A couple of days later I was at my desk working on OBCC’s daily statistics, my cynicism growing. Although the form was never without incidents of arm cutting, head banging, and attempted hangings, once I faxed it to Central Office, most of this data would disappear. Self-injurious behavior was considered strictly in terms of suicide attempts. If it was deemed that the motivation for self-harm was “goal-directed”—as opposed to a bona fide wish to die—then it would simply be deleted. In the case of Leonard Putansk, despite the fact that he was taken to the hospital for an attempted hanging, because the gesture came on the heels of his demand to be released from solitary, it was not considered a true suicide attempt. Using this formula, the big numbers of clawing, cutting, and attempted hangings that were so pervasive among the detainees were whittled down to a mere one or two a month, serving as the island’s official numbers—the numbers that were served up to the public. I never trust statistics.
I was just finalizing the form when Theresa Alvarez burst into my office. “Mary! They’re ransacking the MO! They think somebody’s got a razor! I was in the middle of running the community group when the squad came in with nightsticks, helmets, riot gear . . . and everything!”
“Wait here,” I instructed her and dashed across the hall to the MO. I don’t know why I went over—a sense of protectiveness, a reflex, I guess. But when I got to the door, I could go no farther. Mental frailties notwithstanding, a razor blade was a security matter, and I had no business being here; if spotted, I would be solidly reprimanded. But no one had seen me just yet. The door was slightly ajar and I edged in closer, just close enough to see the helmets and to hear a nightstick crack against a metal cot. An angry voice yelled, “Listen up, ya motherfuckers! You’re nothing but sorry pieces of shit—not one of you should have even been born! Maybe you think you’re fooling the doctors with all this mental illness crap, but you’re not”—crack!—“fooling”—crack!—“me! Now I want my razor back—and I want it back now!”
Heavy boots were pounding down the hallway. It was the Emergency Response Services Unit—the Ninja Turtles. I didn’t dare stay a moment longer and darted back across the hall, but not before I caught sight of an oversized angular chair being rushed toward the MO. It always reminded me of an electric chair on wheels. One of DOC’s most favored security apparatus, it detects weapons stored within the body. This was going to be bad.
Back at the clinic, we all buried ourselves in paperwork; no one talked about what was happening across the hall. I looked up at the clock—three-quarters of an hour had ticked by. Ten minutes later, Pepitone stuck his head in and told us the search team had just left.
We ran over to the MO. It looked like a bomb had been dropped. Lockers lay on their sides, family pictures were strewn about, the bookcase that Theresa had set up was on its side, books scattered on the floor. Mattresses were everywhere. The patients were rocking on their mattressless cots, too devastated to start the cleanup. A few sobbed. Victor, the mentally retarded inmate, sat on the edge of his cot; at his feet were his big eyeglasses, the frames twisted and the lenses nothing more than shards of glass.
At the bubble, the usually good-natured Officer Hartman was dazed. Hovering over him, arms flailing, was Burns, who alternated between berating Hartman and then trying to prop up his flagging spirits.
“What were you thinking?” asked Burns. “Mary, he calls security and tells them a blade’s missing. Why’d you tell them it was gone? All you did was get yourself in hot water. What are you? Stupid?”
“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Hartman said glumly. “I was just following procedure.”
Every morning disposable razors for shaving are dispensed from the bubble. In exchange for the razor, the inmate must turn in his all-important ID card. To get the card back, the blade must be returned.
Apparently, Hartman sent the inmates out to rec without checking IDs and without realizing he was still holding one ID card in the bubble, meaning that someone had walked out of the house with a razor blade. Only after the inmates were gone did Hartman notice the remaining ID. Following protocol, he called security and the squad arrived to search the inmate who’d left the ID behind. A strip search revealed no blade. He claimed he’d dropped it in the house and had simply forgotten about his ID. He was hauled off to the receiving room, and that’s when the search team swarmed in.
In the meantime, a grim-looking Captain Catalano, the MO captain, told me the culprit was still in the receiving room and advised me to transfer him to an MO in another jail. Since he’d brought this upon the house, he was in danger of being soundly beaten if returned to the dorm. I filled out the paperwork promptly.
The following day, the blade had not yet turned up and the house was still “on the burn.” Once again, the dorm was ransacked.
Afterward, we decided to gather the inmates in the dayroom and try to comfort them. At first, only a few would get up, but once we got the group going, they started trickling in. They were initially reluctant to talk, but once they started, the floodgates opened. They repeated the speech I’d heard at the door. Then they said they were ordered to strip, lined up against the wall with legs outstretched and palms against the wall, and warned not to make a sound while the team ransacked their belongings and inspected their rectums. They told us their arms were aching, but they all knew the officers were waiting for one of them to flinch—so someone could be made an example of. They said one of them looked at Victor and said, “Hey, Goofy,” pulled off his glasses, and stomped on them.
Back in our office, Dr. Ketchum was beside herself. “For God’s sake, why are they doing this? They’re torturing these fragile people! The razor’s gone—that guy got rid of it in the hallway. Don’t they realize that?”
Even Catalano thought the searches were going too far but told me it was out of his hands. But he did have an interesting take on the whole thing. “The problem here is that it was our mistake. Nobody should have left that dorm without an ID. Now if somebody gets cut up with that razor, especially in an MO house, it would look very bad for the department. That’s why they’re pushing so hard to find it.”
Buzzie Taylor, an older inmate with a long history of drug and alcohol addiction, was a permanent resident on the MO who suffered from major depression. After the third search, we had to console a shaken Buzzie, but not because of the search. He told us he was heading into the bathroom: “I was just going to take a pee and try to forget about everything. I went around a corner and a pair of sneakers banged into my head, and I said, ‘What?’ and then I look up and it’s Teddy—hanging!”
Teddy Gibson, the patient with the crisscross scars who’d been sexually abused as a child, was barely clinging to life. He was already being intubated when the gurney was rushed through the clinic. The ambulance arrived quickly. It was only after a week that we got word that Teddy had survived. I told a much-relieved staff, and they in turn shared the news with the patients. However, there were murmurings that there’d been brain damage. We would never know for sure, as he never returned to OBCC, but after Teddy Gibson’s attempted suicide, the searches ended.