So after sinking into degradation of extreme addiction to where even over dosing would not convince me to quit the newest warden at Beaumont low decided to enforce a policy that meant if any one was at the facility for more than three years and was outside their region they would be put in for a transfer. i met both criterias and at my next team was told to pick two spots in the BOP that i would like to be transferred to. i put in for Englewood Colorado, which was now a low, and Terminal Island California. i went to neither.
so i had been in Beaumont for around 10 years so far, 4 at the USP, and 6 going on 7 at the low. i had accumulated quite a debt from the store men in the unit and was on a payment plan using my job in the kitchen to slowly pay them off. however when they all found out that i would be transferring things got out of hand because i didn’t have the money on my books to pay them all off in a timely manner. so needless to say there was some angry words said and threats made to my safety. i wouldn’t be able to fight all of them off and since i wasn’t thinking right because of my addiction i left the compound to the SHU. i am not proud to admit this sort of thing as it shows how low i sank both in respect to my view of myself and my responsibility to honor my debts.
i was transferred to Oakdale Louisiana. it was not a place i could stand being at and after three days made the decision to leave that compound also. i spent the next 9 months in the SHU at Oakdale refusing to return to the compound much to the frustration of my new case manager and the lieutenant on duty.
there was nothing in that prison to convince me to stay. they had 6 man cubicles in a two tier horse shoe shaped open dorm. it was around 65 degrees all the time and it rained every day every month of the year, sometimes in 5 minute torrential downpours that left you soaked to the bone only to return to a ice cold dorm. no thanks.
when i finally was transferred again it was to Elkton Ohio. another sad example of a federal institution. the drugs were very cheap and every where. the homosexual activity there was rampant. i made it about 3 months before getting put in the SHU for being high, ironically i wasnt. i caught Covid 19 from my case manager when i went in there one day to ask her for a BP-8 to put against the counselor for throwing away my eagle feather during a shake down. eagle feathers are sacred to my people and i had been given one in 2007 when i was in Colorado. the year was 2020, January. and she was sick as dog when i went into her office. i immediately regretted going in there as i knew she had something extremely contagious.
the following week as i waited for my BP-8 to come back i was more sick than i have ever been in my entire life. at first i couldnt even get out of bed without feeling dizzy to the point i needed to hold on to the walls to go to the bathroom to regurgitate and my stool was water. i couldnt hold food for very long so i subsisted on milk from the chow hall breakfast meal for the rest of the week, stealing extra cartons to carry through the day. two weeks into my illness i started coughing up blood and phlegm evey hour. i couldnt leave my bunk for three days at one point and medical refused to see me even at sick call. i lost my sense of smell and taste also.
then one day as i was delirious and staggering in my room trying to focus on standing up so i could make my way to the bathroom the counselor who now hated my guts for writing him up came walking by and accused me of being high. i couldnt answer because i couldnt talk due to the soreness of my throat so he thought i was stuck then for some reason pulled the front of my pants open and stared at my penis before handcuffing and hitting the dueces. i was walked to medical by two officers on each are and they basically carried me there because i couldnt walk straight. they told medical this and they did a blood pressure check and i was all out of wack.
so they put me in the SHU because they thought i was high when i was actually experiencing the effects of the deadly covid 19 flu. i wsa in the SHU for 2 weeks when my case manager came and said i would have the shot expunged because they didnt give me a drug test to see if i was on anything. the following week the nation went on covid lockdown and the institution itself had been declared a disaster area because 80 percent of the compound had contracted covid 19. so my case manager came back and said she was going make the shot stick and bump my points up to a medium to have me transerred because i couldnt go back to the compound as i was at risk of catching covid. go figure.
so as i sat in the SHU the whole world was going through a crisis as the pandemic raged. i only know this because we still got newspapers to read. the institution was on lockdown and things got out of hand when the cops started to refuse to go into the units to give the inmates basic sanitary supplies and would also leave the food cart with the sack lunches 10 feet from the door and let inmates take them into the units. finally a few inmates who had smart phones filmes the living conditions inside the prison and posted it online and even sent them to CNN. it made national news and started the act that gave us free phone calls and stopped the three person to a cubicle, which was how it was supposed to be but never applied because the BOP is very corrupt and cares only about money and shoving as many inmates into one area as possible.
9 inmates died at Elkton and protests were held in front of the prison, even the national gaurd came in to help with the crisis because most of the prison staff had covid. after nine months of waiting i was finally transferred again to Pekin FCI.
