a lot from you, froma lot of the other people.
You know I was captain there,so I had to lean on some people
(39:32):
in order to understand my newrole in leadership, and you were
definitely a part of thatbecause you had been working in
investigations and had been inleadership for so long.
I mean, how long were you alieutenant?
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yeah, well, I mean, I was a supervisor for 20 years,
total 12 years as a lieutenantand eight years as the SIA.
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
So and then, um, so you stayed at.
You stayed at Thompson.
Uh, you were there when I left.
Um, when did you retire?
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Uh, I retired July 31st of 2019.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
2019.
Okay and um.
So I know you've been doingstuff since then Tell me a
little bit about what you'vedone, because I know a lot of
people think retirement Well, Imean, I absolutely love my job.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
I had no intention of retiring.
And then I get a message onLinkedIn from a head hunter that
was looking.
He was looking for prisonpeople with top secret
clearances.
I just happened to have a topsecret clearance because, uh,
you might recall, my auditguidelines said that the SIA had
(40:44):
to be part of the jointterrorism task force.
So I was.
I was a member of the jointterrorism task force out of
Chicago, which required a topsecret, so that's why I had it.
Yeah, and you know, initiallyhe, you know, he's like do you
want to go to Afghanistan?
And I'm like, no, I don't wantto go to Afghanistan, but tell
(41:04):
me, tell me, how much does itpay?
And then he told me and I'mlike, oh yeah, I'm interested in
going to Afghanistan, yeah, sowhat did they want you to?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
I mean, you're working contract for a company
there.
What did they want you for?
What did you do?
Speaker 2 (41:18):
They basically were a part of a task force and I was
going to be the subject matterexpert on prison investigations
and prison gangs.
So I flew to Bagram Air Basebase.
You know, once I went throughall my training and you know
it's pretty much like being inthe military again, I had to,
you know, qualify on the m4 and,like the military, you know
(41:43):
course of fire, we wereconcealed carry m11s.
You know which I'm like.
I cannot believe we wereconcealed carry inside of a
prison, but we were.
And uh yeah, so I had mycounterpart and we would meet
outside the prison and we'd goover what he was working on and
they were almost all like, uh,green on blue type of stuff,
(42:07):
where the, where the workers atthe prison were tied up with the
Taliban outside and they wereworried about there's going to
be an attack on the staff.
So at one point, you know, wedidn't even go out to the prison
because it was so dangerous.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
So you're doing investigations.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
The Taliban they don't really have.
At least when I got there theywere starting to develop them.
When I got there, or when Ileft, they they didn't have like
prison gangs, cause they're all, they're all Taliban, you know.
So, it's more of a religioustype thing for them.
You know they were all enemycombatants and stuff like that.
It was very, very confusingtrying to figure out who was in
(42:51):
the prison because, uh, you know, over in afghanistan they only
have like one name, so you mighthave we had 5 500 inmates
inside the prison, wow.
But there might have been athousand muhammads, you know,
and which ones?
Muhammad, the the head talibanthat you know, responsible for
(43:12):
murdering 10 people, or what wasthe?
Muhammad the dirt farmer thatgot pulled off the battlefield.
And you know, it was veryconfusing and that's what we
spent most of our time trying tofigure out who was who.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, it was probably the most rewarding time of my
career.
I mean you literally thoughtthat you were bringing peace to
the Middle East, trying tofigure out who was who, and they
were using our information forlike the negotiations to to draw
down out of there.
Not that it ended up workingout that way.
(43:48):
Obviously we had issues withthe pullout of Afghanistan, I
won't get into that, but yeah, Imean it was.
You know we had.
It was the task force was ledby the Colonel, colonel Bergman,
great, great guy, west Pointgrad, smartest man I've ever met
in my life.
(44:08):
He knew something abouteverything and you know, know he
kept us on point and this isour mission and you know he's
really easy to work with, buthe's also very tough on his uh,
his army officers.
So he treated me great.
I loved it there.
I would have, I would havestayed over there for as long as
(44:29):
the war lasted, but then covidgot us down oh yeah, that is so
cool, brother.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Um yeah, so I I can understand that with you know a
group of inmates that have thisone religious um, you know, in
connection, so food's gonnaprobably be a little different,
uh, prayer times.
You know that, being a Muslimreligion.
But looking from overall andyou had 20 plus years in uh
(45:00):
United States prisons and thennow you're looking at these
prisons what's the difference inthe inmates, what?
What were the big differences?
You saw, uh other than I meanthe fact they're not all broke
up into different gangs.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Well, I mean it was just.
It was strange the way they ranthe prison.
The guards didn't like work inthe housing unit with them.
They were like up top with thecatwalks, you know, there was
like catwalks above and they'dbe like peering down into their
living quarters and I mean theywould go in there for the food.
But the food was.
(45:34):
They literally would likewheelbarrow, like rice.
I mean it was a straightwheelbarrow and then they would
like, you know, they'd come upwith their plates and they'd put
the rice on there.
It'd be some type of protein,whether chicken or beef or
whatever.
Never pork chicken or beef orwhatever, never pork.
(45:57):
And uh, you know, uh, theygoing through their food service
.
You know we had put a, you know, a an american style kitchen in
there.
Well, they couldn't, couldn'tfigure it out or didn't want to
figure it out.
So, they like, tore everythingout and they were like cauldrons
, you know, like witchescauldrons, and they would boil
all their rice and all theirprotein in the thing and then,
you know, poured in thosewheelbarrows to wheel down to
the housing units and theofficers in here.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
They're locals.
Are these?
Are these local officers?
Speaker 2 (46:21):
or is it a?
Mix of okay, it's all militaryokay, all military uh, but I
mean, you know, those guys areall related on some level, you
know.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
So it sounds kind of like the South American prisons.
You know they don't go into theprison they.
You know they, they, the, theguards watch the walls.
You know they um, it's not somuch walking a housing unit.
So when you were doinginvestigations you weren't going
in there and and and walkingthrough a housing unit and
(46:53):
talking to people.
They were getting pulled out toyou, okay right.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Well, to be honest, I never talked to an inmate there
.
Uh, that was the responsibilityof my, uh, my counter, like my
cohort, basically my afghan guythat was doing my job.
Basically I met with him and hewas the one doing the
interviewing and I, and you know, and I would be telling him,
you know, this is the questionsyou should ask.
(47:19):
You know, this is what we'retrying to find out, type of
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
So you were the investigation specialist and
he's doing some of theinformation gathering Right, but
okay.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Yeah, I'm based, I'm basically there to help him, you
know, if he has questions.
But I mean they had so manyother issues.
I mean they didn't even haveprinter cartridges to where they
could print off count sheets orany of that stuff, or to, you
know, to print off theirinvestigations.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Yeah, I mean it was just totally foreign, I guess,
yeah, yeah yeah wow, well,that's just so cool.
I mean you, your career hastaken you from, uh, my land the
lowest, you know, all the way toseeing some of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
That is just, yeah, amazing, yeah yeah, um, I, um,
I'm, I'm blessed man, I'mabsolutely blessed.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
That's cool, oh yeah.
So let me ask you this onequestion I like to ask people
who were leaders a long time,because you know I get emails
from uh uh, different people newofficers and stuff on here and
they're talking about you knowleadership.
Give me a couple of.
You know the highlights of.
You've led people for a longtime and I watched you lead
(48:39):
people a great crew over inThompson, uh, in your office
over there what, what's some ofthe leadership things that you
know mean the most to you thatyou think matter the most for
people who are moving into thosepositions?
Speaker 2 (48:54):
that you think matter the most for people who are
moving into those positions?
Uh, I mean communication, justbeing able to listen to people,
you know what they're saying andwhat they're meaning are like
two, two different thingsSometimes that, uh, that crew at
Thompson that I got to select Iam so I mean that was I was so
proud of that team.
Uh, the leaders that Ideveloped to select, I am so I
mean that was I was so proud ofthat team.
(49:14):
The leaders that I developedout of that, you know, you know
I got one for sure that's.
She's high up in the Bureauinvestigative thing.
Now she's in DC.
Other people absolutely could dothat way if they were mobile
and wanted to move.
(49:34):
You know I was so proud of them, you know, taking what I taught
them and then moving on andthey've exceeded my career.
You know that just made me soproud, so so proud, nice, and I
would tell them, you, you know,you know you, you know that this
(49:57):
right here, you know we'restressed, we're brand new.
This is going to, you're goingto look back and this is going
to be the favorite part of yourcareer, because this is where
you're learning everything, forwhen you achieve what you want
to achieve in this career.
This is where you learned yourbasics.
Cause that long poke, I alwaysused to say, uh, I'll never,
ever regret leaving long pokeand I'll never, ever regret
(50:21):
working there, cause that'swhere I learned everything that
made me successful the rest ofmy career.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
So yeah, well, that's I.
I can't tell you how much Ienjoy listening to your stories.
Of course, we've talked a lotin the past too.
It's so good to hear from you,and I think a lot of people are
going to get a lot out of thisconversation that we had today.
I know you're still workingoverseas and doing that kind of
(50:48):
stuff.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
I am uh, yeah yeah, basically when the war ended,
all the uh, the prisoncontractor jobs dried up and I I
fell into, uh, security forembassies that they're building.
So basically what I do now ismy company that I work for.
We have like I don't know like10 different projects where
(51:11):
they're building embassies andconsulates around the world and
I go and I work security at theconstruction sites.
So, currently I'm in Rio deJaneiro, brazil.
I just got done with a year inPodgorica, montenegro, which was
an awesome tour.
Before that was Athens, greece,and before that was Honduras.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Yeah, wow, you know I talk to people and they say I'm
going to retire, but I don'tknow what I'm going to do.
I'm going to go get a job, youknow, at the local Walmart or
something, and there are so manyoptions for corrections when
you retire.
I think that's another reason Iwanted you on here was just to
(51:56):
show people you know, don'tlimit yourself when you retire.
You've learned skills over yourcareer that everybody wants
Absolutely.
And I think you're an exampleof that.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Well, thank you, brother.
I appreciate you coming on thepodcast and I look forward to
talking to you again soon.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
All right.
Thanks for having me on.
Appreciate it All right.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
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Pepperball is the safer optionfirst.
Okay, welcome back to the PrisonOfficer Podcast.
My name is Mike Cantrell.
Today I get to interview notonly an exciting guest but also
an old friend, so I'm lookingforward.
We haven't got to sat down inseveral years together and
(01:06):
talked, so I'm looking forwardto talking to him and having
this conversation about whathe's seen and where he's been.
Steve Hansen he's a retiredspecial investigative agent for
the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
He's got over 25 years ofexperience at various security
levels and different supervisorypositions.
He currently works securityoverseas and we'll see how much
(01:30):
of that he can talk about andhear about what life after
corrections is like.
He's a good friend of mine andit's a pleasure to have him on
the podcast.
Welcome, steve.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thanks, Mike.
Thanks for having me on theshow.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Absolutely well.
Thanks, mike.
Thanks for having me on theshow.
Absolutely.
I'm excited not only to toshare some of your stories with
people, but you know we worktogether for several years and I
miss, uh, I miss sitting downand we used to talk a lot.
So I'm I'm excited about havingyou on here, very excited.
So I always if I know you'velistened, but I always start off
the same way I like to hearabout where people came from, uh
(02:09):
.
So if you could tell us youknow, tell me about where you
grew up, what that was like inschool and stuff before you took
that jump off into uh, I knowyou went in the military, so
what did you?
Where did you grow up at?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I grew up in a small town in Iowa called Palo, Iowa.
I graduated from Cedar RapidsKennedy in 1986.
Originally I was going to go tothe University of Iowa.
I had enrolled, knew where Iwas going to live and all that
stuff, and then I ended up beingdiverted into the Air Force.
Basically.
One of my friends asked me togo to the Air Force recruiter
(02:47):
with him.
We both went, he decided not togo and then I ended up going.
So that was kind of ironic.
So my first assignment was theVandenberg Air Force Base,
California.
And I did a year there and Iwent to Comaso, sicily, where I
(03:11):
met my ex-wife and we had achild.
Then I got sent back toVandenberg.
The marriage fell apart,divorced.
When I got out of the military,the initial thing was I was
going to use my GI bill, but Ihad a kid to support, so that's
how I ended up in corrections.
(03:31):
It was right after a desertstorm.
The job opportunities were notthere.
However, the United StatesPenitentiary Lompoc, california,
was hiring, so that's how Istarted off my career.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, so what was your MOS when you were in the
air force?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I was a security specialist.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Okay, so you were doing law enforcement type stuff
then.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Absolutely.
We're guarding the missilebases.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Ah, okay, so a lot of security.
Were you dealing with anycorrections?
Did you see corrections at thatlevel, that level, um, while
you were in the air force?
I did not I did not uh strictly, uh cop out in the missile
fields okay, so any did you knowabout corrections before you
(04:18):
apparently saw that lompoc washiring?
Was there anything that led upto that?
Did you know anybody thatworked in corrections?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
uh, to be honest, the way I got interested in it was
I got uh, stop lost.
Basically, you know, duringdesert storm I got extended nine
months and during that ninemonths I was taking college
courses and it was all lawenforcement related, of course.
And one of the recruiters fromthe prison came and talked to
(04:47):
our class and he brought out allthe you know cool boxes, shanks
and was telling us all the warstories and I thought that was
pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, so how quickly did you get hired and picked up
at Lompoc?
Hired and picked up at Lompoc.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Oh, I got out in August and then I started
November of 91.
Oh, wow.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So I was unemployed for like two months yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
There was like three of us that all got stop-loss
together.
We all started around the sametime.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Am I thinking of the?
Speaker 2 (05:26):
right.
Two of us made it out of acareer though?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Was Lompoc fairly new in the 80s, or am I thinking of
a different California fan?
No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Lompoc's the old one.
No, lompoc's been around sincethe 1950s.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Okay, let's settle this right here, because I've
been around since the 1950s, so,okay, so let's settle this
right here, because I've beenaround the Bureau for years.
Okay, is it Lompoc or is itLompoc?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
The locals pronounce it Lompoc.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Okay, I usually say that wrong and some people take
a lot of offense to that, andthen others you know it doesn't
matter.
So yeah, we'll put that outthere for everybody.
It is Lompoc, okay, lompoc,okay, I say it wrong, it's
Lompoc.
I'll get that right.
So tell me about that first day.
(06:19):
I mean you hadn't been incorrections before, you hadn't
been.
I'm assuming you hadn't been tojail very many times up to that
point.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I had not.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So what was it like, walking in and hearing that door
slam?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It was kind of intimidating my first day.
It just sucked, you know,because I was the new, the fresh
meat.
The inmates knew that, so theywere talking back to me quite a
bit and I, you know you'reunsure of what you can and
cannot do.
And the thing is, though, withcorrections, you know, once you
(06:53):
get through that first day, eachday gets easier once you
develop a rapport with theinmates.
Uh, you know, all mycommunication skills I developed
over my career comes fromLompoc, having to deal with
maximum security inmates thatyou know, especially from the
California area.
They didn't really appreciateadult supervision, so to speak,
(07:20):
so you had to be able to talk tothose guys to be able to get
them to do what you wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah, so in some ways , one thing I think we have in
common is, you know, I grew upin the Midwest also, and then
when you go in, especially workin federal prison or moving
around and going to thedifferent areas, you're exposed
to a whole different, well,different, cultures, different.
You know, we don't have the asbig a gangs in the different
areas.
You're exposed to a wholedifferent, uh, well, different
cultures, different.
You know, we don't have the asbig a gangs in the Ozarks in
(07:50):
Iowa, uh, so what was some ofthat like, getting used to?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
That was a culture shock, total culture shock.
Uh, you know, my town of 550,you know, was 550 white people,
you know.
Yeah, so you know military,obviously I was around
minorities and differentcultures and stuff like that.
But then when you get to prison, where you're dealing with East
(08:19):
Coast West Coast, we had abunch of Jamaicans, we had
Haitians, we had, you know know,every ethnic group.
Uh, I mean the mexican mafiaand the aryan brotherhood, you
know, sure, uh, it was, it wasyeah, and even, um, even with
the different cultures.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Now, I mean, especially when you get into
those heavy gang cultures,that's something that was just
foreign to me.
I mean, there's a wholedifferent thought process than
working, you know, in themilitary or whatever, with
someone from a different culture.
That's a gang culture out there.
Their views on criminality,their views, they have a
different criminal moral set.
(09:01):
So, that kind of blew me away.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, it absolutely was an eye-opener and everything
was so based on race out there.
You know, like, say, you weretrying to release somebody out
of segregation, you would callthe housing unit and you'd
literally ask them do you have awhite cell available?
Do you have a black cellavailable?
Do you have a Hispanic cellavailable?
And if you didn black cellavailable, Do you have a
Hispanic cell available?
(09:27):
And if you didn't have aparticular race to put the guy
that you wanted to kick out ofsegregation, they stayed in
segregation until the openingcame up.
It was just.
It was just.
It was weird to me, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, yeah.
So what was, what was some ofthe things you saw out there,
anything that really stillstands out in your mind?
I mean, that's a bigpenitentiary.
It's been known as a violentone for a long time.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, the violence was amazing.
I remember, in the first sixmonths of 1993, we had six
homicides, I shouldn't say sixhomicides, there's probably four
homicides and then two drugoverdoses, you know.
But you know, six dead inmatesand uh, you know, it was just,
(10:12):
it was chaos.
You know, we lost our warden,had transferred in, he'd been
there like nine months and thensuddenly he's gone again and uh,
then they bring in the cleaner,you, you know the big boss
warden, and he comes in and he,you know, fixes everything, I
shouldn't say fixes everything,but tries to.
We've got to run itoperationally again.
(10:34):
So yeah, some of the violence.
I saw some of the violencetowards me.
You know, I've been chased withshanks.
I had a guy make a homemade gun, homemade zip gun, and he shot
me.
So, uh, he actually made threeof them.
He hit me the first one, thesecond one, uh, uh, missed me,
(10:57):
went right by my face and then,uh, you know, finally got away
from him.
So yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I started at Leavenworth and you know that
was considered a big-timepenitentiary.
But I can't imagine.
You know we just had AdamDennis on here.
He worked at the CaliforniaDepartment of Corrections for
you know, an entire career andwe talked about the fact that
the West Coast is where a largeportion of the gangs in the US
started.
(11:29):
So being in a federalpenitentiary on the West Coast
in California, I'm guessing thatthat puts the level of violence
you're dealing with at a wholenew level.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, yeah, you know it was.
The prison pretty much was ranby the aryan brotherhood and the
mexican mafia, which they had atruce.
So we also, you know, we're incalifornia and la was 120 miles
down the road, so we had, uh, ahuge population of crips and
bloods and, um, you know,various street gangs.
(12:04):
You know ser, serenios andNortenos.
Well, I guess we didn't haveNortenos in there, but the
Serenios.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And it was just.
You know, we had some TexasSyndicate in there.
Texas Syndicate, those weresome violent guys.
I saw them during the middle ofa mainline.
They were doing some internaldiscipline and they had
contracted out with theGuamanians.
We had about a handful ofGuamanians and they attacked one
(12:34):
of the Texas Syndicate guys andstabbed him 67 times right in
the middle of the corridor.
They wanted everybody to see.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Right yeah.
So what do you think in thefirst couple of years?
Is your brain going well, thisis a career.
Or are you starting to think,well, maybe I need to look
another direction?
I mean, what were your feelingsoverall for that career?
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Overall, I am a Midwest boy through and through
and my whole thing was I wastrying to get back to the
midwest at any type of prison.
I actually put in for atransfer to leavenworth, you
know, okay, uh, not knowing howstuff worked, you know, I was
like I wanted to go toleavenworth and rochester and
then, uh, at the time they wereopening up peekin and Greenville
(13:22):
and Pekin was the closestinstitution to Iowa and I really
, really wanted to go to Pekinbut my captain knew somebody
that was going to Greenville, soI ended up transferring to
Greenville after two and a halfyears at Lompoc, okay, so I've
been to Greenville.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
That's quite a change .
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yes, yes, dramatic.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I'm guessing you rested a little bit after that.
I did?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, it was.
You know it's kind of ironicthough.
You know I was involved in somuch stuff at Lompoc, but my
first large-scale disturbanceyou know where we lost the
institution was at Greenville.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Oh, you were there.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I was there, absolutely that night.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
That was the Cracklaw riots.
Yes, tell me a little bit aboutthat for people that don't know
.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Well, anyway, october 20th, I remember I was working
October 19th, I was supposed tohave the 20th and the 21st off
and I was working, that it was aThursday night and like at 930
in the morning or 930 at night Iwas working evenings.
All the inmates were likerunning to the TV room and I'm,
(14:42):
like you know, checking it outand up on the CNN they were
showing.
I can't remember whatinstitution had gone up.
There was like six or seventhat had gone up that Thursday
because they had overturned the,or they hadn't overturned the
weight disparity between thecocaine and the crack cocaine.
(15:03):
Basically, it took like 100grams of cocaine equaled like
one ounce of crack cocaine.
So it was.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
And cocaine was considered.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Cocaine at the time was considered more of a white
drug and crack was consideredmore of a brown or black drug in
the poorer areas.
So there was a bunch of tensionin the country at that time,
especially in the prisons,because of that disparity.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Right, and so, for the first time ever, we were
going to lock down theinstitution.
So they called in a bunch of usfor overtime.
I asked to work in the housingunit I'd been working all
quarter and they're like no, youneed to go over to H4, which
was the one next door.
So I'm like, okay, uh,ironically, the, the, they
kicked off in the prison or atthe housing unit that I was
(15:53):
working that night.
So, right, uh, so I, I,everybody in there got, you know
, I literally watched as, likesix or seven staff members, you
know, got ran out of thebuilding, you know bloodied and
bruised and you know stuff likethat.
So you know, they, I'mliterally trapped in the other
housing unit.
(16:13):
We're trapped in the middle ofwhat?
The offices.
We didn't have keys to thefront door, those were out on
the compound and then,eventually, after they contained
H3 was the one that went up onthe A and the B side they let us
out.
The disturbance control teamwas, you know, activated and I
(16:36):
was going to go in with them andI was going to have all the
keys to the doors.
So we get ready to go in.
After we negotiated negotiated,I mean, you know broke the
window through through the, the,the phone into them and they
gave up because I mean, what arethey going to do?
They're trapped right and uh.
So we pull them all out and wego in there and there's no doors
(16:57):
.
They had broken every door inthat housing unit.
They stacked all doors.
They were wooden doors at thetime and they'd stacked them in
the middle of the housing unit.
It was like $1.8 million worthof damage.
It was impressive.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, so you guys ended up having to put them on
buses and send them other places, or how did you manage them
with no doors?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
on them.
We worked till well, I workedtill, worked till what?
Six o'clock the next morningand all we did was we were the 4
.
4 pm count did not clear tilllike 4 am.
So, uh, we started, we movedinmates to the gymnasium, we
moved inmates to food serviceand then we started putting them
in segregation.
(17:41):
So we went, we had a capacityof I think it was 144, and we
were running at like 40 at thetime.
And by 4 am.
By the time I got off, we wereat capacity 144.
And then the buses startedcoming the next day Leavenworth
Springfield.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Marion, and you've got how many years in at this
point.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I had three and a half Wow, and I was one of the
veteran guys.
You know, because it was abrand new institution.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Do you think that had anything to do or do you think
it would have went off, nomatter who was working there?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
No, it would have went off, no matter who.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Okay, yeah, cause it was.
It was a national thing morethan a institutional thing.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
When they opened up Greenville.
You know we're right outside ofSt Louis, so we had a huge St
Louis population and most ofthose guys had come from Memphis
, so they all knew each other.
You know it was a really tightcompound as far as the inmates
Interesting the inmatesInteresting.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So still looking at this as a career after three and
a half years in.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah, I absolutely was.
That was the point where Idecided that I wanted to be a
lieutenant.
You know, I wanted to be incharge of a shift.
You know, I wanted to be theone running to the emergencies,
taking charge of the emergencies.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Um yeah, that was uh.
Had you seen some goodleadership?
Was there some people that youwere working with, who I mean?
You looked up.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, I had some really good leadership and some
really bad leadership, yeah,yeah, but I've seen some bad
good leadership and some reallybad leadership.
Yeah yeah, but I've seen somebad leadership too.
It was like, if that guy can bea lieutenant, I can be a
lieutenant, you know.
Absolutely, we had greatlieutenants at Lompoc, great,
great, great guys.
You know guys that you would,you know you literally went to
(19:41):
battle with on a daily basis.
You literally went to battlewith on a daily basis.
And I got to Lompoc or I got toGreenville and we had, you know
, staff from all over the agencyand, uh, you know guys that had
been, you know, made Lieutenantfrom a camp or a low you know
which hadn't dealt withpenitentiary inmates or you know
, inmates misbehaving like on ariot scale, so uh okay, so yeah
(20:05):
I thought it.
You know, if they can be alieutenant, I can be a
lieutenant so yeah, so now you,now you're looking at being a
lieutenant.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So where are you uh what are you putting in for?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
uh well, I was putting in once again I was, I
was trying to make my nine atpekin.
Pekin was like my dreaminstitution, my whole career.
Okay, up and up until, and upuntil thompson, you know I
always, I've always wanted to bea lieutenant or a captain or
something at thompson or at atpekin uh-huh uh, but I'm at, I'm
(20:37):
at greenville and, uh, I getasked to go to mylon to make my
nine at mylon.
well, I wasn't going to turndown a promotion.
If you're specifically askingfor me, I'm going to go.
They were like give us twoyears and we'll get you where
you want to go.
I'm like, okay, I canabsolutely do that.
(20:58):
I went up to Milan and brandnew nine lieutenant, I'm living
on the reservation.
It's a low and I'm absolutelymiserable.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Right, not much going on.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
No, no, nothing was going on.
You know literally justfighting inmates every day about
.
You know do rags and you knowillegal hats and stealing out of
the food service.
That's all it was Right.
There was no violence, minimaldrug issues.
There was a lot of dirty staffbringing stuff into the inmates.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Interesting.
Because, uh, so was there a lotof work release up there, am I
right about that?
Or a lot of them workingoutside the institution?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
We had the same inmates that I was yelling to
take their hat off in the chowhall.
They would be outside, you know, fixing my air conditioners, or
if I had a leaking sink in myhouse, they would be the ones.
So it was different, it wasawkward.
So I remember my son.
(22:12):
He was out, it was in the falland the leaves were falling and
he's out in our side yardplaying football and uh, I go
out there and he's like throwing.
It was like this, uh, it waslike a duct tape, tube, plastic
tube.
And he's like throwing it.
It was like this, it was like aduct tape, tube, plastic tube.
And he's like throwing itaround and I'm like what you got
there?
And he gives it to me and itturned out it was marijuana that
(22:35):
they were trying to introduceinto the, into the, into the
institution.
Yeah, and it was a huge amountof marijuana, man, I mean Wow.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
that's something I've never done is like I need to
leave.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I need to leave my island you know, yeah, that's
something I've never done islive on the reservation for the
the people that don't know earlyon in the, especially the
bureau of prisons, um, it wascommon for them to build housing
.
Uh, you know, the warden wasalways going to live on the
reservation.
A lot of times an AW, anassociate warden or a captain
(23:13):
would be required to, and thenthere would be different levels
of hopefully, you know somelieutenants or something like
that, and then officers wholived on the reservation.
Usually those houses were builtand maintained by the inmates
and they paid a subsidy for rent.
But the reason was, you knowwe're talking, you got to think
(23:37):
back to 1930s, 1940s, you know.
You didn't just have cellphones, you didn't just.
It wasn't as easy to get aholdof everybody.
So having people that liveright there at the institutions
was always considered a plus,and some of that still exists in
the Bureau of Prisons.
For those that don't understandthat, I've never lived on the
reservation, but what's thatlike?
(23:59):
Never getting away from work.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
It's a grind.
Yeah, you, yeah, you want toget away and you can't.
But I mean also, you know, Iknew as a nine Lieutenant that I
was only going to be there for,you know, a year or two you
know at that time.
Basically, you, you know once,once, once you made your nine,
(24:25):
you you're 11 within two yearsand generally it was always at
another spot.
So I was just like, okay, all Igotta do is suck it up.
Okay, yeah, I decided to timeto go out of my, get out of my
island, uh.
So I was uh putting in for my11 and uh, immediately, both
(24:45):
marion and and Rochester wereinterested.
Marion was moving in threelieutenants.
However, I don't know if youremember, but they used to have
three moves a year, so they hadalready used one of them.
So I was going to be the thirdguy.
I was going to be the first guypicked, uh, picked up after the
(25:07):
fiscal year, so after October,uh.
But then Rochester, you know,they still had move money, so
they picked me up.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
So tell me about working at Rochester.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Well, rochester was a prison hospital, so that was
another thing that was totally,totally foreign to me.
You know, corrections, custodywas not running stuff there,
medical was Psychology was butuh, you know, there'd be times
(25:52):
where you'd lock an inmate upand then, uh, within an hour,
the psychologist, psychiatristwould let him out, so yep
because they're not responsiblefor their behavior, because you
know of their mental health, orthey have alzheimer's, you know
Sure.
It was an eye-opening experience.
There was no gang issues there,which was cool.
(26:12):
I mean, the vast majority ofthe inmates were low security
and you know, the max custodyguys that we had and even the
out custody guys that we had,you know, they were really sick.
I mean, we were like the endstage liver disease.
That's where they sent allthose guys, those guys that they
were really sick.
I mean we were like the uh, theend stage liver disease.
That's where they sent allthose guys, those guys that had
destroyed livers, cause we wereright outside the Mayo clinic.
(26:34):
You know, in Rochester, that'swhere the inmates went.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, Working at FedMed.
I saw a lot of the same.
Working at FedMed I saw a lotof the same thing.
You know, federal medicalcenter in springfield, missouri,
is kind of considered uh,downtime for guys.
I mean, even if they werepretty big hitters and gangs and
stuff uh, you know, everybodywas trying to get healed up or
trying to get healthy.
So they kind of called a truceand we didn't have those type of
(27:01):
problems.
But we had plenty of otherproblems like you were talking
about.
How much mental health doesrochester have up there?
We had plenty of other problemslike you were talking about.
How much mental health doesRochester have up there?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
We had an entire building of mental health.
I think there was probably 180inmates between the two floors
and then we had the seclusionunit, which is basically the
segregation for the mentalhealth guys.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
That's when your communication skills came to
bear, didn't they?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yes, exactly, it's kind of tough talking to a guy
you know who's convinced thatthe CIA is in the walls and you
know, please, lieutenant Hanson,make them shut up, you know?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
okay, okay, I'll do it, thank you, thank you, and
it's a fine line because youknow, like you said, I've I've
walked in a cell with a mop, uh,because a guy thought his walls
were bleeding, and I'll mop thewall and then he's fine.
But the next time you dosomething like that you might be
playing too far into his mentalhealth problem and he'll go off
(28:04):
on you, and so it's tough toknow what the right thing to do
is, especially with those guys.
Yeah, we had one inmate.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
At what point did you start thinking about uh
investigations?
When did that start interestingyou?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
To be honest that that uh, when I was at
Greenville I spent six months asthe phone monitor and I got the
bug.
Then I was always interestedthere.
But then as a lieutenant you'vegot to learn how to be a
supervisor so it kind of gotpushed to the background.
And of course, being the SISlieutenant especially at
(28:50):
Rochester where we had an SIAyou know it was a matter of
seniority I had to do your timeup.
You know working SR1, working.
You know swings and mids andall that stuff.
So, eventually I got into theSIS shop and, yeah, I loved the
investigations.
I mean, that was right up myalley.
(29:13):
You know.
You know it's cool knowingeverything that's going on in an
institution.
You know what the inmates aredoing, what the staffs are doing
on some levels, you know who's.
You know who's shoplifting,who's beating their wife, who's
getting drunk downtown.
You know what inmates hasissues with another inmate, what
(29:35):
staff members are dirty, youknow, or looked at bringing
stuff in.
So yeah, I really truly enjoyedit.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Tell me if I've got this right.
You know, at the FederalMedical Center I noticed, you
know, like we talked about theykind of.
You know it's kind of a trucearea, they're kind of laid down,
they're trying to heal up andit's not necessarily that the
inmates would snitch, but it wasa lot more comfortable um uh
(30:08):
arena to have discussions withinmates and you could learn
stuff even outside of yourinstitution that you wouldn't
learn at a, at a full blownpenitentiary.
Uh, was it kind of like that atRochester?
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Absolutely.
Uh, you know it was, it was uh,it, you know I was weird.
For me was like, you know,having like the nurses around
who generally cared about theinmates, cared about their
health.
You know, because you didn't,you didn't have that at the
penitentiary level, you know,you didn't even have that at the
medium level or the low level,you know, and, but this was all
(30:45):
about like the mentally ill guystrying to get them to function.
This was all about, you know,this guy has prostate cancer,
let's get him healthy.
And so the inmates were a lotdifferent too.
You know, it wasn't so usversus them, it was more.
It was a much more relaxed area.
(31:06):
You know, you could talk tothem, you could talk to them,
you could reason with them,except for the mental health
guys.
It's a very easy area tocultivate snitches, very, very
easy.
Right it was easy time there.
No-transcript Right Becausethey didn't want their easy life
(31:51):
to be interrupted.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So one of the things that I guess and it still gets
to me, I still talk about itwhen I train correctional staff
working in the SIS shop, thething that always got me the
worst is you become intimatelyknowledgeable about dirty staff
and how that happens and howstaff manipulation happens and
(32:13):
the amount of it that goes on.
Talk to me about some of whatyou saw, because you were in
there a long time ininvestigations.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, yeah, for Rochester, I mean, a lot of it
was.
We had a lot of female staffwould run off with the inmates,
(32:44):
so to speak, and generally itwas.
You know the inmates wouldidentify, be bitching,
complaining about theirsignificant other, you know, and
they and they would hear stuff,you know, cause sometimes you
don't even think that theinmates, you know the inmates in
there, but you don't think he'slistening cause he's like
working, he's cleaning, whatever, but they're picking up
everything.
So they would take runs at themand eventually, you know, they
just wear them down.
(33:04):
So we had one staff member shedidn't even make it to Glencoe
before she was tied up with aninmate and as somebody that had
taught her IF class, you know, Iwas offended.
I was like, because she cameback, she's like, oh, I didn't
know, she tried to break up withthe inmates.
Like, oh, I didn't know thatthat was the wrong thing to do.
Like, yes, you did know it wasthe wrong thing to do.
(33:34):
We beat you over the head withthat in training.
Yeah, yeah and yeah, it's all.
I mean.
There's always something elsegoing on in their life.
You know, husband's being mean,boyfriend's being mean, um, you
know, and then this person is,you know, waiting on.
You know can't, can't wait tosee him and telling them how
good they look and you know howsmart and pretty they are.
Stuff like that Stuff they'renot getting at home, they're
getting from the inmate and theyjust, you know, they just don't
(33:55):
see it as manipulation.
And then, next thing, you know,you're bringing stuff in and
sometimes it leads to even morethan that.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Sure sure, even more than that Sure, sure, the.
Um, I guess the hardest thingfor me to get used to going from
penitentiaries to the medicalcenter was that familiarity and
it's caused just like you said,there's nurses that care,
there's psychologists that care,psychiatrists that care.
They have to do their job witha level of empathy and that
(34:26):
automatically puts them in aposition to where the I guess
the line is not as wide there asit is for maybe a correctional
officer who's always got thatarm length distance and uh.
So yeah, I saw a lot of thatand it was disappointing.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, I know.
Uh, a big shock to me was I wasprobably three, four years in
my Rochester.
I spent 12 years in Rochesterand we had an inmate who had
been on suicide watch forliterally years and the nurses
had worked with him so hard andthe psychologists had worked
(35:03):
with him and the psychiatristsand he's on psychiatrist and
he's on suicide watch, he's onsuicide watch and then finally
they let him off suicide watchand within a week he killed
himself and the nurses were justthey were crying and I was like
that was just unbelievable tome, you know.
But then, looking at it on ahuman level, I get it.
(35:24):
You know, they were invested,they thought they had gotten him
cured to where he didn't wantto hurt himself and then he hurt
himself.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Sure, yeah, tough, um .
So what are I mean we?
We talked about you knowmanipulation and stuff.
Did you have any other, I guess, memorable?
Um, you know cases and stuffthat you worked on.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Oh yeah, I mean, we had a nursing assistant that she
literally got caught having sexby another staff member with an
inmate.
They worked 6 pm to 6 am, atlike 7 o'clock.
The charge nurse was likelooking for her.
(36:09):
She was a nursing assistant, soshe goes looking for her and
she goes into the it was like ashower area and she you know,
the lights are off and thecurtain is drawn she turned on
the light, throws back thecurtain and there they are
having sex.
So wow, and then, of course, Icame in at midnight that night,
(36:31):
you know, and that's all.
That's all.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
What the whole institution was talking about
was that, you know so, and itaffects the whole institution
when things like that happen,doesn't it?
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah Well, the inmate , you know, he was like I didn't
do anything wrong, you know,because we're we're putting him
in the hole, you know, and hewasn't going to go to the hole.
I mean, he's a big dude man hewas.
He was well over 300 pounds andhe's like I'm not going to the
hole and like, yes, you are.
So, uh, he, he refused to cuffup, so we had to use force on
(37:05):
him and, uh, we ended updislocating the shoulder right
in front of her.
She's like looking at like, ohmy god, you're hurting my lover,
type of stuff.
It was a weird, weird night.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
What a mess.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
You're at Rochester for 12 years.
What's your next step?
Speaker 2 (37:29):
My next step was they opened up AUSP Thompson.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
That's where we met.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
That's exactly where we met, so I would have retired
out of Rochester, except theyopened up Thompson, which was
literally two hours from where Igrew up, and I lateraled down
there as the specialinvestigative agent,
investigative agent so, and then, as you know, there we had all
the trials and tribulations ofjust trying to get our, you know
(37:57):
, maximum security inmates.
Sure, sure that took three,four years yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And I haven't talked about it much.
Thompson was a was a prisonthat the state of Illinois built
in 1999 and never funded it toopen, so it never held more than
just a few camp inmates.
And then in 2014, I think, thestate of Illinois gave it to the
Federal Bureau of Prisons, andso that seemed like a really
(38:28):
great idea at the time.
You know, we thought we werejust going to go in there and
open up this prison, but theprison wasn't built up to the
Federal Bureau of PrisonStandards, so a lot of us spent
a lot of time learning aboutcontracting and building new
fences and how far digital.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah, they were wired for dial-up internet, right,
right.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, it was phone lines, you know.
Know they didn't have stuff forcomputers and printers and
scanners and all the stuff weuse today.
So it was quite a.
It was quite a job getting thatup and going and but once we
got it going it was running good, uh, when I rolled out of there
(39:11):
.
I know it's had some problemssince, but we did have a really
good crew of people workingthere at Thompson when we opened
it up.
I learned a lot from you, froma lot of the other people.
You know I was captain there,so I had to lean on some people
(39:32):
in order to understand my newrole in leadership, and you were
definitely a part of thatbecause you had been working in
investigations and had been inleadership for so long.
I mean, how long were you alieutenant?
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yeah, well, I mean, I was a supervisor for 20 years,
total 12 years as a lieutenantand eight years as the SIA.
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
So and then, um, so you stayed at.
You stayed at Thompson.
Uh, you were there when I left.
Um, when did you retire?
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Uh, I retired July 31st of 2019.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
2019.
Okay and um.
So I know you've been doingstuff since then Tell me a
little bit about what you'vedone, because I know a lot of
people think retirement Well, Imean, I absolutely love my job.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
I had no intention of retiring.
And then I get a message onLinkedIn from a head hunter that
was looking.
He was looking for prisonpeople with top secret
clearances.
I just happened to have a topsecret clearance because, uh,
you might recall, my auditguidelines said that the SIA had
(40:44):
to be part of the jointterrorism task force.
So I was.
I was a member of the jointterrorism task force out of
Chicago, which required a topsecret, so that's why I had it.
Yeah, and you know, initiallyhe, you know, he's like do you
want to go to Afghanistan?
And I'm like, no, I don't wantto go to Afghanistan, but tell
(41:04):
me, tell me, how much does itpay?
And then he told me and I'mlike, oh yeah, I'm interested in
going to Afghanistan, yeah, sowhat did they want you to?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
I mean, you're working contract for a company
there.
What did they want you for?
What did you do?
Speaker 2 (41:18):
They basically were a part of a task force and I was
going to be the subject matterexpert on prison investigations
and prison gangs.
So I flew to Bagram Air Basebase.
You know, once I went throughall my training and you know
it's pretty much like being inthe military again, I had to,
you know, qualify on the m4 and,like the military, you know
(41:43):
course of fire, we wereconcealed carry m11s.
You know which I'm like.
I cannot believe we wereconcealed carry inside of a
prison, but we were.
And uh yeah, so I had mycounterpart and we would meet
outside the prison and we'd goover what he was working on and
they were almost all like, uh,green on blue type of stuff,
(42:07):
where the, where the workers atthe prison were tied up with the
Taliban outside and they wereworried about there's going to
be an attack on the staff.
So at one point, you know, wedidn't even go out to the prison
because it was so dangerous.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
So you're doing investigations.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
The Taliban they don't really have.
At least when I got there theywere starting to develop them.
When I got there, or when Ileft, they they didn't have like
prison gangs, cause they're all, they're all Taliban, you know.
So, it's more of a religioustype thing for them.
You know they were all enemycombatants and stuff like that.
It was very, very confusingtrying to figure out who was in
(42:51):
the prison because, uh, you know, over in afghanistan they only
have like one name, so you mighthave we had 5 500 inmates
inside the prison, wow.
But there might have been athousand muhammads, you know,
and which ones?
Muhammad, the the head talibanthat you know, responsible for
(43:12):
murdering 10 people, or what wasthe?
Muhammad the dirt farmer thatgot pulled off the battlefield.
And you know, it was veryconfusing and that's what we
spent most of our time trying tofigure out who was who.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, it was probably the most rewarding time of my
career.
I mean you literally thoughtthat you were bringing peace to
the Middle East, trying tofigure out who was who, and they
were using our information forlike the negotiations to to draw
down out of there.
Not that it ended up workingout that way.
(43:48):
Obviously we had issues withthe pullout of Afghanistan, I
won't get into that, but yeah, Imean it was.
You know we had.
It was the task force was ledby the Colonel, colonel Bergman,
great, great guy, west Pointgrad, smartest man I've ever met
in my life.
(44:08):
He knew something abouteverything and you know, know he
kept us on point and this isour mission and you know he's
really easy to work with, buthe's also very tough on his uh,
his army officers.
So he treated me great.
I loved it there.
I would have, I would havestayed over there for as long as
(44:29):
the war lasted, but then covidgot us down oh yeah, that is so
cool, brother.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Um yeah, so I I can understand that with you know a
group of inmates that have thisone religious um, you know, in
connection, so food's gonnaprobably be a little different,
uh, prayer times.
You know that, being a Muslimreligion.
But looking from overall andyou had 20 plus years in uh
(45:00):
United States prisons and thennow you're looking at these
prisons what's the difference inthe inmates, what?
What were the big differences?
You saw, uh other than I meanthe fact they're not all broke
up into different gangs.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Well, I mean it was just.
It was strange the way they ranthe prison.
The guards didn't like work inthe housing unit with them.
They were like up top with thecatwalks, you know, there was
like catwalks above and they'dbe like peering down into their
living quarters and I mean theywould go in there for the food.
But the food was.
(45:34):
They literally would likewheelbarrow, like rice.
I mean it was a straightwheelbarrow and then they would
like, you know, they'd come upwith their plates and they'd put
the rice on there.
It'd be some type of protein,whether chicken or beef or
whatever.
Never pork chicken or beef orwhatever, never pork.
(45:57):
And uh, you know, uh, theygoing through their food service
.
You know we had put a, you know, a an american style kitchen in
there.
Well, they couldn't, couldn'tfigure it out or didn't want to
figure it out.
So, they like, tore everythingout and they were like cauldrons
, you know, like witchescauldrons, and they would boil
all their rice and all theirprotein in the thing and then,
you know, poured in thosewheelbarrows to wheel down to
the housing units and theofficers in here.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
They're locals.
Are these?
Are these local officers?
Speaker 2 (46:21):
or is it a?
Mix of okay, it's all militaryokay, all military uh, but I
mean, you know, those guys areall related on some level, you
know.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
So it sounds kind of like the South American prisons.
You know they don't go into theprison they.
You know they, they, the, theguards watch the walls.
You know they um, it's not somuch walking a housing unit.
So when you were doinginvestigations you weren't going
in there and and and walkingthrough a housing unit and
(46:53):
talking to people.
They were getting pulled out toyou, okay right.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Well, to be honest, I never talked to an inmate there
.
Uh, that was the responsibilityof my, uh, my counter, like my
cohort, basically my afghan guythat was doing my job.
Basically I met with him and hewas the one doing the
interviewing and I, and you know, and I would be telling him,
you know, this is the questionsyou should ask.
(47:19):
You know, this is what we'retrying to find out, type of
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
So you were the investigation specialist and
he's doing some of theinformation gathering Right, but
okay.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Yeah, I'm based, I'm basically there to help him, you
know, if he has questions.
But I mean they had so manyother issues.
I mean they didn't even haveprinter cartridges to where they
could print off count sheets orany of that stuff, or to, you
know, to print off theirinvestigations.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Yeah, I mean it was just totally foreign, I guess,
yeah, yeah yeah wow, well,that's just so cool.
I mean you, your career hastaken you from, uh, my land the
lowest, you know, all the way toseeing some of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
That is just, yeah, amazing, yeah yeah, um, I, um,
I'm, I'm blessed man, I'mabsolutely blessed.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
That's cool, oh yeah.
So let me ask you this onequestion I like to ask people
who were leaders a long time,because you know I get emails
from uh uh, different people newofficers and stuff on here and
they're talking about you knowleadership.
Give me a couple of.
You know the highlights of.
You've led people for a longtime and I watched you lead
(48:39):
people a great crew over inThompson, uh, in your office
over there what, what's some ofthe leadership things that you
know mean the most to you thatyou think matter the most for
people who are moving into thosepositions?
Speaker 2 (48:54):
that you think matter the most for people who are
moving into those positions?
Uh, I mean communication, justbeing able to listen to people,
you know what they're saying andwhat they're meaning are like
two, two different thingsSometimes that, uh, that crew at
Thompson that I got to select Iam so I mean that was I was so
proud of that team.
Uh, the leaders that Ideveloped to select, I am so I
mean that was I was so proud ofthat team.
(49:14):
The leaders that I developedout of that, you know, you know
I got one for sure that's.
She's high up in the Bureauinvestigative thing.
Now she's in DC.
Other people absolutely could dothat way if they were mobile
and wanted to move.
(49:34):
You know I was so proud of them, you know, taking what I taught
them and then moving on andthey've exceeded my career.
You know that just made me soproud, so so proud, nice, and I
would tell them, you, you know,you know you, you know that this
(49:57):
right here, you know we'restressed, we're brand new.
This is going to, you're goingto look back and this is going
to be the favorite part of yourcareer, because this is where
you're learning everything, forwhen you achieve what you want
to achieve in this career.
This is where you learned yourbasics.
Cause that long poke, I alwaysused to say, uh, I'll never,
ever regret leaving long pokeand I'll never, ever regret
(50:21):
working there, cause that'swhere I learned everything that
made me successful the rest ofmy career.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
So yeah, well, that's I.
I can't tell you how much Ienjoy listening to your stories.
Of course, we've talked a lotin the past too.
It's so good to hear from you,and I think a lot of people are
going to get a lot out of thisconversation that we had today.
I know you're still workingoverseas and doing that kind of
(50:48):
stuff.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
I am uh, yeah yeah, basically when the war ended,
all the uh, the prisoncontractor jobs dried up and I I
fell into, uh, security forembassies that they're building.
So basically what I do now ismy company that I work for.
We have like I don't know like10 different projects where
(51:11):
they're building embassies andconsulates around the world and
I go and I work security at theconstruction sites.
So, currently I'm in Rio deJaneiro, brazil.
I just got done with a year inPodgorica, montenegro, which was
an awesome tour.
Before that was Athens, greece,and before that was Honduras.
Speaker 1 (51:35):
Yeah, wow, you know I talk to people and they say I'm
going to retire, but I don'tknow what I'm going to do.
I'm going to go get a job, youknow, at the local Walmart or
something, and there are so manyoptions for corrections when
you retire.
I think that's another reason Iwanted you on here was just to
(51:56):
show people you know, don'tlimit yourself when you retire.
You've learned skills over yourcareer that everybody wants
Absolutely.
And I think you're an exampleof that.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Well, thank you, brother.
I appreciate you coming on thepodcast and I look forward to
talking to you again soon.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
All right.
Thanks for having me on.
Appreciate it All right.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
I would like to take a minute to thank one of our
sponsors that make the PrisonOfficer Podcast possible.
Omni RTLS is a company thatI've been working with for the
last year.
I am proud to be part of thisteam of correctional
professionals who have developedthe best real-time locating
system on the market today.
With Omni's real-time locationtechnology, you automatically
(52:45):
know the accurate locations andinteractions of all inmates,
staff and assets anywhere inyour correctional facility, and
you have this information inreal time.
Omni is cutting-edge softwarefor today's jails and prisons.
It is the only way to monitorevery square inch of your
facility while still being PREAcompliant.
Go to wwwomnirtlscom for moreinformation and to make your
(53:10):
facility safer today.
That's wwwomnirtlscom.
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