Phone Privileges?

   At 11:30 this morning I hollered out on the tier to find out if anyone was using the phone so I could “get in line”. Another prisoner hollered back that a Mexican prisoner had the phone and he was presently on it, hence could not answer for himself without interrupting his call. This is the established protocol for getting access to the phone. The basic idea is that each prisoner knows who is next in line, so when a guard comes on the tier, they can tell him who to pass the phone to (it’s an old princess model touch-tone that is passed through the food slot to be used in the prisoner’s cell with the cord plugged into an outlet in the hall; this it is commonly, and jokingly, called “cell phone”).

   When the guards came by to pick up lunch trays (a prime opportunity to get the phone or anything else passed to another cell through the open food slots), I asked the guard who picked up my tray if he could get the phone for me. He said; “Sure, no problem.” And then he got the phone and passed it to another prisoner instead of me.

   I didn’t realize I had been slighted until after the guards left the tier. The prisoner who got the phone instead of me finished using it quickly (probably just checking his account balance, which the phone system lets us do) and then asked if anyone else needed to use it. After me there was a “line” of at least two other prisoners who both knew that I was supposed to be next. So, when they heard that someone else had the phone instead of me they thought it was a mistake (which happens) and informed the prisoner with the phone that I, Duncan, was next. I didn’t say anything at the time because the necessary information was clearly established and nothing needed to be said. Everyone understood that I was next to get the phone.

   About twenty minutes later, a guard came on the tier in order to cuff up another prisoner through the door so he could be escorted to another room to use the “law library” computer (a routine practice). The prisoner who had the phone and at least two other prisoners asked this guard to pass the phone to me. But, asking a guard to pass anything while they are busy doing an escort is hit-or-miss. The guard left the tier with the prisoner in tow without passing the phone.

   A moment later one of the prisoners waiting for the phone after me came to his door and yelled, “Where the fuck is the phone? I’ve been waiting over two hours for it! Who has it?” When he found out that someone who wasn’t supposed to get it until after him, me, and one other prisoner had it then he started yelling, loud enough for the guards out in the common area to hear, “Phone exchange on C-upper!” (another common practice anytime there appears to be a hold-up on the phone exchange).

   Though he, and several other prisoners yelled similarly over the next hour or so, no guards came on the tier to pass the phone. It was now about one-thirty, close to the two-o’clock shift change. I finally spoke up and told the prisoner in the cell next to me that the guards had been refusing to pass me the phone all week, which they have, and it seemed to stem from an incident earlier in the week when I called Counselor Edwards a “cretin” because he stood on the tier for ten minutes harassing another prisoner and also refused to pass me the phone (directly to my face that time --- see “Counselor Edwards” entry). And since then Edwards has been stopping by my cell every day and essentially harassing me by telling me to do something to make my cell “compliant” with policy, such as removing the cardboard window shade that I (and many other prisoners on the tier) use to block the bright sunlight from coming into the cell while I’m sleeping in the morning. Edwards is known for this kind of behavior and seems to derive great pleasure from it.

   I might have been overstating my “victory” over Edwards when I wrote earlier that I had “won” the exchange with him by getting him to react (i.e. pushing his buttons the way he seems to enjoy pushing the prisoner’s buttons). I knew full well that a person who so flagrantly abuses their authority the way Edwards does can’t be one-upped without expecting retaliation. So hi harassments came as no real surprise; I pretty much expected it. But I was content to let him play his childish game until he got bored (because I didn’t react, I’d just get up, take down the cardboard, smile and say, “Anything else?”) and decided to go find someone else to pick on to make himself feel good (a typical bully with a badge).

   But now it seemed that because he couldn’t get a reaction from me by harassing me in my cell, he decided to try pushing the button that he thought got me to react earlier in the week by telling all of his crony guard buddies not to pass me the phone at all.

   So for several days when I asked to use the phone, even when no one else was using it and the food slots were open (on two days this happened when I asked at breast, including earlier this morning) the guards either ignored me, or said they would “check on it” and then not do it.

   When I explained this to the other prisoners waiting on the phone they agreed that it was a “typical Edwards move”, and suggested that I “write it up”. But, I asked, how can I? The “grievance” procedure requires you to only write up specific incidents, not general circumstances. So unless I could prove that Edwards was harassing me --- which he was always careful not to do anything that he could not say was “his job” to do (like telling me to comply with policy) --- I couldn’t write it up. Not to mention the fact that Edwards himself is on the Unit Team Staff that directly controls access to the grievance program, a fact that he has successfully used to block me from getting an Administrative Remedy Review in the recent past (see: “What’s Justice Got To Do With It?”).

   A bit later, just before shift change, a guard came on the tier escorting the law library prisoner back to his cell. This is normally a fairly good time to ask for a phone exchange because after the prisoner is locked up and cuffs are removed the guard is “between tasks” and has the food slot key in his hand.

   So the prisoner who had the phone asked him to pass it to me. The guard opened the slot, retrieved the phone, then carried it to the cell next to me and offered it to that prisoner (who was in line after me). My neighbor dutifully told the guard that, “Duncan is next in line”.

   At this the guard ask him, “Do you want the phone or not?” To which the prisoner said again, “Duncan is next!”

   The guard then set the phone down on the ground in the hall and left the tier.

   The other prisoner who hollered earlier for a phone exchange then came to his door window again (he is across the hall from me so I can see when he comes to his window) and asked me if I got the phone. I told him no, and when he asked who got, I told him the guard just set it down in the hall and left the tier.

   By now even some prisoners who weren’t even interested in getting the phone were yelling from their doors. One prisoner told me to demand to speak to “the lieutenant”, which, according to him, they have to do if I ask. I knew better than that, but decided to play dumb and started yelling and hollering demands to see the lieutenant. I knew they’d never call the Lt., (because they knew they’d get in trouble for playing their little game), which in my mind was a kind of “permission” to yell and scream for the lieutenant all I wanted. (Normally I would never demand any form of “official” assistance in such a matter, but since I knew no such assistance would come in this case I yelled and screamed and even kicked my door (spraining a small bone in my foot, but at least not breaking anything like last time) to put on a good show.

   This, of course, “woke up” everyone on the range. Several other prisoners started chipping into the protest. Even my old “pal” Gabrion put his two-cents in and started hollering also, “Do your jobs and pass the phone or go home!”

   There is a certain subtle dynamic here that I should mention. When guards change shift it is considered amongst them “bad form” to pass of the watch with a bunch of hostile inmates. It is considered a kind of dumping on problems to the next shift. One of the side effects of this is that if the inmates are riled up when shift exchange occurs, the guards that are coming on shift will make it a point to get things “quieted down” as quickly as possible, thus demonstrating their own prowess and skill at “managing” the inmates. The new shift also has a distinct advantage over the old, they can claim (for the prisoner’s sake) that they “just arrived” and could hence not be blamed for whatever the previous shift had done to get them so riled.

   And that’s exactly what happened next. The first new shift guard that came on the tier was immediately bombarded with protests from several prisoners about the phone not being passed. I remained quiet at this point, since my show was for the other prisoners, not the guards, and also because one of the prisoners who got woke up asked me to quiet down so he could ask a guard himself to pass me the phone, asserting that as long as he asked calmly and politely then they would do it (he had missed everything that had just happened).

   When the fresh guard came on the tier he denied any knowledge of why the phone had not been passed, so when the helpful prisoner asked this guard to pass the phone to me he promptly did so. He even let the prisoner use the phone first briefly to check his account balance.

   And get this! This guard, who finally did pass me the phone, was the same guard who threatened my life, and my family, if I ever came out for rec on his shift again! Try to figure that one out (I assume that perhaps impressing the other guards with his ability to “manage inmates” was more important to him than his prejudice against child rapists, but I’m only guessing; as usual).

   After I finally got the phone the prisoner who “helped” me get it, who happens to be the one prisoner who deals with me the most (though that’s not saying a lot) and the closest I have to an actual friend here (he’s just one of those real “friendly” types), started telling me how his “honey instead of vinegar” approach works best. This apparently offended at least a couple other prisoners who started yelling that the only reason the guard passed the phone was to quiet the tier down. My “friend” couldn’t even finish telling me what he wanted to say (and later the “argument” over why and how the phone gets passed continued, and I stayed completely out of it as usual, though it became very heated; they accused each other of “sucking dick” and “raping children”, but once more nobody said anything about me or my crimes, even though in this case the guards had managed to put me in the mix of it; Go figure that one out too, I’m still trying (though my attorneys have suggested that it’s because I don’t act like the typical “sex offender” in prison who walks around in a fearful disposition all the time always trying not to be noticed; I always look the other prisoners in the eye --- not intentionally, but naturally --- and though I keep a low profile I don’t hesitate to “speak up” like I did today when I need to; so, my attorneys say, they don’t know what to think of me or how to react, so they just give me “space” which I interpret as “respect” --- I could test this theory easily enough, by testing the boundaries of the “space” I am given, but I’m really not that interested in knowing such things).

    So anyway, I got the phone, and I made an overdue call to my mother, who has dementia and lives in an “assisted living” home (semi-nursing home). She was very happy to hear from me and told me all about a nurse who has been bothering her by whistling intentionally to wake her up in the mornings. Then she told me the really bad news that her older sister, my aunt Naomi, has been placed in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease; which made my mother cry. I did the best I could to comfort her over the phone in what remained of the 15 minute call limit before we were cut off. And then as soon as another guard came on the tier I passed the phone to my neighbor and that was that.

[J.D. August 20, 2014]