I work in a building that is just one long hallway. Picture yourself looking down a hallway to get an idea. Then walk straight down that hallway and imagine passing a door about every twenty feet. First door on the right, then left, then right, left, right, left, right. Seven sections total. All made of concrete and steel. Each of those doors lead into a section. All the walls and doors in these sections, except for the walls that isolate each cell, are composed of steel bars. The cells are isolated from one another by three concrete walls. One on the back of each cell and one on each side. Two inmates can live in each cell. Each section holds a total of about eight inmates on one side and ten inmates on the other. Because of the bars the section is completely open and inmates on one side can see the inmates on the other. The inmates on the same side have a difficult/impossible time seeing one another. This is the environment where one of the coolest stories of my life takes place.
For background information it is important to know that inmates are classified in a few different ways. The first is as either a sigma, omega, or kappa. A sigma is an inmate who is preyed upon. These are generally child molesters and other such weaklings. Kappas are the individuals who prey upon others. These are your violent criminals. Basically, kappas don't live with sigmas because they will prey upon sigmas. This can involve beatings, rape, murder, etc. Omegas are individuals who can get along with either kappas or sigmas. They are neither preyed upon nor do they prey upon others. These inmates rarely are classified, but generally they will be your basic thieves or alcoholics. The other classification has to do with how safe an inmate is in any given area. A level 5 or 6 is an inmate who is very low risk. Back when work release existed these were the inmates who went home during the day to work and see their family and then came back to prison to spend the night. Level 4s are close to the same thing. They generally work on a crew that will be supervised by an officer on the outside, but they maintain permanent residence at the prison. A level 3 is the average inmate. They live in what is termed "general population" and do things like go to school and take life skill classes. These are the most common. The next level is 2. These inmates are a security risk. A sigma level 2 is generally a risk because so many people want to hurt them that they need to be isolated somewhere. A level 2 kappa would be the person that is actively hurting others or is highly active in a gang on either the outside or inside of the prison. A level 1 would be the highest risk. This classification is also rare. Other factors that determine where an inmate can be housed include gang affiliation, past crimes, escape risk history, and others. For this story the level 2 classification is the most important.
Because of the recent recession a large amount of funding has been taken from all state departments including the department of corrections. The only issue we need to be concerned with here is the fact that more bed space is needed to house inmates but no money is being funded to provide those beds. This has resulted in overcrowding, especially with the level 2 inmates. This is because special housing is required for level 2s and it isn't as simple to move them around to gain bed space as it is for level 3s and above. Because of this my building has become filled with level 2s and gang members. At least a third of the building is level 2s and the problem increases with the gang members who are in the building on top of them. This is because level 2s and gang members are not allowed to work in our building. This has generally not been a problem because in work in Receiving and Orientation, which means that inmates usually move in and out of my building quickly. Right now it's a problem because, without the bed space for the level 2s, we are having level 2s remain in the building for more than three months. What this results in is a bunch of level 2s who are becoming restless. Unfortunately some individuals have decided to take it upon themselves to hire these level 2s in spite of the building policy. As far as managing these inmates is concerned this move can be very helpful. They are much less restless and therefore much more civil and easy to get along with. At the time of hire this idea may seem great, but eventually someone (the captain) finds out and these inmates have to be fired. When this happens it usually results in inmates who are even less manageable than they were to begin with because they now feel like we have taken a job away from them without any justification. Unfortunately I can understand how they feel that way because firing them IS unfair if they have been doing their job well. Most of them do. However, what's truly unfair is the fact that they were hired to begin with. They should have never been put in the position to be fired and disappointed because they never should have been hired in the first place. This is what happened today.
As I said. Level 2s are generally violent inmates who are difficult to manage regardless of anything we may do to them. Now imagine what happens when you suddenly fire them all on one day because the captain has finally noticed the problem and has decided to deal with it. Put that on top of the fact that they are in one of the crappiest facilities to live in because of the lack of privileges that exist in my building and you end up with a bunch of angry inmates. Enter me onto the scene.
I know this is a long intro, but it's important to understand who I'm working with here. All these level 2s got fired and now some of them are ticked. My shift starts great. The inmates that still need to be seen by medical are processed and housed. The building cleaning goes off without a hitch. We're done with that by seven and I go and rack in the workers around eight. One of the level 2s I get along with well and I start having conversation and he's being pretty funny but he starts telling me how mad he is that he's fired. He'd been in the building since February and he was getting sick of waiting to be moved. This is understandable because in the past it usually only took two or three weeks to get a level 2 moved out of our building. I can tell he's frustrated and I walk back and tell my Sergeant that I know he's going to pop off and do something stupid. I guess karma kicked in when I added, "I don't think he'll do anything to us though because he gets along well with us." Poor choice of words. So 2030 rolls around and we do standup count. That also goes well. I'm settling in for the evening because everyone has been racked in and I decide I should probably go and check the two sections I'm responsible for and see if they need anything. This is at about 2040 and nothing is going on when I walk into the second section on the right. I'm going from cell to cell and I suddenly hear my sergeant walking down the hallway. He pokes his head into the section I'm in and asks me, "Are you seeing this?" I had no idea what he was talking about.
As soon as he asked the question I knew something was wrong. I stepped out of the section and I notice what he was talking about. The last section on the right has a huge puddle of water building outside of it and there is a haze floating above that portion of the hallway. My sergeants first thought is, "Hmmm. That's a lot of baby powder to be floating outside of the section." He said this because inmates who have smuggled in cigarettes and who have lit them by breaking the lights try to cover up the smell with baby powder. It's a haze neither of us have seen before, especially with the flooding, so we proceed to check it out. The entire time, before I even get to the section I'm thinking, "Well, I guess he is going to do something to us." We both get to the section and in our heads both of us have this same type of reaction. "Am I really seeing this? Really? Really? That's a pile of books, and they're on fire. Seriously? Who the crap does that? You have got to be kidding me!" Of course the thinking goes on, but now we have a book bonfire in a section that needs to be dealt with.
Serge initiated the IMS (Incident Management System), and everyone from the Uinta's starts responding. It takes a few minutes for everyone to get there, so in the meantime the other guy I work with comes booking it down the hallway. We yell at him to get the keys to the fire hydrants. He's booking it up and down the hallway and as everyone starts filling in from the response Serge has to go inform them what's going on. The hydrants finally make it to the section and we go in to put out the fire. The fire gets put out but it's now smouldering and smoke is everywhere. The section is so filled with smoke that I can only see a few feet in front of me. I tried to go in at this point to help start restraining inmates but there was too much smoke. I had to leave the section and wait for the responders from the other units to get geared up with their gas masks. Once they arrived they entered the section and we started moving the inmates to another location to be seen by medical. After that section was cleared the last section on the left also had to be cleared because the smoke had gotten so bad that it had filled up that section as well.
As this is going on in the last section on the right some other inmates in the second to last section on the right decided that they wanted to join in on the fun. These were also level 2s. One of them was in the process of flooding the section while the other was apparently trying to start a fire as well. Luckily I had decided that the breakers needed to be shut off to all of the cells in each section shortly after the fire started in order to prevent any other fires being started. At the same time this was happening the first section on the left decided it would be fun to try throwing debris out of their section in an attempt to try and hit the officers that were running back an forth in response to the fire and the flooding. The whole building was going crazy!
In order to deal with the section that was flooding the inmate who started the flood was removed from his cell. During that the inmate who was trying to start the fire in that same section had started cursing at the officers who were responding to that section and was also trying to get the rest of the inmates riled up. He also had to be dealt with. He was restrained and taken out of his cell by two officers. As they were pulling him out he decided to start fighting and dropped to the floor. He ended up being dragged out of the section by one of the officers who is a really big guy. These two inmates, the flooder and the mouthy one, plus the inmate who started the fire in the other section ended up being moved to maximum security to be dealt with.
I can't quite put into words exactly how crazy this night was. My sergeant said it's the craziest thing he's had to respond to in his sixteen years of working hear and my captain, who came in because of what was going on in his unit, said he couldn't think of anything as bad as this since at least twelve years ago. Yes we've had stabbings, murders, mini riots, and other events over the last few years, but as far as the scope of the incident this was huge. While I definitely would have preferred not having to deal with this, I at least have another pretty cool story from working out here and my night definitely went by quickly.
I sure hope this teaches people to STOP HIRING PEOPLE AGAINST POLICY!
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