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The Prison Officer Podcast
The Prison Officer Podcast is a place where prison officers and correctional staff share their experiences, discuss leadership, cope with stress, and learn survival strategies for one of the toughest careers out there. Hosted by Michael Cantrell, this podcast delves into the lives, dreams, and challenges faced by those who work inside the walls of our nation’s prisons. It features interviews, insights, and discussions related to the unique and demanding world of corrections. Whether it’s overcoming difficult leaders, understanding rehabilitation, or addressing misconceptions about incarcerated populations, the Prison Officer Podcast provides valuable perspectives from professionals in the field.
The Prison Officer Podcast
97: Guard: Duty, Sacrifice, and Leadership - Interview w/Phillip W Parker
Philip W. Parker, former warden of Kentucky State Penitentiary, joins us to share his remarkable story from rural Kentucky roots to overseeing maximum-security operations. Listen as Philip recounts his unique career trajectory, beginning with a chance encounter while teaching karate that led him to the world of corrections. As we walk through the corridors of history with Philip, we explore the evolution of terminology in the corrections field. The shift from being called a "guard" to "correctional officer" marked an era of transformation aimed at recognizing the professionalism and humanity in the role.
From thrilling tales of prison escapes to the solemn duty of overseeing executions, this episode captures the multifaceted nature of a career in corrections. Philip shares his decades-long journey, emphasizing the persistent need for mental health resources and peer support.
His book, "Guard," serves as a testament to the courage and resilience of those working behind the walls, urging listeners to appreciate the unsung heroism of correctional officers and prioritize their own well-being.
Guard: A True Story of Duty, Sacrifice, and Leadership in Kentucky's Maximum Security Penitentiary
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Take care of each other and Be Safe behind those walls and fences!
Well, hello and welcome back to the Prison Officer Podcast. My name is Mike Cantrell and today my guest is Philip W Parker. He was a warden at Kentucky State Penitentiary from 1993 to 2002. After he retired in 2002, he returned to KSP as warden from 2009 to 2011, for a total of 12 years dealing with a maximum security prison. That is quite well known. Parker began his career as a correctional officer in 1978, or as a guard as he refers to it, and we'll get more into that later, because we're going to cover his book today. Warden Parker is best known as the first warden in 35 years to oversee an execution by electrocution in Kentucky a very publicized event and something that affected his life even to now, and we'll talk some more about that. He's also the author of Guard, a true story of duty, sacrifice and leadership in Kentucky's maximum security penitentiary, so I'd like you guys to welcome him to the podcast. I'm excited to have him here. How are you doing today, mr Parker?
Speaker 2:That's fine.
Speaker 1:Excellent. I always start my interviews off the same way. I like to hear about you. Know where you grew up. Tell me what that was like. What was it like when you were young? Where'd you grow up at?
Speaker 2:Okay, I grew up in a rural community in western Kentucky near a little settlement called Possum Trot. It was awesome, I tell people I grew up in Possum Trot, kentucky, but it was a rural area. I graduated from high school in 1970. And back then all the boys were waiting to be drafted, and so it was kind of hard to plan your future knowing that you might be drafted, probably would be drafted. Sure, came out with a lot of lottery. My number was low, so I knew.
Speaker 2:I would sooner or later have to enlist or be drafted. As it turned out, I was drafted but I didn't pass the physical because I had flat feet unbeknownst to me because I had practiced karate in college and I never knew my flat feet was an achievement, but apparently it is.
Speaker 2:I thought it was they thought so which at the time it was okay with me. Not many people wanted to go into the service. They wanted to go to the enlisted, but not many wanted to go if they were drafted, because it's a sure thing you're going to get. So I would have done my, but I just wasn't selected. So put me on the track to finish college and started bringing it. I didn't know where but I ended up starting a career in a district.
Speaker 2:I was a crack law officer and then was determined to work my way up in the system. I saw a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you a question first. So what was that? How did you find that job? Did you know people that worked in corrections? Was this just luck of the draw? Know?
Speaker 2:people that worked in corrections.
Speaker 1:Was this just luck of the draw? Well, as it turned out, I was.
Speaker 2:I had started teaching karate after I got my black belt and sold my students. I was teaching at the university and in some local dojos, but some of my students were guards or defense captains at an adventure.
Speaker 2:And that was back in the days when they had what was called a LEED grant law enforcement grant to go to college. So they were thinking of course my class would have been an easy class, so it had one hour to learn, I think after every 15 hours they got a 5% raise. So they had a lot of motivation to go to college and that's how. I got to know them. That was pretty good. I was entering a tournament that I had been winning, but anyway, they told me, if you ever need, a job.
Speaker 2:come see us, and so you know. After about a year of graduate school, I found out it's time for me to do something else. So that was really the only job I had available to me that I knew of, and I then signed up and entered the old castle, as it's called, Sure sure, tell me about that first day.
Speaker 1:What was it like walking here in the barters clothes, looking up at, you know, the big stone walls and well, of course I didn't have any close friends there.
Speaker 2:Uh, so I didn't have very much to guide me. I had people I knew, but I wouldn't say they were close friends. Uh, sure, actually they were supervisors, most of the people I knew. But when you see that place for the first time, it just kind of makes you stop and your mouth drops. It's like, oh my god. I look at that place.
Speaker 2:It looks like an old castle and it's situated on whether it should be a river town or a road and then it was dammed old castle and it's situated on what used to be a river town, on one road, and then it was dammed. I think it's set in the early 60s and it formed a lake. So the lake surrounds the penitentiary and it looks like an old castle. It was built in the 1880s. They brought over an Italian stonebason'sbason and they used quarried limestone. It's just amazing how they cut the rock and constructed that place without any modern tools. It just still amazes me. It's there's every block of limestone block like a glove they're not cemented in or mortared in.
Speaker 2:They're just, they sit and it's every guy is perfect.
Speaker 2:And it's a it's a huge, huge place. It's very intimidating. First, my first, my first day I was going up the steps to the front gate entry. I saw men come out of the gun tower right at the front steps and they came out with shotguns and they ran past me and I thought my God, what's that about? And I didn't know until later in the day that three inmates had escaped four cell houses. That was my first day. That's what greeted me as I was going up the front gate was a mass escape and officers scrambling to go out and catch the three, which they did. But at that time, in those days, there wasn't a control center to open the gates, so an officer had to key the lock and let me in and I knew I was entering a different world as soon as I stepped into that place.
Speaker 1:Don't you think that's why they designed? Because you take a look at the places designed Missouri State Pen I've been to West Virginia out there, kentucky State Penitentiary you know those things were designed to intimidate. I think that was part of the law enforcement or the justice thought was I don't want to be there. That's why they built it like that.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 1:I think we feel that when we walk in for the first time.
Speaker 2:Yes, I felt that way. I'll give it a try. I wasn't afraid. I wasn't afraid, but I was intimidated. I think I never afraid in there, maybe once or twice, but it was a whole new room for me, yeah. It was you know small school guards that took me out of the wing helped me a long time. That lets you fumble around for a while, and then it will help you.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of what it was, but I could fumble around and that's kind of embarrassing. They tell you to go somewhere, report somewhere, and then you laugh, this place is big. And you think, okay, you don't want to act like you don't know where it is. But anyway, they told me we had to report to the original hospital for a physical first day. And I went and I get there, I was with two other admirers and we just, I mean, we walked around the yard and we thought we'd see a sign at the hospital or something. We didn't. So finally somebody fell to the Air Force and told us where we needed to go. So uh called the fish Fish. Uh, fish officers.
Speaker 1:And inmates are called fish Fish officers and inmates are called fish.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that's universal or if you're a Kentucky country, but I don't know. I've always wondered that if other prisons call.
Speaker 1:I think inmates are called fish. We weren't called fish, we were. I mean nothing. Rookie was a term of endearment. It's called fish. Yeah, we weren't called fish, we were. I mean. There's nothing.
Speaker 2:Ricky was I mean that was the term of endearment when you were new. Well, we were called fish, Just like the inmates new inmates coming in were called fish inmates or fish gun well, inmates, and we were called fish officers. So anyway, kind of exciting, Depressing. To be honest with you, Our uniforms were terrible. You know, I work a lot of days without even a pair of handcuffs.
Speaker 1:I just work in the glory.
Speaker 2:A lot of officers want their own. I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1:They want me to have handcuffs They'll give me handcuffs.
Speaker 2:You know, I learned I never going to make an arrest or take an inmate to the hole without handcuffs. And an old guard gave me that. He said, you know, he said after it went down, I don't have handcuffs, he said. He said that's really not a problem. That voice, just tell them, just say, hey, come with me and they'll go. Once the fight's over, once you've broken up the fight or stabbing, whatever it is, just tell them to go with you, they'll go. And if they don't, they know what's going on. You might have to fight them again, but there's going to be other officers coming and they don't want to face that. They'll go with you. And sure enough, that's pretty much how it went. A lot of times I had to take down and not have any handcuffs. After we can say, hey, come with me and they'll go. Amazing, that's why we do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I remember a few times missouri state pen was was violent like you've talked about in your book, like kentucky was, and you might let an inmate walk in front of you all the way down the hall to the seg unit because he wasn't going to get cuffed, afraid not of you, but that he'd get jumped again before he could get put in the hole. You know most of them knew when they threw the first punch how their day was going to end. You know they knew they were going to the hole.
Speaker 2:They knew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:They had no protection if you cuffed them, other than the officer escort, right. But at least they had a fighting chance if they weren't cuffed and I saw that play out several times Inmates would be cuffed and be surrounded by inmates who wanted to kill them or whatever, and that's a bad situation to be in. I described one of those situations in the riot we had in 1986. I had one of those situations in the riot we had in 1986. They were escorting an inmate, a group of inmates surrounded them and was trying to kill the guy and they fought off these inmates. But about 10 minutes later a full-scale riot erupted. But anyway, if you read the book you'll see that incident where the two officers in the desk supporting that inmate managed to fight them off long enough and the gun targets fired warning shots at the same time. So that helped too.
Speaker 1:Anyway, Let me go to the book here. You know you talked about getting hired on as a correctional officer. But you know you talk about getting hired on as a correctional officer. But you know you talk about being a guard. And I'm going to the book here. By 1977, the employee classification of guard was changed to correctional officer one and two. Correctional officer one was a classification for officers without a high school diploma and correctional officer two was reserved for those with a high school diploma and Correctional Officer II was reserved for those with a high school diploma.
Speaker 1:The phrase fair, firm and consistent became the Correctional Officer's creed. This was being taught in every state and is still taught today. We were told to use Correctional Officer and inmate, use correctional officer and inmate. The terminology seemed more humane and professional to all of those that were included involved. To this day, however, I do not think we ever won the battle to change public perception to use the new prison terminology.
Speaker 1:People ask me if I started as a guard and I often tell them. People ask me if I started as a guard and I often hear the term jail or prison guard used in newspaper articles. Most professionals in our business cringe when they hear the word guard and as a warden I politely use this to political attorneys and news media In retrospect decades after the word guard became taboo. I view it with affection, because most of my early mentors started as guards. They were not educated, they were uneducated, or brutal or not brutal. They were tough, but they were professional. They were firm, fair and consistent. But make no mistake, they were strong when they needed to be. They were proud to be a guard. And so tell me about that.
Speaker 2:That's okay I agree, I absolutely agree well, um, I started in a time period, well in the late 70s, uh, when that classification had just changed, and I, they, I, uh, well, I showed a guard badge. In the section of pictures in my book there's a badge that said guard. Now, what's wrong with that? Well, we were told that's a really bad word, though, and a lot of people today I mean, I'm sure, and that's one of the criticisms I get in the book I say you know, I always explain it in the the book and you'll see, it's not a bad thing, it's an honor to call the guard.
Speaker 2:My men, the men I had worked with in the business, or at least when I started. They started as guards and they were guards until they made rank, until the classification changed and even when I retired after I was warden first by them. After nine and a half years as warden, when I retired, some of the old convicts now there's that word they'd been there since I'd been there. So we kind of grew up together inside that century and they wanted to walk with me my last day as a warden and uh, I said, sure, come on, let's walk around, I'll walk around the yard. These old convicts gangly, I mean, they had been really hell racers in their younger days, but but they and they would go. We're walking with the OG Now.
Speaker 2:OG either means gangster or old guard Right. In prison context I said I'll just accept that as an old guard. That's an author for them to call me an old guard Right. And if you call them Vic convict, they say I'm not an inmate, I'm a convict. The older guys say that and they're proud to be a convict, and so you know, last time we were on, I began to view the term guard as a term of endearment.
Speaker 2:It's the people I admired the most in this business throughout my entire career started as guards, so that's why I called the book guard. I think if I had called the book press officer, I don't think anybody would have called it.
Speaker 2:I was with him. You want to see what that's about, and so it has kind of created a lot of interest. But it's not a bad word. If you read the book you'll see it's not a bad term at all, even though we were taught never use it. So anyway, that's my explanation of card. Not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1:It's not at all, I've never minded it. If you go back to some of my paperwork which was years after you In 1992 was when I was hired In the Missouri State Pen I still have some of my original contract stuff that I signed, you know, in HR and I still list Guard Because we were making the change into correctional officer and when I named this podcast, I've always thought correction, corrections, correctional was a misnomer for what I did.
Speaker 2:I'm a prison officer.
Speaker 1:you know I'm a guard. Now, does that limit me to be in a turnkey? You know, like the 1700s? No, I'm more than a turnkey, but that is what I started off doing was turning keys. So I don't mind it, I don't. What do you think about some of the change that they're bringing now? You know the newest one is AIC adults in custody. They're trying to change the term inmate like it's something bad. I don't think inmate's a bad word.
Speaker 2:Let me back up and say one thing I don't think. I ever corrected an inmate. I didn't see myself as correcting anything. I didn't correct anything. I guarded them. Sure you know I guarded the community, I guarded them inside that prison so they wouldn't them.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:You know, I guarded the community, I guarded them, Guarded inside that prison so they wouldn't escape, sure, or we tried our best to, and I guarded them, kept them from killing each other, but I never corrected one that I know of I mean rehabilitation might be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did that. But as far as correcting, it's kind of a, I don't. I'd rather think of us as prison cops, prison police or something like that, but prison officers, if you want to call it that. That's another way to look at it. Now, what was the second question? I didn't answer.
Speaker 1:So now they're saying inmates have made it work and they've changed a lot of places. You're trying to force adults in custody or AIC.
Speaker 2:Incarcerated people.
Speaker 1:Incarcerated people.
Speaker 2:That's crazy Justice involved. Yeah, exactly, I held their convicted felons, I mean all convicts, it doesn't matter. I mean that's crazy. I don't get it. I'm an old, old guy. I wouldn't make it in that kind of environment today, because I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it, I'd sell, I'd sell. And I would not sell panties and bras in the commissary, not in my prison, not in my prison Not in my prison, we're not going to but it's happening today in that prison right here. I don't know.
Speaker 1:It is. I saw somebody and. I was headed out, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Well, in my term as warden for about 17 years, I was wardening a lot and I ran to jail after I got done with all the prison. So anyway, about 17 years as a, and there was something it came out with, something out of headquarters that was controversial, I mean something that I couldn't live with or something I thought was dead wrong. I talked about it. I said we're not doing that, we're something that I couldn't live with or something I thought was dead wrong.
Speaker 2:I'd talk about it, I'd say we're not doing that, and I got by with that. I don't know how, but I did. I ended up doing it.
Speaker 1:Don't you think the old-time wardens? You know that was your institution. You were expected to do whatever it took to run that institution, and now they've stacked on everybody's a micromanager. They've stacked on all these layers of of supervision on top of the wardens.
Speaker 2:The wardens can't even do their job well, that's a little bit of that I Like. When we had a nutritionist, for example, in our headquarters central office, we called it and she was directing all the food service managers and all the presidents to do this, do that, do that. And I'd get surprised. I ate at least one meal a day in mess hall. Sure, I just made it my daily breakfast. I'd go in 5, 530 and go straight to the best hall and get the same train the inmates got. I'd get in line with them, I'd try to sit down with them. They'd be sitting with them a lot of times, but anyway, that's just the way I operated. I didn't take a bodyguard, I didn't do any of that, I just went and got trained, had breakfast with them and this allowed me to.
Speaker 2:Anyway, let's get back to the point. The nutritionist would dictate this, dictate that. And they took pepper away and they took coffee away, and so they were doing this. Because I'm the one that's got to face this when I go out on the yard. And they said I don't think Wayne gets salt and pepper anymore. And the last question, my food service manager why aren't they getting salt and pepper? Well, because it's bad for their health. It raises their blood pressure. I said what in the hell are you going to tell me? You know?
Speaker 1:because they thought well for the nutritionists, I see you do it Really, okay?
Speaker 2:No, I see you don't work for the nutritionists, you work for me and that was a struggle, and other areas like religion and so on, and in my day, well, I just wouldn't. God probably love it. Some battles aren't worth fighting. But no, we're going to show down. Cut this guy up, set the inmates like salt and pepper away, and he better tell me about it. You know, I better talk about it before I go out there and face the inmates.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I'll either buy into it or I won't. And I finally said this is a small issue, salt and pepper. I finally said and I'm going to use a little bit of bad language here I said damn it. Morton said I'm telling you, put salt and pepper on the line. They put their things in one. Well, I'll get in trouble. I said, said no, you're not going to get in any trouble. I said I should do it. And I insisted. And so that's the way I had to operate sometimes, to stand up and say we're not doing that. So I don't know if they do it these days.
Speaker 1:I don't know, probably not well, now, I think you know the nutritionist inmates have diets, so this inmate may have one diet where he's allowed this and this one may have another diet where he's allowed this. It is what it is, so we talked about you being a warden here. So let's take that step from correctional officer until you got up to warden.
Speaker 2:Tell me about those steps officer until you got up to warden. Tell me about those steps. Well, you know, I had a good opportunity to go ranks through the security and I wanted to. But I had a college degree when I started, which was kind of rare for a guard to have a college degree. So I had more opportunities probably than just the average Drexeloff's. I had a degree because a lot of those jobs like case manager, whatever you have to have a degree. I did not want to be a case manager, I wanted to stay as a Drexeloff.
Speaker 2:So my first job well, my first promotion really wasn't a promotion, but I was Wharton asked me to be his administrative assistant. I did all his paperwork pretty much not all of it, but most of it. I wrote all these letters and responses to inmates and responses to grievances. I did a lot of investigations and so forth. I did that for a couple of years I don't know about three years investigations and so forth. I did that for a couple of years I don't know about three years. And then I was promoted to. I was promoted for about a year into a position called administrative specialist, which we were under a big lawsuit, and so I was the one that documented our compliance with the lawsuit and provided that information to the attorneys and within about a year and a half that job came almost no job, we had lied with all of it. So then I was promoted program director and that put me in charge of the inmate legal aid, the recreation department, chapel, religious programs and kind of inmate work programs and so forth.
Speaker 2:Well, I did that for another three years and then I made that big work. I made that big work in another prison. They there four years came back to the penitentiary as Deputy Warden Finally, and then I transferred to Ohio as a Deputy Warden. So I was a Deputy Warden in what's that? Three institutions and then Ohio promoted me to Warden, my first Warden job in Warden, ohio. So I thoroughly enjoyed Ohio. It was a really good system. That's a good system, really good. They operate way more conservative than Kentucky was operating at and I liked that. I said that's the way I thought the prison system should be run.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I went to order and they did a good job, but Kentucky was home, so you went back there in the year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I went right back to where I started, and the reason why is I was tempted. I found out that they had passed a new regulation to make all positions security positions well, all the positions inside the prison. As for students, what that meant is a little bump in and another great deal. A bump and a 20 year retirement. I've got to go back to that 20 year retirement and they pay your retirement on your five years. So I would be eligible just about as soon as I transferred back as Lord. Within a few years I'd be able to retire. Of course that didn't happen, I didn't retire. And then a few years I'd be off to the rehire. Of course that didn't happen, I didn't rehire. But anyway, that's why I came back to Kentucky.
Speaker 1:So any issues you know you left Kentucky State Penitentiary in a lower rank. You come back as a warden. Any issues there? Leadership issues. Yeah, any issues there, leadership issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was. Yeah, as you can imagine, even when I was a deputy warden, they sent me back to the dentistry as deputy warden of security after a man's escape in 1988. They had eight inmates escape from segregation unit, you couldn't have had picked eight worse inmates, and that's a whole bookend of itself, right there?
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit, though, because that's interesting.
Speaker 2:It is very. It is very interesting. I wasn't there at the time. Now I got a phone call to the inmates who escaped about 1.30 at the time. Now I came, I got a phone call. The inmates escaped about 1.30 in the morning. Okay, it's a very elaborate escape and we don't have enough time to go into how they managed to do all that. Okay, the inmates had got a track on their cell door which allowed the door to swing out. Okay, but the door still operated. Allowed the door to swing out Okay, but the door still operated electronically like it's supposed to.
Speaker 1:I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you can picture that. Okay, yep. So they found out to make this small cut on that track and the door would hinge out and they could go out and they'd have the lights in the midnight shift.
Speaker 2:They'd have the lights so inmates could sleep and they had big pedestal fans running which grounded out the noise and, fortunately for the inmates, they had a lazy officer on the shift that didn't make rounds. Okay, that's all it took, and 17 had to cut out ready to go. Then 8 got out and they worked for months cutting a hole through the window.
Speaker 2:And then the 9th one going out the hole. 8 had already escaped. The 9th one was caught by a sergeant who was making rounds on the outside. He was out there counting the inmates and the trustees. They had little quarters outside inmates. We called them trustees whatever Third night, 19 or 20 of them.
Speaker 2:He was out there counting there to make sure everything was okay. There wasn't an officer stationed there all night, he just started. An officer stationed there all night. It was all required, but anyway he spotted the knife coming out and he had checked out this outside room. He was called. Anyway, I'm going to fast forward through something.
Speaker 2:Well, that same morning I got a call from headquarters saying we need you to put together a response team. We call it E-Squad, I think now they call it SIR. Put together a SIR team and I tell them the penitentiary is 200 miles away, Get there as quick as you can because it's out of control. The inmates were setting fires inside the prison. They were doing everything they could do, Drunk all staff back off the manhunt and that would give the aid escapees more time to get away. So the place was out of control. Even though everything was locked down, they were still setting fire, they were flooding the walls, they were doing everything they could to draw them back in and for the most part it was work. So I put together a team of well, I forgot, it was at least 12 officers and we got there as quick as we could. We had to act. Enough stuff.
Speaker 2:We knew we'd be there for a few days or a few weeks we go respond back to other prisons for sending in response things. We probably had, I'm going to guess, about 150 officers from all over the state, 150 plus. That number would also include all the state police that responded, drug dogs and so forth. And then we had support from the National Guard. They gave us helicopter use and like vision goggles. Well, mostly that they didn't give us manpower, the helicopter used and, um, like vision goggle, and well, mostly that, um, they didn't get us manned by her, so we didn't ask for it, but uh, anyway. So so we went on this man hunt for the next and it was. It was kind of interesting, to say the least, but we were in the meantime. We were getting called back to the prison without literal powers or disturbances, and that took us away from manhood. We called one the next morning and then we called two more. Let's see, Trying to get this straight now you might have to read the book.
Speaker 2:We come up to war and they had made it. They stole a car and made it to eastern Kentucky and somehow they'd gotten a gun. They had to shoot out. Anyway, nobody was shot but they had to shoot out with state police and our staff in eastern Kentucky. That was captured and brought back. The inmates got to a kind of a resort town over in Tennessee. It was on a lake, it was on Bartley Lake, and they broke into.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, I don't know where they got the gun.
Speaker 2:I never did understand where they got the gun. But they had a gun. They shot the telephone box. This old man and woman lived there, a retired couple. They shot the telephone box so they couldn't call for help and then they stopped them through their bedroom window and they went in at Grand Sack House, got money and guns and their car and they made it all the way to Mexico.
Speaker 2:They made it all the way they crossed the border of El Paso and they were running out of money. But one said I'll have some money to wire the Western Union. And he did. He made a phone call and had his family wire the money. But One said I'll have some money to wire to the Western Union, and he did.
Speaker 2:He made a phone call and had his family wire the money, but they must have told the FBI. I don't know, because anyway the FBI was waiting for him across the border to get the money. And then the Mexican authorities knew that were the two inmates where I guess he ran it on. I'm sure he did, and they surrounded the motel, drug them out, threw them across the border illegally to the FBI waiting on the other side. Now they spent the next 17 months in the El Paso jail filing that tradition, and when they got his filing the Supreme Court refused to hear it.
Speaker 1:So now they're free to be extradited back.
Speaker 2:We charged them with escape and stealing a vehicle and something else. Then we turned them over to Tennessee. They faced charges. All we turned them over to Tennessee. They faced charges. All three of them were on the death row in Tennessee Last time I checked when I was writing this book, two of them had died natural causes and one of them is still on death row in Tennessee. So I mean to be out of that story. It's I mean it's be out of that story. I mean it's one of the worst things you can think of in a prison Besides an employee getting killed. But here we had two innocent people, tired people. They should have lived out their life in a resort area on a lake and they get murdered in the middle of the night by convicts. I mean that's a pretty heavy burden there.
Speaker 2:So as that turns out in the aftermath investigation. I thought I was done with it. After we called all the inmates whatever. We went back to normal operations. I took my team back. We thought we were home free.
Speaker 2:And then I got a phone call. They wanted me to go replace the deputy warden. They kind of blamed the deputy warden for black policies or whatever, for poor leadership, and so I got tapped on the shoulder to go back, kind of blame the deputy warden for lack of policies or whatever for leadership, and so I got tapped on the shoulder to go back. The place was out of control. So anyway, I write about that. I did my part, I went back. I didn't walk through but I did, and the place was out of control. It really was out of control. There was very little leadership, everybody was beat down, the morale was terribly low. So I go back as deputy warden and all these old school guards a lot of them were lieutenants and captains when I started.
Speaker 2:They're still there as lieutenants and captains and now I'm their boss. So it was a little awkward, but I called everyone in individually and said hey, look, you gotta work with me. We're gonna take this place back. We're gonna be a little heavy handed right now. We're gonna jerk a lot in their ass, but you won't face any problems from me, and the court has given. I've been given a mission to get this place under control and you got to be with me on my team and we're going to do it. And that's how I kind of faced up to them and told them here's what we're going to do and here's how we're going to do it.
Speaker 2:And there for a while we were a little heavy-handed. We never had any repercussions. You'll read in the book. A couple times we gave air cuts to them. We just tried to get them rolling and we did. It got better, but it's not enough. We were still having officers get what we call shit down. You know they get in my throat feces all over. It was happening way too much and that was one monster I never quite conquered. You know it's still good if they want to. You've got to make them not want to. And that's when I said we need a heavy-handed group. No more soft. No more take the gloves off. They sit down and officer their fair game you get cops off.
Speaker 2:You know, so, um, here's the first heavy-handed whoops. Handed all these guys a jailer. Once it's over, I don't want to see anybody getting wrapped up after it. So that's the rule we're up to you gotta go in hard and fast. Yeah, where's the income?
Speaker 1:okay, that's what we did.
Speaker 2:I've been doing that. It had been a soft. They were free to make video by then. Me to have been to my dad. They had been a soft friend. They were free to make video by then.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:Deputy Warren was criticized and everything. And talking about how you do all this. So they just kind of gave in and they weren't being shh, they weren't. I think it's important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's important to mention, because a lot of people that work in corrections these days don't work in places with open bars. Open bars is a whole different world and you had open bars there at.
Speaker 2:KSP At that time we did. So that working there Absolutely Race through the bars and grab you. At that time we did, yeah, so that working there is Absolutely Restrict the bars and grab you. Of course, when I was an officer I never knew that.
Speaker 2:Well, they had no idea what was happening at one time, but it already made up my mind. They might restrict bars. Grab me, I'm going to break his arm. I mean, I'm not even going to think twice about it. He's out, but he'll gone in, right, he tries to reach through the bars. You know, it'd be really easy to break an arm. Yeah, and as far as the zone officers, they just didn't have, they didn't dare do that Right. Very blind, they didn't dare do that Right. Bear in mind, you didn't have cameras. Back in my day, when I was an officer Sure, no video cameras. It hadn't even been like this, right. And here's the other thing that's going to surprise a lot of people you did not have policies. There were policies and procedures, right.
Speaker 1:You had to follow the orders of your supervisor.
Speaker 2:There were those corners in a few places, but it was vague, it didn't tell you anything. So you relied on your training, common sense and supervisors to operate the person. That's how it was operated and thankfully, a memo would come out from the board and, whatever the issue was, he'd put out a memo. Well, they would read the memo at roll call. But I was out of here on vacation that week, and no, the memo came out, and so obviously, it was.
Speaker 2:You're just kinda it's the way operating, I guess operated. But that's the way we operated until a warden came in and started writing. We started writing policies and procedures and we bought a video camera and you know, and we bought a video camera and that was the beginning. I was there before and thereafter. Of course after is a better way to manage a prison, for sure. But my point is, in the days before we had policies and procedures and before we had cameras, inmates wouldn't throw BC's and before we had cameras the inmates wouldn't throw ACs on the officer. It just never happened because we would. I didn't have to get permission to go in the cell and get an inmate out or whatever do a cell extraction. I'd do it by myself. I didn't rely on my own common sense and what it was. It well, I got us my own common sense and what it was. Well, it got us in trouble because some officers would do that and wouldn't write a report and it kind of got out of hand.
Speaker 2:This lady just kind of got to a close when we started using policies and procedures and video cameras that were not abusing force and distracting the inmates from cell. That's always video based now and I assume it is everywhere. Probably officers have body cameras now?
Speaker 1:yep, there's a lot of them. Well, we did anyway, so it was a dip and unfortunately, probably, officers have body cameras now?
Speaker 2:Yep, there's a lot of them, oh yeah, anyway. So it was a different and unfortunate. We'll take you from the old days like that to the new days. Now everything is by policy procedure. We're accredited, we have post orders on every post, we have prescribed ways of doing things. I'll tell you, in the old days it just wasn't like that.
Speaker 1:It just.
Speaker 2:As long as you had a little bit of common sense and you knew right from wrong, you would do fine and you know you would do okay. You know he would do okay.
Speaker 1:Unless you were just broken on.
Speaker 2:Unless you enjoyed beating up inmates, that didn't happen that much, not really.
Speaker 1:There's always 1%, there's always 2% we still have those. There's always 1%, there's always 2%. We still have those. A video came out the last couple of weeks with some officers throwing some punches that just absolutely didn't need to be done. An inmate died, so it still happens these days. That's not a representative of the profession, that's just the fringe bunch.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and I want to say for everybody you know we're talking about a lot of stories here out of your book, but you're not even touching most of the book. You know we're just talking about a few of them here. So I do recommend that, if you get the chance, go to Amazon, and Guard is the book by Philip W Parker, so I do want to encourage everybody to actually read it. You'll get all the stories.
Speaker 2:I've had some good reviews and the book is selling pretty well. But one of the things that might surprise people is I was awarding the last electric fusion engine and actually it was the first execution in 35 years. I happened to be a warden when we executed an inmate by electrician. Then I wrote in the law of faith and we started lethal injection in 1999. I was the warden who conducted the first lethal injection, so I took the reader behind the scenes and things had happened. It had, uh thanks.
Speaker 1:It happened especially between Let me go to the book Cause I've got a spot here.
Speaker 1:That sums that up pretty good. I met with McQueen on Sunday morning to offer a last meal. I told him he could order anything within reason. Mcqueen doesn't hesitate. Warden, all I want is cheesecake. That's it? Yep, that's it. Jokingly, I replied I was afraid you'd order a T-bone steak or something. Cheesecake is my favorite food, mcqueen said matter-of-factly, and I'm going to skip ahead just a little bit.
Speaker 1:Afterward I gently described the procedure we would follow in the minutes leading up to the execution. I told McQueen I would come to his cell and say it is time. I wanted to assure him that I would safeguard his dignity. We would not cuff you or manhandle you in any way. You are a man. You can walk and sit down on your own. Yes, I will, mcqueen, agree, you will not have any problems with me. The reason I picked that is because I think people have this uh, this Hollywood, you know picture of what goes on and you're showing compassion there. You know, at this time and I think that's important for people to understand that there is compassion, there is empathy, but it's a job. So tell me some of that. That had to be tough.
Speaker 2:That was tough.
Speaker 1:Let me say this.
Speaker 2:I was there when he came into the system in 1981, I believe it was. So I had known this guy for 20 years. What I was. So I'd known this guy for 20 years. He was never a problem, he was always respectful. Now he committed a heinous crime. When he was on drugs, drunk and on drugs, he held up a store and played it nine and killed a car. Terrible crime. He appropriately got a death penalty. I didn't have Right. He appropriately got a death penalty. I didn't have any qualms about him receiving a death penalty, but once he got in prison.
Speaker 2:he was off drugs. He was a totally different man. He was and I think anybody that works in prison systems has to say the same thing these men are just. You wonder how they could ever Look out in prison when kind of say the same thing. These men are just. You wonder how they could ever look out in prison when they're not on alcohol or drugs.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's a good thing. We did bad things and that's the way I view them, very polite to me. Never got a write-up, I know that. And then we had to. Actually that's a little tough, actually that's a little tough to do now. I would do it I would. I mean it'd be easier. That was never easier. What is what really and it haunts me still is I don't know if you've read the part where he said I didn't have a piece of cheesecake. It was so good and I looked at it.
Speaker 2:I knew there was cameras all around and we were feeding the video all the way to the governor's office, the headquarters of that command center, our command center, and I mean everybody's watching, and I was faced with a situation where this guy is so earnest in asking me where is that piece of cheesecake? So good.
Speaker 2:So not knowing what, I said. Well, hell, that's the right thing to do. So I sat down and he got me a piece of cheesecake and threw me and I ate it. Now, that's something the media doesn't know, that's something that I'm exposing it in the book for the first time. But how could I not have a piece of cheesecake? So I sat down and his chaplain was there and we had a good conversation and I finally asked him. I said how are you doing? I mean, are you really doing it? He said well, you don't worry about me, I know I'm a bit lower than a couple of hours.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm glad you feel that way. Thank you, bill. That's when I said okay. I have to leave but before I leave, I want to tell you what is going to happen. Next we're going to shake your head. I'll give you a shower. Then, when I come for you, I'm just going to walk up and say it's time you walk in on your own. I'll walk with you, and so forth Now talking about his final words and so forth, but anyway, all of that is the behind-the-scenes stuff, the media never knew about and the same thing happened on the lethal injection.
Speaker 2:A different scenario with the inmate on the lethal injection gave me a mission, so to speak.
Speaker 2:He asked me to do something for him after his execution and I didn't want to do that either, so I did. And those two things, both of those situations, kind of still haunt me. I get a little tree-eyed when I think about sitting down and this guy's pleading with me I'm sure he's last minute with me. It's just kind of there's no hate or hostility, trust me, there's none. And the other in, there was no death. Do a favor for him.
Speaker 2:He didn't ask his son, he didn't ask his chaplain, he didn't ask his priest. He asked me why I've always thought it's me. Why didn't he tell me that I've always thought it's me? Why didn't he do it himself? He could have. I had to deliver a message to him, what they love. I mean, it was a given-me-fall call Do it himself. He wouldn't have delivered it so and I did, and that kind of a haunting situation. I wrote about that. I called it the warden's curse.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you put it in the book because it speaks so much to the compassion that happens in prison. I've never been part of an execution but I worked at a medical center for 14 years so I knew a lot of inmates who passed away and I don't tell a lot. I've mentioned it. But it passed away and I don't tell a lot mentioned it, but it's not something I hold out. But I've been there when inmates died and they're in a room, nobody else there, and all they want is to hold your hand while they die. And I've held the hand twice of inmates as they passed away. As you feel the cold, you know, leave from there, or the heat leave from their body. And how do you not do that? You?
Speaker 1:know, as a human, once you get to the point that you can't have some humanity, it's probably time to not be working in a prison, you know. So I'm really glad that you put that in there. I thought it was a very moving part of the book.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 2:And like I say, that's behind the scenes and that's something that's kind of surprised a lot of people, I think, when they read about executions, just how compassionate we were and how respectful we were. You know, you mentioned holding that guy's hand. That's what an old guard does. Yeah, that's what an old guard does. Yeah, you know that's what an old guard does. Sure, an old guard has compassion, but he'll beat your brains out, but he'll also show genuine compassion and humanity. You'll see it time and time again with old school guards and I consider myself an old guard.
Speaker 2:One other thing about my term in corrections from the best. Like I said in the beginning, I learned from old school guards and they're official old school guards and I respected them so much I tried to be like them. They were tough, but they were also, like I said, compassionate. They tried to do the right thing. For the most part they weren't abusive at all. There were a few that were, but that was the exception. Now, as I progressed after I became, especially when I became a warden, you know, I used to go in often I said you know, I'm just a correctional officer, I'm a guard who happens to be sitting in a warden's chair, so I never want to lose sight of that. Security and control comes first, everything else is second. In other words, these programs are all nice, but if you like mowing the grass when your house is on fire, you don't do that, but fire out first. And that's the way I look at running a prison. I wanted to get control of the damn place before you can have any kind of problems.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I had to remind myself of that constantly. Parker, you're just a crash loss if you happen to be sitting in the warden's chair. And that's the way I approached my job and it worked for me. It worked for me. I could have stayed as long as I wanted to, I guess, but it was unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they would. I wanted to, I guess.
Speaker 2:But it was unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they would.
Speaker 2:They would, I'm sure they would yeah, but you know the job I started wearing them. There's this thing called PTSD. Tell me a little bit about what you've been dealing with. Here's what happens to you. I think, if you're in a hot seat, like where every day is danger, every day it's danger every day and you better against the wall and keep your head on the swivel.
Speaker 2:I mean, you're just that kind of awareness. You better just that kind of awareness. You better have that kind of awareness. You walk that yard and I'd walk this warden without a bodyguard.
Speaker 2:I mean I'd go out there because I still saw myself as a stress loss. I did that in that suit and tie and I'd break a fight, I'd rescue suicide attempts while I was making rounds. So I mean I'm not too good to do any of those things when I just because I'm a whore, but you, over the years, that constant exposure to stress and trauma.
Speaker 2:you won't even know it, but it'll start. It'll start. It's followed away in the back of your mind and I always think it doesn't bother me. I can see murders I had. I mean horrible murders. I had a friend of mine killed one day at work. We showed him Christ's food service worker. On March 1st 1984, pat Ross was murdered at food service and I was there that day. I helped escort the inmates to interrogation those things, those things, those things when you come back, not individually one individual thing, but it's just being, it's once. I've heard years of putting that. It's got to have an effect on you, trust me it will.
Speaker 1:It's like drops, being tortured with drops yeah, it's like.
Speaker 2:I used the example in the last chapter that it's like you know, if you start to, I never certainly you're going to go blind. That's the way that explains PTSD. You go into that fire, you go into that when that gate slams behind you. You go in every day. You know you're going to be in a useful situation, you know you're in a place of danger, things are happening and you can't get away from it until you leave.
Speaker 1:In my case, I couldn't get away from it until you leave. In my case, it's more than I can get away from it because of the damn phone rates.
Speaker 2:I never got away from it, and so it ate away at me. It really did when I retired. That's when I retired Well last year it was, but they had last year before, but they had a party.
Speaker 1:If you don't mind, because there's people out there I know that are going through the same thing. What did you notice? What was it that kind of told you? Something's wrong here If you don't mind talking about it.
Speaker 2:A lot of things will happen to you. For one thing, your relationships with your family will be really strained. In my case, I started drinking but I got it worse Because you know I was well. Your spouse can't relate what you're thinking. They just can't. You're I don't know what you saw. You can't understand the things you saw, but you take them home and you try to. You know, first thing I did when I get home was take a shower. Wash that shit off me, that shit off me you know it's funny.
Speaker 2:When I worked, especially when I worked the certification unit, the first thing I did I couldn't get home, get tired, get off of it. You know, off of beer, have a few drinks. That's just what happens in my life. I smoked cigarettes, I was chain-smoking, I smoked back to day, sometimes free, and drink. I get drunk every night, free and drink. I get drunk every night but drink.
Speaker 2:Those are things you'll do or at least I do and people I know do and your relationships with your family gets very strange because they don't understand what you're going through and you don't want to talk about it. The last thing I wanted to do when I came home was believe it, so you have no one to talk to except unless you're around. A lot of the officers had, every day after work they'd go to a certain spot or some cases it'd be probably a park, A little park right around the closest to the best entry. They'd already have cold beer in their car and they'd buy those beers and get drunk before they went home. Yes, sir, oh, that's just the way. I sat there a while and those kinds of things. Then you can't sleep very well.
Speaker 2:I was lucky to get four hours sleep most nights. Lucky to have four hours sleep, and I mean health-wise. Blood pressure went sky high, so you take medication for that. I wouldn't take anything to help me sleep. I didn't get hooked on that crap. But anyway, there's just a whole host of mental things that happens to you and eventually break you down, I don't care how strong you are.
Speaker 2:Eventually, you're alone with your thoughts. You live after you retire. That's when it comes back and slaps you right in the face. It knocked me down. It it after you come back? It slapped you right in the face. I mean it. It knocked me down. I just couldn't believe I was having these, uh nightmares. I'd wake up nightmares. I've had flashbacks. I was uh drinking more. Uh, I was just angry. I could get angry and drop my head for over nothing did you know what it was?
Speaker 1:did you know it was PTSD? One of the doctors had to tell you.
Speaker 2:I didn't know, until I was suicidal and it's kind of a hard thing for me to talk about. But years after I retired, I started writing this book and I finally said, you know, and I'd written some of the book and I was having all these couldn't sleep, all these issues and drinking. I finally said, you know, I don't live this way anymore, I'm tired of it, I just don't want to go on like this. And I didn't know what was wrong with me. Anyway, I said, lee, lee, I did.
Speaker 2:I sat there one night I'm going to say this and this part probably isn't in the book, but I'm saying this in case there's officers out there who feel this way. Right, I had a fifth of whiskey and a nine-millimeter, a three-millimeter block, a three-caliber block. They're on the nightstand right beside the whiskey bottle and I'm slugging the whiskey and I'm thinking I just don't want to let this way anymore. And so I thought let's see what this National Suicide Hotline crap is all about. So I called them, them and we for a while. And uh, and they say, they said, well, you need to get some help. I mean, they said, well, anyway, I'll let you go.
Speaker 2:And that was. They should have called an ambulance, but they didn't. They didn't, and so I just continued to sit there and I finally said you know what? I I'm going to give one other thing a try. I'm going to go see if I can find a doctor that has some kind of medicine that will help me. And I was lucky. I found one that understood what, because he had been in the military. I said here what's happening to me? He said I understand. I said what's happening to me?
Speaker 1:He said I understand I said well, yes, it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crying. You had a severe case of PCS, he said he said you're, I can help. He wrote three prescriptions. He said try this, if that doesn't work, we'll try something else. And so that kind of pulled me out of the hole. Plus, I went or going back to church and I turned faith. I tried. I quit drinking for a while, but I thought I'm still drinking, but I'm not getting drunk every night. I am unhappy.
Speaker 1:I am unhappy.
Speaker 2:There's a big difference, but I still struggle. It has not gone away. It will never go. I've learned this about it it will never go away. Once you have it, you have it, you can't unsee the things you saw. Okay, and you have to rellevel them. To some extent it's worse when you talk about it and people say why don't they talk some more about it? Well, no, it makes me worse just talking to you right now about this. It's just really hard for me to think about it. I sit in the middle.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But I'd almost rather not.
Speaker 1:So is that part of the reason you wrote the book so that you could put it out and deal with it without having to talk about it.
Speaker 2:No, it wasn't like that. It wasn't like that. I did go to a psychologist for counseling. It was a joke and I knew it would be. I didn't know it would be for counseling. It was a joke and I knew it would be. I didn't know what it would be, but I thought I'd give it a try, but anyway, he's always writing that book. I told him I started writing a book.
Speaker 2:He's like oh yeah it's going to be great. Okay, if you're not familiar with that term, it look it up. You know, you kind of spill your guts out and everything will be okay. Well, it doesn't happen, it's just not. I'm sorry. So I had to relive all this stuff. Even if I hadn't done that, it really didn't. It wasn't cathartic, it really didn't help me. In fact, it made me worse.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So I don't know what would have helped Besides the medication that is really helpful. There is medication for this disease. Okay, there is medication, trust me, but it will never go away. You're always going to have it. You just have to deal with it. Take medication, try not to drink. I was smoking, those were my crutches.
Speaker 1:That's how I dealt with it.
Speaker 2:I smoked cigarettes and try not to talk about it, so is retiring, you know, and try not to talk about it.
Speaker 1:So is retiring. You know retiring's been difficult for me in some ways. I mean, I started this podcast. I still go out and teach in correctional centers and jails, so I'm still out there as part of it. But the day-to-day you know where you've got that buddy that you talked to the crew, that you worked with, the shift that you trusted. You know that evaporates when you retire.
Speaker 2:That's kind of tough.
Speaker 1:Did you experience that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yeah. And to be honest with you, for 10 years after I retired, I didn't want to see anybody.
Speaker 1:I didn't want anybody.
Speaker 2:I didn't want anybody. I immersed myself in a little farm. I did woodworking and I kind of went to myself. I didn't go to parties, I didn't do that much social. I was out on the Viagra farm out in the rural area and that's what I'm like. I enjoyed on fire and sitting there with my wife and that guy's not doing fishing. I was kind of active. This is what I really wanted to do the last.
Speaker 2:What I want to do, the last thing I want to do, is have my old buddies come around and us talk about old times. That's not helpful to me. It doesn't help me. I don't want to do it, like Sam, my number 10. I'll be honest with you. I had two of my real close friends commit suicide after they retired Think about that After they retired. One of them was a lieutenant. One of them is in my book. I didn't talk about their death but they were players in some of these big events and after they retire that killed them, killed himself with a gun. Next door neighbor who was a crack law officer. After I retired he killed himself with his Joe crack law officer. Now why did I almost do it? I'm telling you, it's that constant exposure, stress and trauma. That's what it does and it relates over time and it can happen.
Speaker 1:You're not weak, right? No, no, absolutely not. Do you see? And you were in corrections before I was. But when I was first in corrections early 90s, I didn't see staff suicides as much we had. It was a huge thing when one happened. It's almost at an epidemic level now.
Speaker 2:Is it?
Speaker 1:I mean, oh, you get on LinkedIn or something it's. You know, every month, every week, you're going to see where another officer you know, we post our badges with our little black stripe in memory of um. But what I'm? I'm just so hurt by the fact that so many people are are taking that as a way out and that that's the only way out. And I don't know if it's because our profession isn't looked at the way it was before or if it's a change in society, which society's changed leaps and bounds in the last 40 years, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's a quiet time and hopefully where my book will help, Because I'm about to be a non-vet.
Speaker 2:Okay, those guys went to war. It's a time when all their friends were protesting the war, all the colleges. That was a time period in the 60s and early 70s when they were terrible. Back after it's're there for 16, 18 months. If they got drafted, that's about all. It amounted to about a year, year and a half. They step right into combat and when they're done, after a year, year and a half, they're on a plane heading home and they tell them before they board the plane get out of your uniform. You don't want to go through network in your uniform because they'd get spit on, they'd be called baby killers and all that kind of crap. Right, that's what they had to come up to. Uh, they would welcome you crowd.
Speaker 1:They weren't heroes, they weren't they weren't heroes, they weren't treated like heroes.
Speaker 2:They weren't treated. Yeah, okay now that way. That's different than what we did in corrections, at least where it's different, but in a way, christ loves us Going to this combative situation, if you will.
Speaker 1:it's not the same, I don't want to make a comparison. And somebody say, well, that's not the way combat is.
Speaker 2:I know that. But the point is you go into a dramatic event lots of it violence and lots of it. Now, especially as a correctional officer. Now, especially as a correctional officer, I'm not for that your bravery, your conduct.
Speaker 2:it run into a fight unarmed For example we're stabbing and we did that all the time. You're not appreciated. It's actually your second class to be a prison guard. You have not appreciated. It's actually your second class to be a prison guard. You have no appreciation, you have no respect and it's a problem. It troubled me, but that's the path I chose, so I helped with it, even if I don't get respect, I know what I did.
Speaker 1:You know what you?
Speaker 2:say a lot.
Speaker 1:There's studies out there and they've been around for years, back in the 70s that talk about certain jobs are considered dirty work, and corrections is one of them. That's listed in there. And it's not that we personally are dirty, but we're surrounded by low morals. Personally are dirty, but we're surrounded by low morals. We're surrounded by a job that's not looked well upon. We're surrounded by people who are shunned from society and that's what we want to take care of. And they say that part of that dirty work you know comes off on the people that have to do it.
Speaker 2:It does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I want to ask one more question go ahead. One more question, because you know, when I picked up your book there's a word on the front page that are on the front cover that you don't see a whole lot associated with corrections and you do with law enforcement, you do with military, but you said duty, sacrifice, sacrifice and leadership. Tell me why you put sacrifice on there?
Speaker 2:Because, yeah, just tell me your thoughts on that, because I find that very telling. Well, I think you sacrifice a lot just by entering into this profession. Most of us, or at least in my case and most people I know got into it because at the time, in my case, it was the only job I could find it. I kind of accidentally got into it and I was long enough to find another job.
Speaker 2:Most of us. I mean I'll say that it's just a whole job of finding something better, something else. But it's the thing when I slam behind me and when I went in on my first use of force and I hadn't been there long, when I had my first use of force and I thought, you know, this is real shit here. This is real life, this is drama. I mean, I didn't like this.
Speaker 2:I don't like to use force but I like the challenge of going in there and dealing with all that stuff Very challenging. It's exciting in a way. You want to try to prevent it if you can, but when it happens and you run it, you know there's a sense of accomplishment when you do that, when you run in and bring up a fight or maybe one's got a knot and you don't have anything except just you know your own set being promoted, but that's an accomplishment and that's something you're on a personal set being come out of it, but that's an accomplishment and that's something that cops need right or not, and we're dealing with the people that they put in prison.
Speaker 2:So I mean, that's a sacrifice to me being able to put yourself in arms way, day after day after day, knowing that you might not survive.
Speaker 1:Why does the public look at what a law enforcement officer or military or some other public servant? Why do they look at that as a sacrifice? But you don't see that term used towards us, even though we sacrifice a ton to be a public servant.
Speaker 2:Probably more so. Yeah, I don't know if I can answer that, but here's what I do. Know it's very little.
Speaker 1:It's something you've ever done.
Speaker 2:You don't want to get shot. It's very you know when they are shot, a suspect or die, all that and you see it on TV. Whatever. Sure, there's a lot of glory for being a police officer. Yeah, bravery, it's a glorious, honorable profession and so forth. Sure, and it's corrections. Ever mentioned, never, never. And I's corrections ever mentioned, never. Never.
Speaker 1:And I'll bet money. I'll bet money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like all the prison guards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'll bet money. There are lives that you saved during your career.
Speaker 2:Certainly.
Speaker 1:That would be front page. If it was any other profession, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Rescued. I rescued a hostage. That's in the very first yeah. I saved his life. Sure, I think I did yeah you did?
Speaker 2:This inmate had an officer hostage and I was the hostage negotiator. Did I save his life? Yeah, yeah. Another time in Cleveland, hawaii, when I was sporting. Another time in Cleveland when I was sporting we had a house surrounded and we were about to capture him but he stepped out of the house. We had it surrounded with his girlfriend and headlock and a knife at her throat. I was five feet away so I got killed. I finally convinced him. I was five feet away so I'm not going to kill him, right. But I finally convinced him. I kept pointing at him and I was backing up as I was doing this. I said if you let her go or I'm going to, I'm going to die your head off, right? I won't say what I said, but it was pretty ugly. I had to say it about three times. He finally did. He shoved dirt to the side and came after me. Now did I save a lot, was it?
Speaker 1:front page news.
Speaker 2:Well, we captured him, we caught him on the ground. I didn't have to shoot him. He had to read books to see what really happened. We caught him on the ground. I didn't have shooting uh, you have to read books to see what really happened but anyway, we'd got him on the ground, um, putting him in one of our cars, putting him back in the prison. So we didn't call the police, we did it all ourselves, you know uh and it's in a bad neighborhood in Cleveland.
Speaker 2:So, uh, uh, well anyway. So, yeah, well anyway. So yeah, call it hostage risk. Well, I mean, she was hostage there for a moment anyway, and I was ready to get over her, and I think she just got in a prisoner's cell. Nevertheless, those are all incidental things, but inside the prison we went into a fight and broke it up. We'd not done that. The fight would have escalated to what I've got now. I mean almost in every case. So how many times do we do that? I can't even count. I don't even know how many fights we broke up. I don't see what happens. I'm going to get that. It don't even know how many fights we broke up. I don't see what happens. We got, I'm going to get somebody to die for a reason or somebody throw you an eye for whatever. We didn't see a lot of murders, but we'd still run through the murder as quick as we could get there, try to save the inmates' lives, and a lot of times we didn't get there in time.
Speaker 1:That's just the way our life.
Speaker 2:That's what we do, but the Father doesn't know that. Maybe this book you know the book is catching on, it's gaining traction. It's gotten pretty high ratings on Amazon. I think it does shine a light. It makes people behind the scenes what we do, what happens every day? Well, mostly the massacres, but it happens in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2:They fight, they stabbing, they escape, murder, half-murder. They just lost an officer at Ross Crutchill Institutional and lost his kill just last week. That was me. There's a danger. It reminds you when there's an officer or a staff kill that reminds that should be a harsh reminder. It was for me. Then you know when you walk in that gate you better. If you look slow, you're sadly mistaken Because it has to get on. That could be me. So what does that tell you? You need to be aware of your surroundings, you need to work as a team, you need to look out for your fellow officer. There's a lot on what you realize that you work in a place of danger and that next body laying there they may be my friend, but it's going to happen time and time again and that next body lander, they must have.
Speaker 2:It's going to happen. Not at all, thank goodness, too much Well.
Speaker 1:Warden, I can't thank you enough for being on here Everybody you know. Let me get this over to you, the book Guard. I'm going to tell you I have read as many correctional books as anybody you know. You listen to my podcast. You know the people I've interviewed. This is one of the best books written about prison.
Speaker 1:I applaud your honesty that you had in there all the way from the way things were, the way they changed, to the way they affected you at the end. Your honesty was the biggest part of that book and I highly recommend it. I will absolutely put it in the show notes here. So if anybody wants to click below in the show notes, it'll take you directly to his book so that you can order it. I'm also going to put down some information in there about, of course, the suicide hotline and some other links that if you're having trouble, if you're thinking that you want to reach out and get some help, some places that you can do that. So I'm going to put that in the show notes also yeah, on the right medications, nothing else.
Speaker 2:Go see your doctor. Absolutely, ptsd can be treated.
Speaker 1:It can be treated with medication.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there might be a little therapy use and talk about it in the center. But go talk to your chaplain or whatever. But get on the medication. It's got to help you.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:That's what I had to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for coming on here. Thank you so much for your honesty and thank you so much for your service. I mean, good Lord, you spent how long total? I don't think we got there.
Speaker 2:I don't know, Thirty I guess Thirty-something yeah. I lived. I mean, I don't know, I bounced around, I spread my hat over five decades. Okay, I've been involved in corrections for five decades, but I spread it out. Okay, I took a five-year vacation, or six-year vacation. Once it came back, the same damn job I left.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of us do that yeah.
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you for having me Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Anytime.
Speaker 2:Thank you to all the correctional officers that are going to watch this. Keep your head up and be careful and don't underestimate PTSD. Get all the medication It'll help. If you think you're experiencing it, it'll help you.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Have a good day, Warden. Thank you.
