A Couple of Things I Learned the Hard Way While Being a C.O.P. (Correctional Officer in Prison)

A couple of things that an officer had to have concerns for while working in a prison and especially in the lock-up unit are getting spit on and having food thrown on you. Of course I had both of these things happen to me but luckily when the inmate spat upon me it was on my vest and not in my face.

As mentioned in the previous article we had wickets that we would put our supplies through, as well as the food. Another name for the wickets was the "food ports."

On one occasion, or I guess I could say more than one, but one that sticks out the most, is when I was going door to door handing out trays, one of them did get tossed back at me.

Now the inmates that were in Ad-Seg (Administration Segregation or lock-up) got paper plates that looked similar to the other plastic plates, but of course they were paper and almost the same size. The good thing about having paper plates served to inmates in "the hole" or the lock-up unit was if they did throw them back at you at least it didn't hurt. The worst thing was that you'd be a little dirty from the food depending what was on the tray that day.

Sometimes, there was no reason for the inmates to toss them back at you. It could be they didn't like what they saw on the tray or it could be that were just having a bad day and didn't want to eat. Or most of the times a lot of them were off of their rocker, just a little bit, and they thought you were Satan coming up to the door bothering them.

On this particular evening as I handed this inmate her tray I forgot to step to the side as we are trained, so if they do throw it back out at us it would come straight out to ground and not on you. So as I was standing there like a "deer looking into the headlights" the tray came straight back on me with everything going all over my jumpsuit. I don't remember exactly what was on the tray that day but it was pretty messy.

The only time that I remember getting spit on was by an inmate named Mary Less (named changed) Mary Less was one of those inmates that was more or less a big trouble maker. And I would say more in trouble than less in trouble. She was known for her big mouth and always fighting with inmates and always trying to get staff in trouble. Of all of the inmates I knew she had more CDC-115's (serious write-ups) than anyone else. She wasn't afraid of any staff and was always mouthing off at them every minute she could. Put it this way, if the devil has a wife, it has to be Mary Less. She was and probably still is trying to do the devils work.

At the time she spit on me, she was in Ad-Seg again for who knows how many times. Someone had just opened her wicket to give her supplies. When they did Inmate Less put her arm out of the wicket so that no one could close it back up. I went over to talk to her and told her she needed to close it and gave her a direct order to do so.

"Who do you think you are? I'm not closing this up." After a few choice words of expression (not any you would hear in church) she went ahead and spit on me. Luckily, I was standing up so when she spit, it hit only my vest.

Of course, when something like this happens you have to write them up. Unfortunately, when I did the write up I left out one thing to make the CDC-115 stick, which I will explain later.

Inmate Less had so many write ups at this time that she had to go up to what was called a "board hearing" up in the administration building. Depending on how many of them that were considered legit write-ups the board could determine how much more time she would have to spend in prison.

At the board meeting I had to go in and tell my side of the story in front of two officials from the Department of Corrections with Inmate Less in the room as well. I presented my side of the story first and then she got a chance to speak after.

The way it turned out is that it appeared like the officials were on the inmate's side and not my side. And Inmate Less was deceiving and conniving saying that she only made the noise of a spitting sound and that she didn't actually spit on me. She went on to say that in the 115 (write-up) that I didn't say that I observed any spit on the vest.

Because of my over site and not being thorough on my write-up she got off on that 115. However, she had 6 or 7 more write-ups with all the staff at her hearing that day. She may have won that battle with me, but she lost the war with everyone else. With all of the other write-ups she had, she had to spend a lot more time in prison.

The funny thing about this was that I knew she had spit on me but because of a technicality she got off. The next day when she saw me back in graystone she started laughing an evil laugh saying to me, "Ha! Ha! I spit on you and I got away with it! You lousy cop you!"

Another lesson to be learned and instead of the "School of hard knocks," it was the "School of hard cops."