B11) Schindlers list

B11  Schindler’s List

Cook Unit, Florence Az. This prison is part of a massive prison complex which dominates Florence, Az. Cook Unit is just down the street from Central Unit. Central is the oldest prison and it's where the gas chamber is. Cook Unit is a low medium yard meaning we get out to the yard every day, it's also a prison where inmates are housed in dorms. There are maybe fifty to sixty inmates to a dorm.

The prison system had its own TV channels; there were two or three channels. These channels were for disseminating information to the inmates as well as playing movies. The movies were from the local video rental store. Movies would only be shown on Friday and Saturday nights.

1995. Saturday night. The movie for the evening was Schindler’s List

Like many inmates I sat in my cubical watching the movie with my headphones on. I can’t say for sure but I think thirty to forty percent of the dorm population was watching the movie. It could have been sixty to seventy percent. In a prison system with a dominating Aryan Brotherhood (AB) population this was a movie not engendered by the “white race”. While the movie was on all my attention was on the movie.

At some point during the movie I needed to blow my nose. After doing so one of the AB’s walked by my cubical and tossed a handful of tissue onto my bunk while saying,

“Dry your eyes with that you fucking Jew loving bastard”

Wow. All this attention because I blew my nose during the movie. Interestingly enough I am not jewish but this is life in prison. This incident is not something I can pretend didn’t happen. The reality is, now I’ve got a problem now. This is something that’s going to lead to something but what? Prison is a place you do not want to show any weakness and I know that. I’ve know it from the beginning. Showing weakness inspires the predators to take notice and that's never a good thing.

My relationship with the AB’s was an ongoing source of pain and frustration. The AB’s and I have had a difference of opinion on most topics as we have a deep philosophical difference of opinions on most, if not all, topics. The most immediate fallout of movie night was my new nickname “the jew”. following day one of the AB’s made a reference to me as “The Jew” and it stuck. 

When the prison Nazi's refer to you as "the Jew" you know prison life isn't working out well. To be honest I don’t think prison life could get worse. At that time there was so much tension in the air you could cut it with a knife. Always or almost always the tension on a prison yard is race related and or drug related. There seemed to be a major issue involving blacks and whites.

Like a gift from the Heavens I was yanked off the yard and sent back to the Maricopa county jail in Phoenix. I had a court date for my appeal. Never have I been so happy to go back to the county jail than this occasion. The hardest time I did was in the Maricopa county jail. I spent nine month of my 6.25 years locked in that jail. This was because I went to trail. The Maricopa county jail is like a medieval dungeon filled with the most hellish catacombs imaginable.

Immediately upon arriving to the jail I was informed my trip was in vain. A continuance had been filed by my lawyer but notice was not given to the prison system in time to stop my departure from the prison to the jail. I was in the jail for no good reason other than getting off the yard and that felt good. It felt like a stroke of luck even if it was only temporary.

It was right after our dinner meal in the county jail when someone announced,

“Cook Unit is locked down. There was a riot”

Tension on the yard reached it’s critical mass and a war erupted. I would later find out back on the yard (cook unit) knuckles, a black man in a cubical directly across from me got a shank in the eye. Knuckles got his nickname because of a birth defect, his hands were deformed and it looked like he was missing a joint in each finger. Knuckles ran a store. He seemed to get along with most everyone and did business with a wide variety of inmates.

There’s a process when leaving the prison and going back to the county jail for your appeal or for new charges or for whatever. The day before someone is sent back to the jail the guards make you pack all your belonging. Everything is placed in storage, this was S.O.P., standard operating procedure This results in an evening with no tv, no radio, no nothing. I sat there in my cubical, on my bunk, with nothing other than stress to keep me company. I was just sitting there thinking about my court date and feeling the pressure but glad to be getting off the yard. I was shocked when knuckles walked by and tossed a couple of moon pies on my bunk. He said almost nothing as he did it. For reasons I’ll never know for certain why knuckles took pity on me and gave me a snack that night. It was an act of kindness in a place absent kindness. This was a good will gesture I will never forget. Maybe it was because of my recently anointed nickname as “the jew”. Maybe knuckles thought highly of me because I was on the “outs” with the AB’s? This is a surmisal on my part.

News filtered in slowly about the particulars of the prison riot that first night. We heard two inmates were medivaced off the yard and countless others sent to the county hospital via ambulances. As it turned out the dorm I was housed in was in line for chow when the battled/riot began. This meant all those waiting in line to get into the chow hall were trapped when the riot began. When the battle began all dorms and the chow hall were locked down trapping all those outside to become part of the battle. If you were caught on the yard during the riot it was bad news.

I got back to the yard a week or so later. When I did the yard was like a ghost town. I think it was thirty or forty percent of the inmates were shipped off to other yards. Anyone political was gone. There was actually some peace on the yard when I got back. It was a pleasant change.