THE GUN TOWER GUARDS
I won't pretend to know a lot about the gun towers nor who works them or why, but I am interested. I do know that several rogue guards we've tried to expose have disappeared off the compound only to return 3 months later, strutting their stuff with more attitude than when they left. Come to find out, they had been hidden away in the gun towers while the heat cooled. FDOC doesn't tend to fire guards who enjoy taking their rage out on inmates: they tend to hide them from us. Kay Lee.
My late friend used to be a prison guard at several of the area prisons before being fired for smoking pot OFF THE JOB. He told me he'd smoke a joint or two in the tower most nights since no one would actually come up there, they'd just phone in their report every hour or whenever to the Sgt.
He was caught smoking a joint out in the national forest by a ranger. He still had on his DOC uniform. He had just gotten off of the graveyard shift and instead of heading straight home, stopped to burn one in the forest. It just happened to be his luck that the ranger happened by.
He went the normal route of going to the "renouned" (sic) Lake City Community College guard training school. The DOC paid him a beginner's salary to take a few hours (I think 140-160, I'm not sure though).
http://www.lakecity.cc.fl.us/prospective/programs.htmlHe was at Lake Butler's RMC, New River East, UCI, and Columbia. Columbia was his last assignment prior to being canned. This was around '96 or '97. Altogether he was with them about 5-7 years.
He was what you would call "an errant guard." Actually I feel he just 'went along with the program' but he used to tell me how he'd mess with some inmates quite a bit. (This happened on a few occasions when he had to pull afternoon duty on the compound). Who knows if he ever used physical violence? If he did he never let me know about it.
What he did tell me though was that he would make a prisoner pick up cigarette butts and the inmate had to bring back a certain number only. If it was too many or too few he'd have him do it all over again, etc.,. That's surely some awful harassment there if you ask me.
He said the "regular guards" HATE the gun tower guards. Yep, the guards have their own cliques too. A tower guard was the lowest of the low wearing the guard uniform because they couldn't hack it inside the fence, dorms, cellblocks, etc.
Also the graveyard shift personnel were pretty "worthless" to the day shift guards. Day shift (to include the 2nd shift 4 to midnight) was considered the best duty to pull. Dan was mostly a 'graveyard worker'. That included the tower, and also the dorms. In fact his last assignment before getting fired was the tower at Columbia.
Danny died three years ago this coming August...
Danny's Death
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