The Prison Officer Podcast

94: Exploring the Path of an Investigative Agent - Interview w/Steve Hansen

• Steve Hansen • Season 1 • Episode 94

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Former special investigative agent Steve Hansen joins us to shed light on a career filled with intense experiences and unique insights into the world of federal corrections. From his humble beginnings in a small Iowa town to navigating the complexities of federal prisons, Steve's story is one of dedication and resilience.

Steve's career journey is nothing short of remarkable, marked by significant events like the volatile "Crack Law Riots" at Greenville.  Discover the challenges he encountered while managing federal medical centers dealing with mental health issues among inmates, and the intricacies of transitioning into investigative roles.

Beyond the bars, Steve's story doesn't end with retirement. Instead, he shares his inspiring transition into an overseas role, where he applied his investigative expertise in Afghanistan, contributing to US peace efforts. His narrative emphasizes the possibilities awaiting those in corrections post-retirement, urging professionals to pursue fulfilling roles that maximize their hard-earned skills.

To contact Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hansen-634129122/

Click here to buy one of the books by Host Michael Cantrell -

Keys to Your New Career: Information and Guidance to Get Hired and Be Successful as a Correctional or Detention Officer http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DFWYSFMK/ref=nosim?tag=prisonoffic05-20

Finding Your Purpose: Crafting a Personal Vision Statement to Guide Your Life and Career http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BW344T4B/ref=nosim?tag=prisonoffic05-20

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Take care of each other and Be Safe behind those walls and fences!

Speaker 1:

In more than 28 years of corrections, I have used or supervised Pepperball hundreds of times. Now, as a master instructor for Pepperball, I teach others about the versatility and effectiveness of the Pepperball system. From cell extractions to disturbances on the rec yard, pepperball is the first option in my correctional toolbox. With the ability to transition quickly from area saturation to direct impact with the non-lethal PAVA projectiles. Pepperball provides me with a range of non-lethal options for cell extractions involving non-compliant inmates and when the use of force is over, decontamination is easy with no oily residue on the walls or floors. To learn more about Pepperball, go to wwwpepperballcom or click the show notes below. Pepperball is the safer option first.

Speaker 1:

Okay, welcome back to the Prison Officer Podcast. My name is Mike Cantrell. Today I get to interview not only an exciting guest but also an old friend, so I'm looking forward. We haven't got to sat down in several years together and talked, so I'm looking forward to talking to him and having this conversation about what he's seen and where he's been. Steve Hansen he's a retired special investigative agent for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He's got over 25 years of experience at various security levels and different supervisory positions. He currently works security overseas and we'll see how much of that he can talk about and hear about what life after corrections is like. He's a good friend of mine and it's a pleasure to have him on the podcast. Welcome, steve.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me on the show.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely well. Thanks, mike. Thanks for having me on the show. Absolutely. I'm excited not only to to share some of your stories with people, but you know we work together for several years and I miss, uh, I miss sitting down and we used to talk a lot. So I'm I'm excited about having you on here, very excited. So I always if I know you've listened, but I always start off the same way I like to hear about where people came from, uh. So if you could tell us you know, tell me about where you grew up, what that was like in school and stuff before you took that jump off into uh, I know you went in the military, so what did you? Where did you grow up at?

Speaker 2:

I grew up in a small town in Iowa called Palo, Iowa. I graduated from Cedar Rapids Kennedy in 1986. Originally I was going to go to the University of Iowa. I had enrolled, knew where I was going to live and all that stuff, and then I ended up being diverted into the Air Force. Basically. One of my friends asked me to go to the Air Force recruiter with him. We both went, he decided not to go and then I ended up going. So that was kind of ironic. So my first assignment was the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

Speaker 2:

And I did a year there and I went to Comaso, sicily, where I met my ex-wife and we had a child. Then I got sent back to Vandenberg. The marriage fell apart, divorced. When I got out of the military, the initial thing was I was going to use my GI bill, but I had a kid to support, so that's how I ended up in corrections. It was right after a desert storm. The job opportunities were not there. However, the United States Penitentiary Lompoc, california, was hiring, so that's how I started off my career.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so what was your MOS when you were in the air force?

Speaker 2:

I was a security specialist.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so you were doing law enforcement type stuff then.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. We're guarding the missile bases.

Speaker 1:

Ah, okay, so a lot of security. Were you dealing with any corrections? Did you see corrections at that level, that level, um, while you were in the air force? I did not I did not uh strictly, uh cop out in the missile fields okay, so any did you know about corrections before you apparently saw that lompoc was hiring? Was there anything that led up to that? Did you know anybody that worked in corrections?

Speaker 2:

uh, to be honest, the way I got interested in it was I got uh, stop lost. Basically, you know, during desert storm I got extended nine months and during that nine months I was taking college courses and it was all law enforcement related, of course. And one of the recruiters from the prison came and talked to our class and he brought out all the you know cool boxes, shanks and was telling us all the war stories and I thought that was pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so how quickly did you get hired and picked up at Lompoc? Hired and picked up at Lompoc.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I got out in August and then I started November of 91. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:

So I was unemployed for like two months yeah.

Speaker 2:

There was like three of us that all got stop-loss together. We all started around the same time.

Speaker 1:

Am I thinking of the?

Speaker 2:

right. Two of us made it out of a career though?

Speaker 1:

Was Lompoc fairly new in the 80s, or am I thinking of a different California fan? No, no, no, no.

Speaker 2:

Lompoc's the old one. No, lompoc's been around since the 1950s.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's settle this right here, because I've been around since the 1950s, so, okay, so let's settle this right here, because I've been around the Bureau for years. Okay, is it Lompoc or is it Lompoc?

Speaker 2:

The locals pronounce it Lompoc.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I usually say that wrong and some people take a lot of offense to that, and then others you know it doesn't matter. So yeah, we'll put that out there for everybody. It is Lompoc, okay, lompoc, okay, I say it wrong, it's Lompoc. I'll get that right. So tell me about that first day. I mean you hadn't been in corrections before, you hadn't been. I'm assuming you hadn't been to jail very many times up to that point.

Speaker 2:

I had not.

Speaker 1:

So what was it like, walking in and hearing that door slam?

Speaker 2:

It was kind of intimidating my first day. It just sucked, you know, because I was the new, the fresh meat. The inmates knew that, so they were talking back to me quite a bit and I, you know you're unsure of what you can and cannot do.

Speaker 2:

And the thing is, though, with corrections, you know, once you get through that first day, each day gets easier once you develop a rapport with the inmates. Uh, you know, all my communication skills I developed over my career comes from Lompoc, having to deal with maximum security inmates that you know, especially from the California area. They didn't really appreciate adult supervision, so to speak, so you had to be able to talk to those guys to be able to get them to do what you wanted to do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so in some ways, one thing I think we have in common is, you know, I grew up in the Midwest also, and then when you go in, especially work in federal prison or moving around and going to the different areas, you're exposed to a whole different, well, different, cultures, different. You know, we don't have the as big a gangs in the different areas. You're exposed to a whole different, uh, well, different cultures, different. You know, we don't have the as big a gangs in the Ozarks in Iowa, uh, so what was some of that like, getting used to?

Speaker 2:

That was a culture shock, total culture shock. Uh, you know, my town of 550, you know, was 550 white people, you know. Yeah, so you know military, obviously I was around minorities and different cultures and stuff like that. But then when you get to prison, where you're dealing with East Coast West Coast, we had a bunch of Jamaicans, we had Haitians, we had, you know know, every ethnic group. Uh, I mean the mexican mafia and the aryan brotherhood, you know, sure, uh, it was, it was yeah, and even, um, even with the different cultures.

Speaker 1:

Now, I mean, especially when you get into those heavy gang cultures, that's something that was just foreign to me. I mean, there's a whole different thought process than working, you know, in the military or whatever, with someone from a different culture. That's a gang culture out there. Their views on criminality, their views, they have a different criminal moral set. So, that kind of blew me away.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it absolutely was an eye-opener and everything was so based on race out there. You know, like, say, you were trying to release somebody out of segregation, you would call the housing unit and you'd literally ask them do you have a white cell available? Do you have a black cell available? Do you have a Hispanic cell available? And if you didn black cell available, Do you have a Hispanic cell available? And if you didn't have a particular race to put the guy that you wanted to kick out of segregation, they stayed in segregation until the opening came up. It was just. It was just. It was weird to me, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So what was, what was some of the things you saw out there, anything that really still stands out in your mind? I mean, that's a big penitentiary. It's been known as a violent one for a long time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the violence was amazing. I remember, in the first six months of 1993, we had six homicides, I shouldn't say six homicides, there's probably four homicides and then two drug overdoses, you know. But you know, six dead inmates and uh, you know, it was just, it was chaos. You know, we lost our warden, had transferred in, he'd been there like nine months and then suddenly he's gone again and uh, then they bring in the cleaner, you, you know the big boss warden, and he comes in and he, you know, fixes everything, I shouldn't say fixes everything, but tries to. We've got to run it operationally again.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, some of the violence. I saw some of the violence towards me. You know, I've been chased with shanks. I had a guy make a homemade gun, homemade zip gun, and he shot me. So, uh, he actually made three of them. He hit me the first one, the second one, uh, uh, missed me, went right by my face and then, uh, you know, finally got away from him. So yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1:

I started at Leavenworth and you know that was considered a big-time penitentiary. But I can't imagine. You know we just had Adam Dennis on here. He worked at the California Department of Corrections for you know, an entire career and we talked about the fact that the West Coast is where a large portion of the gangs in the US started. So being in a federal penitentiary on the West Coast in California, I'm guessing that that puts the level of violence you're dealing with at a whole new level.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, you know it was. The prison pretty much was ran by the aryan brotherhood and the mexican mafia, which they had a truce. So we also, you know, we're in california and la was 120 miles down the road, so we had, uh, a huge population of crips and bloods and, um, you know, various street gangs. You know ser, serenios and Nortenos. Well, I guess we didn't have Nortenos in there, but the Serenios.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And it was just. You know, we had some Texas Syndicate in there. Texas Syndicate, those were some violent guys. I saw them during the middle of a mainline. They were doing some internal discipline and they had contracted out with the Guamanians. We had about a handful of Guamanians and they attacked one of the Texas Syndicate guys and stabbed him 67 times right in the middle of the corridor. They wanted everybody to see.

Speaker 1:

Right yeah. So what do you think in the first couple of years? Is your brain going well, this is a career. Or are you starting to think, well, maybe I need to look another direction? I mean, what were your feelings overall for that career?

Speaker 2:

Overall, I am a Midwest boy through and through and my whole thing was I was trying to get back to the midwest at any type of prison. I actually put in for a transfer to leavenworth, you know, okay, uh, not knowing how stuff worked, you know, I was like I wanted to go to leavenworth and rochester and then, uh, at the time they were opening up peekin and Greenville and Pekin was the closest institution to Iowa and I really, really wanted to go to Pekin but my captain knew somebody that was going to Greenville, so I ended up transferring to Greenville after two and a half years at Lompoc, okay, so I've been to Greenville.

Speaker 1:

That's quite a change.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, dramatic.

Speaker 1:

I'm guessing you rested a little bit after that. I did?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was. You know it's kind of ironic though. You know I was involved in so much stuff at Lompoc, but my first large-scale disturbance you know where we lost the institution was at Greenville.

Speaker 1:

Oh, you were there.

Speaker 2:

I was there, absolutely that night.

Speaker 1:

That was the Cracklaw riots. Yes, tell me a little bit about that for people that don't know.

Speaker 2:

Well, anyway, october 20th, I remember I was working October 19th, I was supposed to have the 20th and the 21st off and I was working, that it was a Thursday night and like at 930 in the morning or 930 at night I was working evenings. All the inmates were like running to the TV room and I'm, like you know, checking it out and up on the CNN they were showing. I can't remember what institution had gone up. There was like six or seven that had gone up that Thursday because they had overturned the, or they hadn't overturned the weight disparity between the cocaine and the crack cocaine. Basically, it took like 100 grams of cocaine equaled like one ounce of crack cocaine. So it was.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And cocaine was considered.

Speaker 1:

Cocaine at the time was considered more of a white drug and crack was considered more of a brown or black drug in the poorer areas. So there was a bunch of tension in the country at that time, especially in the prisons, because of that disparity.

Speaker 2:

Right, and so, for the first time ever, we were going to lock down the institution. So they called in a bunch of us for overtime. I asked to work in the housing unit I'd been working all quarter and they're like no, you need to go over to H4, which was the one next door. So I'm like, okay, uh, ironically, the, the, they kicked off in the prison or at the housing unit that I was working that night. So, right, uh, so I, I, everybody in there got, you know, I literally watched as, like six or seven staff members, you know, got ran out of the building, you know bloodied and bruised and you know stuff like that. So you know, they, I'm literally trapped in the other housing unit.

Speaker 2:

We're trapped in the middle of what? The offices. We didn't have keys to the front door, those were out on the compound and then, eventually, after they contained H3 was the one that went up on the A and the B side they let us out. The disturbance control team was, you know, activated and I was going to go in with them and I was going to have all the keys to the doors. So we get ready to go in. After we negotiated negotiated, I mean, you know broke the window through through the, the, the phone into them and they gave up because I mean, what are they going to do? They're trapped right and uh. So we pull them all out and we go in there and there's no doors. They had broken every door in that housing unit. They stacked all doors. They were wooden doors at the time and they'd stacked them in the middle of the housing unit.

Speaker 2:

It was like $1.8 million worth of damage. It was impressive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you guys ended up having to put them on buses and send them other places, or how did you manage them with no doors?

Speaker 2:

on them. We worked till well, I worked till, worked till what? Six o'clock the next morning and all we did was we were the 4. 4 pm count did not clear till like 4 am. So, uh, we started, we moved inmates to the gymnasium, we moved inmates to food service and then we started putting them in segregation. So we went, we had a capacity of I think it was 144, and we were running at like 40 at the time.

Speaker 2:

And by 4 am. By the time I got off, we were at capacity 144. And then the buses started coming the next day Leavenworth Springfield.

Speaker 1:

Marion, and you've got how many years in at this point.

Speaker 2:

I had three and a half Wow, and I was one of the veteran guys. You know, because it was a brand new institution.

Speaker 1:

Do you think that had anything to do or do you think it would have went off, no matter who was working there?

Speaker 2:

No, it would have went off, no matter who.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, cause it was. It was a national thing more than a institutional thing.

Speaker 2:

When they opened up Greenville. You know we're right outside of St Louis, so we had a huge St Louis population and most of those guys had come from Memphis, so they all knew each other. You know it was a really tight compound as far as the inmates Interesting the inmates Interesting.

Speaker 1:

So still looking at this as a career after three and a half years in.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I absolutely was. That was the point where I decided that I wanted to be a lieutenant. You know, I wanted to be in charge of a shift. You know, I wanted to be the one running to the emergencies, taking charge of the emergencies.

Speaker 1:

Um yeah, that was uh. Had you seen some good leadership? Was there some people that you were working with, who I mean? You looked up.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I had some really good leadership and some really bad leadership, yeah, yeah, but I've seen some bad good leadership and some really bad leadership. Yeah yeah, but I've seen some bad leadership too. It was like, if that guy can be a lieutenant, I can be a lieutenant, you know.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, we had great lieutenants at Lompoc, great, great, great guys. You know guys that you would, you know you literally went to battle with on a daily basis. You literally went to battle with on a daily basis. And I got to Lompoc or I got to Greenville and we had, you know, staff from all over the agency and, uh, you know guys that had been, you know, made Lieutenant from a camp or a low you know which hadn't dealt with penitentiary inmates or you know, inmates misbehaving like on a riot scale, so uh okay, so yeah I thought it.

Speaker 2:

You know, if they can be a lieutenant, I can be a lieutenant so yeah, so now you, now you're looking at being a lieutenant.

Speaker 1:

So where are you uh what are you putting in for?

Speaker 2:

uh well, I was putting in once again I was, I was trying to make my nine at pekin. Pekin was like my dream institution, my whole career. Okay, up and up until, and up until thompson, you know I always, I've always wanted to be a lieutenant or a captain or something at thompson or at at pekin uh-huh uh, but I'm at, I'm at greenville and, uh, I get asked to go to mylon to make my nine at mylon.

Speaker 2:

well, I wasn't going to turn down a promotion. If you're specifically asking for me, I'm going to go. They were like give us two years and we'll get you where you want to go. I'm like, okay, I can absolutely do that. I went up to Milan and brand new nine lieutenant, I'm living on the reservation. It's a low and I'm absolutely miserable.

Speaker 1:

Right, not much going on.

Speaker 2:

No, no, nothing was going on. You know literally just fighting inmates every day about. You know do rags and you know illegal hats and stealing out of the food service. That's all it was Right. There was no violence, minimal drug issues. There was a lot of dirty staff bringing stuff into the inmates.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Because, uh, so was there a lot of work release up there, am I right about that? Or a lot of them working outside the institution?

Speaker 2:

We had the same inmates that I was yelling to take their hat off in the chow hall. They would be outside, you know, fixing my air conditioners, or if I had a leaking sink in my house, they would be the ones. So it was different, it was awkward. So I remember my son. He was out, it was in the fall and the leaves were falling and he's out in our side yard playing football and uh, I go out there and he's like throwing. It was like this, uh, it was like a duct tape, tube, plastic tube. And he's like throwing it. It was like this, it was like a duct tape, tube, plastic tube. And he's like throwing it around and I'm like what you got there? And he gives it to me and it turned out it was marijuana that they were trying to introduce into the, into the, into the institution. Yeah, and it was a huge amount of marijuana, man, I mean Wow.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's.

Speaker 2:

that's something I've never done is like I need to leave.

Speaker 1:

I need to leave my island you know, yeah, that's something I've never done is live on the reservation for the the people that don't know early on in the, especially the bureau of prisons, um, it was common for them to build housing. Uh, you know, the warden was always going to live on the reservation. A lot of times an AW, an associate warden or a captain would be required to, and then there would be different levels of hopefully, you know some lieutenants or something like that, and then officers who lived on the reservation. Usually those houses were built and maintained by the inmates and they paid a subsidy for rent. But the reason was, you know we're talking, you got to think back to 1930s, 1940s, you know. You didn't just have cell phones, you didn't just. It wasn't as easy to get ahold of everybody. So having people that live right there at the institutions was always considered a plus, and some of that still exists in the Bureau of Prisons. For those that don't understand that, I've never lived on the reservation, but what's that like? Never getting away from work.

Speaker 2:

It's a grind. Yeah, you, yeah, you want to get away and you can't. But I mean also, you know, I knew as a nine Lieutenant that I was only going to be there for, you know, a year or two you know at that time. Basically, you, you know once, once, once you made your nine, you you're 11 within two years and generally it was always at another spot.

Speaker 2:

So I was just like, okay, all I gotta do is suck it up. Okay, yeah, I decided to time to go out of my, get out of my island, uh. So I was uh putting in for my 11 and uh, immediately, both marion and and Rochester were interested. Marion was moving in three lieutenants. However, I don't know if you remember, but they used to have three moves a year, so they had already used one of them. So I was going to be the third guy. I was going to be the first guy picked, uh, picked up after the fiscal year, so after October, uh. But then Rochester, you know, they still had move money, so they picked me up.

Speaker 1:

So tell me about working at Rochester.

Speaker 2:

Well, rochester was a prison hospital, so that was another thing that was totally, totally foreign to me. You know, corrections, custody was not running stuff there, medical was Psychology was but uh, you know, there'd be times where you'd lock an inmate up and then, uh, within an hour, the psychologist, psychiatrist would let him out, so yep because they're not responsible for their behavior, because you know of their mental health, or they have alzheimer's, you know Sure.

Speaker 2:

It was an eye-opening experience. There was no gang issues there, which was cool. I mean, the vast majority of the inmates were low security and you know, the max custody guys that we had and even the out custody guys that we had, you know, they were really sick. I mean, we were like the end stage liver disease. That's where they sent all those guys, those guys that they were really sick. I mean we were like the uh, the end stage liver disease. That's where they sent all those guys, those guys that had destroyed livers, cause we were right outside the Mayo clinic. You know, in Rochester, that's where the inmates went.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Working at FedMed.

Speaker 1:

I saw a lot of the same. Working at FedMed I saw a lot of the same thing. You know, federal medical center in springfield, missouri, is kind of considered uh, downtime for guys. I mean, even if they were pretty big hitters and gangs and stuff uh, you know, everybody was trying to get healed up or trying to get healthy. So they kind of called a truce and we didn't have those type of problems. But we had plenty of other problems like you were talking about. How much mental health does rochester have up there? We had plenty of other problems like you were talking about. How much mental health does Rochester have up there?

Speaker 2:

We had an entire building of mental health. I think there was probably 180 inmates between the two floors and then we had the seclusion unit, which is basically the segregation for the mental health guys.

Speaker 1:

That's when your communication skills came to bear, didn't they?

Speaker 2:

Yes, exactly, it's kind of tough talking to a guy you know who's convinced that the CIA is in the walls and you know, please, lieutenant Hanson, make them shut up, you know?

Speaker 1:

okay, okay, I'll do it, thank you, thank you, and it's a fine line because you know, like you said, I've I've walked in a cell with a mop, uh, because a guy thought his walls were bleeding, and I'll mop the wall and then he's fine. But the next time you do something like that you might be playing too far into his mental health problem and he'll go off on you, and so it's tough to know what the right thing to do is, especially with those guys. Yeah, we had one inmate.

Speaker 2:

Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 1:

At what point did you start thinking about uh investigations? When did that start interesting you?

Speaker 2:

To be honest that that uh, when I was at Greenville I spent six months as the phone monitor and I got the bug. Then I was always interested there. But then as a lieutenant you've got to learn how to be a supervisor so it kind of got pushed to the background. And of course, being the SIS lieutenant especially at Rochester where we had an SIA you know it was a matter of seniority I had to do your time up. You know working SR1, working. You know swings and mids and all that stuff.

Speaker 2:

So, eventually I got into the SIS shop and, yeah, I loved the investigations. I mean, that was right up my alley. You know. You know it's cool knowing everything that's going on in an institution. You know what the inmates are doing, what the staffs are doing on some levels, you know who's. You know who's shoplifting, who's beating their wife, who's getting drunk downtown. You know what inmates has issues with another inmate, what staff members are dirty, you know, or looked at bringing stuff in. So yeah, I really truly enjoyed it.

Speaker 1:

Tell me if I've got this right. You know, at the Federal Medical Center I noticed, you know, like we talked about they kind of. You know it's kind of a truce area, they're kind of laid down, they're trying to heal up and it's not necessarily that the inmates would snitch, but it was a lot more comfortable um uh arena to have discussions with inmates and you could learn stuff even outside of your institution that you wouldn't learn at a, at a full blown penitentiary. Uh, was it kind of like that at Rochester?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Uh, you know it was, it was uh, it, you know I was weird. For me was like, you know, having like the nurses around who generally cared about the inmates, cared about their health. You know, because you didn't, you didn't have that at the penitentiary level, you know, you didn't even have that at the medium level or the low level, you know, and, but this was all about like the mentally ill guys trying to get them to function. This was all about, you know, this guy has prostate cancer, let's get him healthy. And so the inmates were a lot different too. You know, it wasn't so us versus them, it was more. It was a much more relaxed area. You know, you could talk to them, you could talk to them, you could reason with them, except for the mental health guys. It's a very easy area to cultivate snitches, very, very easy.

Speaker 2:

Right it was easy time there. No-transcript Right Because they didn't want their easy life to be interrupted.

Speaker 1:

So one of the things that I guess and it still gets to me, I still talk about it when I train correctional staff working in the SIS shop, the thing that always got me the worst is you become intimately knowledgeable about dirty staff and how that happens and how staff manipulation happens and the amount of it that goes on. Talk to me about some of what you saw, because you were in there a long time in investigations.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, for Rochester, I mean, a lot of it was. We had a lot of female staff would run off with the inmates, so to speak, and generally it was. You know the inmates would identify, be bitching, complaining about their significant other, you know, and they and they would hear stuff, you know, cause sometimes you don't even think that the inmates, you know the inmates in there, but you don't think he's listening cause he's like working, he's cleaning, whatever, but they're picking up everything. So they would take runs at them and eventually, you know, they just wear them down. So we had one staff member she didn't even make it to Glencoe before she was tied up with an inmate and as somebody that had taught her IF class, you know, I was offended. I was like, because she came back, she's like, oh, I didn't know, she tried to break up with the inmates. Like, oh, I didn't know that that was the wrong thing to do. Like, yes, you did know it was the wrong thing to do. We beat you over the head with that in training.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah and yeah, it's all. I mean. There's always something else going on in their life. You know, husband's being mean, boyfriend's being mean, um, you know, and then this person is, you know, waiting on. You know can't, can't wait to see him and telling them how good they look and you know how smart and pretty they are. Stuff like that Stuff they're not getting at home, they're getting from the inmate and they just, you know, they just don't see it as manipulation. And then, next thing, you know, you're bringing stuff in and sometimes it leads to even more than that.

Speaker 1:

Sure sure, even more than that Sure, sure, the. Um, I guess the hardest thing for me to get used to going from penitentiaries to the medical center was that familiarity and it's caused just like you said, there's nurses that care, there's psychologists that care, psychiatrists that care. They have to do their job with a level of empathy and that automatically puts them in a position to where the I guess the line is not as wide there as it is for maybe a correctional officer who's always got that arm length distance and uh. So yeah, I saw a lot of that and it was disappointing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I know. Uh, a big shock to me was I was probably three, four years in my Rochester. I spent 12 years in Rochester and we had an inmate who had been on suicide watch for literally years and the nurses had worked with him so hard and the psychologists had worked with him and the psychiatrists and he's on psychiatrist and he's on suicide watch, he's on suicide watch and then finally they let him off suicide watch and within a week he killed himself and the nurses were just they were crying and I was like that was just unbelievable to me, you know. But then, looking at it on a human level, I get it. You know, they were invested, they thought they had gotten him cured to where he didn't want to hurt himself and then he hurt himself.

Speaker 1:

Sure, yeah, tough, um. So what are I mean we? We talked about you know manipulation and stuff. Did you have any other, I guess, memorable? Um, you know cases and stuff that you worked on.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I mean, we had a nursing assistant that she literally got caught having sex by another staff member with an inmate. They worked 6 pm to 6 am, at like 7 o'clock. The charge nurse was like looking for her. She was a nursing assistant, so she goes looking for her and she goes into the it was like a shower area and she you know, the lights are off and the curtain is drawn she turned on the light, throws back the curtain and there they are having sex. So wow, and then, of course, I came in at midnight that night, you know, and that's all. That's all.

Speaker 1:

What the whole institution was talking about was that, you know so, and it affects the whole institution when things like that happen, doesn't it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, the inmate, you know, he was like I didn't do anything wrong, you know, because we're we're putting him in the hole, you know, and he wasn't going to go to the hole. I mean, he's a big dude man he was. He was well over 300 pounds and he's like I'm not going to the hole and like, yes, you are. So, uh, he, he refused to cuff up, so we had to use force on him and, uh, we ended up dislocating the shoulder right in front of her. She's like looking at like, oh my god, you're hurting my lover, type of stuff. It was a weird, weird night.

Speaker 1:

What a mess.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

You're at Rochester for 12 years. What's your next step?

Speaker 2:

My next step was they opened up AUSP Thompson.

Speaker 1:

That's where we met.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly where we met, so I would have retired out of Rochester, except they opened up Thompson, which was literally two hours from where I grew up, and I lateraled down there as the special investigative agent, investigative agent so, and then, as you know, there we had all the trials and tribulations of just trying to get our, you know, maximum security inmates. Sure, sure that took three, four years yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I haven't talked about it much. Thompson was a was a prison that the state of Illinois built in 1999 and never funded it to open, so it never held more than just a few camp inmates. And then in 2014, I think, the state of Illinois gave it to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and so that seemed like a really great idea at the time. You know, we thought we were just going to go in there and open up this prison, but the prison wasn't built up to the Federal Bureau of Prison Standards, so a lot of us spent a lot of time learning about contracting and building new fences and how far digital.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they were wired for dial-up internet, right, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was phone lines, you know. Know they didn't have stuff for computers and printers and scanners and all the stuff we use today.

Speaker 1:

So it was quite a. It was quite a job getting that up and going and but once we got it going it was running good, uh, when I rolled out of there. I know it's had some problems since, but we did have a really good crew of people working there at Thompson when we opened it up. I learned a lot from you, from a lot of the other people. You know I was captain there, so I had to lean on some people in order to understand my new role in leadership, and you were definitely a part of that because you had been working in investigations and had been in leadership for so long. I mean, how long were you a lieutenant?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I mean, I was a supervisor for 20 years, total 12 years as a lieutenant and eight years as the SIA. Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

So and then, um, so you stayed at. You stayed at Thompson. Uh, you were there when I left. Um, when did you retire?

Speaker 2:

Uh, I retired July 31st of 2019.

Speaker 1:

2019. Okay and um. So I know you've been doing stuff since then Tell me a little bit about what you've done, because I know a lot of people think retirement Well, I mean, I absolutely love my job.

Speaker 2:

I had no intention of retiring. And then I get a message on LinkedIn from a head hunter that was looking. He was looking for prison people with top secret clearances. I just happened to have a top secret clearance because, uh, you might recall, my audit guidelines said that the SIA had to be part of the joint terrorism task force. So I was. I was a member of the joint terrorism task force out of Chicago, which required a top secret, so that's why I had it. Yeah, and you know, initially he, you know, he's like do you want to go to Afghanistan? And I'm like, no, I don't want to go to Afghanistan, but tell me, tell me, how much does it pay? And then he told me and I'm like, oh yeah, I'm interested in going to Afghanistan, yeah, so what did they want you to?

Speaker 1:

I mean, you're working contract for a company there. What did they want you for? What did you do?

Speaker 2:

They basically were a part of a task force and I was going to be the subject matter expert on prison investigations and prison gangs. So I flew to Bagram Air Base base. You know, once I went through all my training and you know it's pretty much like being in the military again, I had to, you know, qualify on the m4 and, like the military, you know course of fire, we were concealed carry m11s. You know which I'm like. I cannot believe we were concealed carry inside of a prison, but we were. And uh yeah, so I had my counterpart and we would meet outside the prison and we'd go over what he was working on and they were almost all like, uh, green on blue type of stuff, where the, where the workers at the prison were tied up with the Taliban outside and they were worried about there's going to be an attack on the staff. So at one point, you know, we didn't even go out to the prison because it was so dangerous.

Speaker 1:

So you're doing investigations.

Speaker 2:

The Taliban they don't really have. At least when I got there they were starting to develop them. When I got there, or when I left, they they didn't have like prison gangs, cause they're all, they're all Taliban, you know.

Speaker 2:

So, it's more of a religious type thing for them. You know they were all enemy combatants and stuff like that. It was very, very confusing trying to figure out who was in the prison because, uh, you know, over in afghanistan they only have like one name, so you might have we had 5 500 inmates inside the prison, wow. But there might have been a thousand muhammads, you know, and which ones? Muhammad, the the head taliban that you know, responsible for murdering 10 people, or what was the? Muhammad the dirt farmer that got pulled off the battlefield. And you know, it was very confusing and that's what we spent most of our time trying to figure out who was who.

Speaker 1:

Interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was probably the most rewarding time of my career. I mean you literally thought that you were bringing peace to the Middle East, trying to figure out who was who, and they were using our information for like the negotiations to to draw down out of there. Not that it ended up working out that way. Obviously we had issues with the pullout of Afghanistan, I won't get into that, but yeah, I mean it was. You know we had. It was the task force was led by the Colonel, colonel Bergman, great, great guy, west Point grad, smartest man I've ever met in my life. He knew something about everything and you know, know he kept us on point and this is our mission and you know he's really easy to work with, but he's also very tough on his uh, his army officers. So he treated me great. I loved it there. I would have, I would have stayed over there for as long as the war lasted, but then covid got us down oh yeah, that is so cool, brother.

Speaker 1:

Um yeah, so I I can understand that with you know a group of inmates that have this one religious um, you know, in connection, so food's gonna probably be a little different, uh, prayer times. You know that, being a Muslim religion. But looking from overall and you had 20 plus years in uh United States prisons and then now you're looking at these prisons what's the difference in the inmates, what? What were the big differences? You saw, uh other than I mean the fact they're not all broke up into different gangs.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean it was just. It was strange the way they ran the prison. The guards didn't like work in the housing unit with them. They were like up top with the catwalks, you know, there was like catwalks above and they'd be like peering down into their living quarters and I mean they would go in there for the food. But the food was. They literally would like wheelbarrow, like rice. I mean it was a straight wheelbarrow and then they would like, you know, they'd come up with their plates and they'd put the rice on there. It'd be some type of protein, whether chicken or beef or whatever.

Speaker 2:

Never pork chicken or beef or whatever, never pork. And uh, you know, uh, they going through their food service. You know we had put a, you know, a an american style kitchen in there. Well, they couldn't, couldn't figure it out or didn't want to figure it out. So, they like, tore everything out and they were like cauldrons, you know, like witches cauldrons, and they would boil all their rice and all their protein in the thing and then, you know, poured in those wheelbarrows to wheel down to the housing units and the officers in here.

Speaker 1:

They're locals. Are these? Are these local officers?

Speaker 2:

or is it a? Mix of okay, it's all military okay, all military uh, but I mean, you know, those guys are all related on some level, you know.

Speaker 1:

So it sounds kind of like the South American prisons. You know they don't go into the prison they. You know they, they, the, the guards watch the walls. You know they um, it's not so much walking a housing unit. So when you were doing investigations you weren't going in there and and and walking through a housing unit and talking to people. They were getting pulled out to you, okay right.

Speaker 2:

Well, to be honest, I never talked to an inmate there. Uh, that was the responsibility of my, uh, my counter, like my cohort, basically my afghan guy that was doing my job. Basically I met with him and he was the one doing the interviewing and I, and you know, and I would be telling him, you know, this is the questions you should ask. You know, this is what we're trying to find out, type of stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

So you were the investigation specialist and he's doing some of the information gathering Right, but okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm based, I'm basically there to help him, you know, if he has questions. But I mean they had so many other issues. I mean they didn't even have printer cartridges to where they could print off count sheets or any of that stuff, or to, you know, to print off their investigations.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean it was just totally foreign, I guess, yeah, yeah yeah wow, well, that's just so cool. I mean you, your career has taken you from, uh, my land the lowest, you know, all the way to seeing some of that stuff.

Speaker 2:

That is just, yeah, amazing, yeah yeah, um, I, um, I'm, I'm blessed man, I'm absolutely blessed.

Speaker 1:

That's cool, oh yeah. So let me ask you this one question I like to ask people who were leaders a long time, because you know I get emails from uh uh, different people new officers and stuff on here and they're talking about you know leadership. Give me a couple of. You know the highlights of. You've led people for a long time and I watched you lead people a great crew over in Thompson, uh, in your office over there what, what's some of the leadership things that you know mean the most to you that you think matter the most for people who are moving into those positions?

Speaker 2:

that you think matter the most for people who are moving into those positions? Uh, I mean communication, just being able to listen to people, you know what they're saying and what they're meaning are like two, two different things Sometimes that, uh, that crew at Thompson that I got to select I am so I mean that was I was so proud of that team. Uh, the leaders that I developed to select, I am so I mean that was I was so proud of that team. The leaders that I developed out of that, you know, you know I got one for sure that's. She's high up in the Bureau investigative thing. Now she's in DC.

Speaker 2:

Other people absolutely could do that way if they were mobile and wanted to move. You know I was so proud of them, you know, taking what I taught them and then moving on and they've exceeded my career. You know that just made me so proud, so so proud, nice, and I would tell them, you, you know, you know you, you know that this right here, you know we're stressed, we're brand new. This is going to, you're going to look back and this is going to be the favorite part of your career, because this is where you're learning everything, for when you achieve what you want to achieve in this career. This is where you learned your basics. Cause that long poke, I always used to say, uh, I'll never, ever regret leaving long poke and I'll never, ever regret working there, cause that's where I learned everything that made me successful the rest of my career.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, well, that's I. I can't tell you how much I enjoy listening to your stories. Of course, we've talked a lot in the past too. It's so good to hear from you, and I think a lot of people are going to get a lot out of this conversation that we had today. I know you're still working overseas and doing that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

I am uh, yeah yeah, basically when the war ended, all the uh, the prison contractor jobs dried up and I I fell into, uh, security for embassies that they're building. So basically what I do now is my company that I work for. We have like I don't know like 10 different projects where they're building embassies and consulates around the world and I go and I work security at the construction sites.

Speaker 2:

So, currently I'm in Rio de Janeiro, brazil. I just got done with a year in Podgorica, montenegro, which was an awesome tour. Before that was Athens, greece, and before that was Honduras.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, wow, you know I talk to people and they say I'm going to retire, but I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go get a job, you know, at the local Walmart or something, and there are so many options for corrections when you retire. I think that's another reason I wanted you on here was just to show people you know, don't limit yourself when you retire. You've learned skills over your career that everybody wants Absolutely. And I think you're an example of that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you, brother. I appreciate you coming on the podcast and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Speaker 2:

All right. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it All right.

Speaker 1:

I would like to take a minute to thank one of our sponsors that make the Prison Officer Podcast possible. Omni RTLS is a company that I've been working with for the last year. I am proud to be part of this team of correctional professionals who have developed the best real-time locating system on the market today. With Omni's real-time location technology, you automatically know the accurate locations and interactions of all inmates, staff and assets anywhere in your correctional facility, and you have this information in real time. Omni is cutting-edge software for today's jails and prisons. It is the only way to monitor every square inch of your facility while still being PREA compliant. Go to wwwomnirtlscom for more information and to make your facility safer today. That's wwwomnirtlscom.

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Michael Cantrell

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