Unacknowledged Victims of the DOC

The family and friends section of Making the Walls Transparent is devoted to all non-prisoner victims of the DOC *.

A MOM & HER TEENAGE SON
(A YOUTHFUL "OFFENDER")

From: My Son's Mother
To: nimer.richard@mail.dc.state.fl.us ; gilbert.gwen@mail.dc.state.fl.us ; woolley.william@mail.dc.state.fl.us ; Hendryci@mail.dc.state.fl.us ; moore.michael@mail.dc.state.fl.us ; fl_governor@myflorida.com ; edcomm@popmail.firn.edu
Cc: kaylee1@charter.net ; faulkner.gershom@leg.state.fl.us ; bilirakis.gus@leg.state.fl.us ; justice.charlie@leg.state.fl.us ; oppaga@mail.oppaga.state.fl.us ; sullivan.don.web@leg.state.fl.us ; wilson.frederica@leg.state.fl.us ; Rlucey8812@aol.com ; meek.kendrick.web@leg.state.fl.us ; jacksonville@fbi.gov ; stopfloridatorture@yahoogroups.com ; cure-national@yahoogroups.com ; common-sense@yahoogroups.com ; FloridaFLIP@yahoogroups.com ; adam@sptimes.com ; dporter@orlandosentinel.com ; Bea7111@aol.com ; COLLINS.SHANNON@leg.state.fl.us ; frankel.lois@leg.state.fl.us ; HumaneRightsAgenda@yahoogroups.com ; granny0000@icountry.net ; info@fdle.state.fl.us ; jeff-dicks@yahoogroups.com ; josalma@tds.net ; ngrant@strato.net ; sherree@okeechobee.com
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 10:43 AM
Subject: A MOM & HER TEENAGE SON (A YOUTHFUL OFFENDER)

I want to make it clear & plain right here & now, that I DO believe if someone commits a crime, they do the time, but they should NOT be sent away to be beaten & choked and other forms of cruel & unusual punishment.  Their punishment SHOULD be,  to be separated by society, in order for society to be "safe".

As some of you are quite aware, I sent an email last night , when I was VERY upset.

I thought about it, and thought maybe I should not have sent that. But in a way, I am glad I did.

I guess you could call this somewhat of an apology email.

The only thing is, after reading what I wrote, I meant every word and at the same time I wanted for the  lawmakers, the DOC officials, and other topdog  representatives of state agencies( Dept of Education) and the Governor to try to be able to comprehend just some of the unimaginable,horrifying experiences  , that "Moms of Prisoners" and their "children"  encounter while being incarcerated under the FLorida DOC.

No one can ever completely understand, unless you are a parent , with a teenager , or even older "child" in prison, the amount of tears, fears , the downright , numerous heartaches and heartbreaks of what we go through on a daily basis.

(Kay Lee , you have my permission to add this, if you like,  to the Family Page located at www.angelfire.com/fl4/fci/family.html)

I want to make myself a little bit clearer in this email, if you are still reading this, while I am in a calmer frame of mind.

Please note my son is NOT aware of my speaking out and hopefully, he will not suffer because of MY actions.  But knowing the ways of the DOC, they will
likely target him. I cannot be quiet, when so many things are wrong with this corrupt agency.

I am NOT  blaming the Education Dept of the DOC.,nor I am blaming the staff at Hendry CI. There are many fine people at Hendry that are indeed caring &  professional.  They are apparently following unwritten orders and/or memos.

Families and friends of prisoners live under tyranny, so afraid to speak out, and when they do, sure enough, retaliation does occur, which is also against the law.

Under tyranny, the people are afraid of the government (DOC).  Under democracy, the government listens to "we, the people" and should become afraid, as we have the power to vote them out of office.

With almost 72,000 prisoners just in Florida (2 million in the US), which is an all time high figure,  the "elected" should realize soon that the families and friends of this many WILL be voting for one that believes in true crimimal justice as one that will NOT allow our loved ones to be destroyed mentally and physically.

We, the families and friends of prisoners,  have taken  our own  polls and the average poll answer is for every prisoner incarcerated, there are 4-5 people, per prisoner that WILL vote for someone who will not tolerate the abuses within the DOC.

WOW! Well, if Florida has  72,000 incarcerated, not counting the ones on parole and being supervised, that is a whopping  288, 000 to 360, 000 people that will vote for people  that are opposed to all the abuses within the DOC.

One of my missions in life is to try to educate the public, that there is NO rehabilitation in prison and to expose what really goes on behind those walls.

Kay Lee has a wonderful website, "Making The Walls Transparent" and I encourage each of you to take time and see the other side! The url for this is  http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/prison I call this the UNofficial DOC website.

Scroll down and click on any prison.  There are many links on this website and it does send a powerful  and truthful message, regarding what really goes on behind those walls.

If one is rehabilitated, it comes from their own personal doing. However,  Florida Statute  20.315 (1) states that one of the main purposes is to "rehabilitate offenders".

I was very upset because the institutional team & the state classification office denied my son's request for protection. He appealed to Tallahassee and I found out yesterday Tallahassee also denied this.

There was no evidence (injury). I guess one must be hurt or bleeding or nearly dead before protection is given and even then protection or pleas for help are ignored by the DOC (Valdes).  (SEE BOTTOM OF EMAIL)

They assumed my son was lying and assumed my son wanted a transfer.

(Note: My personal opinion is the staff at Hendry was following some type of unwritten rules or possibly memos by Michael Moore, Secretary of Corrections.)

(Governor Bush,  you really need to put someone else in this position!  Please see editorial from the St Pete Times at the end of this email for more info.)

If the inmates were not so wild and dangerous at this location, both my son and myself would love for him to stay there, as the majority of the staff at Hendry are indeed professional and treat me with the utmost respect.

In addition, the gain time is much easier to achieve, as this staff appears honest and does not issue bogus disciplinary reports, as many other prisons  do.

I think the main problem at Hendry is that they severely understaffed.

FS 20.315(1)(d)  To provide a safe and humane environment for offenders and staff in which rehabilitation is possible. This should include the protection of the offender from victimization within the institution....... 

October16-18, 2001, my son was scheduled to take the real GED.  They would not allow him to do so, as he was seeking protection.

They denied on the basis of FAC 33-602.220, which covers alot in "Administrative Confinement", so I am unsure as to which  specific rule they were referring .  

FAC 33 -602.221 should have been used , as this is more specific and "administrative confinement" is also covered here.

FAC 33-602.221(1) (j)    Protective Management where used herein refers to a special management status for the protection of inmates from other inmates in an environment as representative of that of the general population as is safely possible.

They could have arranged for my son to take the GED , if they wanted to. They certainly "bend" plenty of rules.  NO fault should be put upon the education department, as they tried to make this happen. However, on October 18, 2001, AFTER , the exams were administered, they told  him his protection was denied.

Don't you find the timing of this  odd?

When he was told that Tallahasee also denied the protection, they ordered him back onto the compound. I was told that my son refused to go back on this dangerous compound.

If this is so, I am relieved that my son disobeyed this particular order, as his safety comes first.

This should help "prove", that my son was not lying when he pleaded for help.

He was serious. I knew he was serious all along, as our visits & rare phone calls were completely halted.

In addition, a disciplinary report was issued for  "disobeying an order" to go back on the compound.  If he is found guilty, which he will be, he will lose at least 4 months of gaintime.

While seeking protection in administrative confinement, a "guard",  namely, OFFICER MOSHER (sp?)  at Hendry  wrapped a white shirt or something around my son's  neck and began choking my son.

This definitely aggravated my son's neck, as my son had a bullet in his neck due to being a state witness.  It is with my understanding this is under investigation with the DOC.  This incident is also under investigation with me, as this will be reported to the State Attorney in that area.

So, what is next? I fear the worst now!

My teenage son will probably be sent to Florida State Prison, or one of the worst, because of my actions.

In fact, a top official of the DOC, right out of Tallahassee,  threatened me in a very  subtle way  with this! In all fairness, if this was not a threat, it "appeared" that way to me.

He should remain In a youthful offender location, but the DOC has plenty of loopholes, in their rules and they will most likely find a way to try to destroy my family, as they have done to so many others. If they don't do this, they will most likely  move him far enough away, to make it impossible to visit.  

F.S.944.8031  Inmate's family visitation; legislative intent; minimum services provided to visitors; budget requests.-- (1)  The Legislature finds that maintaining an inmate's family and community relationships through enhancing visitor services and programs and increasing the frequency and quality of the visits is an underutilized correctional resource that can improve an inmate's behavior in the correctional facility and, upon an inmate's release from a correctional facility, will help to reduce recidivism.

(3)  Upon determining any deficiencies and barriers to the effective and efficient operation of the department's visitation program and services, the secretary shall submit annual budget requests identifying capital improvements, staffing, and programmatic needs necessary to improve the quality and frequency of family visits and the visitation program and services.

(Does anyone know where I can get these reports, if they were submitted?

It is no telling where they will place my son,or if they will even transfer him ,  as both my son & myself , have been lied to and deceived so much by SOME of the top officials(NOT Hendry CI, they have good people here) .  

The DOC has way too much power and they can do as they please and get away with it, including  violating International Treaties, Federal Codes, Florida Statutes, and even their own rules.

The beatings,the killings, the unprovoked & unnecessary macings, the bogus disciplinary reports, the deprivation of food, or very little food, the spoiled & rotten food,  the separation of our loved ones by being placed so far apart, the medical neglect , the falsifying of records, the DOC employees that are fired for reporting misconduct by other staff, all must be stopped, only for my son, but for all of the prisoners.

(Note: I see where the DOC took away more monies from the school lunch funds , for prisoners under age 21, for food. Hopefully, the prisoners will be fed decently, but I seriously doubt that.  Our prisoners do go hungry!

If someone knows Education Secretary, Jim Horne, let him know he is absolutely right about it NOT being a " prudent use of resources".)

Hopefully, some of you can better understand my  frustrations of dealing with the DOC.

I am a law abiding citizen, never been in trouble before , and never ever imagined , that MY son would be prison.

As Kay Lee says and I totally agree with this:

"I have great faith in the goodness of man and know that
real healing can only come when the truth emerges."

Visualizing enlightenment,

My Son's Mom

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Times Editorial
A case for cleaning up our prisons

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 11, 2001

The beating death of Frank Valdes, a death-row inmate at Florida State Prison, allegedly at the hands of the men who were there to guard him, raises deeply troubling questions about the state's continued tolerance of brutality at its prisons.

The beating death of Frank Valdes, a death-row inmate at Florida State Prison, allegedly at the hands of the men who were there to guard him, raises deeply troubling questions about the state's continued tolerance of brutality at its prisons.

Why is it that we can't seem to keep sadists and brutes out of state uniforms? And why is the grievance procedure at state correctional facilities, the one internal mechanism an inmate has to alert prison management to problems of excessive force, so unresponsive to legitimate complaints?

As Times staff writer Adam Smith vividly described in a recent story detailing the state's case against eight corrections officers indicted in Valdes' death, Valdes died a much more painful death than he would have faced from lethal injection -- his sentence for the murder of a corrections officer.

On Friday, the trial begins for five of those guards who allegedly broke Valdes' body and punched and kicked his face so brutally that he was barely recognizable. According to fellow prisoners on X-wing, Valdes was left in his cell for hours after the final assault, groaning in pain and gasping for breath. Medical personnel were not summoned until Valdes was dead. It's hard to explain away a corpse, but the corrections officers tried, claiming, as a group, that Valdes' injuries were self-inflicted -- that he launched himself from his bunk, head-first.

The story unraveled, however, when the medical examiner found Valdes had suffered 22 broken ribs and a smashed face and had a boot print on his torso, not the kinds of injuries that are self-inflicted.

Whether these men are ultimately convicted is less important than how the prison system deals with its serious staffing and systems problems. The grievance procedure at Florida State Prison is apparently a bad joke.

Prison officials had been warned just days before Valdes' murder that rampant abuse was occuring in X-wing -- the prison's building for incorrigible inmates.

An inmate wrote in an emergency grievance that prisoner beatings were occuring regularly and pleaded for an investigation "before we are killed."

In a response that shows how the officiousness of bureaucrats contributes to an environment that tolerates prison brutality, the inmate's emergency grievance was rejected because his request was found not to be of an emergency nature and was therefore improperly filed.

The prison's personnel problems are sadly obvious and should have been so to prison administrators for a long time.

Instead, prison officials gave supervisory and training authority to men like Sgt. Montrez Lucas, who apparently thought beating inmates and getting away with it was some kind of sick game. He taught new recruits ways to avoid excessive force charges: When kicking an inmate, be careful not to leave a boot mark, he warned his class.

Lie on your reports; just make sure everyone has the same story, he told another.

By the way, the medical staff will sometimes help with the coverup, he confided.

Lucas proudly showed one class a stack of excessive-force allegations he had beaten over the years.

Yet this man was moved along in his career and promoted by James Crosby, warden of Florida State Prison at the time of Valdes' death.

Crosby, too, has been promoted since Valdes' death; he's now a regional prison director.

What is Florida's Secretary of Corrections Michael Moore thinking?

Crosby is at the helm of a prison so full of brutal guards and inept or indifferent grievance administrators that a man died under his watch.

And what is the system's response? Promotion.

Frank Valdes and the men who occupied X-wing are unsympathetic characters. Their crimes put them behind bars and their attitude got them a pass to X-wing.

But that doesn't make them fair game for sadists in uniform. This is Moore's problem, but he seems to be too busy looking for another job to pay attention to the system he is charged with administering.