LIFE AND TIMES OF A CORRECTIONAL OFFICER
By R. Mark ShepardAnother of many escapes, were three Haitian men who were in prison for Numerous crimes, such as Trafficking in Cocaine, 1st Degree Murder, Kidnapping, Assault, and the list goes on.
All three of these men had Natural Life Sentences. All three knew how to play the system with the right attitude. No matter what an Officer said to them or asked them to do, or what task to perform, it was always, 'Yes sir', and 'No sir'. This attitude would eventually gain them the right job, or should I say the job that they wanted all along: A chance to work in food service.
At the time, the Kitchen was operated by an outside company, contracted by the state to run and be responsible for all of the meals served to the Inmates at this particular prison. It did not pay much to the Inmates, only about .32 cents an hour, but for some it was a dream job, especially when you had no family on the outside sending you money each week or per month for Personal Items. But these 3 inmates had more on their minds than just the small money factor.
The food service company would place all of it's garbage inside a fenced area on the prison compound and a local sanitation truck would drive onto the compound after being searched thoroughly from the Back Gate. These searches of vehicles was just a routine security check so the prison could try to eliminate any contraband from the outside coming into the prison.
Once the truck was checked and cleared from the back gate area, the truck was escorted by an officer to the food service area. The Sanitation truck would quickly lift the large dumpsters up with its forks, and dump hundreds of pounds of old, Nasty, Stinking week-old garbage into the back of the truck.
Then the truck would be escorted again from the food service area to the back gate where it would under go another rigorous inspection. The back gate officer would have to stand on top of the garbage truck with a long steel pointed probe, pushing it through the garbage, making sure that no one is hiding in the back of the truck. After the probing was complete, the driver would be ordered to compact the garbage, which was done with strong hydraulic Rams. This insured that if anyone was inside, they would be crushed.
When the inspection of the truck was complete, the truck would be on the way to the county dump.
A Head count of all inmates was done three times a day, and some shifts had more frequent counts. This particular count was right before Noon, before the inmates were released for the noon meal. The Count kept coming up short. Three inmates were missing from three different locations. All of the outside work squads were accounted for, and the kitchen kept coming up with 3 missing Inmates ... the Hunt began.
Many hours later, after all of the surrounding law enforcement agencies were notified, one of the agencies notified the prison that they had 3 Haitian Males, 'that smelled VERY BAD', in their custody.
The 3 inmates told the police officers that they had jumped in the dumpsters at the prison and waited for the truck. After surviving the fall from the dumpsters into the truck, the probing, the compacting of the garbage, and the dumping of themselves and the garbage at the dump, they made their way south approximately 25 miles and were going to try to get on a boat and to back to Haiti.
Needless to say that the Policy of the Outside garbage truck coming ONTO the compound to empty the dumpsters changed, drastically.
CONTACT MARK SHEPARD
markshepard2003@yahoo.com
