Klan Guards, Black Inmates – Cops Don’t Snitch

 

  One off-duty correctional officer

““I’ve visited more than 50 [prison] facilities and have seen that this is a pervasive problem that is not going away... Those who work in our prisons don’t seem to fear people knowing that they are white supremacists.”                               

Florida State House Representative Dianne Hart

Most state and federal men’s prisons and jails, particularly medium and maximum-security institutions, are fiercely divided within along racial and gang-affiliation lines. Incarceration is supposed to be the punishment for convicted criminals (or those in jails unable to post bail), but unfortunately for too many inmates, being confined, losing freedom, eating mediocre food and sacrificing privacy are the least of their punishment. The pain only starts there. The average inmate in these “houses of detention,” unless placed into a cruel solitary environment, faces physical danger from beatings (which can permanently injure or even kill), with or without blunt force objects to inflict pain, and can face cuts and stabs from “shanks” (homemade knives), often fatal. Rape is also a risk. 

Being recruited to join one racially compatible gang becomes attractive as a mechanism to secure “protection” from other gangs ready to prey on a newbie. But gang membership has a price, and that price is often to kill or maim targets designated by the member’s gang’s “shot caller” (gang boss). Often, following such orders results in additional criminal time, but failing to follow orders can result in gang-inflicted punishment, which could just be death. For those incarcerated in these gang mills, loyalty is evidenced by prison tattoos and often involves a lifetime commitment to the gang’s criminal enterprise, inside or after release. Learning the ropes also generates an excellent education on the “how-to’s” of criminal activity.

As bad as this violent exposure to fellow inmates might be, at least those are the designated criminals – the ones society does not really care about – some of the worst and definitely illegal violence is perpetrated, encouraged and planned by the guards themselves. Within too many American jails and prisons, guards often affiliate with white supremacist groups, protect each other when the violate inmate rights, often involving a beating or a “look the other way” response to known gang violence by inmates “protected” by these guards. 

What is most troubling is that too many of those deputized to oversee prisons are completely and openly members of white supremacist groups, from the many right-wing militia across the land to the Ku Klux Klan. They wear the symbols of their racial bias with pride (like the officer pictured above). To make matters even worse, the supervisors – often all the way up to the relevant inspector general – make sure that reports of officer abuse never leave the prison walls… and the rule among officers: don’t snitch… is just like the gang rules. Writing for the November 25th Associated Press, Jason Dearen explains: “Some Florida prison guards openly tout associations with white supremacist groups to intimidate inmates and Black colleagues, a persistent practice that often goes unpunished, according to allegations in public documents and interviews with a dozen inmates and current and former employees in the nation’s third-largest prison system. Corrections officials regularly receive reports about guards’ membership in the Ku Klux Klan and criminal gangs, according to former prison inspectors and current and former officers…

“This summer, one guard allowed 20 to 30 members of a white supremacist inmate group to meet openly inside a Florida prison. A Black officer happened upon the meeting, they told the AP, and later confronted the colleague who allowed it. The officer said their incident report about the meeting went nowhere, and the guard who allowed it was not punished. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss official prison business. They told the AP that, after the report went nowhere, they did not feel safe at work and are seeking to leave…. Officers who want to blow the whistle on colleagues are often ostracized and labeled a ‘snitch,’ according to current and former officers [and fired]…

“This is a pattern all over the country,” said Paul Wright, a former inmate who co-founded the prisoner-rights publication Prison Legal News. Wright helped expose Ku Klux Klan members working in a Washington state prison in the 1990s. He and Prison Legal News have since reported cases of Nazis and Klan members working as correctional officers in California, New York, Texas, Illinois and many other states… ‘There’s an institutional acceptance of this type of racism,’ Wright said. ‘What’s striking about this is that so many of them keep their jobs.’

“Most state prisons and police departments throughout the U.S. do very little background checking to see if new hires have extremist views, said Greg Ehrie, former chief of the FBI’s New York domestic terrorism squad, who now works with the Anti-Defamation League [ADL]… ‘There are 513 police agencies in New Jersey, and not one bans being part of outlaw motorcycle gangs. A prison guard who is the patched member of the Pagans, he can be out about it and tell you about it [with no punishment] because it’s not stipulated in the employment contract,’ Ehrie said. The ADL lists the Pagans among biker gangs with white supremacist group affiliations.

“This dynamic can lead to what the former Florida prison investigator described as ‘criminals watching over criminals.’… ‘If you have a heartbeat, a GED and no felony conviction, you can get a job. That’s sad,’ said [twice fired Mark] Caruso, [a] former Florida correctional sergeant… Officers, meantime, fear retaliation… ‘Officers are saying their colleagues are members, but they can have me killed,’ one former investigator said.” AP. Correction officers are disproportionately affiliated with unsavory groups, many racist in the extreme, and where the ethos is to look the other way because prisoners are deemed unworthy of protection, there is almost nothing that an inmate victim can do about it. Although it is an agency that can sidestep the racists networks of officers and their supervisors, the FBI almost never intervenes. And you wonder why so many inmates leave prison angry and with little commitment even to try and join a normal society.

I’m Peter Dekom, and over the decades, where we really should know better, the pattern of violent officers crushing inmates has only gotten worse.