The first time i was in a riot was in Colorado. when it happened it made me realize that my timein prison was not going to be just working out and going to school. it drove home the fact that when things go wrong between two individuals it can snowball out of control if not handled correctly by the so called shot callers that are supposed to disarm such situations.
what had happened was the illegal immigrant mexican population grew to such a state that their area in which they sat in the chow hall was not enough for them and those that were eating didnt take this into account to hurry up and finish their meal as quickly as possible so there were always a couple dozen just standing around eating standing up because they couldnt sit at other tables because they were in a different groups territory. now this is where i think prison gets stupid in that entire groups of inmates unite together behind race, religion, or gang affiliation, and declare that this or that belongs to them and only they can use it. when in fact if we all put aside these differences we could all get along fine. however us being flawed human beings it usually goes down like the book Lord Of The Flies.
instead of seeing their plight of not having a place to sit and letting them sit down at any table when they did try they were told they could under no circumstances sit at this tabel or that table. so feelings got hurt and words were said in a very unpolite way. this situation bled over into the unit as the immigrants began occupying two man cells that were claimed by other groups, mainly the white boy car, which happens to be the most gung ho racially bigoted group in the system. they were taking them being in those cells as a power move to take over their territory when in fact the of the unit manager was the one doing it because there were no white boys to actually put in those cells or they only had one person in the cell “holding it down” until another one of “them” got locked up so they could move them in and keep the cell. that combined with the fact that the white boys at the time were always getting in trouble and going to the SHU for dumb stuff made moving the mexican population into those cells convenient. the white boys did’nt see it that way.
it came to a head when the mexicans tried to claim a whole phone in the phone area and pressed up on a white boy who tried to make a call on that phone because it was the only one open. he made the call and some mexican came up pressing the clicker that ended the call. so naturally the white boy swung on him and a fight started. about four other mexicans who were nearby waiting for such a thing to happen jumped in to help. they started to beat the white boy up and when other inmates saw this they jumped in. since you can see the other units through the large hall windows the mexicans in across the compound took action and attacked any white boy they could find. soon all four units were at war.
i has in a four man room in at the end of the hall of my range when all this started and i happened to look out the window and see all the commotion. i called my cellmates who were all natives and we started watching the fights. one of us went to the other native in the range and gathered them up in the room for safety because we really didnt know what was going on. but we quickly accertained it was mexicans versus white boys so we stayed put. it took about twenty minutes for the correctional officers to finally catch on that something major was going on and try to mobilize themselves to stop the riot. twenty minutes is a long time and there was a lot of blood already on the ground not really form knives or anything just good ol fashioned knuckle sandwiches. although when the goon squad, as the SORT team is called, came running into the units with bean bag guns and gas grenade launchers to stop the fighting we did see a whole lot of home made weapon some flying out the windows so whoever had them wouldnt get catch a shot for having them.
luckily nothing happened on my range and all the violence was contained with no loss of life. and it showed me that my fellow native american brothers put all differences aside and rallied together for a common cause which was personal safety.
the second riot i witnessed was about months later when the mexicans got into it with the blacks. this was a whole new set of immigrants because the last ones that were invovled with the previous riot were all loaded on buses the same night and shipped to the oklahoma transfer station. these ones were mostly from south america. they got into it in my unit over one guy owing another some debt for store that was given in exchange for them going to the commisary for them at a later date. the black guy who owed instead paid someone else and the south american felt disrespected and tried to go to the guys shot caller to get the issue rectified. when he did this the guy who owed got mad for him even attempting to go above him pushed the south american and a fight broke out. this quickly escalated into a every spanish speaking person going against any person with very dark skin and afro hair. this is usually how it all starts in a very basic bigoted attitude that if you look like the guy im fighting even if you guys dont run together you are still part of his group by proxy. so again people saw through the window mexicans fighting blacks and the whole compound erupted.
this time the jamaicans got in on the action but soon found out that when you fight one mexican you fight them all. one jamaican was caught all my himself against some big tex mex fellas and got the worst of it. their only beef with him was that he was an asshole and like to talk bad about them loudly all night long in a open dorm. so when it kicked off even though he didnt run with the guy who started the whole thing they used it as an excuse to come after him. thats when i learned that you have to watch everything you say and do in prison because you never know when things will go haywire causing people to take advantage of the chaos and strike out at you for something you did to them in the past that left them with bad feelings toward you. thats when i started to keep relations with everyone as good as possible and made sure to be overly polite and courteous to all no matter who they were. its given me a good reputation as far as i can tell and the respect i give to everyone is shown back towards me. i can even say i am a shining example to others on how to carry myself. i may fall to the wayside sometimes as not everyone can stay in a good mood all time and my insanity boils to the surface in the form of short tempers and such. but for the most part i stay in my lane as much as possible.
the third riot i witnessed also happened in Colorado but this time it was black against white. i guess at another prison there was an issue of recial tension on april 20 which happens to be Hitlers birthday celebrated by most Aryan gang members and other hard core racist in prison. at some USP there were some Aryan Brotherhood members hailing Hitler in the middle of the yard and the black inmates rose up in anger kicking off a nation wide riot at a lot of prisons across the BOP. we when on lockdown and the correctional officers didnt tell us why but we heard second hand on CNN what was happening. so the white racists at our prison started praising their fellow racists actions and the black inmates again heard about it and fights broke out. this one again didnt involve me but i did witness the unbridled anger of racism as the two groups fought the age old fight that has been raging for many years in America. the cops came in and busted it up but i do have to admit that they were definately rougher on the black inmates than the white pepper spraying them and cuffing them behind the back before slamming them face down on the gravel of the compound but politely asking the white inmates to sit away form them and letting them kneel down gently. thought that was kind of weird until i realized that 9 out of 10 correctional officers on the SORT team were of caucasian decent.
anyways that was all the riots that happened at Englewood while i was there. every 6 months about. very eye opening to the reality that this was going to be my life for the next 25 to 30 years.
