A Drug Deal from Inside Prison

For those of you who don't know me, I work as a Corrections Officer for the Great State of Ohio. I can't reveal which prison I work at and can't give you my real name, for safety sake. So, speaking from relative anonymity, I can share this true conversation I was lucky enough to have with a couple of mid-level drug dealers, one night last week. During this conversation some interesting things came to light. Things like, the relation between drug dealers and politicians, connections made and reinforced between drug dealers in prison, corruption in Mexican law enforcement, and routes of travel and techniques used to transport drugs across the Mexican American border. I thought you the reader might find some of these things I heard interesting.

Rewind to the middle of last week. I reported to work for third shift to find out I would be working a "Constant Watch" of a "Supposed" suicidal inmate, down in the Infirmary. Just as a personal note, I hate constant watches, for the most part, because you have to sit right outside of the inmates cell all night and watch the inmates every move. You have to keep a log of the inmates actions and mood every fifteen minutes. I'm an active guy and like to be up and moving. So, sitting there all night is almost more than I can bear at times. Some guys love to do these "Constant Watches" but not me, unless that is, I can make a game out of it.

First you have to understand a very high percentage of these inmates are not suicidal when they go on these watches. They do it for other reasons. Even if they are suicidal there is virtually no way they can hurt themselves. They have an Officer watching them day and night. They have a indestructible padded bed, they wear a suicide gown and have a suicide blanket designed to prevent them from hanging themselves. Even if by some really, really remote chance they could make some kind of noose out of it, there would be no place for them to tie off to. That's all they get and nothing else.

In an effort to help you understand why some of these guys would go on watch when they're not suicidal, I'll list a just few things. As you'll see later, they almost always have an ulterior motive for going on suicide watch. You might think I'm full of crap but trust me, I'm not. Some of these motives might be things like:

The need to get to someone else who is on watch to "Communicate" or "Holler."

To get out of paying for a debt they owe someone back on the block, we call it "Checking In."

To get away from a obnoxious "Bunky" or "Cellie".

To get out of trouble with a strict C/O or "Corrections Officer."

To avoid an ass whooping by another inmate.

To snitch other inmates out.

To avoid some type of trouble they know is brewing back in the block.

Or to just to change their view.

Rarely ever are they truly suicidal, but the state can't take that risk. So, we put them on watch and station a C/O outside their door 24/7 until the Psyc. Doctor takes them off the watch.

That is just one more reason I hate to do these type of watches, they aren't really necessary. I however, have learned a few tricks over the years to make these lousy details a little more interesting, palatable and productive for me. My first technique is to talk crap to the inmate on watch "Trade Barbs" to see what kind of mood the guy is in. This is a good ice breaker and can tell me a lot about the inmate right off the bat. Depending on the reaction I get, I can get a feel for what this inmate is about. After the initial "Trading Barbs" session is over I start a conversation with the inmate. If I don't already know the inmate I talk about stuff in my life "Bullshit Mixed With Reality" to gain the confidence of the inmate. I tell these guys all kinds of erroneous stuff to make them believe certain things about me that aren't true. It's funny what some of these guys will buy into, especially the younger inmates. Once they are in "Hook Line and Sinker" you wouldn't believe the information I can get out of them. Last week was just one more prime example.

I was stationed on a young black guy who was on "Suicide Watch." He happened to be out of a near by major metropolitan area in Ohio. Throughout the coarse of the night I found out he was down for dealing heroin. He was only doing a short, three year, bit. During the initial "Barb Trading" session with the guy it was obvious that he was down here for another reason, other than a true "Suicide Watch." As I was talking shit to my guy, his neighbor in the cell next door started laughing. Bonus, I thought to myself. Two dip shits for the price of one. The black guys neighbor just happened to be an illegal alien out of Mexico. So, I started in on him in my limited Spanish. Then I started asking him how to say this or that in Spanish (Small Talk or BS). About two hours into this I had them both talking.

It turns out the Mexican guy was under Protective Custody and we just happened to be housing him down in the infirmary to keep him out of contact with people in the general population. He was going to ride out the next morning to a maximum security prison and he was going to be housed in protective custody there. The Mexican was caught with 20 kilos of cocaine, 5 kilos of heroin, and $3,000,000.00 in cash. He spent $140,000.00 for his legal defense and went from a possible 40 year sentence down to a 10 year sentence. He could have had the charges reduced to a year if he would have snitched on his accomplices. That whole idea was squashed when they called his mother in California and told him if he went states evidence they would kill her and his daughter. I guess his Mother told him, "you got yourself into this mess and we shouldn't have to pay for your mistakes," and, "I know it's a long time but you're just going to have to do it!" With that hanging over his head, he told his mom, he would do his time and keep his mouth shut.

During our conversation I could tell he was salty for getting caught. It was starting to dawn on him just how long he was going to be down. He conveyed his thoughts on how it was unfair for the Mexican Drug Cartels to get away with everything and the little guy always has to pay the price. He detailed some of the techniques the drug runners used to get across the border at Tijuana an Mexicali. Some of which were quite ingenious. There are many more ways he talked about but here are just a few:

They have someone on the inside drugging the American drug dogs so they are less alert.

They have American Border Guards on the payroll.

They know the schedules and at what areas these Border Guards are going to be in, so they can go through their section and get by with out any trouble.

They use truck drivers to move large quantities.

They use white American citizens to transport their product across the border, because they draw less attention.

Some of these things, he said, are getting harder to do in the last year or so but some still work well. After talking about how they transport their drugs the conversation changed to current politics in Mexico and how it was making it more difficult to make and transport their drugs into America.

He talked about how before the current Mexican President came into office corruption was rampant in the law enforcement community, right down to Corrections. He told me tales of Drug Lords who had been arrested at the US governments request and how they just paid the Corrections Staff off, had their pictures taken as if they were incarcerated and then were subsequently released back into the public, never serving a single day in prison.

He said this new President Felipe Calderón was locking Drug Lords up by the truck loads. He said in the past a family member of the President was killed by the Drug Cartels in Mexico and it was something of a personal mission of his to get back at them. One unique twist on this is that he is sending them to American Prisons in Texas to do their time. Because, he knows they will do their time and can't bribe their way out.

With further research I confirmed everything this inmate told me, everything except the murder of the family member. Some of these things were proven by a debriefing I had the next day with the institutional investigator and the rest you can read with any internet search on the President of Mexico and his stand against Drug Cartels.

I was wondering how in the world did he end up so far into the heart of America, so I asked. He told me he was ordered to come to Ohio to get in contact with the black community in order to push more of their product in the Midwest.

As we talked about drugs and political connections to the drug trade, the two inmates started to relax and started to think of me as a non-factor. What I mean by that is, they started to talk directly to one another right in front of me. The black guy, I was tasked with watching, started to talk about a drug deal he was setting up with the Mexican inmate next to him.

Now, do you remember when I told you about ulterior motives for guys going on suicide watch? This turned out to be a prime example. Sometime in the near future, this Mexican inmate has an associate on the street that is going to be in the in the same town the Mexican inmate was arrested in with a large amount of product to move. The Black inmate got himself put on "Suicide Watch" to "Holler" at this guy in order to get the logistics set in motion for his own brother to deal with the associate of this Mexican out on the streets.

During the conversation I made a mental note of everything I heard. After they went to sleep I wrote everything down on a sheet of paper. When the Captain came down for his nightly rounds I gave him a quiet debriefing. He suggested I call the institutional investigator the next morning. I did as he asked and all the information was sent to the Detective in the city in question and the DEA. Everything I was told by the Mexican and black inmate was confirmed by our investigator.

The investigator was upset that this black inmate was housed so close to this Mexican inmate because of prior drug dealing interactions between the both of them on the street. It turns out the Mexican was previously the black guys supplier. There was a lot of information that I had gathered that was new and hopefully useful to both the detective and the DEA. There are obviously many more details I gathered within this conversation than I am at liberty to discuss in a forum such as this but I'm sure you can garner the rest of the picture.

So, my little techniques of, trash talking, ice breaking, and total bullshit paid off for me and, more importantly, other law enforcement in Ohio. In short, instead of being the typical disgruntled apathetic employee, I choose to make a game out of it . In games such as this, I gain the trust of inmates, get them to talk, and then put the information I gather to good use. In so doing, I can gather a lot of information as to what is going down in the institution and out on the street. Good times Brothers and Sisters, let me tell Ya.