Make Big Bucks In The TDCJ

In my last chapter, I wrote about how the Puppetmasters didn’t take into account where they were going to find all the guards they would need to fill over one hundred prisons. And to this very day, they are still struggling to fill all of these prisons. The turnover rate is so high, it seems like it’s a revolving door. And the Puppetmasters don’t care about the professionalism or the quality of the people they hire any more. To them, it’s all about keeping these prisons full of warm bodies so the industries stay up and running, and they can keep raping, pillaging and stealing. The TDCJ doesn’t care if the men or women they hire are qualified or even physically capable to do their job. All that matters is that someone shows up, and preferably, that they can count.

If an officer is obese and will not or cannot do their job the way it’s supposed to be done, so what! If some of the officers are mentally unstable to the point they are barely functioning in society, that’s even better, because it’s even easier for the Puppetmasters to manipulate them. Believe me, I have seen some things. I remember one old woman who worked here who literally could not see good enough to figure out which door to open from the picket. The 12-inch high numbers were too blurry for her to read them. She wore these Coke-bottle glasses and her hair was snow white. She had to be at least 70 years old, and this woman was very nice- a good-hearted lady who you’d want for your own grandmother, but not for a prison guard.

We had another woman who worked here named Ms. Barnes. She was right at, if not over, 400 pounds. When she got here in the morning at 6 o’clock to count, she was already sweating so bad, I thought she was going to die.

The list of the elderly that have worked here, and continue to work here, is unreal. You’ll recall a woman I told you about, Ms. Patterson, who is a very hateful woman. Please don’t think I’m exaggerating this when I say that Ms. Patterson weighs 75 pounds soaking wet. She is already in her 60s, and there is no way for me to really explain all that I have seen this lady do. She has lied on inmates time after time. She’s written utterly bogus cases. She’s just an all-around miserable human being who has caused too much strife for both inmates and her fellow guards, and even rank. The other officers stay miserable when she’s working, because she puts them in dangerous positions. Her hateful ways toward the inmate population will stir up rancor until the dorm is on the verge of a riot, and then she’ll just walk off, leaving her co-workers to settle things down. And, God forbid, if something ever DOES explode, that other officer will be on their own, because how in the hell will a 75-pound old crone be of any help to this person? One look at her and you would know beyond a doubt that this woman has no business working inside a prison - not now, not ever.

The Puppetmasters understand there is no possible way they can find the qualified officers needed to work over one hundred prisons at the pay scale they are offering, so they will hire people like Patterson even though they know she is not fit to work here, and even though they fully know the devious and hateful things she does to the inmates. They don’t care that her fellow officers can’t stand working with her, and they absolutely know exactly how many boxes of grievances have been filed against her for her continuous campaign of aggravation and provocation. Yet, they will not fire her. Why? Because she shows up to work. She’s more reliable than the sunrise, because she never misses a chance to “kick the animals”. And they need that warm body so they can keep the slaves a-working. That’s truly all that’s important to the TDCJ - keeping us in the factories, keeping their tables waited on in the ODR, keeping their clothes clean and their cars washed. They could care less that Ms. Patterson is a walking time bomb. She is simply a tool to keep the slaves moving around.

It’s the same thing with the African immigrants I told you about that have flooded the prison system around the Houston area. It doesn’t matter that they can’t communicate with inmates or co-workers. It doesn’t matter that their attitude and lack of work ethic has caused problem after problem. I mean, really, who in their right mind would hire hundreds of employees into their company that couldn’t even communicate with the customers or the supervisors? It’d be the same as hiring a school full of Russian-speaking teachers and expecting our kids to learn something about science or math. Who would hire young kids fresh out of high school to work in a maximum-security prison? Who would hire someone who weighs 400 pounds to work a job that involves climbing stairs all day with no air conditioning? Who would hire someone for ANY job that comes to work drunk or high every day of the week? Who would hire someone so mentally unstable that you can’t even talk to them without sending them into raging rants? Well, if any of the above categories applies to you, I’ve got good news for you. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice will hire you... WITH a sign-on bonus!

They simply don’t care that this new model of employee is undeniably a threat to the safety and security of the prison. They don’t even care that other officers’ lives are being put in danger because of these hiring practices. They just want to know if they have enough staff to open the factory and the ODR.

There are times when I have repeated myself over and over in my attempt to stress certain issues to you. It drives my editor crazy, but when I have experienced the insanity of this system, this brutal, evil system that would puta noose around my neckband threaten to kill me for trying to use the grievance system to protect a wheelchair-bound senior citizen from getting smashed into gates, I can’t contain myself sometimes. And just remember, the state is fully aware of the things I’m talking about. They know full well exactly who it is they are hiring.

It was only a few years back that I saw on the news that a warden, several of his ranking officers, and some of the unit’s guards were indicted for running a brothel and dealing drugs to prisoners along with some other criminal activity. Please know, I would absolutely understand if this was something that happened every once in a while at a certain prison. People, obviously, make mistakes. But there is dirt all over this system. It’s in every unit. It’s from El Paso to Texarkansas, Dalhart to Brownsville. There have been times when I’ve seen good wardens show up, and they try their best to clean things up. Sadly, the prisons have been saturated with these certain types of new hires, and the warden will have very little chance in accomplishing their goal. After all, the behavior has been going on for decades, and it’s rooted so deep into the Texas prison system that new guards showing up already know what to expect when they get here. In fact, many come seeking TDCJ employment precisely because they want to sell drugs or cell phones and make an “easy” bundle of cash. So the best the warden can hope for is that the illicit activity is put on hiatus until their little two-year stint is over, and then they go full blown when the next warden shows up.

Now I need to tell you about the worst kind of people who have infiltrated the TDCJ through it’s lackadaisical employment practices, active gang members. They have not only flooded the prisons, but have helped their fellow gang members inside the prisons with taking control of the units they live on. Let’s say this guard is a gang member and one of his own gang gets in trouble with another officer. They just use the gang-affiliated officer to set up the one that is doing their job honestly, and the problem goes away. After all, if the TDCJ finds drugs in an officer’s car or in the bag they left in the picket while on duty in the dorm, they’ve got to do something, and the dirty officer reports it to the administration, and the problem is eliminated. Then, they are free to go back to dealing drugs and phones. Also, the gang officer has duped his supervisors into believing he’s one of the good guys, doing the right thing, when all the while, he’s just working his way up the ladder of the gang AND the prison hierarchy

There’s a reason the Puppetmasters have allowed these guards to continue working in the prison system. Let’s say the warden knows he’s got a dirty group of officers. Administrators have been working this system a long time. Retirement is just around the corner, and they don’t want to get their hands dirty. They want to stay in the background and keep up appearances of legitimacy. So, they will send one of their cronies, say a dirty sergeant or a lieutenant, to talk to this crooked officer. They’ll deliver the message saying something like this, “Look, we know you’re bringing in drugs and phones, and that’s cool, but you got to pay to play. For 20%, when you show up in the morning for your shift, you can tape that stuff all over your body, and no one is going to say anything to you.

Big prisons, like Connally or Ferguson, might have three to five thousand prisoners, and half of their staff will be dirty. Like I said before, 50 cell phones for $500 a phone is $25,000. Now, if there are twenty dirty guards working for the warden, they can gross half a million. That means $100,000 for the warden to pocket or spread around among his “friends”, and they never touch a cell phone or a baggie of dope. And I assure you it doesn’t stop there. That warden is going to kick a percentage on up to the Puppetmasters so that, if they ever DO get busted somehow, they can just walk away with a slap on the wrist and full retirement benefits.

Folks, there are 109 prisons in Texas holding up to 180,000 inmates. Can everyone reading this imagine how much money these criminals are pulling in monthly? Remember, what I have just showed you money-wise, that’s just from cell phones. I haven’t even started to break down all of the dope inside these prison walls. And don’t forget, whenever you want to make that half a million all over again, you just lock down the unit and begin the shakedown so all the phones get broken up and flushed down the toilet. As soon as everyone comes back up off lockdown, everybody needs a phone again. It’s like some ATM has gone berserk and is spitting money out at you every time you walk by, and in the face of all of this, can you imagine how hard it is for an officer making $15 an hour to stay straight? Do you think they are going to put their job or their family’s safety on the line to expose this corruption? Hell, no.

e next few chapters, I’m going to start telling you about a new drug that has hit the Texas prison like a tornado. It’s a new, synthetic marijuana called K-2, and it’s destroying men and women down here by the thousands. Sadly, as long as the millions keep rolling in, the Puppetmasters don’t give a damn.