Samourai Dispatch #7: Dispatches From Within

Bitcoin Magazine

Samourai Letter #7: Notes From The Inside

Dear Reader,

It has been many months since I last wrote you. Part of the reason for that is because I spent most of June and part of July in transit from FPC Morgantown to FCI McKean – a four-hour drive away. For most of that time I had no access to pen, paper, stamps, or the rudimentary email system that I use to send these letters out.

The other part of the reason why I haven’t written in so long is that once I did finally arrive I was so shell-shocked from the entire ordeal that I needed time to decompress and process the month-long trauma that is BOP transit.

Six days after arriving at FCI McKean I finally put pen to paper to document the journey, but the result was less of a letter and more of a trauma dump to help me process the absolute worst 30 days of my life. I decided to take a step back and give it some time before I sent out this letter. I have been slowly adapting to life here at McKean, and in good time I will tell you all about this place, but for this letter I want to go back to early June.

I want to tackle the entire transit process and explain how what should have been a quick four-hour drive turned into 30 days, two trans-continental flights, three multi-hour bus rides, a cellmate doing time for murder, and a cellmate who couldn’t stop shitting (I preferred the murderer). This letter will likely be published in two parts due to the length. Thank you for your continued reading and support.

“I finally put pen to paper to document […] the absolute worst 30 days of my life.”

On June 5th I was told I would be transferred from FPC Morgantown for a drug and alcohol treatment program. Successfully completing the program (which takes about 9-10 months) rewards you with a year off your sentence, so it is seemingly well worth the hassle of moving to take it.

For security reasons they do not tell you when you will be leaving or where you will be going. While being transferred in BOP custody you almost always are put on an airplane being piloted and operated by the US Marshalls to be taken to a BOP transit hub in Oklahoma City. After a few days in Oklahoma you are put back on a plane and taken to your destination. From speaking with others I was told to expect 1-2 weeks of transit.

I also heard that it costs around $10,000 per prisoner to be transited through Oklahoma. I figured that since I am classified as minimum security, spent close to two years on pre-trial release, self-surrendered, and had no incident reports since being incarcerated I would be a good candidate for what is called a transfer furlough – where I would be responsible for transporting myself to my new institution at my own expense.

I put in my official request for a transfer furlough on June 5th. On June 8th my request was denied without explanation; I would be going through transit, no way around it.

On June 10th I was called to Receiving and Discharge (R&D) at 6:00 AM. Though I did not know it at the time, I was about to embark on a month-long fever dream through two different holding facilities, share cells with murderers, be locked down behind iron-barred cells for 23 hours a day, and much more.

Leaving through R&D is much the same as when I arrived. I was stripped, searched, and issued a pair of ill-fitting clothes (khaki elastic-band trousers, a brown cotton shirt, threadbare boxers, socks that didn’t match, and a pair of slip-on blue canvas shoes).

I was put into a holding cell while the other inmates being transferred went through the same process. There were six of us transiting from Morgantown on that day. We were each lined up and called forward so that the officer could fasten shackles to our ankles and cuffs to our wrists.

Once cuffed and shackled, the officer wrapped a chain around our waist and attached the handcuffs to them. The end result was that you could not lift your arms or hands much higher than your waist, and you could walk only in painful short shuffling steps. We were handed a brown paper bag with ‘breakfast’ in it (bread, peanut butter, bologna) and escorted to the waiting bus.

“We were each lined up and called forward so that the officer could fasten shackles to our ankles and cuffs to our wrists.”

The bus was a cross between a yellow school bus and a coach (think Greyhound or National Express) and already filled with inmates from other prisons in the area. There were guys from all security levels on the bus. Some guys were serving 20 years and coming from the “pen” (The US Penitentiary), while others like me were serving short sentences and going to a camp.

The atmosphere was generally friendly on the bus; most of the USP guys were interested in what the camp was like and how much contraband like vapes and phones cost. At the front of the bus behind a metal grate were the driver and three heavily armed officers. They all wore stab vests and carried handguns and long guns.

As we departed Morgantown I was excited to watch the scenery go by. This was the first taste of the outside world I had in 6 months. I took in all the sights. The trailer park, the rundown gas station, the XXX store—it was all captivating. After about an hour of driving, the bus suddenly exited the highway and stopped on the side of a small road. After 20 minutes of idling, I noticed one of the officers walking back to the bus with a bag of biscuits from Tudor’s Biscuit World – a West Virginia institution.

We remained on the side of the road as each officer one by one went and bought breakfast, an endeavor that took over an hour. I decided breakfast sounded good, but my bread fell out of the bag onto the floor. Breakfast would have to wait. As quickly as we got back on the road, we suddenly pulled off again. This time each officer went one by one into a gas station to buy cigarettes and energy drinks.

The metal of the shackles was starting to dig into my ankles, my wrists were cramping, and my eardrums were shot beyond comprehension. Many others have said it before, but the one thing you really remember about the prison bus is how unbelievably loud it is. Every bump in the road is followed by a symphony of crashing metal. Inmates at the front of the bus maintain full conversations at full volume with their friends all the way in the back. The volume is at maximum for the entire journey.

After about 5 hours we arrived at the Greenbrier Valley Regional Airport. There were several other prison buses parked off to the side of the runway. For the next hour or so, a parade of officers from other buses would climb up and yell out a series of names. We were playing a grand game of musical chairs, and for a brief moment I prayed that I would be called to another bus and spirited off to my camp, bypassing the free plane ride to Oklahoma.

Eventually musical chairs was over, and we were instructed to get off the bus and directed to a line of waiting US Marshalls standing in front of a plain white airplane adorned only with a small American flag on the tail fin.

The Marshall patted me down, checked my mouth and feet, and directed me to line up and wait by the front of the plane under the cockpit. They packed us in tight on the runway—10 rows of inmates, at least 10 men deep. We watched inmates disembark the plane and enter the buses we just left.

The whole thing must be a logistical nightmare for the folks at the BOP, and I was surprised how smoothly it all was moving. It was by no means quick, but it could have been far worse. Finally I was ordered to wobble up the stairs to board the plane. I felt like Joe Biden before falling up the stairs.

How embarrassing it would be to eat it in front of all the convicts. I made it up without embarrassing myself. On board, Air Operations Marshalls replaced flight attendants, though one really couldn’t tell any difference in demeanor between a Delta air steward herding a bunch of fat slobs in sweat suits and a US Marshall herding a bunch of prisoners. We filled each row from back to front at the direction of the Marshalls.

I was sat in the window seat. The guy next to me sported a nifty full-face tattoo and informed me he had been down 15 years and was kicked out of the USP for fighting. I informed him I was on my way to a camp and had been down for 6 months. He had nothing else to say to me after that.

“This was the first taste of the outside world I had in 6 months.”

The plane itself had certainly seen better days; it looked to date from the Cold War. The stickers commonly found plastered across the surfaces of airplanes telling you not to smoke or where to find the life vest in case of emergency – how exactly to apply said life vest while shackled and bound was not explained – were all in German and Russian. Where the hell did they get this thing from?

The plane was filled two-thirds of the way with inmates. The final third at the front of the plane were all US Marshalls, at least 30 of them. With that, the plane took off and we were on our way to Oklahoma City. After about an hour, an Air Marshall doing their best surly Delta stewardess impression threw a bag of lunch at us. It was the second – but not last – sack lunch containing 4 slices of bread, a pouch of peanut butter, two slices of turkey, and a small pack of cookies (“Cream 4 Fun,” a BOP staple that even in my dire circumstances solicited a juvenile chuckle out of me).

Sick to death at this point of the oily BOP peanut butter, I happily pawned it off on the face-tattooed inmate next to me. I got started trying to fix myself a turkey sandwich – a task made difficult due to the cuffs and limited mobility. The bread was ice cold and the turkey was frozen solid. After brushing off the top layer of ice from the sliced meat and placing it between the now-soggy and still-freezing bread, I took a bite and decided I wasn’t a great fan of the turkey popsicle sandwich. The Cream 4 Fun would have to suffice for lunch.

I was thankful for the small bottle of water that was handed out, but was not thrilled when I spilled most of it down my front contorting myself to try and twist the cap off. Shortly after lunch the Marshall went row by row to ask if we needed to use the toilet. Most people did, so the rest of the flight consisted of much jostling and shuffling to the bathroom and back. I refused, preferring to hold it, but the gentleman across the aisle let the entire plane know that he needed to take a shit, a declaration that caused much consternation and debate.

As we approached Oklahoma City the pilot got on the intercom to let us all know it was a beautiful sunny day in Oklahoma City, a balmy 88 degrees. He failed to mention that none of us would see that sun for our entire stay in FTC Oklahoma City.

We landed at the OKC airport, went past the main terminal building towards a squat brown concrete building about 6 stories high. After what felt like an eternity, we were disembarked row by row through the jet bridge directly into the airport prison.

We shuffled single file through an assembly line of Marshalls who thankfully removed the cuffs and shackles, searched our mouths and feet again, and directed us into a dark concrete holding cell where we were packed in tight like a tin of sardines. In the corner of the room was a single stainless-steel combination toilet, sink, and water fountain.

Almost immediately several inmates somehow fashioned a lighter and proceeded to get extremely high on K2 – known also as Deuce. In prisons, Deuce is commonly just roach spray or rat poison drenched on a small piece of paper.

When you light the paper and inhale the fumes you often freeze where you are standing, lean over, and are lost to the world around you for several minutes. I was most curious as to where the hell they were hiding these things to make it past no fewer than 3 probing searches.

All I could think of was getting out of this claustrophobic concrete box into a housing unit with other minimum-security “camper” inmates. Everyone had warned me that security classifications would be mixed until you were assigned a housing unit. I just had to tough out the intake process.

You quietly wonder if Dante got it all wrong and all the circles of hell happen to be within the BOP’s Oklahoma City airport transfer facility.

For being the official transit hub of the BOP, handling thousands of inmates every week, the staff at FTC Oklahoma City were breathtaking in their incompetence. Every last officer was less than useless, all of them wearing an expression of bewilderment as to how they happened to stumble into this predicament of dealing with a planeload of convicts, as if normally they were payroll accountants or copy clerks.

It was as if it was everyone’s first day on the job. After jam-packing us ass-to-elbow in the small concrete room for 4 hours – presumably they were having some sort of crisis meeting trying to determine what exactly they were supposed to do with us – a morbidly overweight officer whose stab-vest appeared to be groaning in protest at the enormity of the task of protecting such a large man unlocked the door and shouted that he needed five of us at a time.

Instantly well over 100 men, all desperate to be out of this hellish room, pushed and shoved their way towards the door. The only ones in no hurry were the deuce heads, who had no idea where they were – and if they were indeed aware, their limbs were in no mood to take any direction regarding movement – and myself, who had no interest in playing grab-ass with murderers and rapists.

I waited patiently towards the back of the room and entertained myself by taking covert glances at the inmates around me to try and guess which ones were the ‘chomos’ (child molesters). You may at this point wish to chide me and extol the virtues of not judging a book by its cover, but these books had covers that all but said “Hey Look! I’m a chomo!”. They have a look about them.

After 45 minutes of 5 men trickling out at a time, the room emptied, and the deuce heads stumbled back into reality – what a horrible reality to return to from what must have been a thrilling escape – and we shuffled out into the convict assembly line.

We were commanded to undress, lift, squeeze, and cough under the careful supervision of an officer no doubt cursing the recruiter at the Buttplug County job fair who never said anything about staring at genitals all day.

Once the second strip search of the day concluded, you were thrown a bundle of damp clothing with odd stains on them and hurried further along the conveyor belt towards a long queue to go through a body scanner machine, the kind of thing you would find at an airport designed to find bombs and weapons.

The officer manning the machine sits behind a lead curtain to shield themselves from radiation that leaks out of this whirring machine. The warning sticker helpfully informs you to keep back behind the blue line for your safety, but it turns out this warning is not for you; you are instructed to jam yourself as close as possible to the machine so they make sure to dose you with the radiation of the 6 guys ahead of you.

Once you have been sufficiently irradiated, you get pushed along where the medical officer menacingly asks if you have anything medically wrong with you, almost daring you to say anything but “no”.

There is a whirlwind of papers being stamped, collated, duplicated, and filed, and before you know it the assembly line ends. You breathe a sigh of relief, surely some friendly officer is going to check your papers and notice you are a minimum-security ‘camper’ and whisk you away. Instead, yet another morbidly obese officer points at a room and makes some sort of grunting noise. You do not speak primate but gather he wants you to wait in the room.

You quickly realize this room is a carbon copy of the first holding room, and you quietly wonder if Dante got it all wrong and all the circles of hell happen to be within the BOP’s Oklahoma City airport transfer facility.

“All I could think of was getting out of this claustrophobic concrete box.”

Another couple of hours pass – or years, who can tell at this point – in the second holding room, and the Deuce heads are the only ones having a great time. The Deuce dealers have defeated yet another strip search and now a body scanner. Eventually an officer of indeterminate gender unlocks the door and yells out 5 to 10 names, and you are escorted to your “range” (prison speak for the floor you live on).

The officer leads us towards the elevator. Ten of us cram in and I get a good look at the men with me. Seven of them have full-face tattoos that extend across their shaved heads. Rams’ horns, Celtic knots, Thor’s hammer—that sort of thing.

At this point I am fully aware that a “camper”-only range is a fantasy. I am going into the general population with murderers, rapists, kidnappers, gang members, and career criminals – many of whom have spent more time behind bars than they have in society. I take a deep breath; this is no time to be anxious or afraid. If the sharks smell fear, they will strike.

The guard walks us to the heavy metal door that separates our range from the hallway. He turns the key, but the door won’t open. He tries another key with the same result. One of the face tattoos mocks him, “What is it, your first day or something?” he heckles. The officer, now very aware that this is taking way too long, fumbles the keys and drops them on the floor. The scene is objectively funny, and now several more of the inmates are heckling the clumsy officer.

Finally the door opens from the inside. The range officer must have taken pity and opened it for him. The guys watching on the security cameras must have been pissing themselves. He will probably never hear the end of it in the breakroom.

I am on Range 4D. The room is vaguely triangular in shape, as if the architect started drawing a triangle but gave up halfway through. The room is large and painted in a palette of institutional grey and the same sort of pink they paint high schools.

Cells with big metal doors line three of the walls. Two large staircases flank both sides of the room and take you up to an internal balcony where cells line the walls as well. If I remember correctly, there are 30 two-man cells on each floor, so each range holds a total of 120 men. As soon as you cross the threshold between hallway and range, you are immediately struck by the sheer number of strung-out junkies hunched over, seemingly frozen in place.

Before you even have a chance to breathe, several face tattoos are in your face asking if you want to buy drugs from them. These enterprising fellows apparently are running a fully stocked pharmacy. They offer me deuce, ice, meth, snizzlefizz, and junglerush.

Okay, I made the last two up, but they offered me stuff I have never heard of before. I decline the offer and they move on quickly to a more lucrative mark. The range officer leaves his office, steps over a frozen drug addict, and informs us that he is new here and to just give him a minute to get us situated.

I politely wait while the officer – looking more and more flustered by the minute – assigns the guys ahead of me their cells, hands them a roll of toilet paper, and a thin mattress before sending them on their way into the jungle. When it is my turn, the officer lets me know that he has run out of toilet paper, but if I give him a minute he will find me some. He gives me my cell number and scurries away back into his office. I follow him and remind him I need a mattress, to which he explains he has run out of those as well, but if I just give him a minute he will try and locate one.

From that point forward he was “Officer Just-A-Minute”. I climb over three junkies strung out on the staircase and make my way to the cell I have been assigned.

“This isn’t fucking Guantanamo!”

The cell is small, featuring only a bunk bed, a toilet, a sink, a desk, and a fluorescent light. Inside is a large American Indian. If you asked someone to draw the most racist caricature of an American Indian, he would have drawn this guy.

He looks at me and says in a deep voice with a flat affect, “I am Shadow”. The strange face tattoos gave him the air of some sort of tribal witch doctor. I said, “You sure are,” and quickly introduced myself lest he take offense to my glib remark and place a hex on me.

I liked Shadow immediately. I learned that he was on his way to a USP doing 20 years for murder. Before I had a chance to explain that I was on my way to a camp for the fake crime of not having a license I didn’t even need in the first place, Officer Just-A-Minute was in the doorway of the cell holding half of a foam mattress.

Decidedly at the end of my tether, I looked to him, to the mattress in his hands, back to him, and asked incredulously, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” “It is all we have,” he responded, slightly annoyed. “It is half gone. How the hell am I supposed to sleep on that? My ass and legs will be on bare metal!” I protested. “Welcome to prison,” he responded curtly.

I was seriously fed up at this point, plus I had Shadow the murdering witch doctor to back me up, so I pressed further: “I understand this is prison. I am well aware of that fact! You still have an obligation to provide us basic amenities like bedding. This isn’t fucking Guantanamo!”

I pushed. He simply shrugged, dropped the mat onto the floor, and walked off. “Fuck that guy,” said Shadow. I agreed.

A few minutes later Officer Just-A-Minute walked by and locked the cell door. We were locked in for the night. It would be the first time I had been truly locked in a cell. I was mildly surprised there wasn’t some sort of central locking mechanism; the officer needed to walk by 60 cells and manually lock them all. A while after locking us in, another officer showed up to perform the 10:00 PM count.

Count concluded, I climbed onto my half mattress and waited for the bright fluorescent light to be turned off. By 11:00 PM I asked Shadow what time they usually turned the lights off. “They don’t,” he responded.

I sighed, covered my head with the sheet they gave me – it smelled vaguely like motor oil and sawdust – and silently sobbed. Everyone told me that transit was bad, that Oklahoma was terrible. They were not overstating it.

I laid there, ass on bare metal, harsh light shining through the threadbare sheet, and asked myself if all this was worth the year off. I regretted ever leaving Morgantown, and I desperately wanted to call my wife Lauren.

The transit story will continue in Part 2. Thank you for reading.

This is a guest post by Keonne Rodriguez. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.