A reality of walking through the gates of prison is there’s a possibility you may never leave. Anyone entering those gates has to be careful; you don’t want to pick up something you didn’t come with. This warning relates to the abundance of contractible diseases – HIV, hepatitis, TB – but what no one tells is that there are far worse things that could happen to you.
An inmate and Iraq veteran named “Captain” would fall victim to the lack of order and confusion that is prison. The effect of his death would cause a literal spark amongst the prison population.
Captain began as the stereotypical man entering prison. Clinging to PTSD, he blamed his wife for cheating on him while he was overseas, and his victim for being stupid enough to be caught in the act with said wife. In time he came to realize that his actions were his own. The situation should have been handled differently.
During his 10-year sentence for the violent outburst that left his victim hospitalized, he became the commander of the Veterans Club. He was not only well-liked, he was respected. Captain became a peer to countless young, disgruntled men finding themselves incarcerated. These men, though captives of their own decisions, don’t respect their captors, by the very nature of their circumstances. So when forced to watch the rapid physical decline of someone they consider their own, that lack of respect becomes more pronounced.
Captain came down with a cold. He complained of dizziness, fatigue and a slight fever. Despite his ailment, he still did his best to be there for the members on his prison league basketball team. He was, after all, only 33-years old and a cold never stopped him before. He collapsed during the first quarter. Now his life was in the hands of the prison’s medical department.
A staff of five nurses is insufficient to handle the healthcare of 1200 inmates. The nurses often find themselves stalked by inmates deprived of intimacy, and hassled by the guards who gravitate to them in hopes of a date. Throw in the limitations placed upon healthcare staff who often find their hands tied by Corrections administration’s strict adherence to procedure, and it’s easy to see how mistakes are made, short-cuts are taken, and little medical problems become escalated when they’re overlooked or misdiagnosed. Inmates, however, only end up seeing the aftermath of what can amount to fatal ineptitude.
Captain would meet “Grumpy” in the prison medical’s waiting room. Grumpy was not well-liked. He was obnoxiously vocal and would tell anyone listening that the nurses were out to kill him.
His demands for treatment were prompted by an illness the nurse practitioner couldn’t diagnose. Medical staff acknowledged that a “condition” existed – nevertheless, unless or until the cause was confirmed to be life-threatening, treatment would not be provided.
It had been close to a year and Grumpy had gone beyond being seen as a nuisance to the guards and the healthcare staff he urgently asked for treatment. But that didn’t stop him from showing up daily. His constant presence seemed to exacerbate the evident hostilities shown by everyone present. Captain, by proxy, found himself sympathetic to the man’s plight, and so the tinder was laid in what could only become a volatile social condition.
By the time Grumpy was finally diagnosed, his suspicions had become confirmed truths in the eyes of the prison population. He died a week later.
Captain noticed that the inmates from supportive families got the treatment they needed, once their loved ones called the prison administration with inquiries as to why things weren’t being done. He’d burned those bridges and now regretted it.
Captain continued to ride the pill call line standing outside, in the cold, waiting for up to an hour. He went to his scheduled medical appointments only to be told that he was sick and should continue his pill call regime
n and drink plenty of fluids. When his symptoms worsened, and he developed shortness of breath, he was allowed to receive breathing treatments. This one concession on medical’s part would prove to be their undoing.
The breathing treatments served as a placebo, the teaspoon of sugar that made the bitter medicine being administered easier to swallow. Though Captain still exhibited the same ills, the treatments were a weight-lifted, because he could breathe again.
He spent his last moments alive fighting for breath, his lips tinged a shade of cerulean blue, in desperate need of oxygen. The nurses on staff were busy, and protocol dictated that pill call, sick call and scheduled appointments be completed prior to any other inmate concerns.
In the waiting room, just five feet from the nearest nurse, Captain died of complications from pneumonia, drowned by a lungful of his own fluids. With the tinder laid and the atmosphere ripe for combustion, the spark caught flame. The abrupt outpouring of grief consumed everyone.
“Yard dogs” – prison guards whose sole job is to maintain crowd control amongst the inmate population – found themselves trying to outrun the blaze of destructive wrath that was the culmination of nearly 1200 inmates’ resentment.
The spark, and the resulting fire, became an inferno – and the first building to go up in flames was the prison medical.
It was worse than leaving with something you didn’t come in with. Captain lost his life, Grumpy died in misery, and the prison riot that ensued when the prison system’s inadequate healthcare was overlooked and left untreated, metastasized like a backdraft, engulfing the entire compound into their funeral pyre.
For now, the disorder that was diagnosed and identified as a disturbance is in a form of remission. Flare-ups are highly probable if regular check-ups and preventive measures aren’t taken.
If you’d like to contact this author directly, please write to:
Derek Trumbo #201410
Northpoint Training Center
PO Box 479
Burgin, KY 40310
I can assure everyone that the riot wasn’t planned because I was there and it actually started in my dorm. First I want to say that yes the food was terrible and sometimes so bad you couldn’t force it down. Unless you had money to buy food from commissary you just starved because the 20 dollars you make a month working barely buys your hygiene items. And yes medical care is nonexistent. If you had any serious medical needs they would tell you they have to get treatment approved through Frankfort which rarely happens. Paperwork goes from point a to b to where the Hell ever until you die or get out. But back to the riot. We were put on lockdown over some MS 13 Mexicans retaliating and beating down a black guy that had broke into one of their lockers and stole all his stuff. The black guy was told by the Mexicans to give his stuff back but he didn’t. So about 8 of them caught him in the blind spot on the yard and beat him with locks and shanked him a few times. The white boy who was with him his sissy took off running so they didn’t get him. I seen him go out on a stretcher unconscious covered in blood so don’t know if he lived or not. But same day all the Mexicans were rounded up and put in the hole. Guess the warden got pissed so he locked the prison down and after a few days they were saying yard time was gonna be very limited and was gonna start controled movement. It was summer and people used to going outside on the yard to stay busy and move around. The dorms was all open dorms so you got around 70 people running around bored and hot. No air conditioning. The riot started out in my dorm by a couple guys sitting a trash can on fire and pushing it up to the door. Old steel bars door. There was no guard inside the dorm. There was usually one guard down stairs in a small office room. Fire sets off alarm so they have to evacuate the building and do a head count. On the way back in people just started getting hyped up breaking shit. The guards got chased out. Door to the yard got kicked open and it was on. Other dorms saw us and joined in. The commissary was robbed and burned down which also burned medical because they were the same building. The only dorm that didn’t participate was the honor dorm. But maybe people should’ve said it was about the armark food because it was bad. I know being a prisoner you can’t expect steak and baked potatoes but the shit isn’t fit for a dog to eat. All the food comes in plastic bags and there is no meat. A little processed turkey sometimes mixed with rice. And carrots everyday. When the state fed the inmates they grew gardens and raised cattle and chickens and dairy cows for milk. The food was decent then. But somehow they let armark a private corporation take over for a certain price yearly. So you can imagine how cheap they feed humans because the cheaper they feed the more profit for them. I’m sure armark treats the Commissioner and the governor real nice to get that contract. Prisons now is all about profit. Not rehabilitation. And most prisoners are doing long sentences for non violent crimes and not a threat to society. Ky a few years ago had more people incarcerated per capita than any other state. We need prison reform bad in this country. Not gonna happen though long as the politicians are making money keeping people locked up. And before anyone comments and says my grammar is messed up and so on I already know. Just expressing my opinion. I barely scratched the surface on how bad the system is and what people locked up is going through.
I HOPE THIS COMMENT MAKES IT WAY TO YOU. IN CASE YOU AREN’T AWARE, YOUR STORY LINKS TO THIS NEWS ARTICLE, WHICH I HAVE ATTACHED. NO MENTION OF INADEQUATE MEDICAL CARE IS MENTIONED IN THE ARTICLE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR STORY. BASED ON OTHER STORIES THAT I HAVE READ, IT APPEARS THE PUBLIC IS ONLY GOING TO HEAR THE TRUTH, FROM THE INMATES THEMSELVES.
Prison Riot Is Attributed to Lockdown
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NOV. 21, 2009
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Despite previous assertions, investigators said Friday that bad food was not the primary cause of a riot at a central Kentucky prison.
The inmates at Northpoint Training Center were instead reacting to a partial lockdown and to planned restrictions on their movement, investigators said in a 22-page report released Friday.
On Aug. 21, prisoners started fires in trash cans at Northpoint, a medium-security facility near Burgin, about 30 miles south of Lexington. The fires spread, seriously damaging several buildings.
Officers in riot gear rushed in with tear gas, and all inmates were subdued within two hours. Eight inmates were taken to hospitals, and eight prison workers were treated at the scene.
The damage to the prison, which opened in 1983, was so severe that about 700 inmates had to be transferred to other prisons around the state.
A corrections officer, Matt Hughes, told lawmakers this month that he believed that inmates had rioted because they were upset over the quality and quantity of food rations. But investigators said in the report that interviews with the inmates determined that there was a general concern about the quality of food and the prices of canteen items,but most inmates said neither was a primary cause of the disturbance.
Investigators said the prison was put under partial lockdown after a fight, involving weapons, between about 10 Hispanic inmates and two others, one black and one white, who had stolen canteen items from one of the Hispanic prisoners.