“Why not?”
“I got rid of it.” The fish was upset and disgusted but, because of his ignorance, not as frightened as he should have been. His questioner, a younger man but schooled, guessed that this guy might be OK, that he just didn’t understand. “Turn around and run,” the young con told him. “Run! Back to that last door, and shout for the guard to let you in, understand?”
“What?”
“Listen to what I’m saying. Run! Now. Do it now!”
He seemed to think he’d have time to figure things out, like it was a crossword puzzle or something. But it was already too late. The word was out. No paperwork. The escape route was blocked, and a small mob converged, instantly worked to a boil. The younger con shook his head, stepped aside, and the horror began. When it was over the fish made it to the infirmary alive, but the attack left him a paraplegic.
As it turned out, the young man who’d tried to warn him had guessed correctly. The new guy was neither a child molester nor a snitch, just some fool still angry at himself and the universe around him, about to do time for a vehicular homicide he didn’t want to be reminded of. He was driving, and someone in his family was killed. When he saw it spelled out on the document, it all came back to him, and he tore it up. But he was in the wrong place to look for patience or understanding. Even if they couldn’t articulate it, those who crippled him were hungry for a release from the deadness and waste all around them, the lost years, missed opportunities, stupid coincidences, everything that led them to such a gray, sorrowful place. Jumping a pervert or a suspected pervert felt good, at least for a little while, like uncoiling a spring. And they were absolved because they did only what was expected of them. After all, he had broken the rule.
The young con never saw the unlucky man again. It often works that way inside the walls. You see or experience something searing, and yet, when it’s over, it’s almost as if you never saw it because now you have to stay alert for the next thing. Whatever that next thing is, you don’t want it to be about you. You endure. You find religion or make jailhouse hooch, joke with your buddies, smoke five-dollar cigarettes (no-smoking rules ran up the price astronomically), and sometimes even dream sweet dreams.
Before Jesus Chavez won the International Boxing Federation (IBF) lightweight championship, he was a convict.2 His Chicago homeys had drafted him as a lookout for an armed robbery that went wrong. A very tough yet scared eighteen-year-old, he was eventually transferred into Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois, one of those impossibly crowded joints. Too many bodies inhabiting too small a space generate a relentless noise that’s grating and cruel to the senses. It reaches inside people, not just into their ears. It hammers at nerves. But the worst time of all is when the noise stops because it means something awful is on the way, most likely a gang about to pounce and scatter. Other gangs might decide to move first. In Stateville, just the perception of trouble meant there would be trouble, even if the original perception had been incorrect. Those not part of a gang were prey for everyone. Those in a gang were drafted as warriors in battles they knew nothing about. And wars were only part of the violence, which was often expressed through a kind of methodical two-man combat, a violent ballet that was a Stateville tradition.
Chavez quickly learned that the lifers all around him avoided beefs with each other because making an enemy of another lifer would start an interminable back-and-forth vendetta. Thus, short-timers like Chavez were targets for a never-ending series of challenges and raging physical attacks from lifers who didn’t really care if they lived or died. They fought because it felt good. Some prisons are more violent than others, and Stateville was a gladiator camp. Living in such close proximity, everyone was in everyone else’s face. All it took to provoke a challenge was a wrong step, a wrong word in the chow line, or a too-narrow corridor. Two men would settle a challenge by entering an empty cell, closing the door behind them, and exploding. Sometimes one man would be twice the size of the other, but no one could duck a challenge.
Each warrior, usually from rival gangs, had his own representative outside the door. Inside the cell the two men fought until someone lost consciousness or the sentries spotted a guard approaching. The cells were tiny, and in the course of combat, heads smashed into walls, porcelain sinks and toilets, steel bars, and bunks. Convicts called these battles ping-pong. Chavez was a Golden Gloves champ back in Chicago, but sometimes he’d wake up from ping-pong in his own cell with his cellie trying to revive him.
In Los Angeles County’s Men’s Central Jail, the gang culture is so pervasive that it infects even the deputies’ ranks. Although it’s supposedly forbidden, these deputies have been known to form their own gangs. Jailer members sport gang tattoos, flash gang signs, and mimic the behavior of street gangs. Deputy gangs that have been discovered and documented include the Vikings, the Regulators, the Cavemen, and the 3000. Usually their ire is aimed at inmates, but at an off-premises Christmas party in 2010, six guards in the 3000 jumped two other guards who had “disrespected” them. The two suffered serious injuries.
By this time, the FBI was already investigating the over-the-top violence that deputies inflicted on inmates in Los Angeles County jails. Sheriff Lee Baca’s reaction was to condemn the federal investigators. The department, he said, could handle its own problems.3 Later he toned down his criticism and agreed to cooperate. At least that’s what he told the news media. The FBI had become involved only after it concluded that the Baca administration had little interest in policing its own jail deputies. Jail chaplain Paulino Juarez had filed a formal complaint after witnessing a beating in February 2009. He said he was ministering to an inmate when he heard thumps and gasps. He walked toward the sounds and saw three deputies pounding an inmate pressed against the wall. Juarez believed the victim was handcuffed because he never raised his hands to protect his face from the deputies’ fists, as he pleaded for them to stop. Finally, the inmate, Juarez said, collapsed face first. The chaplain’s statement recounted that the “body lay limp and merely absorbed their blows.” The deputies continued kicking him for a full minute, he said. It might have gone on longer, but one of the assailants spotted Juarez. Juarez said the assault left a large pool of blood on the floor.4
In the weeks after he filed his complaint, he said, deputies would insult him and call him a “rat,” among other things, as they passed him in the corridors. Eventually, having heard no response to his complaint for two years, Juarez asked to meet with Baca. During the meeting, Juarez recalled, Baca claimed no one had informed him about the complaint. He sent for the report, which said the beaten inmate was schizophrenic. “Punches are allowed, but kicks are not allowed in my department,” Juarez recalled Baca saying.5
Scott Budnick, a producer for The Hangover movies and a former writing tutor at Men’s Central Jail, gave a sworn declaration that in 2009 he witnessed three deputies kicking and punching an inmate in an empty chow hall. The inmate fell to the floor. The deputies, he said, repeatedly yelled, “Stop resisting!” even though the inmate put up no resistance. Presumably, their shouts were intended to foil any possible audio recording. On another occasion, in 2008, Budnick said he was standing outside his class when he saw a deputy stop an inmate for a search. “I then saw the… deputy grab the inmate’s head and smash his head into the wall, hard. It was so hard that I could hear an audible crack,” he said.6