Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was a Guard Inside Georgia's Violent Prison System — I Can't Unsee What I Saw | Tyler Ryals

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Tyler Ryals couldn't get into the military, so at 18 years old he became a correctional officer in the Georgia state prison system. He quickly worked his way up, becoming one of the youngest CERT team commanders and sergeants in the system. Over nearly 10 years, he worked inside some of Georgia's most violent maximum-security prisons and witnessed firsthand how severe staffing shortages put both officers and inmates at risk. Eventually, Tyler became a whistleblower, speaking out about just how dangerous conditions inside Georgia's prison system had become — a decision that ultimately pushed him out of the career he had built. _____________________________________________ Thank you to AG1, HUNGRYROOT & CASH APP for sponsoring this episode: AG1: For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at https://drinkag1.com/lockedin _____________________________________________ Hungryroot: Explore my Hungryroot Digital Cookbook "THE COMMISSARY UPGRADE" at https://hungryroot.com/LOCKEDIN _____________________________________________ Cash App: Download Cash App Today: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/6pao71et #CashAppPod Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. _____________________________________________ Connect with Tyler Ryals: https://linktr.ee/TylerRyalsX?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=c0142663-7c83-4224-a495-33de8fbea012 _____________________________________________ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://ianbick.com/ _____________________________________________ Timestamps: 00:00 A Brutal Attack 00:31 Tyler's Upbringing 01:42 Family and Early Plans 03:31 Failed Military Enlistment 04:45 Choosing Corrections 06:00 Age Requirements Then and Now 07:37 No Other Options 08:33 Juvenile Detention and Fight 10:15 The Legal Battle 13:44 Community Service 15:15 Inside YDC 17:44 Teenage Trouble 18:19 Parents' Reaction 20:04 Corrections Application 22:35 AG1 Advertisement 23:56 Training Begins 26:24 First Test 27:57 The Hole 28:50 Why Start in Max Security 29:25 BCOT Experience 30:53 Choosing a Shift 32:00 What is Tier? 35:13 Tier Program Expansion 36:20 Getting into Tier 37:00 Officer Role in Tier 40:14 Was the Tier Effective? 42:37 Career Goals 43:19 Joining the CERT Team 44:04 Cell Extraction Stories 45:00 Early Rise to Supervisor 45:50 Knife Extraction Part 1 49:40 Electrical Surprise 50:02 Hungryroot Ad 51:33 After the Extraction 52:15 Supervisor Pay and Benefits 53:37 High Turnover Reasons 54:36 First Day in Uniform 58:26 How Inmates Throw Poop 59:18 Getting Hit 01:00:00 The Flooding Incident 01:02:33 Keeping Professional 01:03:23 The Sour Milk Story 01:04:29 Dad's Advice 01:05:35 Worst Gangs 01:08:29 Paperwork and Snitches 01:10:57 Worst Thing Seen 01:13:31 State Reporting and Coverups 01:16:19 The 10% Reduction 01:17:18 Cash App Ad 01:19:52 First Misconduct by Staff 01:19:52 First Misconduct by Staff 01:21:00 Staff Shortages Worsen 01:23:19 Return to Telfair 01:25:40 Abandoned Buildings 01:27:40 Inmate-Reported Deaths 01:28:48 Dealing with Killers 01:29:39 Calling for the National Guard 01:32:48 The Whistleblowing Letter 01:33:56 Instructing and Realization 01:36:35 No Safety in Prisons 01:38:00 Meetings with Gang Members 01:40:20 Georgia State Prison Collapse 01:41:21 Buck Flaps 01:41:50 How Tyler Got Stabbed 01:46:10 Training Green Officers 01:48:20 Gear Shortages 01:49:45 The Cell Extraction Begins 01:52:08 The Struggle 01:57:40 The Aftermath 02:01:20 Machete Incident 02:02:00 Post-Extraction Chaos 02:02:30 Wrapping Up 02:03:00 Constitutional Violations 02:03:40 The Bloods vs GDs War 02:04:56 Final Thoughts _____________________________________________ To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/LockedInWithIanBicka

See, most of the time when they do the buck 50 thing, it'll be a toothbrush that they melt the razors into, and then they come up and smack you on the side of the face. And, I mean, it's bad when you get done like that. But this guy had a brush, so a hair brush that he put razors in. And it was like four different rows of razors. So when he hit this guy, it was like one cut right here that was flap down. And then it was one big one that went all the way up, got his ear and everything. And that was just, I mean, you can see his teeth.

That's Tyler Riles. He became a Georgia correctional officer at just 18 years old and quickly rose to the ranks to become one of the youngest CERT commanders in the system. For nearly a decade, he worked inside some of Georgia's most violent maximum security prisons. But when he started speaking out about what he was seeing behind those walls, he says it ultimately cost him his career. Where to grow up, Tyler? East Dublin.

And what was your upbringing like? just what I thought of as regular, I guess. I mean, I guess you would call it like lower class or whatever, like not homeless or anything like that, but like I got free lunches and stuff at school. So I went to the same school, though, my whole, you know, my whole grade school time that I was in grade school. And I mean, other than that, just like a country upbringing. I grew up outside, you know, way out in the sticks pretty much.

So a lot of hunting and fishing and just outdoors and stuff. And that's pretty much about the gist of it. What did your parents do for work? So my dad worked at a meal for like 20 years. And then he was actually in correction when I was born. So he was a drill sergeant at a boot camp that had near our house in East Dublin. The boot camp was in Johnson County.

But yeah, he worked there, and then he went to Dodge State Prison, and he actually retired out from Dodge medically from an incident that happened there where he got hurt or whatever. And then my mom has just been, and my mom's had like 50 jobs. I don't know.

She's Walmart and, you know, Dollar General and stores, you know, she's just like a free spirit. So not really a sense. set career. When I was growing up, she worked at a Fred's distribution center for like 10 years, a good period. So as far as like my upbringing and growing up, like I remember I always remember working at Fred's, you know, but Fred's ain't even a thing anymore. What is it like a convenience store? Fred's was like, it was like a small Walmart type thing. Do you know, do they have the dollar

generals? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was like a dollar general. Would Walmart buy them out or? I think somebody else. I think roses was the name of the, At least that was the name that took over the stores, you know, that they had was roses. But I don't even think they're open now. Was your dad the one that gave you the idea to get into corrections yourself? No. No. Actually, my plan was my senior year of high school, my plan was going to Marine Corps.

So I was in the Pooley program, you know, training with the guys and everything, going to the recruitment office all the time and filling out stuff. So that was my plan. And my last year of high school was to enlist the Marine Corps. and then, you know, go from there as far as, like, life or whatever. And what happened? Why weren't you able to do that? So when I went to MEPs, so I graduated at high school, I was still 17.

I got my parents or whatever to sign off saying I can go ahead and the list. And then I went to MEPs, like right after I graduated. So June of 2014, I went to MEPs. And that's when I found out that I had hearing loss in my left ear. I didn't even know it, you know. But when they did the hearing test, I had hearing loss in the left year. and they was like, the doctor at MEPs was like, oh, you should be able to get a waiver for this

because it's just one ear, your other ear is perfect, you know, and all this. And they sent the waiver up, and then like two weeks later, I got a thing in the mail, like, waiver denied and all this. I'm like, it crashed me, man. I can't lie. Like in the moment back then because I was like, what am I going to do? You know, I've been planning on doing this for over a year, you know. And then it was after that that I went down to the Department of Labor

and then that was the first thing that popped up was Telfer State Prison and it was saying no experience required, you know, it was like 12 something an hour. It was like not even 13 an hour. But I had another officer offer at the Freds in East Dublin and it was like $8 an hour. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to the prison.

Why did you want to go to the military? I've always been into stuff like that. I mean, I knew that I didn't want to go like a traditional route of being in an office or anything like that. I wanted to be doing something that was hands-on and that just the soldier thing always resonated with me. When I'm growing up, I had a little a two-by-four one time that we were selling sugar cane,

me and my dad, and he carved me a sword out of a two-by-four, like a four-foot two-by-four. And man, I had that sword because I'm my dad's only son. So the way I grew up was one week with my mom and one week with my dad. dad. So I was like two years old, something like that. When they, the custody stuff all came down, they was like, okay, you're split custody. So one week I'd be with my mom and her new husband, and then the next week I'd be with my dad. But when I was with my dad, I was his only child, and then he didn't have anybody else in the house with him. So it was like, you had nothing to do. So I was out there in the, you know, in the yard. Imagine fighting with dang swords and

stuff like that with my, with my stick swords. So, yeah. Now, What year was it when you went to the Department of Labor to look for a job? 2014. And how old were you at that point? I had just turned 18. And what were they saying was the requirements age-wise? There was none? 18.

18 to get into corrections. Yes. It's 21 now. Back then. Do you know why they changed it? I think there was a lot of people complaining about it being 18 and things of that nature. And, I mean, no, I don't necessarily know exactly why they changed. Probably something to do with that.

that, oh, we don't need them too young, you know, and they can't, I think it was right around the time that they changed the tobacco age limit that they changed the things for, for corrections. But, yeah, I think it was like maybe 2018, 2019 that they stopped letting 18-year-olds come in. But even now, they do a thing where they call them correctional technicians. It's a tech. So they're not an officer. They don't get post-certified, but they essentially like shadow officers and help, officers and stuff. And it's like a lower pay rate and all that, but they can start at 18. What is that just another way to get cheap labor?

I don't even know, because they don't really, I mean, when they get them in there, it's like they, it's so hard to utilize them for, for things when they're not certified. Why would anyone even want to do that? Why wouldn't they just go right to correctional officer if they're working in that same field? Well, they can't if they're 18, 19. I guess if you're an eager 18, 19, 20-year-old, then you would do that. You could get your foot in the door, you know. But like I said, when I started, it wasn't like that. I mean, I came in.

I turned 18 in June. I started the 1st of September. So, I mean, I hadn't even been 18 but a couple months, you know, two months, really. Now, there was no other gigs other than Fred's or corrections. Did you look? Not really. I'm going to tell you, you know, that there was some things I could have done. Right coming out of high school, though.

I mean, that was probably about the most that I could make, especially right around that area. I mean, there were several jobs that I could have got that have been, you know, $8 an hour or $9 an hour. But there wasn't, there was nothing that was up there around that, what that was at the time, which was like almost $13 an hour. Which is still not the best. No, especially not for what you're dealing with, you know, and I didn't even know anything that much about it. I mean, I knew a little bit because I actually did a week in a YDC when I was 14. So, and I went through that whole process. So, I mean, I kind of knew what an institute.

was it? Because, I mean, I've been there, you know, as a, as a juvenile, I stayed like so. It was like six days. What was that over? Why'd you go? It was a big fight at the school, and I had a guy that was 18, so we had elected classes that we took in high school. So there was a couple classes that I'd be in the, I mean, I was a freshman, but I was in a class with seniors. And this guy, we were actually kind of friends, I guess you would say. I mean, really what the deal was, I was getting tobacco from him, you know. Because I was bad, man. I hung out with older people and all this stuff.

And I was getting tobacco from him. We was like tobacco buddies. You know, we both did tobacco. And then he did some stuff one day that I didn't agree with at all. And then I told him that. And then he just, you know, to make a long story short, he wanted to start up a bullying thing on me. You know, so he started doing that.

And I told him like, look, man, we ain't doing this. You know, we even, we had a physical altercation. He won that. I mean, he was 18, a wrestler. I was 14, had never even did sports. So he got me. But he wanted to continue after that, you know, like try to make me miserable or whatever. And that didn't last but like 12 hours, you know.

So the next day when I came to school, I ambushed him and beat him really bad and got locked up. I actually got charged with aggravated assault. You know, I went on trial for aggravated assault when I was 14. Wow. Yeah, I just, I beat the charge and got it down to simple. simple battery, but, but yeah, I did. I did get convicted of simple battery. And that came off your record by the time you applied.

It was just a juvenile thing? Yeah, because it was juvenile, and it was a misdemeanor. Okay. Even though I was charged with a felony, but when I went through, and I actually had to go through trial and all that because what they did, and this was kind of like my introduction into kind of the corruption of things and how people play the system against, quote-unquote inmates or people that are involved in the justice system because,

when I first went to YDC, they was like, the lawyer came in there, the public defender, and he was like, oh, you're looking, you know, they're trying to give you one to five years and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, one to five years in, in confinement, they was like, yeah. So he already had me thinking about stuff like that. And then as we kept getting closer to the court date, they didn't come with no kind of plea deal or nothing like that, you know? And I was obviously pleading not guilty because in my mind, I mean, I didn't commit everybody at assault, you know. him use a weapon. I used some pepper spray to get him, you know, to even the eyes out, but that's not a deadly weapon, you know, that's just pepper, literally, you know, and then everything I did

doing, I did with my hands, you know, so I was like, they ain't no way that they can get me with aggravated assault, but right before, I think it was the day of trial, it's hard to remember now because it's been so long ago, and I mean, I didn't ride all this stuff down when it was happening, but I think it was like an hour before we were about to go in there to do trial, They came up and they was like, oh, we got this deal. You need to take it. And I read it. And it was like, terroristy threat.

So they were trying to get me to plead guilty to a terrorist threat, saying that I said that I was going to beat his ass or whatever. But that is not. And then they even in the in the little plea deal, they said when it was that I said it, like as I was doing it to him, you know. And I was like, that's not what I said. I was like, there's even witnesses that I say that what I said. And what I said was that so while I mean, I was angry and stuff at the time, too, about this whole situation. So, and I was hyped up because I was, you know, doing ambush on somebody, you know, or I call it ambush. But, I mean, it was provoked.

But, I mean, I did strategically do it. You know, I didn't walk up like, hey, man, I'm about to, you know. I mean, you guys were kids. Yeah, yeah. And so, but they came and they said that, that I said that. And I said, no. I said that you thought you were going to be. beating on me, but look, I'm beating on you now.

You know, this is what I told him as I was beat, as I was, you know, assaulting him. And I was like, I'm not pleading guilty to no felony, terrorist threat. I was like, this whole thing started behind him assaulting me and him threatening me. I never threatened him. Not at one point during all that, I didn't threaten him. You know, I was actually really trying not to do this. You know, I even told him, like, look, man, just let it go, you know. This is not the path he wants to go down.

him, you know, but he, because even that day, like, I already had the stuff with me. Because he told me that day before that it was on the next day. And it was that initial day when the first altercation happened. And then as we're leaving that day, he was like, yeah, I got you tomorrow. So the next day when I came, I already had the pepper spray and all that with me. I mean, I was already in my mind. Like, if you try something, like, I'm going to do it to him, you know, if I can. But anyway, yeah, they came right before I did try and tried to get me to,

plea to that and then i was like no that's a lie i was i'm not pleading guilty is enough felony that i didn't do and uh the lawyer was mad at me man i should have fired him right then on the spot you know looking back but i mean i was 14 man i was kind of he almost had me where i signed it you know and i was like no he was like man you're going to go in front of this judge you might get five years imprisonment what they're trying to do it was like this is a deal you only get one year of probation and blah blah blah and i was like yeah but it's pleading guilty to a felony that i didn't commit. I said, I'm not doing it. It'd be what it'd be. You don't give me five years, let's do it.

You know, so I went through, had to testify and all that, and did the trial, and then I ended up, I ended up getting sentenced to the same thing that they were trying to give me the plea deal for, a year of probation. And then I had like a thousand hours of community service. So I did most of that at the Humane Society. And so my whole summer that year, from 14 to 15, I worked like 55-hour weeks at the Humane Society doing community service, because that was part of the thing because his medical bill, because he had to go to the hospital and stuff after the fight. His medical bill was like $4,000 or whatever

because they had to CAT scan him and all the stuff. And then community service only paid $4 an hour. I was like, dang, man, that's a thousand hours. Because they was like, you have to either pay it or you have to do the community service. And my family just didn't have, you know, no extra money. So it was like, you got to do the community service, man. We're going to take you up there.

So I called around and got all the, like got all the list of all the places I could do community service at. And all of them was like the most you could get was 20 hours a week except the Humane Society. Humane Society, I could work there every day per week except Sunday. So that's why I did that whole summer from 2011 to 12, I think that was. Yeah. How was the juvenile detention center when you were in there? And it was wild. It was stupid.

They were fights going on all the time. I didn't get in a fight. My hand was broke too, though, because I broke my hand during the what got me locked up, yeah. So when I got there, not long after I've been there, first of all, when I come in, I'm trying to find out, you know, where to, how to fit in and all this. It's like four white guys in there.

So that's it. It's like, because the dormitory that I went in was the bad dorm. Because you had to, I think, at the YDC that had them in, like, colors. So it was like you're on the white hall or you're on the black haul, whatever way. There's like four different colors that they had that they used. It was like blue and green. I think green was like the good one. Like, oh, you get X amount of time outside and blah, blah, blah. But I was on the lowest room because when the intake you in, you have to go through, I think, at least a week in the, if you go a week without any kind of DRs or any kind of disciplinary fractions in that initial place I went,

then you can go to quote unquote better buildings. But I never made it to the best. better be in because, you know, I went to court and they released me, you know, on house arrest, but they released me that next week. But, yeah, it was crazy, man. It was crazy. But, I mean, I didn't have no problems. I did have a black guy that came and sat at the table. We were sitting there with playing cars.

And then he was like, I just want to let you know, like, some of us are going to jump you when you come out to go to breakfast in the morning. And I was like, why? I was like, I ain't, you know, why ain't going to jump me? And we just want to see if you can fight. And then I'm sitting there, I'm like, and I put, because this whole time I kept my hand stuffed into the jumpsuit because my hand was hurting. So I kept it stuffed in.

I pulled my hand and I was like, I got a broke hand right now. Like, how good do you think I'm going to be able to fight? Well, of course I can't fight that good. You know, and then he was just like, look, this is just how stuff goes. And he went back to his table and then they never did it. So maybe that was just him trying to see if I was scary or something like that. you know, let's see if he gets scared and all this, but, or see if I tell, you know, that's probably really what it was.

Let's see if he'll tell the officer that we're going to jump him. But, I mean, I didn't. I was ready, though, that next morning. I was, shoot, I then got hyped up before I came out. I was like, man, I'm going to give it all I can with this left end. But it didn't come to it, you know. Do you think the teenage you would have ever pictured yourself becoming an officer just a few years later? No, not even a little bit, man.

Because like I say, I mean, I was not a model person. I mean, I wasn't bad as far as like I didn't bully people. You know, I didn't do any of that. But, man, I started drinking. Let's see, when I was 14, I started having sex. I started drinking. I started smoking weed. I started, you know, I got locked up behind all that.

I mean, it was just like, I guess I was hitting puberty or something. And I was just going buck wild, you know, so, no, I didn't ever thought I'd have been an officer. Not at that time. What did your parents think about you getting locked up in that whole situation? Well, my parents knew that I was probably going to get into that next day because I told them, you know, what was going on and everything. When I got home that evening from the initial thing, and that's actually where I got a pepper prey from my mom because she had it on her keychain. That's what it was one of the little bitty thing like that big. It was a little one of the keychain pepper sprays.

And she had had it for a while. And matter of fact, I wasn't even at my mom's house. I was at my dad's house because remember I said it was one. week one week but that evening when i got home i called my mom like hey come up here i need to talk to you she came over there i got that thing pepper spray off her keychain i was like i need this for tomorrow like these and er initially with that whole incident that next day it was supposed to be him and another guy that was going to jump me and this other guy is like six five big you know and i know i'm big now but i mean i wasn't this big when i was 14 but uh so that was my main thing in my

mine like I'm definitely not going to fight both of them. Ain't no way. So I'm going to have to get something to even odds out. That was just the first thing that came to mind like, okay, I know where some pepper sprays is that. It's on my mom's keychain. You know, so I got that. And I mean, I had already prepped them up for the whole thing.

So they called my daddy, came out there. I mean, I didn't think I was going to be locked up or nothing. You know, I really didn't because I even went and read the sign on the, uh, at the school. Because the school I went to, they had a sign that says, you can't bring weapons in here and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it even had a list of what could be considered weapons. I read over it again like that morning when I went out of read over and I was like, I don't say nothing about no i-euritence, no pepper spray, no none of that.

I said, so I'm good. They ain't going to be able to try to get me with no weapons stuff. But like I say, they did. They charged me with aggravated assault. But, yeah. What was the application process like to corrections once you apply? It was a walk-in interview. It was a walk-in interview that,

Because that was the whole thing when I looked on Department of Labor. It was like that pretty much immediate hire as long as you don't have, as long as you clear background and all this. So I went that next week to do a walk-in interview. I called them. I think that's what it was that I had to call them and I set up interview. I went, I did the interview, I did a PT test, and then, I mean, it was like, it was like that.

I was hired. What kind of questions do they ask you? And they was just asking stuff like, let's say you're an officer and you're down here and you tell a guy a lawful order and he refuses to do it. You know, what do you do? Things like that. Very basic. Like, can you, are you okay with getting bodily fluids thrown on you and, you know, and not retaliating against the person and blah, blah, blah, you know, stuff like that. How do you even know any of that, though, at 18?

I know. You know. And that's why I didn't. During the initial interview, especially when I asked me like what to do if somebody's refusing to do what you say or whatever. And in my mind, I'm just like, I'm going to call and tell my supervisor. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's the right answer. But, yeah, it was very basic. To my understanding, it's changed a lot now as far as like the interview process.

Now they have to go through this whole thing of what's it called? it's not a polygraph. It's called like an ethics test or something of that. It's not anything like a polygraph, but I think it's, I mean, I've never took it myself. But it's like a thing where you have to answer a lot of questions, and maybe the questions are done in a way to try to see if you're honest or something of that. You know, they do that now and some other things, but they weren't doing any of that when I started. But, I mean, the problem with corrupt staff is even worse now than it was before.

And when they had a less strict hiring process. So it's kind of weird, you know, with stuff like that when you're looking at it because you can look, even when I started, but if you go back 20 years, it'd be even less that they really do as far as looking into you and trying to vet people and all this. But then you have more people that are corrupt now, even though you have stricter guidelines and stuff. So it's just strange in that way. This summer was definitely one for the books.

maybe even one of the best summers of my life. We traveled, we worked, and we had fun while doing it. But now that summer's over and it's everyone's busiest time of the year, it's time to lock in. I used to be one of those people that had 10 different kinds of vitamins in my cabinet, and I would spend each morning taking one of every kind. In fact, these vitamins right here all came from my kitchen cabinet. That is, until I discovered AG1. It's stupid simple, one scoop, eight ounces of cold water every morning.

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That's drinkag1.com slash locked in. So now once you got hired, how long does it take to go to training? It took like a little over a month. So I was what they call a cadet for over a month. I had a white collar shirt tucked in to black pants. So I was doing that, man. I was working in the hole a lot as a cadet. Oh, before even training?

Yeah, yeah. I was shadowing my officers. I actually ended up being able to do to handcuff people and take them to the thing. Because, I mean, I was all, you know, I was high strong and stuff. And a young man, and I got down there. And there was a couple of the officers that I worked with that was real cool or that I liked working with. And we just got along good together. And they was starting to let me do all kinds of stuff.

But technically, I mean, I probably wasn't supposed to be doing. Well, I know it wasn't, but... How did the inmates treat a cadet? Not too bad, you know, not really that bad with the cadets. They mess with you and stuff, you know? You're going to bring me a beer and stuff like that, you know, just trying to hit you with stuff. And it was very strange as far as coming in, but...

Yeah, I mean, not too bad because you're always with an officer. You know, they treat the new officers, at least back then anyway. The new officers was who got, you know, trashed on by the inmates a lot, just because, I mean, they do that, though. Just like that dude was saying when I was in Juvie myself, you know, they do heart checks. You know, they just trying to see, you know, if you can take the pressure or if they can make you have a, and it ain't like it's all of them, but there are some of them, man. They just try to get under your skin.

So I had stuff like that. My first week when I was a cadet, I was down in front of C-bill in that tailfare, and a guy came out and he passed some shanks to another guy on you. yard. So this was my first time seeing a prison shank too. And I'm like, this is like my first week. I'm in black and white.

And I seen him past, at first I didn't know what it was. You know, I just seen him kind of, he passed one and I didn't know what it was. And then that second one I seen what it was, like a prison shank that he

passed out on the yard. After he passed that second one out, because I mean, I was looking right at him. And after he gave that one out, he looked at me, he was like, you better not say nothing. So he told me,

he was like, you better not say nothing. And the officer was like, like five feet that way. You know, when he said that, I thought about it for like half a second. And I went to the officer. I was, hey, this dude just passed two shanks out of the yard. I don't know. Something might be about to happen.

And she got on the radio and called a certain team. Man, they came and got the dude, locked him up, you know, found the shanks. He locked him up and everything. And that actually kind of, stuff like that kind of helps you from my officer perspective. Just because, like I say, I mean, they know that I ain't going to just sit there and let somebody get stabbed up, you know, or not say nothing or I'm not easily intimidated into like being quiet and stuff like that. So was it about not being afraid or you just wanted to make sure you're doing your job correctly? Or a mixture of both?

A mixture of both. I mean, I really wasn't that. I wasn't really afraid of the people. I mean, I was nervous for sure. You know, I was nervous my whole first probably two months in there, you know, to somewhat. But that was the main thing was that because they had not, especially those officers that I'd working with in the hole. And by the time this happened, it might even be my second week there because I had already

been around these guys on the hole. And, I mean, they told me stuff like that. Like, hey, look, you need to, you do you not want to be here to be friends and all this? Like, you don't need to keep anything from anybody. If somebody does something in front of you that people need to know about, like, you need to hurry up and do something to where you gain a reputation, you know. And it is that way. It's that way with the, with the inmate population and with the officer population.

that your reputation really is what makes a breakshare. You know, if you get a reputation, at least from an officer's side anyway, of being somebody that's easily pushed over on or somebody that you can do things in front of or somebody that you can pay off or whatever the case may be, you know, then that reputation is going to follow, you know, it's going to be with you. Like people are not going to forget that you've been doing whatever it is that you've been doing. The hole's probably a pretty scary spot to go to first, right? You know, first on the job.

as a cadet. Yeah, a little bit. And you're hearing stories of why people are in there and stuff. Oh, yeah, I stabbed up such as such, you know, because there was a lot of stabbing that was going on at tailfare, even from the time I started. So, yeah, it was getting, it was definitely an adjustment to make, you know, to get adapted to that environment. Is that a max security prison?

Yeah, what they call close. You know, our classification is minimum, medium close. And then technically there is a maximum classification, but it's only at one. in prison and it's called the high max and they're constantly locked down. They never come out and stuff. So as far as GP guys, close security is the highest you can go. And that's what Telfare is, close security camp, level five. Now, what's their logic of sending a new person to a max for that training before the

academy? Is it to do like a heart check on you in a way or? No, it depends on what prison you start at. So if I started at Telfare, then that's where I be at until I go. to train and then come back. But if I start at Johnson, which is a level three, then I'd be at that prison until I go to training. But they do all the training together.

So when I go to training, I mean, you got close security prisons, medium, minimums. You know, everybody trains their officers together. But as far as like the shadow and the officers and all that, you're going to do it at the institution where you're going to be working. So what was training like for you? As far as BCOT? Yeah, we have the basic training. Yeah.

It was good, man. I loved it. Tell you truth. I mean, I was all into that march. stuff. And before we went, see, because number I told you, there was some officers that I liked, you know, I liked working with. They were just time went by good.

They was busy. There was a couple people that were lazy and stuff. And then, I mean, I just, and there was a couple people that the inmates, you could just walk all over too. And I just didn't like being around them very much. So I knew that this one shift was the shift I wanted to go on, but you can't pick your shift. But they did tell us right before we went to PCOT.

They was like, if you make an undergraduate at basic, then you get to. to pick your shift. So, I mean, I didn't do that great in school because I hated being in school. But, I mean, I could, I could just not even pay attention and then still make like a 78 or something on the test just from hearing stuff in class and stuff like that. But so I never really, how do you say it, like, I never really applied myself in high school. You know, I was, I was there and waiting to get out. You know, I was waiting to go get drunk and other stuff, you know.

But when I went to BCOT, I was, man, I was taking notes. I was doing everything. And I did make an undergraduate. So, and you have to make a 95 or above average to make an undergraduate, basically. So, I mean, it was fairly hard. Like, I had to, I studied a lot and took my notes and all that. And then I made an undergraduate. When I came back, I picked, I chose my shift that I wanted.

And then, dang, if I wasn't on that shift, but two days. and the unit manager for the lockdown because I guess he had been like scoping me out and stuff while I was down there as a new officer while I was down there as a cadet and he approached me and was like hey look I got a spot coming open on this escort team which was split shift

but they only weren't a lot down and it's money through Friday and he just gave me a speech you know all about how he thinks I'm I got you know whatever the word is like I could be good at this or whatever. Potential?

Yeah, potential. Yeah, I got a lot of potential with the department and stuff like that. So when he told me that, he was trying to get him to go on it, I was like, yeah, I'll do it. So, I mean, I didn't even get to go on the shift that I wanted. But I did get to work with those officers, though, because I money to Friday. But I had to work with the other ones that I didn't like that much, too, you know. But, yeah, so I did that. And then so my first whole 14 months was on the tier program.

What does that mean? tier, it stands for tracking institutional, educational, responsivity. So it's a mouthful. But it's T-I-E-R, and it's the long-term lockdown for Georgia. They didn't start until like 2013. And I think it's modeled after the shoe California's program long-term. So it's like when they go on, at least back then anyway, we remove all their property.

We give them state issue, everything state issue. and then writing supplies. And that's all you get on phase one. So tier two, phase one, tier one, they just reclassified as like admin seg. So before the tier came in, it was admin seg and disciplinary isolation was the two categories that you could go to. And then once tier came, it was tier one and tier two.

And tier two being the long-term program. And so they would take all the stuff. They would go in a single-man cell. and then every 90 days they come up for a review to phase up. So after 90 days, if they didn't get any disciplinary reports, and there was a little folder on the side of their door, you know, if they did anything good or bad, you know, if you wanted to put a good note in there,

you could put as an officer anyway that was working. I could put a good note, I could put a bad note if they were doing something bad or whatever. And at the end of that 90 days, they had three people that they would make a, like a classification committee, but I forget the name of it. It's not called a classification community,

but it's a tier review, to review them to go up to the next phase. So as long as they approved the phasing up, once they go to phase two, they can start buying hygiene off the store. And they can get a couple more thing, but they still can't get food off the commissary. And then on phase three,

so after six months, you go to, they go to a phase three, which is they get like $40, I think, worth of commissary and they can have food and stuff now at this point and then that's supposed to be the last phase they did make a three plus where the guys can get full store and they actually did that after I left from from from dealing with the tier and the reason they did that is because they had they had a whole gang locked down in Georgia and they were locked down when I started for almost seven years I mean in lockdown the whole but I mean it wasn't but like maybe

350 of them or so something like that statewide but they had I all of them lot down. Every known, validated member of that gang was in tier, you know, for, like I say, years.

And so I came, I started working in that. But anyway, that's why they created that, that three plus was because they, they actually, a bunch of those guys won lawsuits because they were like,

look, you got us on this store restrictions. You know, we haven't done anything. Or if we did, it was like four years ago, you know, we're still being punished,

you know. So they did end up making it where those guys could get full, store. And then I think it was 2019, I believe, or 2020 when they let those guys out. So they're back on the compound now. But I think from 2011 or 2012 to 2019, they were in the lot now. Did every facility have the tier program? Not every one of them. All of your level five's had tier. I think that's it. And what is it a separate unit within the prison? Okay, so you were assigned to that unit in that prison. Yes. Now, what would it take to get sent to?

to tear besides what you were discussing about being a known gang member, would it be like if there was a riot or? Yes. And is it a group of people going into it at once? Can be. Can be. But sometimes it's individuals. When they first started it and when I came in, if you got two possessible weapon DRs within a two year or one year period, I forget which one it was, then you automatically go to tier two.

But they stopped doing that later because they're just, I mean, it got overflooded with knives to the point that, I mean, everybody's got knives. So it's just impossible to put that many people on tear. But, yeah, I mean, nowadays, pretty much a stabbing, you know, if you stab somebody, if you get caught with a lot of contraband, like a pound of marijuana or something like that, then they'll go to tear. I mean, there's a lot of different things that they can go for, you know. But it's pretty much severe disciplinary infractions.

Or, like I'm saying, something where they can try to say that it's a threat to the security of the prison. And that's what they did with that gang. You know, they was like, it's a threat to the security of the prison, which that gang wasn't a lot of incidents. And they had pretty much united all the other gangs against them. So, and they were outnumbered way bad. So there was a lot of violence behind that whole situation before I came in. So that's kind of, it was kind of two-prone.

I mean, they were in there for their protection, but it was involuntary. Like, they didn't want protection, you know, but. How many people could fit in tear? At your prison? On the Tier 2 program, 120. And they're all locked down throughout the day. So what does your role as an officer then? Are you just making rounds, giving food, whatever, showers?

Shows, york. Because as an escort officer, that was like, I wasn't never, I mean, I was a couple times that they were short or something like that. But I was not on post, as they call it. You know, I could go between buildings and just do all kind of stuff. But my main duty will make sure that the showers were ran. yard call was ran, sell clean out was ran, and that I helped the officer down there,

feed trays and all there. Because this is back when, I mean, when the trays came in, us officers sat there and got the trays out of the card and put them on the thing. Sometimes we would have an orderly

that might do that for us that would take them out of the cart and put them on the, or take them out of the main kitchen vessel, cart thing that they rolled down the sidewalk and put them on the carts to feed them. But at that time, I mean,

it had to be the officer that fed them, had to be the officer that opened the flap, had to be the officer that took them to the shower, took them to yard. And we were really strict about yard at that time. You know, it's five hours a week. Like, you'll have the opportunity to be outside for five hours every week. And the way that we were doing that at that time was that we split it up through the ranges.

So the top range, let's say, on Monday, we'd go out and they would each get two and a half hours if they wanted it. You know, and then the next day it would be the bottom range, and then Wednesday it would be the top range again, and then Thursday it would be the bottom range again, and then Friday it would be the whole, everybody for showers. So that, and it was actually a pretty good system as long as you have the officer to run it

because when we run a yard on the top, we would do showers on the bottom. So Monday, all you have to do is top range yard, bottom range showers. And then Tuesday, it would flip-flop, Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday, no yard, but everybody goes to the shower. So that's because our protocol was three showers. per week with with no more than a seven two hour window in between the showers and then the five

hours of of outdoor recreation. So it's pretty much the same thing as the shoe, just on a larger scale. Yes, it is. That's why I'm saying. They modeled it after the shoe of California. But they still kept the shoe in place in Georgia, or they got rid of the shoe? They just converted it to this. Oh, okay.

So they phased that out and then. Well, actually what they did, they converted what they used to call it, like I say, they never really called it the shoe in Georgia. It's always been, usually what it'll be called by the inmates is the hole.

Usually what they'll call it, the hole or SEG. But at most of your prisons, what they did was, they took what used to be the hole or the shoe or whatever, and they converted it for this tier two, and then the building

right next door to it, which would normally be the Thunder dorm or whatever, like the worst dorm, they converted that into a regular lockdown. So all these level five prisons ended up expanding their lockdown beds when they implemented the tier program. So that's kind of how it ended up happening, was that the building that was shoe got turned

into tier, and then the building that's door to it, that was GP, got turned into the shoe. Now, do you think these programs were effective? They were when I came in, at least to some degree. I mean, it depended on the staff that you have working there. At this time, there had to be a multifunctional officer is what they were called, that that seen them several times a week and they had classes that they had to do. We had desk. That's another part of the duties of escort officers.

They had a little desk. So once you get to phase three, not only do you get the shower and the yard and all this, but twice a week we bring them out, it says it would be four days a week, but like I say, it flip-flopped. It flopped with that as well with the ranges to just help with numbers and stuff. But we would take them and they had these tables that you could lock them down in. So you had this bowl thing. And it took forever doing all this stuff.

You had to take and move this little thing back and then put their handcuffs down under and the bar came above it. That way they couldn't, you know, they couldn't move their hands up on the thing. And then you took the, you had to leg iron them too to the thing. So they were, when they were in class, they would be leg ironed and handcuffed to these desks that they had in the middle of the floor, literally bolted to the floor in there. And then there would be one of these multifunctional officers or a counselor that would do this class with them. And I mean, that stuff was positive. You know, there was definitely some positive things that were going on with the tear.

It was good in the sense that it definitely was not rewarding to be on having dissonair infractions. Because like today, I mean, and we had guys that were like that. I mean, you could just sit there on phase one for three years. I mean, if you keep getting disinterested by infractions, they're not going to, they can justify not phasing you up. And so it helped with getting people to not do disfinary infractions and to actually do the classes Because that's another part of it like if you don't do the classes and complete them Then you don't go to the next phase either So it was structured in a way that could be positive

But by the time said that was in 2014 when I went to be an escort officer in that By 2018 it was all the crap man It was all the crap there was almost no officers left They're not getting yard call anymore They're barely getting showers. The building's nasty. Nobody's getting self-clean out. I mean, it's just the prisons in Georgia really started taking a bad turn in 2017.

Did you see yourself staying there long term in those first 14 months? Did you enjoy the career overall? Yeah. Where did you see yourself going? I just knew I wanted to be on the cert team. So that's from really day one. And when I was the first time I seen them, like doing a mission or something as a team or going in there and shaking down or doing a cell extraction or whatever it was, I knew I wanted to be on that. So within that first 14 months, like, that was the only thing on my mind.

Like, make sure that I'm always on time, make sure that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, make sure that I handle my business and my building and all that and get on that cert team, ASAP. So where do you go after the first 14 months? To the cert team? Okay. And the cert team covers the whole. prison. Did it give you extra training for the cert team? Yes, but it took me a long time to go to it. That's the, and that's the thing that they shouldn't do, but to my knowledge, they still do this where they put people on cert and then you go to training later. So I think I might have been on a

cert team eight months before I went to the basic. So, I mean, I had already learned what you need to learn. I already learned what I didn't do it. As a matter of fact, I had done, I already done a cell extraction and everything. And that's where they give you the training for the cell extraction is that special operation basic. But I mean, I did go later, though, like I say, it was months after being on the team. Tell us a good, like, cell extraction story or cert team story. Well, the first sell extraction I done on a guy was in a shower and he had the shower run. So that was a very wet, wet experience.

I mean, my feet were soaked. I was mad. But it wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't no kind of injury or any of that. What happened? He was just refusing to cuff up, and they had already sprayed him and stuff. So he still wasn't coming out. So it was like, we got to do a sell extraction.

And it was very uneventful, though. The first one that I did on the guy with a knife, I'll tell you this one. I got stabbed in 2021. I've already told that story publicly, though. But I'll tell you, this one I haven't told publicly. So this guy, this is by the time things are getting really short. I think this might be late 2019 or early 2020, this is the one I'm about to tell you. but I was on one side running shower.

By this point, I'm a supervisor. I became a supervisor in 2016. So it wasn't long, you know, after 14. I started, 15. I went to the 13. And you're 20 years old. 20 years old. I was the commander of Telford State Prison Surrteam at 20 years old.

Is that normal? No. I was a record, you know. Nowadays, I mean, I should keep that record forever because you can't even start until you're 21 now. You know, you can't even be a C-O-1 unless you're 21. one and I was the SIRC commander at 20. So, yeah, it was, it was odd. I mean, but, but I was, I was really into, like, I was coming in on my off days when people

would ask me to come help. I mean, I was doing stuff like these cell distractions. I was, it didn't take me long, especially when it was like on a certain team to, like get a reputation amongst the inmate population that was outside. And, I mean, for the most part, it was a good reputation. I mean, of course, the knuckleheads and stuff. I mean, I would get into it with them, but. So this guy with the knife, what happens?

The guy with the knife. So that's the point I was getting to is this already short by this point. And I'm already well seasoned. I've already been to Vald Austin for two years at this point as a lieutenant. And I'm back here. So I came back to Telfare in 2019, November. So this is probably December of 2019. I just got back.

We had one officer on each side. As a matter of fact, it was a sergeant over there and then I was a sergeant. So there was two, I was running showers over here on this side by myself, which is completely unheard of, you know. And it goes back into the whole reason why I'm whistleblowing because in 2014, because this happened in E building, in 2014, the building would not be running anything unless there was at a bare minimum an officer in the booth,

two officers on E1, two officers on E2. So that's five officers, bare minimum. They would usually be a supervisor on each side too, so that would make it seven total in the building. By this point in 2019, it's just me and him. There is no officer in the booth. there is no officer to help me escort. There's no officer to help him escort.

So we're running showers. He calls me on the radio and it tells me to 25 with him, which means meet with the radio codes. So I go over there and it's the first cell when you go up the straight stairs. And I walk up to the cell, the roommate was stabbed up. I didn't even know this. As I'm walking up to cell, he's opening the door. You know, he opens the door.

The roommate that got stabbed runs out. And then this other guy comes wide-eyed, acting like he's coming out of the door, and he's got a shank in his hand, and I push him, you know, back into the cell and slam the door. You know, and then that's when this other guy

started telling me, like, yeah, that's why I called you because he was stabbing this guy, and I went to blah, blah, blah. He told me the situation. I was like, okay. So I was trying to get this guy

to cuff up now, the guy that's still in the room that doesn't stab his roommate. And he's not doing it. I can tell this guy's high, you know, because this was a big problem. Like most of my real bad incidents

like this, where we had to really do something to somebody, it was they were how mess i mean like 80% of the time it was crazy and then and then when they when they're on it they'll be up for several days and then they just man i don't know if you've ever seen anybody like that that had been up for days on meth and they they get very paranoid they're not listening all this so that's what the case with this guy he was just wide-eyed he had the shank we ran we uh ended up rounding up four men because you you're supposed to have at least four

four or five when you do a sell extraction. I got four men with me. There was another guy that was there that we started about the same time. He was also a supervisor by this point. And he's bigger to me. And so usually the biggest guy is going to be the shield man on the team. And I was like, hey, you're going to be the shield? He's like, no, I'm going to let you do it.

He's got that big. He had a big knife. He was a big old metal knife. And I was like, all right, man, I got you. So I ran the shield on this incident So I come in, we're up in the cell He's sitting there like this I mean I'm talking about I

This black guy too, you know So I mean it's just unreal how These guys look when they get on that stuff For days like this But he's at the back of the cell He's looking like that And I hit him with the shield I hit him and we go to the corner

So I hit him We go to the corner this way And then he's trying to buck a little bit And then I Kind of go him down the side of the wall there into the locker box area. Well, what I didn't know is they had done took the wires out of the wall over there. So they had done sat there and chiseled out the concrete and got to the wires in the wall.

And they had some stuff rigged up right there. So when I hit him with the shield and went down, his head hit on the wires. So it went to sparking in there. Sparks flying. I'm like, oh, no. I didn't know if it was going to shock me or what. And, man, just the look on that guy's face when it shocked him. But the man didn't hurt him or none.

I mean, it burned a little spot on his head where his head hit those wires. But, I mean, that was pretty much the end of the situation. Like, he gave up. We got him cuffed up and out the door. I partnered with Hungry Route to create an online digital cookbook because I know a lot of you watching may have just gotten out of prison and are tired of eating prison commissary food, which is why I called my cookbook the commentary food.

commissary upgrade. And even if you haven't been to prison, I'm sure just hearing about prison food on the show all the time makes you sick of it too. When you scan this QR code or just click on the link in the description of this episode, it will take you to my cookbook where you will see some of my favorite recipes that my girlfriend Letitia and I cook at home throughout the week. There's the Swiss burger, black bean avocado pockets, chicken fajitas, pork chops, and more. These are all quick and easy meals to make for you or your family, and they come out way better than any type of prison food you can make with commissary.

And guess what? Not only will Hungry Root send you all the ingredients you need to make these recipes so you don't have to hit the grocery store on your own, but they also have a massive selection of snacks and other recipes if you don't like mine. And you know how important it is for me to keep my snack bar stocked at the studio for my guests,

so I have Hungry Root set up on auto delivery. And like the meals, these snacks are definitely a commissary upgrade. Explore my digital cookbook on Hungry Route today and find recipes that are right for you. Go to Hungryroot.com slash locked in to access my cookbook, the commissary upgrade. Now, once they're extracted like that, do they automatically go into the tier program? Or they're given another chance? It depends on the situation. I mean, if they had assaulted an officer during the extraction,

or something like that, then yeah. But, I mean, this guy, he may, would have if he would have. But I hit him with the shield quick, got him down quick. Like I say, the electrical stuff hit him. And he just, the fight went out of him, you know, so he didn't, he didn't fight back or anything. No. Yeah, go on. Go ahead.

I was just going to say that the guy that stabbed me in the next year in 2021, he did go to tear, you know, after he stabbed me. So, because he wasn't in tier when he, when that happened. He was in the regular law down. So the shoe or the hole. How much do you make? as a supervisor or a sergeant? Let's see. When you were 20.

Yeah, when I was 20, it would have been 20% more than I made when I started. I think it was like, it was under 40,000 a year. It was like 38 something a year. That's it. Are the benefits good? Not really. And the retirement.

They changed it. This has got a lot to do with why not a lot of people go and stay anymore. You know, because the retirement pension went from 90% after, so let's just say 3% per year. That's what it was originally when the Department of Corrections was made or whatever. It's 3% that you get per year. So if you do 30 years, you get 90% of your salary as your pension. They change it in like the 90s to 60%. So you get 2% per year.

And then in 2011, they changed it to 1%. So, I mean, I started in 2014. So for every year that I did is 1%. So if you do 30 years and you're making $100,000 when you retire, then your check is going to be $30,000 annually. You know, so it's crap as far as the retirement pension and all that. I mean, they do more like matching with 401K nowadays with the New York people, but no pension and all that.

So now you said those first few years, there's a high turnover and a high drop-off rate. Why was that? Was it because of violence or? Yeah, mostly. mostly because of violence and unprofessional supervisors. We did have that. And we had definitely some that would, they had like little cliques and stuff. You know, I mean, just like workplaces do.

We get people that group up with who they like. And then they're pretty much beefing with the other ones. And then we had some supervisors that were sexual harassment type stuff. And they ended up getting weeded out over the next couple years because, I mean, all it takes is one of these people to do a report. poured on them when they do this stuff and and they're gone but some of these people wasn't I mean they would just quit you know or they just wouldn't wouldn't hang around and then that's mostly for the women side of things for the men I mean these guys especially like at tail fair I mean I can't speak on that word about also was actually even worse but they were really

aggressive to the male staff like my first day in uniform I got spit right I did do spit right in my face you know so over what just I was uh running the lockdown This was, and this was a lot of the times what would cause situation like this would be that there was these officers that would get bullied. So my first day back from BCOT, that's when this happens. I go down to F bill and we're just tier two and I'm doing showers. Okay. When you're walking them to the shower, you're supposed to, I mean, don't grab them hard and then of that, but you put your hand on their arm when you're escorting them. Not bad.

You put your hand on their arm when you escort them, just, it's hands on with them. court. That's the policy. Like, that's what you're supposed to do when they're in handcuffs and when you're moving them. So this guy was coming out of the shower, and he was actually one of the leaders of this gang I was telling you about. They've been locked down the whole time. So he's a capo or whatever. He's up high in that. He comes out. The officer that I was down there working with was one of the officers that wouldn't touch him. I mean, he wouldn't put his hand on them because they would do some, they would say, you better take your hand off of them in. They would just, okay. And then they would just walk without hand on them.

So that officer did stuff like that. So that officer took him into the shower. And then I got there. He's in the shower. The first thing I do, he started knocking on the door. I cuff him up and now I'm the person that's opening the door. So this guy just took him to the shower. It wouldn't even touch him.

And then when he comes out, I'm touching him. So as soon as he steps out and I grab his arm, he looks at me, he's like, man, he better take your hand off of me, blah, blah, blah, blah. You don't got the rank to be touching me and blah, blah, blah. and I was like, dude, it ain't going down like that. Like, I'm going to walk into the cell with my hand on you. Like, I'm not going to rough you up or not that, but like, I'm going to walk with my hand on you. Like, that's the policy.

I'm not, you know, I'm not letting you walk without hands on. So when I said that, he started bucking, man. And then so we're spinning around. We spun around like three or four times because, again, this is my first day in uniform. So I'm thinking, like, am I about to get fired? Like, shit. I let him go. I don't even know what to do really at this point.

I mean, but I didn't let him go. You know, as in my mind, like, I'm just not going to let him go. You know, he was in handcuffs this whole time. So we spun around, and then that officer came and started getting in between us. The same officer that wouldn't even touch him. So as he's getting in between us, there's a sergeant coming up because the booth officer been called on the radio about the situation. And as soon as the sergeant comes up, the officer that's in between me and the inmate,

He's facing me. He's not even facing the inmate. I mean, because it was getting aggressive. Like, me too. I mean, I was not being like real gentle. I mean,

he was bucking. He was snatching away from me and trying to, he really tried to get loose of me, you know, but by this point I don't put two hands on him. It was like, man, you're not getting loose. So I had him by the arm.

The officer was in between us. And then the sergeant said, go ahead and let him go. You know, because the sergeant was going to get him. As soon as I let him go, spit right in my face. You know, we were close, you know, when all this is going down.

So that was my first time ever being spit on like that, you know. And then so stuff like that was pretty common. Like, these guys were aggressive, you know, at Georgia's prison. So a lot of men just wouldn't stay in an environment like that. And then the poop throwing, like that was, as far as the men during the first several years that I was working, it would be stuff like that. I mean, they're getting shit throwing on them. They're getting spit on.

They're having people be assaulted toward them all the time. These guys are constantly beating on the door and doing all this stuff like this. So, I mean, it was a high stress environment. How are the inmates throwing the poop? Most of the time, in lotion bottles or they would get it in styrofoam cup. I mean, I've seen it all kind of way. But the lotion bottle would be the most effective thing because they could squirt it, you know. So I don't know how that.

What they would do is they would get it whipped up. So they would, I mean, these guys are sick, man. But they would get in there in the room and they would poop in a tray or something and pee in it and add some sour milk to it and stuff and sit there and whip it until it's like a liquid. And then they sit there and pour it into the empty lotion bottle. And then you might be walking down the range and a daggone lotion bottle come out and boom. It just squirt it all in your face. Now, do these guards like antagonize them that they hit or are these just like? Most of the time.

Is it an innocent guard that's never bothered them? Most of the time, it's just the officers, at least in my experience, that are trying to do what they're supposed to do. Have you ever been hit? Not with feces. But I got hit with some urine within my first year. And I got, well, both within my first year, urine and soured milk. Tell us the urine story first. So the urine story, I'm running a yard.

So again, I'm an escort officer. I'm running a yard, and this guy's out on the yard. He was part of Death Row. They called herself Death Row. What happened was they were, there was, there was, like, nine. Inmate's one morning. This was not long after I got on the escort team. This was a crazy day.

I come in, matter of fact, this morning, because I always came in early and stuff and all this. So it's like not even daylight yet. I'm walking down there to the building, and I just see water, literally like a river flowing out of the front door. I mean, it's like that deep coming out in the front door or the building.

So I'm walking out. I'm like, what is going on here? I walk inside, man, it's water an inch and a half deep, all in the dormitory. There's water coming down off the top ranges. What happened was these nine guys from different gangs, I mean, there was some of them GD, some of them blood. They was either one white guy that was ghost face. I mean, it was different people.

They all decided to bust their sprinkler heads all at the same time in the morning. So they straight up flooded the dorm out that morning. And then when I came in, I ended up operating the camera for the use of force. They made them spray all of them and everything. So it was like a five-hour use of force incident. After we, so every time they would take one guy out of the cell, they would move him behind the glass. Because we did have a, and it's still like that now, where in F2, which is the Tier 2 program, there's 10 cells that are behind a solid sheet of glass.

So it is like people that beat on the door and do stuff like that, like that's where we put them at because it keeps the noise contained to that one little hallway instead of being in the whole building. And so by this point, we had those guys back. there they were all knuckleheads and they called herself death row you know yeah it is death row da da da and uh so that was the guys that i was running the yard so i got to this one guy i was taking him in from yard and that's what we would do i would swap people so i would take one in and bring nothing out and then i would just do that to to get everybody all because they weren't my seven cages out there you know so you had to do rotations to make sure everybody get out and i came up on

this guy and i was like hey you know it's time to go in it had done been over two and a half hours And he was like, no, man, I'm trying to stay on the yard, rise. You know, just let me go for another hour. And I was like, no, man, I got somebody else to bring out here. Like, you already had your time. Like, come on. And he was like, I'm going to piss you down about that shit. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, you. It's just going to have to do what you got to do, man. Like, you're going in, though. Or I'm going to call the supervisor or whatever. You know, about it. At this point, I'm just a regular officer. And he was like, I got you, blah, blah. So I was expecting that from him.

So that's why it didn't really get me that good. But he waited until the next day. So the next day, when I went to give him his tray, he'd come out with the styrofoam cup. And he wanted to throw it at me and I sidestepped it. So it barely got the side of my head. So it got my hair wet with the pee, but it didn't get me in the face or anything. It would have if I wanted to move. But he got me with the pee and I hit him with the tray.

You know, and then that was just that was a living. How do you keep a professional in those moments getting spit on, the urine, the milk? How do you keep your cool? I don't know. With the spit thing, if that sergeant and the other officer haven't been there, but I don't know, because it did make me very angry. Right. But I mean, by that point, like, as soon as he spit on me, there's other officers right here,

this sergeant's right there, and they're intentionally trying to keep me away from him now because he can spit on me. So usually with things like that, whoever the supervisor, and I've done that a bunch of times with officers that I was supervising, you know, hey, somebody's going to do something like to this officer. Like, I'll come up and say, hey, you know, step outside, let us. Let us handle this. What the fuck is wrong with people? Yeah, they're just trying to be a menace, man.

Like, if people really want to be malicious, like there's all kind of ways that we can think of to be malicious as humans. So it's strange. Tell us the sour milk story. Okay, so this was actually on my birthday. So this was June 23rd, 2015. So it was my 19th birthday. I'm doing trays.

I didn't even have no, like with the last time, I mean, I kind of was expecting it because he told me he was going to do it because I made him. go in when he was supposed to. But with this time, this guy had just got to the building. I didn't know him that good. I mean, I knew he was another one of these members of this gang that had locked down. And, man, I was just feeding trays. It was toward the end of the day, too.

And I opened the flat. I gave him his tray. And then he, boom, he just hit me with a thing, a sour meal. It got me. And they didn't get me in the face, though. I've been lucky every time. The only time that I've been got in the face was people spitting. And I've been, like, three times.

I think that I've been, somebody spit on me. So, but yeah, he just threw it on my, my, all over me, man, a clumpy, stinking sour milk, man. And I just remember, like, why did you do this? And I'm looking there at him, I'm like, I don't even know you, man. Why he'd you throw that on me? And he didn't even, he wouldn't say. I mean, he never did. Did you ever ask your dad for advice and did he give you tips at all?

Yeah, a little bit. He just told me to be fair and treat people like I would want to be. treated if I was an inmate and that's pretty much the gist of it. I mean, initially he was trying to be like, oh, you don't need to go out there. You know, they're trying to disoad you from going in an environment like that. But, I mean, I was high strong, man. And like I say, I was, when I started out there, I mean, I didn't know if I was going to like it or not. But after like a month or two, I mean, I knew that I liked it. You know, I just, I don't know if I fit in good out there for some reason.

You know, for the most part. But, yeah. And I liked several of the officers. You know, there was some people that I really had good relationships with that I was working with. So that makes it a lot better. When you're working with somebody that you could talk to and you make the time go by and y'all are on the same page

and y'all are both trying to conduct yourself morally in here and all that, like it can be a fun job, you know. It was for me, you know, during that time. Who are the worst gangs in there? Or what gangs kind of ran Georgia prisons? When I started, it was more the GDs than anything, but that kind of flipped over to the Bloods. And then when I'm saying that, I'm talking about numbers. Now, what's got the most numbers on the compound?

GDs when I started and then by the time I left 10 years later, it had pretty much the Bloods was the most numbers. Aside from that, the Hispanics would have a lot of the motion on the compound as far as like drugs and cell phones and all that. and most of them would be Sareños or MS-13, which MS-13 is El Salvadorian. But all the Hispanics, at least in Georgia, at all the prisons that I've been to, they all click up together. It doesn't matter if it's an old guy that's not in a gang.

Like, they're Hispanic. They're going to be living with the Hispanics. If a riot goes down, I mean, I was saying old dudes, a Hispanic come out of the room with a dang with a net bag full of dominoes beating people. You know, so when that's a, when that's a, when it's a riot against them, like, they're all going to go.

It doesn't matter if they're in the gang, they're not. Like I say, the civilian Hispanics will be, even if they don't have a knife, like that they'll throw something together real quick. But there wouldn't be that many of them. And then same thing with the whites. They wouldn't be that many. It'd be maybe 15 ghost face and five ABs or something on a compound. And then it might be 40 Hispanics.

And then everything else would either be civilian, white, which there would be maybe a hundred or so across the whole compound and then we had several buildings that were all gang members and all black so matter of fact when I first started I think there was one white guy in C1 other than that C1 C2 D1 D2 all them four pies was nothing but gang members blood GDs Crips and Muslims which technically isn't a game gang, but they move like a gang in the Georgia Department of Corrections. So that was kind of how it went. So, yeah, I mean, the GDs, when I first started, especially at Telfair, like, they had the

most control over the compounds far from the inmate side of things. And then by 2019 or so, that that has kind of swapped over to the Bloods. But with the Bloods, it's weird because there are so many different sets, and then there's the East Coast sets and the West Coast sets, and they beef with each other so much. that like 90% of the time when they would be involved in the stabbing, it's against each other. You know, there's sex going to war in here. So I'd say probably even still today, the GDs probably have more,

even though they don't have as many numbers, you know, they're more a cohesive, you know, of an organization than the Bloods are. Were they big on paperwork and politics in Georgia, you know, getting rid of chomos or snitches or anything like that? Not really. They'd let them all walk. The whites would get there, you know, if they found out. But even that, I mean, they could slip through the cracks.

I'm trying to think with Hispanics, I mean, I've never seen a Hispanic get removed or anything for any of that. But then again, at the same time, like the camps that I've worked at, Telfare and Bidostle, and Bidaw, anyway, it was mostly armed robberies, aggravated assaults, murders. It was mostly violent crime. I mean, most of those people in there did they didn't have bad paperwork anyway, you know. So, I mean, I've seen the only thing. that I seen was one time as far as Chummo or something like that getting put down or getting not put it down but getting like violated or whatever you want to call it was a guy had actually became ghost face or he was in there trying to become ghost face which GoFace is a white

gang that was started in Georgia in the county jails maybe in like the early 2000s so it's a fairly new organization but anyway they found out that this guy was ghost face down there in G building and they tied him up, beat him, and tattooed, man, tattooed a big penis on his forehead, tattooed child, molester on his face. Dang, something on his back, another big penis. Yeah, big penis on his back. I mean, tatted him up in there and stuff and put him out of the dorm. But, yeah, I mean, other than that, most of what I seen was gang violence or, you know, gang warfare between each other or just personal beasts that they would have going on. It was very violent, but not that I mean that.

Now at Johnson, man, it was like half the compound was that. So, no, they didn't know. I mean, everywhere you looked, it was one of them, you know. So, I mean, the people that was there, I mean, even if they would have, I mean, I'm sure they probably did do stuff to them, maybe. But, I mean, it's just not something that we seem very much. But in the same sentence, by the time I got to Johnson, everything had collapsed anyway. I mean, there's almost no officers ever in the building.

They're abandoned all the time. I mean, so who knows what's happening until you've got down there. I mean, most of the guys that end up getting killed, I'll tell you that, they're not jobless or anything. You know, most of these guys that get their skull crushed and all that, and they get their eye sockets beat out and all this stuff. They got on drugs down there in the building, and then they owed a debt, you know. What do you think was the worst thing you saw?

The first worst thing I saw was a guy that got, he got, buck 50 I don't know if they call that he got cut up the side of the face you know with a and the guy what he did was he it wasn't see most of the time when they do the buck 50 thing it'll be a a toothbrush that they melt the razors

into and then it come up and smack him on the side of the face and it I mean it's bad when you get done like that but this guy had a brush so a hair brush that he put razors in and it was like four different rows of razors so when he hit this guy it was like

one cut right here that was flat down and then it was one big one that went all the way up got his ear and everything and that was just i mean you can see his teeth and all in there i mean they were bloody and stuff so it wasn't i mean it looked weird and then there was one right here and then there was one like uh over the top of his eye uh eyebrow right there so i mean he was just it was laid up real bad when he would talk i mean you could just see the inside of his mouth and stuff so that was uh that was pretty graphic and then um um Before they took the boots, we had several guys that got stomped to death. That's disturbing, you know, when you go in a room,

and it's like teeth over here and, you know, brain stuff coming out to do's ear. I mean, it's don't even look like a human, really. I mean, because he just got stomped to death, you know. So stuff like that's pretty rough. I mean, I've seen when I went to by the Austin, so I had already seen most of, like, all the stuff that I just told you about, that was in my first three years that I'd seen all that. when I went to Valdosta, it just took it to a whole other level

because these guys were, a lot of these, Valdosta is not only just level five, so it's close security, but it's also mental health camp. So it's the only close security mental health level three camp. And that's the highest level of mental health that you can be on GP, on compound. So, man, these dudes, I mean,

I've seen guys sit there and eat part of their arm right in front of me. I mean, I've seen dudes cut, cut a big self-injure and then pack feces into the cuts. I mean, I've seen people hanged themselves, seeing people cut their throat, you know, and to be blood just literally pouring out from under the door, you know, of their cell. And definitely seen a lot of stabbing.

Probably, I don't know, man. 200, 300 people I've seen get stabbed, something like that. I mean, it's a lot. So I think everything you think of, man. Does the state report it, or do you feel like they cover it up? they cover up a lot of it, especially recently because I think it was 2023. They came out with this thing saying that they want a 10% reduction in incidents. So what they end up doing was they just end up throwing away a bunch of the incident reports

and be like, ah, nothing happened. You know, but like when I started, yeah, I mean, everything got reported that I'm aware of of anyway, you know. And definitely everything that I did, I mean, I did the incident report. but I will say that in 2023, and the only reason I found out this that the incident report didn't get put in is because, okay, so I had a guy, and like I said, this is like 20203,

so I'm well-seasoned and all at this point. I'm at Johnson. I had to use force on a guy, and the reason that I remember this used force so much is because I was the only man down there and I had to put this guy on strip cell. So, and the guy that I was putting on strip cell was being resistant.

So he's bucking and stuff He tried to buck hard And I mean he had a little bit longer hair He bucks so hard that even the handcuffs Like I had done grabbing by the hair and stuff in the room And I was holding him against the wall And then I hollered out for it Because there was a counselor in the building

A female counselor And I hollered out for her I said hey come over here So she came over there And I was like look you know I'm about to strip this dude and all this I was like technically I ain't supposed to be having the female right here

I said but there's no other officer in here And I don't want this guy trying to say that I, you know, pre-ed him or something, you know, in here. So, like, he's being assaulted or resistant, and I need a witness. So she sat there. I stripped him out because he was going on a strip cell for mental health reasons. Anyway, I stripped him out, and then it was a, I did the incident of poor, all that, because, I mean, especially in my mind, I'm thinking, like,

I definitely got to make sure this paperwork is squared away because, I mean, it is bad. Years ago, I wouldn't even have done that. Like, there would have been another mayor. with me anyway. Like years ago, they wouldn't never find yourself in a position

where you're the only male security member on this entire compound. So, but that was the case that day.

So I had done that. So I made sure the instant report was written and I turned it in. I put it on deputy warden desk, all that.

Even with the, uh, with everything, even with his statement in it. Then about a month later, I get a grievance from the guy, you know, the guy that I stripped out in the room,

he wrote, the grievance. So when I got the grievance, I didn't even really write a response. I wrote C the incident report from this day, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, because the incident report been done on it. And then the chief counsel comes back to me and said, I couldn't find any the incident report in the system, blah, blah, blah. I was like, nah, at this point, it ain't even been that long, so I still remember the date and everything. So I go and look it up and there is no incident report in the system. So then that made me go and look at some of the other of forces that I had done.

And what I came up with, at that time, I think I had maybe done like 15 use of forces at Johnson, where I used force on people to do whatever, get them a handcuffs or break them up from biting or whatever the case was. I had used force about 15 times and did incident reports on it and everything. There was three incident reports for use of force in the system. So 12 or 15, they just got shredded or something. And what I'm thinking is more of because that was there as far as, the management of the prisons, they were being told these goals or whatever, and one of them

was 10% reduction in incidents. So why were they doing that? I mean, I think that's one, you know, just to be able to say, yeah, look, we didn't have but three uses of forces when really we had 15, you know. You guys know my story. I owned a nightclub when I was 18 years old, and I can tell you right now, I might have been the king of overdrafts. I was 18 running this massive nightclub, and let's just say I wasn't exactly the world's greatest businessman. The worst was when everything would hit the account at once. Payroll, vendors, bills, some random charge I completely forgot about, and suddenly I'm looking at my account like, oh no, what just happened.

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See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton Debit Flex card, and Bancorp Debit Flex card. Cash App Green features savings, direct deposit, roundups, overdraft coverage, and discounts provided by Cash App, a Block Incorporated brand. Visit cash.app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. What was the first thing you think you saw in your career there that really didn't rub you the right way or unsettled you or you knew was wrong committed by staff? There was a guy that worked with me. His name was Marks, Officer Marks.

And he was very nasty. He even tried to get me fired. He was nasty with the officers and the dang inmates. And I didn't like some of the things that he would do. And we actually got into it a little bit when we worked together. when I was in that initial CO phase. And then he went out on compound. And, man, he wasn't out there for like two weeks,

and he was getting beat up. This dude doesn't start swinging. What he did, he ended up spitting on the inmate out there on the sidewalk. And this inmate straight up knocked him out out there twice. Knocked him down. He got up, and then he knocked down again. And that second time, I think it actually put him out. So when I came up to the situation, he's just bloody and bleeding.

And when I seen it was him, I was like, yeah, man. I didn't tell him what this dude did. you know, knowing him, know how nasty he acts. But, so, I mean, that was the first officer that I seen that was like, um, this dude is just nasty to people, you know, for no reason. Even, even like I said, the staff, besides that, most of the things that I seen that were bad that really rub me the wrong way, it wasn't something that staff necessarily did. It's just that there wasn't a staff down there and this guy got raped for two weeks in the cell

or whatever the case was. Stuff like that would be the stuff that, that really affected me and made me start looking at things differently. Like, what are we doing here? You know, what's, what, are we just going to let this happen? We've got these bills abandoned. These people were breaking out onto the ruse. We've got people that tied up in here for days at the time, getting beat, stomped and tortured,

getting their dang fingernails ripped out and their bottoms of their feet cut and all this stuff. And there's no officers in the building. Everybody's on. I'm talking about everybody. So, even the officers, some of us. I mean, I was. I tell you that. Toward the end, by the time, when I got back,

matter of fact, when I got back to Telfare in 2019, that's when stuff changed for me. So 2014 to 2019, I was on the up and up, man. I was, in fact, I turned down a captain's position in 2019. So I could have been the youngest captain in state history. I mean, I was already the youngest instructor and the youngest cert commander and all this. But I turned it down just because, number one, I was still like, what, 22 years old. I mean, I was young.

I knew I had a lot of time to do that if I wanted to, but I had seen things from management that I didn't like as far as things that they were being told by their superiors and how they drag the captains. I always noticed that they, the captain got the worst in the stick because, yeah, they were the highest as far as the uniform staff, but then they were the lowest for the management staff. So all the upper management, the deputy wardens and the unit managers

and the wardens, they would just be all over the cat in the butt all the time. So things like that I've seen and I just turn it down and I end up going back to Tailfare on a deal that I worked out for myself because they wanted me to come back to tellfare. I had already been at about Austin for two years at this point and made a name for myself down there and everything. So I was good. I didn't have to come back.

But at this point, they started giving Sargent's overtime. So when I first made Sargent, I stopped even Sargent. get overtime. So in 2016, when I made sergeant, it was that 38 whatever a year, and that's it. Like, it don't matter if you can be working 300 hours a month, and you're still going to get 38,000 a year. And then lieutenants, so when I was at Valdasa's lieutenant, man, I was pulling 240, 250, every 28-day cycle. And, I mean, I was getting paid for 40 hours a week. I mean, it was insane to me to be doing that. So toward the end of that, they had started letting sergeants get overtime. There was like, sorry, just get over time, but lieutenants can't.

And like I say, I was a lieutenant by this point, about Austin. So when they started calling me, he wanted me to come back to tailfare, I was like, okay, this is a good opportunity to do some negotiating. I was like, hey, if y'all leave me at the same pay I'm making now as a sergeant, then I'll go. And I'll supervise the, you know, they wanted me to supervise the tier program anyway. So I got it word out where I would keep my same pay, but I would go from lieutenant to

sergeant. That way I can get this overtime. So that's what that's what I got set up and I went back. But, but yeah, like I'm saying, man, 2019 Telvester State Prison was polar opposite of 2017 to Everstate Prison. Like it just, it really blew my mind when I first started walking around on my tour when I was starting back, you know, because I mean, I'd done worked here for three years and then went to about Austin for two years and I'm just coming back. And man, there's no officers on a compound. They're like, oh, this building's abandoned, this building's abandon, and we've got two officers here. I was like, two officers. It's like, so there's no officer even in the booths or nothing?

It was like, no. And that just wasn't the case when I left. Like in even 2017, they would never abandon the buildings. Like, they was always an officer in every one in the buildings. Matter of fact, there was always two officers, you know, one for the booth and one for each side, which really is supposed to be one for the booths and two, you know, for one for each side. instead of one for both sides, which is what it normally would be even when I started, it would be one for both sides and then one in the booth, always watching your back.

And then like I was saying with the lockdown, it'd be one in the booth and then two on each side, at least. And that was where, so in 2017, even at night, there would be 28, 29, 27 maybe on a bad night, 32, 33, somewhere in there on a good night. That'd be how many officers you had there, even at night. 2019 when I come back, man, there might not be three people there, period. At night, the whole prison might be abandoned

because they might have three people there and then one inmate gets stabbed to have to go to the hospital, two officers have to go with that inmate. And then you end up with just a lieutenant just at the prison, walking around every now and then to the buildings. And the buildings are just abandoned.

Like, there's nobody that... The inmates are down there, but there's no kind of supervision from officers whatsoever. So that's one of these things like people getting tied up for weeks at the time and people breaking out onto the roofs and people getting killed. I mean, I had several situations during that second stint that I was at tailfare that, man,

we would find somebody. They would been dead for long enough for rigor mortars to sit in, you know. There was one guy that I haven't known CPR on, and that was at tailfare. And, I mean, I didn't do CPR because when we found him, man, this dude was in the bed. He had an OD. So this was actually, it wasn't a murder. he OD and he was laying sideways and he had been laying there so long that I mean I couldn't get his arms out of the way from the rigor mortis to do compressions because I mean he was just that stiff you know and cold and all that and I was like there's no way that you're going to be able to resuscate this guy and the inmates aren't reporting anything they they're the ones that they're the ones that usually yeah it would be the inmates that come up and hey man we got a guy down here he did you know and you go down there it's usually how it's good the first time I seen some something like that was actually about Austin.

And they had took a guy and bled him out over the toilet in the room. And he was sitting on the toilet. They cut his throat and, like I say, bled him into the toilet. And I guess sat there and flushed it and all that, flushed the blood. And left him there for like four or five hours. No officer came in. Eventually the guy drugged him out of the room. And like he had done rigor mortis had set in while he was on the toilet.

So he was still like in the toilet. position and they pulled him out on the range and you got people running jumping over him trying to go hurry and get in the shower and stuff because they know they're about to get locked down and stuff like that and that's actually how we found out that morning was a guy came up to medical and told one of my office was hey there's a guy down there in debilting instead he's out on the range right now and then they call me hey you need to go check on de building and then go down there and now the people that do this do they end up getting charged or sometimes sometimes that situation at Vought Austin, there was another guy about to get killed.

We actually prevented one death because it was like a hit type thing. So that was one guy, and then there was another guy in another building. And as we're finding out all this, we go down and he was in that building. The guy that killed the one guy had already left that bill. He didn't even belong in that building anyway. So this guy to killed him wasn't even in the same building with the guy he killed. He went snuck into the building where he killed a guy, killed the guy. and then he had already snuck down and got into the building with the other guy

and just it hadn't got to him yet you know so as we're finding out all this we found him down in that building and got him locked up so I'm pretty sure with that one that they did charge him but but there's a bunch of them that they don't charge them you know it's just kind of hit or miss you know whatever state wants to do usually if nobody dies is what I've noticed nobody dies I mean I've seen people get stabbed 30 40 times and I mean they get a DR and And that's it, man. They're right back on the compound. So, but I've seen where people stab somebody and don't kill them and it ends up being a charge.

You know, but most of the time when somebody dies, they charge somebody. But that's if they know. You know, sometimes they don't know who done it. Now, why isn't it the state the wardens, you know, calling in the National Guard for support when they're understaffed? That's a very good question, especially when things have gotten to this level like I'm talking about. all their emergency plans say that they should have called somebody a long time ago. But they haven't, man. They refused to, literally.

Even when people like myself, and I mean, I'm not trying to sit here and be like, oh, I'm this and that. I mean, I don't even have 10 years. I got nine years, 11 months, and 11 days working in corrections. But I know what I'm talking about in the sense that I have worked at three different compounds. I've actually worked at five, but two of them I was just the instructor. So I just talked to staff and stuff. I didn't spend much time dealing with the inmate population.

But at three of a prison, I've been to CERT commander. I did do these. I did make it all the way to CERT commander by the time I'm 20. I mean, I really dedicated myself to being a correction officer or being a sergeant or being a lieutenant, whatever, instructor. You know, so by the time that I made that decision that, look, something has got to be done. Like, we cannot allow this. This is a violation of where constitutional rights,

to even have them being here in these conditions like this. And that's what led to me writing a three-page statement, sworn statement, with my name, signature, all this, and sending it up the chain of command. Essentially, one pointing out the issues that we all know about anyway, but I was just making sure that they knew the people in Forsyth and Atlanta and all that, and then calling for action, you know. And that was two months before the DOJ report. So I submitted that letter.

that was on August 1st, 2004. They didn't address any of the issues. I mean, they wouldn't even talk about it, man. They wouldn't even address this stuff. I mean, they would somewhat. I have a 20-minute Zoom call that I had with this as a commissioner where essentially he admits that he knows that there's no, especially male staff at these prisons and that they're out of control.

And he's just like, well, you know, the budget and stuff. And, well, we can't bring National Guard because we would, They're not certified as officers. And I'm sitting there like, I'm a post-instructor. I can certify somebody as an officer in 240 hours. That's all it takes. 240 hours of training. So six weeks of training, and they can be ready.

So it just was blowing my mind. They kept giving these, what I saw was bullcraft excuses, especially considering how bad things have gotten, how many people were losing. I mean, if we're not at 1900, we're right there in the 1890s since 2020, have passed away in custody. And that's just the people that have died. There have been so many people that, like there was this one guy,

I just watched a testimony on that in 2024, that same year, right before I blew the whistle. He skull crushed, ribs broken, a hole the size of a saucer that came in his leg from where he was getting, he was tied up and being tortured and beat for over two weeks before he finally was discovered at Makin State Prison. and then they took him, I mean, they took him and ended up saving him. I mean, he was in a coma for a while, all this, and now he's out, you know, lives with his, lives with some family and all that, but, I mean, he had brain damage, I mean, it's just, he had, both of his eye sockets were completely crushed, most of his teeth were knocked out. I mean, fingers, this is one of these guys that they cut the bottom of their feet and all this.

I mean, just brutal, man. And things like this have been happening regularly since, since, again. got like this. So, I mean, obviously, of course, things are going to happen like that, especially when we have such a high gang population and everybody's armed down there because there's no security. And they just leave them down there. Like, it's just, it's insane to me that we would even allow it to get at that point. So that's ultimately what led to me right, blowing the whistle. I mean, I was, I was out of the prisons by then. In 2023, I think it was maybe July or somewhere in there, 2020.

I got a position instructing at Roger State Prison, which was a little far of drive for me, but they told me that they would get me closer as soon as I could, and then that's how I ended up being the instructor of Washington. So from 2023 to 2024, I wasn't even in there anymore anyway. All I had to do is teach in service, man, teach the officers what to do. But I'm in there talking to teaching the officers, and they're telling me, like, Mr. Riles, we know that that's what we're supposed to do,

but I think the three of us here. like you know this not what's happening in his prison and I'm sitting there like yeah I do know you know because I've been there myself you know so it just and these people are telling me what's happening they're telling me how it's affecting them you know I'm going in because I did my visit my overtime I would go to Johnson State prison because I already had a good rapport with the inmate population and stuff they knew who I was because I just a certain manner there and everything and so I would go there to do my overtime and man I'm having dudes come up in visitation they're crying, they're telling me like, man, we hate that you love.

Like, it's been so bad. And it's just one guy, you know. So I'm like, how can it change something really one person not being here? But when you look at it, it's like a bunch of the days that I was at Johnson, I was the only male. You know, like this situation I was telling you about earlier. And when you don't have that, I mean, like that guy that was crying to me in visitation, I mean, he took his shirt off and showed me where they had sat there literally and carved a star into this dude's back, the bloods down there in the building.

They owe the debt or something. And then the way they do these debts thing, man, they'll be down there trying to peddle these drugs to them. And then they'll get the drugs. And let's just say they get a $5 loan or whatever, which I don't see why you'd be loaning people money on drugs anyway. But, hey, I'm not a drug dealer. I've never been one.

But they'll get these guys, and then it'll be a $5 debt. And then they'll be like, oh, now you owe me $20. And then the next day, oh, now you owe me $50. And then, I mean, they can't pay that, man. And then they end up doing all this stuff to them. You know, because like I said, there's nobody down there in the building. And even when they go to lockdown, see, now when the guys go to lockdown, they're not safe either. There's no such thing as catching out in Georgia Department of Crictions at most of these prisons anyway, not the way the prisons are now.

Because like I'm saying, the prison is so insecure that there can be three officers there. Or let's just, let's give them the benefit of doubt. Let's say there's 10 there, you know, which is most of these people. prisons don't even have that. The inmates down at H building, which is on the other end of the side of the compound of F, which is the lockdown, an incident happens down there. Well, guess where all them 10 officers is about to go to this incident? While they're at this incident, this building is left abandoned.

It don't even have to be a situation like that because even when they go to count and stuff, they have to lead to buildings abandoned. Whereas used to be, they would never be abandoned because they would be at a minimum, it'd be booth officer in there that's watching the floor. But they started abandon those in 2018. So since 2018, there has not been a booth manned at tailfare. Valdosta's like that too nowadays, from what I'm being told. Johnson was definitely like that.

There was never an officer in the booth. So when these things happen or when officers go to count this other building, now you have even the lockdown buildings are left abandoned with nobody in the booth. So these inmates, they've done figured out. how let's say one guy in the dorm knows how to pop his door. Well, all he's got to do, he pops his door, he comes out to cell. There's nobody in the booth to say, hey, there's a guy out down here in the shoe. He just goes, opens this other cell, pops that door, gets his gang member buddies out,

and then they go to the cell where the guy that they want to get that and pop into his cell and get him. I mean, they've done this multiple times that I've seen. So, I mean, it's like you're not, there is no such thing as safety in some of these prisons in Georgia. you know, right now because like I say, the state has just literally turned over control to the gang members. I mean, it's to the point now where they're having meetings with the gang members on Zoom, the assistant commissioner and the head of special operations just last week. So, because I'm getting constant updates from inside the prisons, just last week, and this is not the first time they've done this. Because during COVID, they set up these rooms where they have a big TV in the room where they have a big TV in the room

where they can do court in this courtroom. What they've started doing is they get all the top gang members, let's just say at Telfair and about Austin and Hayes and all the different prisons, bring them up to the courtroom thing all at the same time and then have a big meeting with the assistant commissioner, Ahmed Hope, and then the head of special operations. And then they're essentially, like from what I'm told about the meeting last week, week, the gang members were essentially saying, hey, we want to discipline our own, but every time we try to, you know, y'all ride us up and stuff like this, and we don't want to get no write-ups.

So if y'all are wanting us to discipline these guys, then we need to be able to do what we can do without having to worry about disciplinary infractions. And from what I'm told, they were told by us as a commissioner. Like, as long as you don't stab them or kill them, then it's okay. So that was, man, I hate to get the date wrong. That was early last week. No, that was early this week. But that was it because it's Saturday. That was early this week.

They had that meeting, I think it was Tuesday. The very next day, within 24 hours, there's a dead guy, game member, stabbed and killed, you know. So it's just, and then there was other stabments and stuff too. So it's like, but of course, you know, of course. You can't sit here and let the gang members run the prisons and expect that this thing is going to go ratiously and morally out here and that people are not going to get killed. Like a lot of people are going to get killed.

If you have literal street gangs running the security of the prison, I mean, it got so bad at Georgia State prison before they shut that down, and they actually did shut that prison down, that the inmates, man, because we got a bunch of them when they shut it down at, that tailfare. That's where I was at. I think it was 20, 21, maybe. It might have been 2020 or 2021, either one, when they shut it down.

Man, we got those inmates off the bus. Their uniforms were brown. Most of the inmates' uniforms were brown, even though they were supposed to be white and blue. They were brown because they haven't even been running laundry. The inmates down in the building, they couldn't send laundry out, because as soon as they send laundry out,

the gang members up there would just steal all their laundering go sell it. So the inmates don't even want to send their laundry out. A bunch of them were skinny and stuff because they were scared to go to chow. Because every time they go to chow, they'd be stabbing.

They'd be people getting robbed out there on the sidewalk and stuff, going to chow. So, I mean, it was just insane. They had people going around stabbing people through the flap. So the officer, what, let's just say, and this was that Georgia State prison

before they closed it. And like I said, it's right around 20, 20, they would go down to the lockdown. They'd be inmates bucking the flap. Do you know what that means? Did they call that the same thing, like the feds? No, I haven't heard of that term.

It's when, so you got these little flaps on the, on the door, yeah. On the door in the lockdown. It's when you put your arm in it and you, like, refuse to let them close it. Yeah, I'd seen people do that. Yeah. So they would be doing that. They might be one female officer down there. There is nobody to call.

The one supervisor that's there is running child for the main compound, so they can't even come help. And then it got to the point where literally, like I say, these officers are asking the gang members, hey, can you get this guy closed the flat? And they're like, yeah, you know, and they're going there stab him in the arm, you know, and then he moves his arm. You know, so we had stuff like that happening. I mean, it's just, it was insane and stuff that was happening. How did you get stabbed? I got stabbed during a cell extraction. Um, when a guy had sexually assault his roommate. This was on a Saturday. So I was off, but they called me in because, I'm a chemical munitions specialist, so I can deploy CS gas and pepperball.

I mean, everything that the state's got, I can use it. During this time, this was during all the George Floyd riots and all that, and most of the prisons in Georgia were out of pepper spray because all these police forces were buying up all the pepper spray during these riots. And when these places were getting burned and all this stuff, these going on, and you had a lot of protests that were happening, and they were using pepper spray, these police departments. So we ended up running out, especially of the foger, the mass area contamination ones. And that's what the police and the street wanted too, you know, because they are effective at dispersing crowds and stuff like that. But they had bought all that up, so we were out.

So they were calling me all the time because I was one of only two people at the prison that could use this other stuff. So when I got stalled, that's what the case was. Like they didn't have anybody there that could use the chemical munitions. that they had so they called me so i went out there i tried to get the guy to cuff up he wouldn't cuff up for me he wouldn't even talk to me the whole time he wouldn't talk and this is another one in situation where he's been up for days on meth you know and this guy was the head of security for the muslims on the compound and he was like he was well built physically and he was probably 28 29 he was in good shape he was like 6 3 probably like 190 he's slim but he's you know he's a good

fighter you know and i already knew that before when because, I mean, I've been around him a lot, you know, as far as because I had been on that compound a pretty good bit. And I knew that he was over to security guys for the Muslims. So I already knew he had been in stabbins and all just. And so I recognized him as a threat. And then he had the knife, too. So I ended up calling and getting authorization to use something that we normally wouldn't use in a cell. But I told him, like, hey, he's got a knife.

He's already done this to his roommate. He tried to stab the officer through the flap. I mean, there was a bunch of things that he had done already before I even got. there. And then when I get there, I'm trying to talk to him. He's just, he's just looking at me with the knife in his hand. Like, I'm, he was looking at me, like, I'm just waiting on you come in here. Like, whoever's going to come here, that's all I'm waiting. All just talking, like, well, I don't even care about talking. He just looked at you. He never said a word to this whole situation. And so I told them all that. They gave me the authorization to use the pyro,

which is when they, the power techniques is when inside the canister, it'll be something burning a powder, and that's what makes the smoke. So usually we wouldn't put those inside cells. We put, it would be just what they call a muzzle blast, which is just a blast of powder out the front of the barrel of the grenade launcher. But it wouldn't be something that just sits there and smokes continuously in the cell. But like I say, given a total of the circumstances with this incident, being as he was a deadly threat and all this other stuff,

I did, was able to get the authorization to try this power, because with that whole situation, and this all goes back into the same reason why I blew the whistle and all that anyway. So, and this was before, this was actually considered a good day out there. But when I got there, there was two guys from Hayes State Prison Tax Squad, which is way up in North Georgia. That was the only two members of Hayes Tax Squad. And these tax squads were supposed to be 12 members.

So that I just kind of give you an idea of how short even the Special Operations teams are. You know, like even with the CERT team, when I left Telfare in 27, I was a commander and I had eight members under me. That's a full team. So eight members and a commander. When I got back to Telfare, they was four of them. They included the commander. And then the TAC squad at Telfare was one person when I came back.

And then I ended up getting on it and becoming a commander. So it made two of us. So they was literally, when we went out and a call out, the TAC squad was two people. This is supposed to be a 12-man squad. You know, we can't even do a self-straction as the whole. tackle out of Telfer take prison. But so anyway, when I get down there, as I'm looking at this situation, these two guys from Hayes, and then there was a, there was a sergeant that was there, there was a new guy that had just

got on cert at Telfer that was new back in the day with me. He started after I did back in the day, and maybe he stayed three or four months and left, and then he's just coming back now. So it's me, it's these two guys from Hayes, it's this supervisor, and then, It's this new guy. And then there was a sixth male there that was brand new. Like a week graduate from BCOT. So I had enough men to create a four-man team.

But when I'm asking these guys, hey, have you been trained? Have you been trained? None of them. None of the other people there that day had been trained on set of distractions or had done one or anything to that extent. And that's another reason why I called and was like, Like, hey, can I try this other stuff in there? Because, man, this dude's probably going to be violent, you know, when we go in there.

But anyway, so now it comes time to suit up. We go to suit up. First of all, I have to take these guys in the day room and train them how to do a cell extraction. So I'm in there in the day room of the dormitory, I mean, which is a lot now. So it ain't like there's inmates out here watching us and everything. But I'm in there. I'm teaching them how to do a cell extraction right before they about to go on the route of their life. because this guy's in here,

how meth is a known combatant. Like, we know that this guy can go because he's done against other inmates out here. And he's a big guy too. And he's got these knives. So it was a bad situation to be doing your first cell attraction on, you know. Usually with stuff like this,

you want to train people in an environment where they can run through the motions. Maybe it'll be me or somebody, you know, somebody pretending, quote unquote, to be the inmate and then they're doing a distraction and I mean I can be sitting there talking to them throughout this incident and all this. It would be kind of a low stress thing where they can learn some stuff. But this time, I mean, they just wasn't the time to do that anyway. I mean, I had enough time to go in there and tell them what the role would be and give them a pep talk, you know, to make sure that they didn't freeze up or to make sure that they knew like that what the plan

was anyway. Luckily, before we went in, because after I trained them, I went to go get the gear. So how about the inmates had them broke out of the sales and lockdown and stole a bunch of the gear so that wasn't even enough gear for four people to suit up. So what I ended up doing was I got the three guys that was going with me. I got them all the way suited up. I think one guy was missing like a growing potato or something like that. But all three them were pretty much fully suited. Man, you know what I had on? A freaking turtle suit. And maybe some leg, it was either the legs or the arms. I had one or the other.

I didn't have all, I mean, I had like one third of the gear that I'm supposed to have on it because they just wasn't enough of it. You know, so I get them outfitted. I put on what's left. I mean, I didn't even have a helmet or nothing. So, but I had a gas mask. So I did put a gas, and luckily that's what saved me from getting stabbed in the face because if I wouldn't have had the gas mask on,

I would have got hit right in the face. But anyway, I ran the shield on this incident. even though there was a guy one of these other guys was considerably bigger larger to me but he had never done a cell distraction so I mean I just didn't I didn't want to get messed up with the whole

shield thing because if you're running the shield you're the first person through the door like you really don't need to freeze up if you're running the shield so I did it this time I come up right as we go up to the cell I see the lights go off in the cell

so I'm like oh man he just shorted the lights out of here you know And there's nothing we can do at that point. I mean, I can sit there and push this button all day long. But if he's done guy in there to the wires and he breaks the connection. And it's over with it. There ain't no light in the cells. I already know that the cell's dark.

I didn't know that this guy didn't got really suited up in there. But he had, I mean, he had like three pair of pants on. He had a daggone sweater, rain jacket, regular jacket. He had his sleeves tied down and had gloves on and had the knives tied to his hands. So this joker was stupid ready. Like he was really ready. And so when the door comes open, he's coming out. So the door's coming up and like this.

I'm going in. Usually with a cell extraction, well, it depends on the way the door opens. But you're going to come in on the side that the door opens. And then usually I would come and get square in the doorway before I would go in to hit him. But with this situation, like, it wasn't no time to do that. Like I had to get on him because he was coming out. So as the door is coming open, he's coming out with the knives.

So I hit him and just go straight cat a corner into the cell, and then that's like where the sink is. So as the door's coming open, boom, I hit him. He has one of the, he's coming around the shield, but he's missing. Everything he's doing because the shield's got his arm like this. So when he tries to go toward me, I mean, it just can't reach me. You know, I got the shield like this. I hit him. I get him pinned up against a wall.

And at this point is when the second guy is supposed to branch out and go this way. the third guy going to go right, the fourth guy is going to go to the lower extremities. So the way it was supposed to happen was, I keep him pin with the shield, the second guy will go and get the left upper extremity, the third guy will go get the right upper extremity, and then the fourth guy will get both lower extremities,

which usually, hopefully, is the legs, but sometimes we can get flopped around in there, but whatever the lowest, you know. So if he gets flopped upside down, And still the fourth guy is going. He'll get the hands this time instead of legs. But anyway, that's what was supposed to happen. I had him pinned up against the sink.

The guy behind me, this guy that's a really big guy, he goes to step out and he slips and falls and hits me in the back and just completely pushes me over the toilet, gets me off the inmate, everything. And which the guy has stuff all in the floor in there. So, I mean, like I say, he knew. what he was doing you know he he set the cell up very good he had like say it was dark in there so i mean we couldn't see was in the floor anyway but there was like wads of blanket there was the pill

everything in the cell was in the floor in there you know so he slipped and fell and not me off the guy so i'm sitting there i got him i'm i have him pin against the walls in my mind i'm like shoot this is good as done man when he's got to get around me and get a hold to him that usually that's what we would do we would go in and secure at least get those hands secure And then I would take the shield off and toss it to the side and then we'll be good. Being as, he knocked me off of him, though. So I'm sitting there and then I just get knocked over the toilet. So I'm going to boom, bloom, you know, I hear the shield hit and all that.

I just throw the shield because as I'm hitting the ground, I can see this guy in the shadow of the knife. It's just coming down on the second officer. Because the second officer, now he's like on his knees because he fell into my back. and I went over the toilet and he went kind of down to his knees and this dude's just over it I mean that's what I could hear just pop pop pop pop pop pop

he stabbing the guy and so I'm getting up and I'm trying to hurry and get to this guy because in my mind like oh no like these these are I'm leading these guys like these guys I'm not about to get hurt in here so I get up and I rush him and I grab his

wrist at this point I didn't know he had two knives I knew he had the one because he kept showing it but I didn't, I don't know, but he had one in each hand. So when I grab his wrist, he comes around and hits me right dead in the gas mask with the other one. Boom. And that's actually what injured me. During this whole incident, I didn't have to have stitches or none of that. Because the first one hit me in the gas mask, and then he went to hit me again, and I went into him some more.

Because, I mean, in my mind, I know this stuff. It's like, I don't want to have, if somebody's about to say, stab you, you know, you don't want them to be right at the right distance. Like, you either want to go ahead and close the distance or get out either one. So he hit me the first time, that caught me off guard. And then as he's about to stab me the second time, I come into him some more and his arm just kind of slams against my neck. You know, he probably would have got me in the neck if I wouldn't, if I wouldn't, if I wouldn't have got closer to him. But his arm smacked against the side of my neck, and I had him by the wrist, and then I just kind of flipped him

over the toilet and then we went down in there and I had him, man, we're going across the floor in there. What I didn't know, I'm assuming when one of those two times he hit me, the knife actually came out the handle of that other hand. The one he had in his left hand was the handle he had was made out of the Manila folder. So it was probably when he hit me in the face shield or the gas mask,

that the dang, the knife popped out the back of the handle. So it busted through the Manila folder and came out. And then this other knife was the big one, which I had his wrist of that hand. So, I mean, I knew he wasn't going to be able to stab him with that one. So when we go down, we both go down when I flipped him over the toilet. Because, I mean, it took a lot of effort to get him down anyway. And I took him down over the toilet and then he's trying to get me. He actually ended up on top after we go over the toilet.

He ended up on top. And then this second guy that was getting stabbed, I didn't know it at the time, but he was knocked out. So one of these hits that this guy hit him, and he didn't have the abstinages or nothing either, because the stuff hit him in the protective gear. Because the love that they had protective gear all on. You know, I was pretty much the only one that didn't have that much on, which, and I still had the stuff protecting my bottles. But I got him in the floor in there, and then he would try to stab me,

and then I would push away every time. So we were like going across the floor in there like that. You know, every time he would go in, I'd push away, and that's just what was happening. And we were sliding across the floor in there and doing like this because he was trying to stab me. And then the other hand he took and he was, at first I thought he was stabbing me in the leg or something like that. But I figured out that it was just a fist, you know, because he was trying to stab me in the leg. But he didn't know that the knife had done popped out the back of the handle that he had made. So all this is going down.

I holler out because, remember I was telling you, there was a brand new officer. there. So the brand new officer that was there right before we went in, and I'm glad I thought to do this, I expanded my expandable baton, and I gave it to him. And I was like, I just gave him a little pet talk and like, hey, look, if this guy, for whatever reason makes it out of the room past us, like, you can use this. And I just went through the legal aspects of, like, use the force with him and make sure he knows, like, this is a serious situation. Like, if he does make it outside that cell, like, you can use the baton, you can hit him in the head. Like, it don't even matter. If he's got that knife, like, we just need to stop him, mainly. And we don't need to let him get

out of the cell, because especially with a guy like him, when you, out in open space, he can do a lot more with that knife than he can if you keep him in, you know, like I was doing, we keep rushing him and get him in, you know, you got him in a little bitty spot, you know, it's hard for him to really be able to move around and do what he needs to do. You can, you can kind of smother it out, you know, like a fire. But, uh, but anyway, he was out there. So as I'm sliding across the floor in there with this guy as he's trying to stab me I holler out for this guy I say hey such such such said his name he said yeah

I said come here hit this dude so he comes in there man when I said that that dude went he started trying to stab me real hard in I mean he was trying I guess he knew like oh man that's getting short on me so but well I was just I had his

I had two on one you know that bows of my hands was on that wrist so he just he wasn't able stab me he come in there bam hit him in the head and he got a little bit weaker. He kept on, I mean, he was hitting him. Boom, boom, boom. He hit him probably five times or so right in the head with that metal baton. And, uh, I mean, that last hit, man, I could feel like the blood splat in my eyes and stuff, my face and stuff. Because, I mean, his head was pretty close to my head. And he was just, bam. And it was bust in his head, you know, every time he hit him. So that last time he hit him, I felt his arm go limp. And I say, hey, stop hitting him. He stopped hitting him. I moved him over. And I got on top of him, and put the cuffs. on all this. I didn't know what had happened at the back of the line, but come to find out,

the guy, let's see, the second guy fell into me, knocked me over the toilet. He ended up on his knees in there, and he was getting stabbed, and he actually got knocked out by one of these hits that this guy was hitting him. The third guy went to hit the inmate,

and the guy with the baton reached in and tried to hit the inmate and actually hit the third guy in the back of the head. So the third guy got hit and rolled into the inmate, and that's all happening at the same time that I'm getting him by the wrist and toss him over the toilet in there. So that's why I'm like,

the one guy was laying there that got hit. The other guy that got hit with the baton was dazed, and then the fourth guy did what he was supposed to do, which was get the guy's legs. So as we're in there in the floor, before I ever told the guy to come hit him, like I got his wrist right here and then this fourth guy is getting his legs so down there towards the toilet at the end of the cell there is a guy getting his legs but there's nobody up here

because both of the guys that was going to be up here they're like out of commission for the moment so when a guy came in there he hit the guy I got him off uh shut him off and then it's this fourth guy that's with me and man I thought it was over with for that guy you know because as you know at this point now we're getting lights on in the cell because this whole time I mean it was very limited visibility in there. Like the most thing I remember from this whole incident is seeing his silhouette with this big knife, you know,

and hearing that tap, tap, tap, tap, when he stabbed the guy. But yeah, when the lights came on, man, there was a big puddle of blood coming up by his dude's head. You know,

I got blood on my face and stuff from him and stuff. I'm like, man, I'm calling the radio, like, I need to get an ambulance on the way here and all that. And me and that fourth guy, got him, so all this done happen.

Me and this fourth guy, get him on the, get him on the stretcher, run him up to medical. I get him loaded up on the ambulance. As soon as I get him loaded up on ambulance, they call me to the building. Because while this whole incident is going down, it's like a three-hour, probably ordeal between me showing up,

me trying to talk to him and de-escalate, me calling and getting this authorization to use this other thing, using it, training these people to do a cell attraction, getting all this gear. I mean, all this stuff took a while. The whole time all that was doing, the whole compound is abandoned, like I was saying before. So the inmates in lockdown had them broke out,

and they were doing some of this what I was telling you about, you know, getting out and going and trying to hurt people that's maybe owe money on the compound or got hits on them or whatever. And they were trying to get at those guys in lockdown. And they called me on the radio, I got a guy running around here with a machete. I'm like, okay, so I run down there.

I still don't even know. I still really ain't even check myself for injuries that much, man. point because like I say I mean as soon as I got this guy off of me it's like a big puddle blood I seated his head split you know I'm thinking this dude you know is in critical condition which he ended up making it and all but so yeah when I soon like as the ambulance is being loaded with this guy now I start I run down to this other building and just luckily when I came in I knew the guy that had the machete in his hand I said hey man he need put that down he put it down and he was like Miss Rao, I was just trying to protect such and such.

He showed me an old thing. He was like, go look on the cameras. You know, you're going to see. It was a bunch of us out down here. I was just protecting myself. I'm like, a bunch of y'all out in lockdown. So I went to review the cameras and show enough. I mean, the whole time we was doing that incident in D-building,

they're out at the door with machetes and knives trying to get in these people's cells and lockdown and all this. So that's why I was saying why I brought that up earlier that, like, it's just insane, man. I don't think that anything like this has ever happened in America, you know, with things being this bad. Maybe at some point in time, in America or otherwise, I mean, prisons have been a thing for quite some time,

and a lot of times they end up being pretty cruel, and I think that's why we implemented the Eighth Amendment in our Constitution to prevent stuff like that. And that's exactly what we have going on right now. It's just not, and I think that may be the reason why people are not, angry about it or do anything because it's not that the officers are it ain't like the roman times or nothing where the officers are putting people down in this in poop and stuff and you know torturing them like that's i mean we have a situation like that and most of the time with those

people they get caught pretty quickly in george anyway but now it's just like i'm saying they're just abandon to without the resources that they need and they're just letting the the emmate game them run it, you know, and whoever. And in these lockdown buildings, that's where a lot of these, the sexual assaults and stuff happen, because on the main compounds, I will say that having it be such a heavy gang population, it does kind of help with the sexual assault thing, because most of the gangs have strictly no homosexual activity in their, you know, in their rules and stuff. So you don't end up with that many of the sexual assaults happening on the compound where the

gangs are running the buildings. You have stuff like what I was saying earlier where dudes getting, I mean, tortured and beaten, all this. You have a lot of stuff like that, but you don't have a lot of the sexual assaults. But down in lockdown, you do have the sexual assault because these guys are in the cells where they have roommates. And in the building, it might be left completely abandoned for 12 hours or more, you know, at times.

So, and these are buildings that are supposed to have 30-minute checks on these guys. And these are also buildings that are never supposed to be abandoned. None of these bills at these close security prison. In order for them to be classified as close security, they have to meet the classification specifics to be classified as close security. Once they classify them as close security, that's pretty much them admitting that, hey, this guy needs, as it says, to be closely supervised.

So it's within the policy that close security inmates never supposed to be left abandoned. Like these buildings are it supposed to be exactly how it was when I started where it don't matter if it's Christmas Eve night at one o'clock in the morning. Like they're supposed to be an officer in that building, period. Like there's no excuse. So just to see things get to the point where, I mean, at Johnson, there was weeks and months that would go by without an officer really, I mean, even counting, man. You know, so it just, uh, conditions really got. really bad as far as the living conditions, their sales, because that's another big thing that we had in 2020.

When I got back to Telfare, the inmates on the compound would be wanting money to buy the drugs and stuff. So what they would do, they would go to the hole and go in there and tear the light fixture out the dang ceiling in their cell while the bill was abandoned and then make knives out of it. sales and knives and then come out a lot down and then they would go back and then they would do that and then the staff are so short that it's not like used to be like even when i started on tier before i put somebody in a cell i would go in that cell i would do an inspection of the cell we even had a little sheet that we fill out

you know a cell inspection such such as is going in this cell on this day and so forth so on and so on and uh that was a way to keep up with things like this where these guys can't tear stuff up and and get away with it. But what I'm saying is by this point in 2020, I mean, it was so short and there were so few of us there that doing stuff like a cell inspection and all that was just,

it's impossible. Like, I barely have enough time to get everybody fed here, like with the resources I have. So doing these cell inspection sheets and all this, it just wasn't happening. So, and then that's why a situation like this happened.

So after six months of that, I mean, you got 40 sales in lockdown And they ain't but 10 of them that's even got a light in the cell. Because they didn't make knives out of the rest of it. You know, so stuff like that. And then just with the building being abandoned like this, I mean, just a numerous incidents. Like we had a guy at Johnson that had a pipe.

So he had a big piece of pipe out of the pipe chase in his waistband. We're going around on inspection. It's me and the warden. And the warden is the only other male there. And the warden's like 55, diabetic, 300 some odd pounds. Like, he's not, he doesn't have the physicality to go in and do a use of force. We see this guy with the pipe. He refuses to give it to the warden.

He refuses to give it to me, so forth and so on. So I tell the warden like, hey, you don't have to call a Tad squad or something. Like, I'm the only male out here. And this guy, this is another one in a situation where I knew this guy. Like, maybe I could have went in there, but it's. It's definitely not smart to go in a cell as a, you know, as the one man against another man like that. Like, it could go either way, you know. I don't know how it's going to go really.

You know, if there's four or five of us going up in there, pretty much guarantee that this one dude is not going to whoop all of us, you know. Now, you run across some dudes that can fight there, like, real stuff, you know. And that's why, like, I'm not, if I had known what was happening in there, I may would have. But I didn't, all I knew was he had to pipe. but anyway I tell him that he oh I don't think we can call

Tax Squad or none of that go get with the female unit manager and see if she can go down there a sweet-talking out of it so I'm like okay so I go

I tell the unit manager what he said like hey the warden can you go say can you go see if you can sweet dog this guy and this pipe use your powers

of persuasion and stuff as a female and so she went down there tried it. It didn't work. That next day, a guy tried to stab me in ID that was back there threatening the county. It's stuff like this happened so much when these prisons get this bad off because like I say, you got people that are doing drugs all the time. You got people that are their lives in danger. So we've had, we've had several situations where an inmate would assault an officer just to go to high max because they want to go to high max because it's the only

safe spot in the dang state where they can, especially if they got, like a price on their head or something of that. So stuff just got wild in there. But yeah, so the guy tries to stab me an ID. The only reason he didn't stab me is because the orderly told me right before I went in there. Like, hey, this guy, he's got a knife. He said he's going to stab you because we had already had words before this incident

because of him threatening the female. So I had already put him in handcuffs. I already had me an ID waiting on the room. I left him with a lieutenant. This is the day after this situation with the pipe. So the situation happened with the pipe on Thursday morning. I spoke with the unit manager. She was supposed to go, tried a sweet talking about it.

And then I didn't get an update on that after that. I mean, it was in the warden in the unit manager's hand. I'm the cert commander. I went and fed chow and stuff and went through the rest of the day. That next day, I asked her, hey, did you get that pipe from that guy? She was like, no, he wouldn't give it to me. I'm like, okay, now I'm going to have to talk to the warden about this. but this situation happened

to an ID where this guy tried to stab him. So he was down there threatening the counselors. I pull up on him because the counsels called me. I come up. He's still threatening them and talking smack to them and cursing them and all that when I walk up. And these counselors are abandoned in the building too. So

these counselors are way down here in a building. There is no officer in the building whatsoever. That's just a counseling office and then four dormitories of inmates. No officer in the booth. No officer in the... Just wild wild west down here. You know, so the situation like this actually happened pretty common when it gets like this. But so I come up, this guy's threatening the counselor. I tell him to turn around and put his hand on the back and he acts like he's going to buck.

So I pull the taser on him. When I pull the taser on him, he turned around cuffs up. I take him up the ID. And when we're going ID, I have to go find him a cell in lockdown. Because you can't just throw them in any cell in lockdown. You got to make sure that they're not. opposed as far as with gang affiliation, with pre-status, whatever the case is. You've got to make sure that the people are compatible when you put them in the cell together

in a lot down. So I was doing all that and getting the going to find him a room. There was a lieutenant in there, though, another male. So today, this Friday, because the shifts go like Monday, Tuesday, all Wednesday, Thursday, work Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So that Thursday, there was not even one other male at this whole prison. And this prison has like 1,400 male inmates. So the Thursday, there wasn't another male.

That next day to Friday, when all this is happening, there is one other male. He's a lieutenant. So he was an ID. So I left the guy in cuffs with him sitting on the bench. I tell, hey, man, have a seat right here. I'm going to go, find him a room. I'll be right back, Lieutenant. Okay, I got you.

I go, and then I come back. As I'm coming back, the ID orderly meets me out on the sidewalk. Hey, I just want to let you know. Such a, the lieutenant, he took the cuffs off this guy. said he had to go down to wherever and that now this guy he says he's going to stab you when you come in there like he already pulled a knife out and everything

I mean I'm very thankful that that guy told me all this stuff so he tells me that the guy's going to try to stab me so I walk in I walk up to him I say hey man just stand up turn around put your hand money back as soon as I said that he hopped up and went in the pocket and started pulling out with a knife but I mean I was already ready in my mind

and then I was really looking at back, I probably should have called some people and all that instead of just walking up in there by myself and trying to do that with him. But, yeah, I mean, who else is going to come really? Anyway, but anyway, I walk up to him when I tell him to cuff up, he pulls up. He's pulling the knife. As he's pulling a knife, I draw a taser and shoot him. It's like a very quick draw with it.

I shot him. He went down. The knife flops on the floor. I get on top of him. And then when the taser stops deploying, he's trying to reach for the knife. So I'm rolling around in the floor with him in there. getting his wrist. He broke my watch off my wrist and all that.

I mean, it was pretty big incident. I mean, I never hit him or anything because I was already on top of him from the time that the taser stopped working. So, I mean, I had him under control. And plus, this guy wasn't that big. That's another reason why I just walked up to him without no regard, really, because I was like, man, yeah. And this was already after all this stuff that I've been through at tailfare

and I haven't been stabbed before and all this. So I just really wasn't that worried about it, really. but yeah so I get the knife in my hand I get him cuffed up all that he refuses to even walk to the lot now so I have to carry him with this lieutenant after I get him up there carry him down the lot now I go up now now keep in mind this guy still got the pipe up there too I go up uh talk because this happened in the evening that Friday and I tell the warden and I tell the deputy warden I say hey look this is what happened with this guy I don't forgot his name now at this point, but I thought I knew the guy's name good at that time. I said, hey, this is what happened.

He was threatening the counselors. And then when I tried to lock him up, he tried to pull a knife on me and all this, an ID. We had to, I had to use force on him. He broke my watch, all this, which one of the inmates ended up fixing my watch. So I was glad about that. I was going to charge him with dang destruction of property if my watch couldn't have been fixed. But he got it fixed. So I didn't even write him a day off for that.

Anyway, I said the reason I was going up there telling them that is because by this point, They had already started a practice where they would have a release list for the weekend because so many people are putting theirself on the door on the compound. Do you know what that mean? Like getting put on the door or putting yourself on the door. It's when you essentially refuse housing where you say, I'm going to the hole. You know, I'm not, what are they call that? And is there like a saying?

Checking in. Checking in. Okay, yeah. So there are so many people checking in because of how dangerous the compound is that the lockdown stays completely full. So over the weekend, if somebody checks in or gets stabbed or whatever the case is, they have to let one person out a lockdown

just to put one person in. So they would have lists to who you can let out. The reason I was going to them was to tell them, like, make sure that this guy does not get released. Like, he's threatened two counselors and tried to stab me today. So I go up there, I talk to him about all that. I remind him about the pipe.

I said, hey, you know what I said she didn't get that pipe either. No. Okay, well, Monday, we're going to get this plan together on Monday. I was like, okay, Monday when I come in. So every day when I would come in, I would go straight to the east side over there and be running, helping my child because that was like the side that had the gang members mostly and all that. And the other side was mostly like wheelchair guys and mental health inmates and stuff like that. and they were just easier to manage.

So I would always go over there because I mean, I was a certain commander anyway. And plus, I was familiar with that type of interaction because, like I said, like I was saying earlier, like,

tailfare was almost nothing but game members, especially in certain buildings. So I was already used to interact with them. Like, I'm not scared to deal with them. Like, I know what I'm doing as far as managing that population. So I would always go over there. Man, I go over there. I can't, open the gate,

go on the east side. I go out on the sidewalk. And, man, I ain't on the sidewalk five minutes. Guess who I run into? The same guy that I just put in lockdown on Friday, me and him roll up on each other on the sidewalk. And just luckily, I'm looking at him.

So, and after he tried to stab me in ID, keep in mind, the whole way I'm taking him down there. Yeah, I'm going to stab your bitch ass when I get out. Da-da-da-da-da-da. And all this. So I see him. I say, what's up? You know, he's looking at me.

He looked me up and down. I looked him up and down. I said, what's up? you know and then he was like oh i'm gonna spare you and then he started he turned around and started walking off toward the building so i'm sitting here and like i don't even know what to do really in this situation like do i lock him back up do i just let him go like what what is the point what are we even doing out here that's when i'm now i'm getting like angry because i'm like man are we keeping anything secure are we fulfilling the mission are we doing any of this

I ain't even thinking about the pipe situation at this point. I'm thinking about this dude that just literally tried stab a staff member and threatened two other staff members. And he wasn't even locked down two days. He's back out. I mean, he could have walked up behind me if I wouldn't see him and stabbed me. I mean, I wasn't worried about him if I'm looking at him. But you get my point.

He should not have been let out. I go up top and I'm pissed. I'm like, what are y'all doing, man? Y'all going to get somebody hurt out here doing this stuff. I said, I came up here at my seat. self and told y'all and not only that but i put it in the system too because i'm the one that made a move because as a supervisor you you made the move and i'm putting him in the cell like i said i'm the one that had to go find out what cell he could go in so i'm putting it in the notes uh verbally threatening

staff members possession of a weapon all this stuff and they just turn around let him out and they let him out on saturday so he didn't even spend 24 hours and sig and they let this guy out so all this situation just makes me say to heck with this stuff i went on stress league. I thought, I'm going to go and I'm going to go to the doctor. So I went and I went out of stress leading. Okay. Because at this point, I mean, I had, well, I took leave when I had, because I ended up having to have neck surgery after I got stabbed during an incident at tailfare.

I guess when the guy, that's what the doctor said, probably having, when he stabbed me in the front of that gas mask, because it did go through the face shield, but it didn't go through but about that much. And it actually, because it tore the gas mask off my head. I mean, it was a good hit that he hit me with. And it didn't tear it all the way off. It was kind of dangling there for a minute. and then once we flipped over, it came the rest of the way off,

or it was just barely sitting on my head right at the end of it. But that snap, when it snapped my head back that hard, it ruptured the disc in my neck. So I ended up having to have a fusion. So I got a plate and some screws and all that. I'm missing one vertebrae. You know, my C5 and C6, they just all won. So I had already had that.

But other than that, I hadn't taken no leave. I had heck of leave. I had probably a thousand hours leaves. I was like, I'm going to go out and leave, and I'm probably going to leave this whole Shabang. So I got out and leave. That's when I called somebody that I knew

that was high up in GDC. And I said, look, I'm coming up on 10 years of being in this system. I said, I've done a lot. And that's another thing I didn't even mention before, but during 2020,

they nominated me for the supervisor of the year and they awarded me with that for that year 2020. 2020, man, was crazy. I mean, I disarm a dude with a machete. I stopped. And somebody's incident And it's like, I'm forgetting about it because this stuff like this happens so much.

And so when I went to go get the award, they was like, Sergeant Ryle from Telfare State Prison, you were awarded with supervised a year for outstanding bravery in preventing several officers and inmates from being stabbed. And I'm sitting there and thinking, what officer did I stop being stabbed? You know, I'm trying to think, you know, because it's just so many situations like this. And when you're one of the only men that's physically capable or willing to do something like that. that around, then you're just always the one, you know. So by that time, like I say, I mean, I was just involved so much because the person they would call, you know, because there wouldn't be nobody else around, you know, especially at Johnson.

But anyway, so I told this guy I knew, I was like, look, I did all this stuff and y'all want me to be in corrections and all this. I said, but I'm not staying in these prisons. I said, I came to a medium security camp. I said, I just spent seven years between two of the worst prisons in Georgia. I came here to this medium security camp, which Johnson is a medium security. It's not supposed to be nothing like this. It's not supposed to be the wild west.

It ain't supposed to be the wild west of these closed securities either like it is. But you get what I'm saying. Like, it really shocked me that Johnson was that bad off being as they were medium security. So I told this guy, I was like, look, I'm out on leave for three weeks. I said, by the time I come back, I'm saying, if I don't get something outside these facilities, I'm resigning. I'm just letting you know. I'm going to leave this.

I'll go be some other type of law enforcement or something. So he was like, okay, let me see what I can find out. Man, it wasn't even 24 hours later. They called me back. Oh, we can get you started at instructing. You know, because I had already had my instructor certifications. And I was the full-time instructor at Vodosta, too, for a little over a year. That first year that I was there, I was a lieutenant on the inside,

and then I ended up getting the instructor position there. So I had already done full-time instructing by this point. I was certified in everything. So, I mean, I could do stuff like this. And that's how I got rolled over in the structure. Anyway, when they told me that, he was like, it's going to be 30 days before you can get you over in there. So you got to go back to work for 30 days. Oh, okay.

That's fine. And there was other stuff, too, that happened to John, that I could go into. But it's like, man, you'd be here all day trying to go through this stuff. But so I come back. I come in. And they're a girl at the front entry because, I mean, I like talking to people. I like talking to people anyway. Just in general, I just like people.

people for most part, you know, unless they're like, like I was telling about some people was just nasty acting. I don't really like them too much. But even them, I talk to them, but you get my point. I'm always talking to people. I come in, I'm talking to her. She's like, oh, we got two staff members that got hurt last week. I'm like, how do they get hurt?

It's like doing a cell extraction down there on such a thing. She said the guy's name. And I was, oh, that's that guy that in the pipe. They ended up, man, going in there. there. And I told the warden, with that day, I said, you need to call tax squad because we do not need to take no women in this cell. Like, you cannot go in the cell on this guy with two women and two men and think that this is going to turn out good. This is a real deal guy. He's a real deal violent. And it's going to take some real deal of physicality to get him under control. Like, because this guy,

he was, it's kind of a similar situation to this one at tailfare where, I mean, he wasn't the head of security for nothing, but, I mean, the reason I knew this guy, he had the top part of his ear bit off, and that was at Valdosta. And I seen that incident when he got his ear bit off because they was three people jumping him, and they went, by the end of it, they was biting him. So that just tells you how violent that guy. Like, even with three people jumping on this guy, he's fighting hard enough to where they start biting him because he's biting them, and he can hit hard.

He's very, like I said, he's just explosive, all this stuff. Like, he can fight. There's just a small percentage of people that just nigh the leg into fight. Like you're going to have a problem dealing with them if they go. And this is one of them guys. So I told him all that. And that's when I was trying to get a tax squad there. But they didn't want to do to all that.

Come to find out, man, they left him up there almost that whole three weeks. So this has been weeks since. Because remember, I went out and leave. I'm not even there. I'm at the house. It was about four days or so before I came back that they actually, and this is the reason they went in there. They finally found out that this guy had been in there raping his roommate

because he had a roommate. Even on that first day that we seen the pipe, he had a roommate. The roommate wasn't doing nothing, you know, just sitting in the bed, you know. But they ended up finding out that he had been sexually assaulting the roommate, and then they went in there with two women and two men, and one of the women got hurt and one of the men got hurt. and they're just they're lucky that nobody get killed or something in there because i mean he had weapons all this stuff he bit he bit a big bite into the into the bicep of the male hurt one of

the females in the leg or something of that which i mean and that's sad i don't want to see no officer get hurt but what is even sadder is that we knew about the pipe all this time ago and because we have abandoned this prison out here with it that forget about having control of 1,400 inmates. We don't even have the people here to deal with one guy that has got a pipe in his cell and they won't give it up. We don't even have enough. We don't have four men.

Like I said, that day was just me. And they don't want to do these things like calling people in for whatever reason. Like maybe they're being told they better not. I don't know what the dang reason is, but that all needs to be stopped. These prisons do need help. They've been needed help for years and years. years. This stuff got bad like what I'm talking about around 2019, 2020, and it spread through the majority of our prisons in Georgia. So right now, Wilcox State Prison, Dooley State Prison,

Telfare State Prison, Valdosta State Prison, Central State Prison, Making State Prison, Smith State Prison. I mean, just those prisons, that's like 8,000, 9,000 people right there that are being subjected to cruel and use of punishment every day. Now, are all of them being subjected to that? I mean, all of them are being forced to survive in an environment like what I'm explaining to you, which can be cruel and unusual in and of itself. But there is a subset of the population at these prisons that are being victimized, like what I'm saying, and being victimized for extended periods, and even being victimized after we know, like there, when I first started in, man, there is zero chance that somebody would have had a freaking weapon in the cell and

that we wouldn't have took it that day. That day, we would have took that pipe from that guy. Come hell or high water. We would have got ten people to go in there. If we need to, we would have got him now. But you don't have the resources at these prisons to even deal with stuff like this. And then that's how these situations end up going on for so long like that. So, I mean, that guy, they ain't going to tell him what all happened.

That guy in that cell. Like, it'd probably dang crushed my soul if I sat there and heard his whole testimony, especially knowing that I seen the dang pipe in that. We should have did something that day. So stuff like that has been happening for a long time now. And there's just the cost of this whole situation being allowed to go like this is, it's costed a lot of people a lot. I'll tell you that.

Why did you leave? Well, they, after I wrote that statement, okay. So I wrote, and keep in mind, so I left and went into the instructor. And then like I was saying before, I mean, I'm still here. hearing these things. I'm seeing these officers going through this. I'm seeing an officer get beat too, because that was another thing that ultimately led me to being like,

okay, I'm going to just write the whole leadership of GDC and say, it's time to do something because they had a male at Washington that got beat when he was out there by himself. He, he made got aggressive with him. And this guy, I mean, I knew his guy. This guy was so soft-spoken, so, I mean, he was nothing like me. I mean, he's not going to sit there. He's not a fighter or another that.

You know what I mean? Like, he's not aggressive and all that. Like, it's just not his nature. But this inmate gets aggressive with him and punches him and knocks him out. And it's just out there stomping him on the sidewalk. There is no man here to help him. The females that were around, I mean, they just can't do it. Most of the time when a female, when a man gets really violent in front of a female, it freezes them.

And I think that that's probably natural to, to, to, protect women. Like when stuff like that starts happening, when the men start fighting and all that, like, just stay away from, you know, and that's natural. Like, I'm not knocking the women for that. Like, that's not a woman's place to stop a man when he gets violent like that. But they're leaving his prisons abandoning like this. Anyway, so that happened with that guy.

He got stunked down on the sidewalk. There's other situations, too, and a situation where these females have been harmed. And then nobody's there to help him, man. usually, and I've seen this happen multiple times, when one of these real bad incidents happen, now usually they don't do it with the men. So like with that guy that was getting stomped out on the sidewalk, like nobody really helped him until,

and one of the females all the way from the front entry got down there. So this is a, he got beat out on the sidewalk. And one of the females helped him. But when it's the females, usually one of the other inmates would step up and help them. But if it hadn't been for that, man, there's no telling how many female officers we would have, that would have died or would have got sexually assaulted. Who knows what would have happened to them?

Because they were abandoned in these buildings. They don't even have a male officer around whatsoever. So just, it's luckily and thankfully that some of these inmates, the honorable guys would be like, no, man, we ain't letting this happen. And they would do something, you know.

But so all, I'm seeing all the culmination of all this. I'm seeing that I'm coming to more and more the realization that this is not specific to one or two or three prisons. Like this is pretty much statewide. It's being covered up by things like what I'm talking about, massively underreported incidents, falsifying the documents, all the audit paperwork.

And I've been no doubt, and that was part of my statement, too. I put in there. I refuse to participate in any of this ACA documentation until these issues are addressed. Because the ACA documentation in and of itself is a lie. It's fraudulent. It is impossible to run a facility to ACA standards when you have, a tent of the officers there that you need to run it. You know what I'm saying?

So there's so much stuff that's being pencil whipped. I mean, because these artists, that's all it is. It's not like they come in and review the cameras and see did you count in all this. It's they come in, they look at this paperwork, and they say, oh, all the boxes are checked. A-plus, you know. And so stuff like that. And it's just the culmination of all this stuff. And it was three pages worth of stuff that I wrote in this statement.

I tried to be kind of, try to hit most of the high points of what's going on and what needs to be done. So when I submitted that, they didn't say nothing but for 24 hours. They just, I didn't hear nothing. I was just sitting there. I wonder what they're going to say. Because I emailed. I didn't give it in, I mean, I've already, I figured that I'd probably be retaliated against for doing this. Just because I had already seen where this ACA thing is unquestionable and all.

this and to me like it's not unquote nothing's unquestionable to me but especially not something like that because the ACA have you ever heard of that the american correctional association they're not anything we have to do anyway that's some stuff that the state decided they wanted to try to do to get accredited and to be able to have all these perks lawfully and all this stuff but it's a lie like i say all this paperwork is a lie anyway when i said that i submitted it after about 24 hours they had my direct supervisor call me because I sent it to him too I sent it to my direct supervisor

I sent him to his supervisors the supervisor above them all the way to the director of training and I think the assistant commissioner too but I may not have put the assistant commissioner it was like 10 people that I I met all the way up chaining my command they had my supervisor call me

and was like hey well you are you okay and blah blah are you just venting and I was like no I'm not just venting like that's that's this is real like something needs to be done it's time for us to to stop uh putting a band-aid on this thing and it's time for us to do something he was like oh well they they they said they want to get and i'm sitting there like day day they put a name on it you know what i'm saying like somebody whoever is against because even him and all these people that i talked to including the

citizen commissioner none of them would deny what i was saying the citizen commissioner kind of tried to you like oh well i don't want you making blanket statements and all this but I ain't making no blank a statement. I've been to most of these prisons. I'm speaking with people at a bunch of these prisons. This is real. Then he gave me a few hours, I guess, to try to see if I would recant. That's what they wanted me to do, would just say I was venting and recant.

I refuse to do that. Then he said, okay, well, you got two options. You can resign or you can be terminated. They have not even so much as tried to address any of this. because in my statement, I listed out several different things. I talked some crap about the ACA stuff, which is corrupt, and I've seen that with my own eyes. I talked about bad supervisors that were bringing down the morale and that were running officers off. And we have people like that.

And not only with the, and you're talking about with the inmates and stuff, most of these supervisors that are running the officers off, Like they're also, I mean, I wouldn't say it's cruel, but they're just nasty, man. They're just nasty. Oh, you're a bitch and this and that. You know, they're saying stuff like this to the inmates and stuff. And nine times out of ten, this is going to be females because as a male, I mean, I can't do that anyway. It don't matter. I might be the circuit manner.

If I go around calling these dudes bitches and stuff, man, it ain't going to take long. You know, I'm going to be getting stabbed, you know, but sometimes the females can, you know, they can skirt by and do stuff like that. that. But when they're doing stuff like that, they're running off your staff members because they're also treating their subordinates like that, too, you know. And then there was another issue, too, that I brought up in amongst that. They didn't even try to address any of that. They told me I could either quit right then and have resident resign be on my paperwork or I can get terminated. So I told them, we was on the phone when I'm doing all that. I said, do your paperwork. They said, oh, what do you mean? I do the paperwork, man. I'm not quitting for nothing.

They won't be nothing saying that I'm resigned behind this stuff. Y'all got that statement. If you want to fire me, you need to say that you're firing me for the statement. Then they send a statement up. Then the HR director calls me. Oh, da-da-da-da. Are these things really going on and blah, blah, blah. Oh, yeah.

That was the other issue I brought up because they've been sending females to hospital posts and stuff, just two females. Not even having a male officer with male inmates. that's insane. First of all, this against policy. But all this, man, there is no policy

that's being followed in this stuff anymore, man. It's just, it's crazy than I'm even having to do stuff like this to try to get the word out to people because it's really that insane

that, and a lot of people, like even on some of the stuff that I do, they be like, ah, you do the time, you do the crime,

you do the time and all this. And I'm like, look, that is not the situation that we're, these people are not doing time. Whatever this is, that's happening.

It's not doing prison time. It's gladiator school. It really is. And this is not good for any of these people involved. It's not good for the people that are perpetrating all this violence because they're becoming some cruel and evil MFers down there as they're torturing these people for weeks on the end. And it really changes their psyche doing this stuff.

It's definitely hurting the ones that are being tortured and all this. But guess what? It's also messing up. it's messing up everybody in there just got a conscience because, and I've had guys tell me stuff like this, like I see some of this stuff happening and I want to do something because they're walking this guy across the floor,

beating him and stomping him and all this or treating him like an animal and making him eat pee and beans and all this stuff and I want to intervene, but I can't, have to mind my own business. Because I'm talking about inmates that are telling me, you know, what they're feeling like in these situations,

where they're seeing these people be done like this, and they're not like me. Like when I'm down there as an officer, if I see something like that, I'm going to intervene, and I'm supposed to and all that. But from the inmate side of things, when the gangs are running it so much,

and it's the prison politics, quote, and quote, that are doing it, then you know how that goes. Like, people are going, quote, quote, they're going to mind their business. Like, you're not going to have nobody trying to save people down there in the building. You know, so.

So what ends up happening? Eventually, they let them go or they kill them. No, to you. Oh, okay. So I tell them that I refuse to quit. The HR director calls me and says, oh, you don't need to get fired. We need to have you talk to the assistant commissioner. So I talked to assistant commissioner on a Zoom meeting.

I actually got this. It's published on YouTube. It wasn't 20 minutes long. He was, it pissed me off, man, this whole thing. he gets on a Zoom meeting with me. He doesn't deny what I'm saying, but he does try to tell me like, oh, I just don't think you know what we're doing

to try to recruit people and stuff. And I feel like that if you came up here and seen what we're doing, and man, I haven't been all up there, man. It's like the arrogance of some of these people, man. And then he's also the one that's telling me they can't do the National Guard because they, duh. And then also he lied to me and sold me that the National Guard is mostly female in Georgia.

As soon as I got all the phone, I'm looking up the information. It's like over 70-something percent, almost 80 percent mail. So it's like, why are you even lying with what you're saying? Anyway, we had this 20-minute conversation. He lies. He tells me that he don't want me making, quote-unquote, blanket statements and all that. Pretty much trying to intimidate me and not following through with what I'm trying to do. And then at the end of it, you know, this man has a nerd tell me, oh, well, it didn't even address,

Didn't even read the statement, man. When we first started the call, I mean, you can listen to this. It's on my YouTube. I mean, I didn't record it video-wise, but I recorded the audio of our call because it's legal to do, being as I'm a member of the call, at least in Georgia. Toward the end of that, he's like, well, we sure love to have you back in the prison. This guy goes and tells, and I'm just like, oh, okay, you mean, you can even hear me at the end of the call. So we just talked about all this.

First of all, you didn't even read the statement of what I explained. to you, your responses are either illegitimate, like this stuff about the training stuff, or they're just outright lies, like saying that the National Guard is mostly female. And then at the end of this call, you're like, oh, well, if you want to be a part of helping fix it,

then we'll put you back in. And then the HR director calls and says, oh, well, we got this deal for you. We're going to put you at Hancock State Prison as a lieutenant, and we're going to leave your pay all the same, blah, blah. We're not even going to take pay from you.

even though we spode and now their whole demeanor has changed because I don't know, man. I don't know what they got going on. But now they're like, oh, well, you ain't going to get in trouble. I'm like, and then I saw, I'm saying, ma'am, I'm not doing that. I'm not about to go to Hancock and be no lieutenant. And in fact, it peed me off even more when she told me that stuff. So I'm like, so you got somebody blowing a whistle about plain non-constitutional conditions going on. horrible supervisors that are running off,

are officers, and females being placed in extreme danger, and your response is to, what, punish me, move me to a different place just because I said something about it. And then I also knew that there was a, one of the corrupt people that was at Johnson that was being told on,

or being informed on by the captain, the only reason I didn't get involved in that whole situation at Johnson with this deputy warden that was corrupt is because the captain was already on it. The captain was already, me and him were talking about it. And he was reporting him. So I was like, okay, hey, look, it's good. I don't even have to say nothing because I had already, before the captain even brought it up, I had already been thinking like, man, this dude's got to go, man.

This dude's corrupt. I'm talking about bad. Do you know, man, after the captain tried to talk to internal affairs about that deputy warden, They showed up next week out there, strip searching and searching the captain, the one that's trying to, you know. So I had already seen stuff like that, and I knew that that guy got moved to handgun. And I was like, this SOB, man, they're trying to set me up. Man, they're trying to get me over there with this corrupt guy so that they can set something up on me. I'm like, man, no, I'm not doing it.

Then, and I actually, I didn't even just say that I'm not doing it. And I got evidence of all this stuff. I sent them an email saying, these are two things that I would do. one of them was I said that I would go to Johnson State Prison if y'all would give me 20 members or so. It might not have been 20. Maybe it was 15. I can't remember an exact number of the Interdiction Response Team, which is essentially the Tax Squad, so that I can take control of that prison and that we can get a serious recruitment effort going.

Once I've hired 50 officers or whatever, then you can release the tax squad and I'll do whatever. I'll be a lieutenant or whatever at Johnson. But and then the second option I gave them was that I'd go and be the, the tier supervisor or the lockdown. Because Johnson don't have tier, but I thought them I'd be the lockdown supervisor. And then at the end of that, I put, well,

at least if y'all have made me the supervisor of the lockdown, then it's only one building. So I can make sure things go right in that one building at the prison. And I'm kind of being a smart bud at this point because it's like, what are you even, what are we even doing here? You know, but I mean, I was serious, though. If they would have did it as one of those things, I would have did it because it would have actually been something going toward a solution, you know, especially with the first thing, like getting, because that's what they need. Like, they have to get some people at these prisons, some able-bodied men that are teachable and that will try to enforce order to take control of the prisons.

And that's just, that has to be done to stop these incidents like what I'm talking about, or at least make it manageable, you know. Probably not ever going to be able to just stop. everything. But, man, you can stop having people being tied up in the building getting tortured for weeks. You know, you can stop people from, from getting sexually assault for weeks. You can stop people from being, you know, dead for two days in their decaying in the cell when you find them. That's all uncalled for and unnecessary. Like, it's not that hard to stop stuff like that. So, but after I sent them that, they sent back a thing saying, uh, saying that by refusing,

to take their offer, I resigned. And they counted as a resignation. I got a separation notice saying that I resigned on the 13th, which was that day, and I still got all this, that I sent them that response saying, these are two things that I would do, but I'm not going to Hancock, you know. So do you get unemployment for that or no?

Is there an appeal process? I mean, you probably didn't even want to go back, right? Exactly. What about a lawsuit? I mean, I went up. around to two or three. Everybody that, I looked it up, like, which lawyers except wrong for termination and retaliation against whistleblowers.

I called them, I think it was either two or three firms in Georgia. I sent them my stuff, and they all said, well, we don't want to take the case pro bono. Oh, they want to get paid for it? I want to get paid for it. I mean, I just, I don't have the money to do all that, man. Like, I've been a dang officer in a prison. I mean, by the time I ended my career, like, I was actually making pretty good money, rather than in, or pretty good for Georgia, you know, about 80,000 a year or something of that.

But, I mean, this whole thing is just shocked me. Like, really, I didn't expect it to go that way. Like, I expected to get some resistance, you know, but at the same time, like, I expected that somebody at least hear me out and for us to do something. Like, I really, it completely surprises me that we have allowed this to go this far. Because this is bordering on, like, crimes against humanity is the way I'm looking at it, especially now, especially because. because they've been, because like I'm saying,

all this that I'm talking about with the writing statement of this, this is in August of 2024. Okay. October 1st of 2024, so two months after that, the DOJ submits the 93 page report saying, yes,

Georgia Department of Corrections is an indirect violation of the United States Constitution, imposing criminal injury punishment on the inmates and blah, blah, and gives all the reasons why, and that report is accurate. It's not comprehensive. Like, the reality is that. actually way worse than what that report says.

But that report says that, yes, they're violating the Constitution. They're imposing a cruel or unusual punishment upon the inmate population, that they're deliberately indifferent to the safety and welfare of the inmates. And I would include the staff in that as well, because they are. So the DOJ said that in 2012. And here we are. And they have still, to this day, allowed this stuff to be like this. and even worse.

I mean, it gets worse by the week, man. Do you regret coming forward since you lost your job? No. Oh, man,

I'll lose everything before I stand for something like this bull crap what's going on. What do you do now? A roof. So actually, the day that they let me go,

I called my cousin. I was like, hey, what are you doing for work right now? I operate a bulldozer. I was like, do y'all need some help? He's like,

yeah, let me call such such such. And then we, He called me back. I think it was on like a Friday. You were like, you could start Monday. So, shoot, man, I didn't even got my severance check before I started working at, you know, heavy equipment operator. Oh, they gave you a severance truck or?

Well, they paid me from a leave and stuff, you know, that I had accumulated. At least you're in a safer job now. Not really, though. Man, heavy equipment operating. So it was not long after I left. I was operating a bulldozer. Then the big hurricane hit, Helene. So then I went to being a day and.

then a basket cutting trees and stuff because uh which i might like stuff like that it's not i'm not really out for safety really but and then so i did that for about a year and then for this last little over year i've been doing roofing so metal roofing so it's be like 150 especially during like this summer man i took a temperature gun one day and i was like man it's it feels like it's way hotter than the hundred degrees up here on this roof and it is man i took me a little temperature gun hit it at 145 148 i'm like down Dang. You know, you can feel the heat from your shoes up through the, when you're walking on the metal roof and stuff.

But, yeah, I've just been doing that. I mean, I've been doing the, trying to do interviews and stuff for over a year now. I did a couple on my personal YouTube channel. I did most of them on other people's because I'm really trying to get the message out there. Like, this whole stuff, what I'm doing, like, like I was saying before, like, this is not, this is negatively affecting tens of thousands of people. people. And it's already resulted in hundreds of unnecessary deaths. And unnecessary other things, like I was telling you about earlier, with the guy with the pipe and the sexual assault and all that.

And nothing. I mean, I'm talking, and this is not even an issue that's that hard to fix, you know. And then it was after getting in all this with the state that I've looked into other things and then you run into stuff. I mean, we don't have to go into all that. Yeah. You're like, the whole government is like in treason, active treason right now. Like, they are predatory against us.

It's fucked. Yeah. And it's evident with stuff like this prison stuff when you can't get anything done. Even when what you're talking about is a direct violation of the Constitution. Like, as far as I'm concerned, these people like Ahmed Holt, that's the one I had the Zoom meeting with, like these people that was trying to get me to recant. And they are all violating the civil rights of these inmates and the constitutional rights. Like, they need arresting. And this situation needs to be put a stop to, which is easy to put a stop to.

It's not that hard to secure a prison. Now, when you get looking into reform and stuff, there needs to be a lot of reform. There needs to be nutritional reform because the nutrition they get is crap, and that's got a lot to do and why we have so many mental health disorders in the prison, because our metabolic system, is very heavily tied with how our freaking brain operates. Like, duh. But, I mean, I didn't know all this stuff before, but I'm... Since doing this, like, I'm trying to look at things from a broad view.

Because, like, I don't just want the prison to be manned. Like, I would like to see rehabilitation happening. I would like to see humane conditions. And a lot of these guys, man, we got some good guys that are in prison. Like, just is what it is. I've seen it myself. Like, they mentor other people. They conduct themselves rightously.

most part, and they're not the scum of the earth or nothing. Now, there are some of those in there. Like I was saying earlier, I mean, there's some in there to sit there and whip up duty just to throw it in your face, you know, so you got those type of dudes that are in prison. But those are the minority. And the real, real good guys, I mean, they're a minority, too, you know. So you got the real, real bad ones.

You got the real, real good ones. And then all the other people fall somewhere in the middle of that. but my point is like they're all human beings most of them have the opportunity or will have if they survive the conditions they're in have the opportunity to come back out in society do we want people coming back out into society after having been in straight war for 20 years i mean because this stuff really affects these guys like i'm i'm telling you because i've seen it like they'll be i mean i've had guys sit there crying and begging me man please riles don't move me to this building. And it'd be gang numbers telling me, don't move me down there. And I'm like, man, there's 30 of your homeboys down there. You might, you should want to go down there. He's like, no, man, I'm telling you.

I can't even take a shower without having a knife on me. You know, I'm in there bathing with a knife in my hand and then getting done and rinsing and swapping to the other hand and bathing the other side of my body. And they're just telling me how this is really messing with them, to have to be literally holding a knife all the time. their freaking boots on because this whole thing is able to just flip upside down any second. And, I mean, I've seen that.

I mean, it does. They do have to stay ready, especially if they're in the game because at any moment, the other gang might be rolling up on stabbing the crap out of killing you, you know. So, and that's uncalled for. Like, since the 1890s, I think Georgia has had a law saying that you have to separate known combatants. Okay. So why do we have dorms with bloods and crips and GDs and Hispanic gangs and white gangs and all in the same building? And then you lay that building abandoned.

Of course there's going to be war in there. Of course there's going to be assaults and all this. You got what, 10 different warring factions of people down there completely unsupervised and all of them are armed. Like even if everybody's cool in there. Well, they're in there making liquor. That's another thing they're doing. These prisoners are so insecure. They're making moonshine steels in the buildings

and burning off straight up liquor, not buck and some fruit wine. No, straight up clear liquor they're making in these buildings. So when these guys gets drunk and stab somebody, and then the next thing you know, there's 20 people that are stabbed because these people are affiliated in gangs. Yeah. Same thing with the meth and stuff. You know, this guy, he's been on meth for three or four days.

He's getting paranoid. He does something. Or sometimes they get sexual because I don't know what's up with the meth, man. I would never do meth. Let me say that on record. I ain't never done meth. Never will I do it, man, because I'm scared of it. I ain't lied.

Some of the stuff that I've seen people do when they get on that meth bad, I'm not. But, yeah, I mean, we have one bad war that happened at Telfare. I need to wrap this thing up. Yeah, let's put a bow on this one. Save these for your channel, you know. Put these on your Facebook and YouTube and stuff, you know. And what was I going to say? Yeah, there was a guy.

It was C1. So this is a really bad ride out of it. I mean, there was a lot of people that got hurt during this thing. And it all started behind a dude high on meth, dumping up for days on meth, doing meth in a building. And then I think this guy was blood or the other guy with you did. One of the other. It was between the blood and the GD though

They was in the room together And the one that was Whichever one of them was up on the meth so bad Deg on try some homosexual stuff on the other guy And then it just It erupted the whole buildings in their stabbing it I mean I think we had like 15 people Had to go to the hospital all this stuff

I mean because the blood and GDs went to war in there Because this guy did that in the room And then the other guy stabbed him And then boom I mean it just goes from there Like once it starts like that, it spreads, especially in that building, you know, and then when you got such large populations of them in there, like that day, I think it might have been like 25 GDs and 20 bloods in there or something like that. Like this is, this is a dang near 50 people going to war up in here with knives. That's crazy.

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. Well, brother, I appreciate you coming on the show. What an episode, you know. Absolutely incredible. But like we were talking about off camera, you got to start just posting these stories on Facebook. YouTube, you know, getting those out there, starting your own channel. You have so much.

Yeah. So many great stories, and you're a good storyteller. Yeah. To tell you the truth, man, like I was saying before, like my thing was to get something done, man. Not see here and,

I mean, not that there's not benefiting this. And I want to do stuff like this because it's part of what happened. And the truth does need to, because as far as on the official record, most of this stuff ain't even happen, like I'm saying. The state will tell you that it's so,

okay, oh, we got a little bit of a staff problem, but not really that bad. And the way they do that, I'm not trying to add too much time here, but the way they do that is they add in all the prisons. So we do have some prisons that are fully staffed, the little PDCs and stuff like that that are not, but all the level five and stuff are so bad, they add the numbers of all of men together. That way they can say, oh, 60% vacancy. When in reality, it's like 90% vacancy at this prison, that prison, this prison.

But yeah, so yeah, I do need to put out more. But also, like, I just want to get in contact with some people that are willing or want to try to stop, put a stop this. Because it is to uphold the Constitution of United States of America is to stop this. So if the Georgia Department of Corrections is some kind of unconstitutional criminal entity, which is what I've been calling them here lately, then they need to be put a stop to. It just is what it is. Like, we can't allow this to propagate in for what generations of people to be harmed, which they've already had been, because this has been, like I'm saying,

this has been going this bad for years now, six plus years, you know. So it needs to be put a stop to. I thank you, sir, very much for having your own. Yeah. Sometimes I get going, man. No, you did great, man. I appreciate you. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.