Martin Correctional Institution - Federal

American correctional Association
Standards and Accreditation Department
206 North Washington St.
Suite 200
Alexandria,VA 22314
(703)224-0000
SAC@aca.org

RE.,Bias audit of Martin CI

Dear ACA,

My name is XX. I am a Florida prisoner,housed at Martin CI. I am writing in the behalf of all prisoners regarding your 9/16/19 audit. We couldn’t help but notice that you did not speak with prisoners, leaving us no choice but to conclude that 1) your are not working in the interest or welfare of prisoners or society. And 2) You feel that we are so bell curved that we are not worthy of speaking for ourselves regarding prison conditions. So how objective can you or your audit be if it is based only on one side of the system? How much do you care about genuine rehabilitation or penological interest if you visit a prison for days,and not consider speaking to prisoners regarding Prison conditions?

It is obvious that you are not interested in implementing genuine rehabilitation and effective change to this amerikkklan prison industrial complex. The personality of your auditors showed that you and the state harbors the very same opinion of prisoners,that everyone in prison is an animal who deserves to be there and tortured while there. It is clear that you came to see only the fiscal aspect of Martin CI, while turning a blind eye on the living conditions and well being of prisoners. It’s all about money for you, so please allow me to inform you of what you chose not to see,much-less,make public.

1. YOUR MEMO

You chose not to notice that the memo informing prisoners of your visit was posted on 9/13/19,not the mandacious 8/21/19 date it claims. In fact,fixed prison yard and dormitory video surveillance will show that prisoners knew nothing of your coming until Martin CI administration went all in, forcing prisoners to work all through the weekend, prettying up the plantation for your visit. Sidewalks were pressure washed, trays in the kitchen we’re soaked in soap water overnight in cofinement carts, for mold. Laundry stayed open all weekend. Dormitories were painted and repainted with $2 paint,saves money. We thought Donald Trump was coming to visit. Now had that memo of your visit been posted in time, I would have sent you an in-advance list of attractive sights to see while on your Martin CI tour. I still can’t believe you didn’t see or noticed these inhumane and contradicting living conditions. Then too, if you did notice them and acted objectively by moving for genuine rehabilitation and effective change, what then would happen to FDOC as a 13th Amendment slave housing industry? Too many people will lose jobs, too many investors will lose money. What makes us still think, that the state would spend mega millions building prisons, just to turn around and genuinely rehabilitate itself, and prisoners into not getting rearrested, or changing the way the state itself, including law enforcement and state attorneys, see poor and miseducated people. I’m boring you with this, so I’ll get to the point.

2. WHAT YOU CHOSE NOT TO SEE AT MARTIN CI

PHYSICAL ABUSE OF PRISONERS

9/18/19,btwn hours of 3 PM & 7 PM. While you conducted your psuedo-audit, Sgt. Swain had a handcuffed prisoner, laying on the hot pavement, in front of the dining hall, in the hot sun, for about 3 hours, because Sgt. Swain caught him coming out of the chow hall with a bag of ice. How could you have missed that? Or the fact that it is so hot in the dormitories, that prisoners have to resort to stealing ice from the chow hall, or take several showers a day despite 5 PM shower rule, or put plastic bags on windows to direct air flow to themselves, risking confinement trying to cool ourselves.

TOBACCO PROHIBITION,CH.33-401.401

While prisoners are being placed in confinement for possession of tobacco in violation of Christmas.33-401.401, prison staff are smoking freely, and with impunity, above the law despite FL statutes(944.115) prohibiting use of tobacco on all state prison property.

FOOD SERVICE

Warehouse is filled with long expired and outdated food products, for prisoners consumption,ordered and delivered that way due to being much cheaper than what tax payers are charged. So the profit can be pocketed by higher-ups.

Rats: hundreds,if not thousands of them living under the oven in the baking room of Martin CI kitchen.

Trays,cups,and sporks: Moldy,worn out and torn,and being washed by hand, in cold water, in giant garbage cans, rather than by dishwashing machine with legally required water temperature and detergent.

Food Portions: Exiguous,and food is prepared intentionally bad for the swill and to keep canteen sales up. And prisoners are being rushed to eat their meals in less than 3 minutes like animals.

LAUNDRY

Whites and blues being washed together in the same load with no bleach. Whites (underwears) are coming back literally brown, dirtier than when turned in, exposing prisoners to jock-itch, urinary track infection and other dirty under wear related illness. While prisoners are not allowed to hand wash their whites, or use clothes lines. You need to see how brown, our whites come back.

CANTEEN

Robbing our families, through us, price gouging, way above fair market price, especially considering the fact that prisoners earn no income for performance of prison labor, this price gouging amounts to economic war, not on prisoners, but on families and friends of prisoners, whom are being punished by the state for supporting prisoners. Prison staff are paying half price for same like food items that prisoners and their law abiding civilian visitors are charged double and triple.

RECREATION

Once a week if that. There are never enough staff to conduct recreation, but there are always more than enough thrill seeking goons when it’s time to apply excessive force on handcuffed prisoners. They appear out of thin air like magic.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

According to facilitators,the head of Martin CI education department, Dr.Layton, received an annual education budget of only $1500 while security security has unlimited access to program funds, while canteen profits pay for the very same handcuffs, pepper spray, tactical gear, and all else used against prisoners,in what is called the Department of Corrections. What kind of education can prisoners get on a $1500 budget?

Then you wonder why there are so many stabbings. This is clear proof that the state and it’s avaricious superiors and investors have no interest in genuine rehabilitation. The worse part is the fact that the state will not allow prisoners to become independent thinkers capable of determining their own social and political destiny. We are not allowed to genuinely rehabilitate ourselves. Not allowed to even order certain books,or publications,under the guise that certain books can be a threat to the prison system.

A prisoner may read a certain books and become too positively or essentially self aware and disciplined. Positive Prisoner self control is the total opposite of FDOC standard of rehabilitation,the dumber a prisoner,the better for FDOC. being autodidactically genuinely rehabilitated is considered the ultimate threat,and a crime to the state. If every Prisoner become genuinely rehabilitated,the prison system will be rendered irrelevant, out of business, obsolete, thus genuine rehabilitation or correction of any kind for prisoners or staff, is no where in FDOC’s thought or mission.

JPAY MAIL SERVICE

FDOC is robbing prisoners loved-ones,by use of prisoners,charging .39¢ per postage stamp which cost only .7¢ wholesale at JPay. A .32¢ profit per stamp,which go towards buying the very same pepper spray, handcuffs,and all else used against prisoners. The mosquitoes hate the very same cows off whose blood they cannot live without.

On 9/11/19,there occurred a multiple prisoner on prisoner stabbing. The whole plantation was placed on lockdown, collective punishment. RRT, rapid response teams showed up immediately, many from neighboring plantations, in full military tactical gear, clicking-illegal-electric tazer shields and brandishing riot batons to intimidate prisoners while conducting a mass trashing of prisoners cells and property, claiming a so-called mass search. So to keep prisoners from informing the free world of these illegal electric shields and batons, the JPay WiFi was turned off for almost a whole week. In fact, the WiFi is off as I write this on 9/27/19. It’s turned off during every lockdown to keep prisoners from reporting what’s going to the outside world,to keep the truth from getting out,to kill all transparency. So the story is told only by the real criminals, FDOC.

JPay is taking funds(.39¢ postage)from our prisoner account even after censoring and denying our Jmail from leaving the JPay kiosk system,or reaching it’s intended destination.

9/3/19, I plugged my tablet into JPay kiosk to download music. I unplugged my tablet to find that all my political journal notes, essays, and poems, grievance drafts, legal letters, criminal appeal case citings, the event and birth dates,i.e.,my entire calendar section, all stored in my tablet had been illegally accessed, and deleted after being downloaded by JPay. The JPay trouble ticket response basically told me to get lost. Informal grievance response stated that I had exceeded the storage capacity of my tablet, so it automatically deleted, “yes, of all entries on my tablet, just my entire calendar.”

The truth is,my tablet comes with 32 Gigs of storage capacity, and there is still space for 5511video grams, so how did I exceed storage capacity? I get censored alot by Jpay, and the political content of my tablet is well known by JPay and Martin CI mail room. It’s a known fact, I am being retaliatorily targeted due to my prison activism and political belief. They’re reading all my writings right now. This is not the first time, and it won’t be the last, and the physical may be next.

PRISONERS PERSONAL PROPERTY

Prisoners personal property keep getting lost because overseers do not follow CH.33 F.A.C rules in regards to inventorying and safe guarding prisoners personal property, family photos, legal papers and more. Prisoners personal property keep coming up missing.

COUNT

Intentionally long counts, so overseers can sloth their senicure days away, hanging out, smoking cigarettes at tax payers expense, while prisoners can’t get to their legal deadlines in the law library,or other call outs and programs.

During your audit, if you just stepped one foot in side of wing 4 of A dormitory, you would have been left no choice but to smell and see the clogged up sink in the mop closet. It’s been clogged up for months, the water is black, stink and a breeding pond for mosquitoes. It gets over looked every week during inspection. Every senior administrative overseer has taken cell phone pictures of this sink week after week, with the promise of getting it fixed to no avail. Only if you’d entered wing 4 of A dormitory, where your true Accreditation skills are needed. That mop closet is still clogged, stink, and dirty if you think I’m lying or if you need proof. Now you see why the state is in permanent fear of prisoners having any kind of recording devices. These amerikkklan iron curtain issues just mentioned would all been going viral. This is why the prisoners side of prison must be kept concealed at all cost. And you will have to Lynch me to keep me quiet.

FDOC Secretary
Mark Inch
501 S. Calhoun St
Tallahassee, FL 32399

RE: 2/15/19, AND ONGOING BRUTALITY OF PRISONERS IN HANDCUFFS

February 15, 2019, Between 1 pm and 3 pm, during lunch feeding. On walkway in front of medical building, Sgt. Logo and Overseer, St. Croix were roughly escorting handcuffed prisoner, [X] to confinement. Sgt. Lobo literally took out his side arm canister of pepper spray and emptied it in the handcuffed prisoner’s eyes and face area. Sgt. Lobo then slammed prisoner X to the ground and repeatedly kicked him in the back and side. Many other prisoners also witnessed this brutality.

Captain Bensi came running, and rather than stopping the brutality, she literally joined in and participated. Thereby continuing, condoning and encouraging the brutality of prisoner X. Overseer Hampford and all other overseers on the walkway started ordering prisoners to their dormitories so there would be no witnesses. Per Martin CI Policy and Practice, any prisoner caught looking gets the same treatment. This is an ongoing issue here at Martin CI, especially with Sgt. Lobo.

2/6/19: Approx. 1:02 P.M. C-dormitory fixed porch video surveillance will show and prove that prisoners coming from lunch were stuck on the porch outside due to the overseer in the overseer station not opening the two main entrances to the dorm. Sgt. Lobo approached with his large side arm canister of chemical agents in hand (another unknown overseer with him whipped out his handcuffs and fitted it over his fist in brass knuckle fashion), the broken seal in his mouth as he sprayed chemical agents toward the crowded porch causing prisoners (myself included) to start coughing as the overseer in the overstation finally opens the main doors. Sgt. Lobo did this for no other reason other than the fact that he is above the law. There was no disturbance or emergency as is required by SOP to justify breaking the seal of chemical agents canister. And this is Sgt. Lobo’s second time doing this in recent weeks that I’ve witnessed.

1/1/10: between 5:30 PM and 7:30 PM. On walkway in front of medical. During dinner feeding and pill call, Sgt. Lobo gassed a prisoner who was already in handcuffs, in the face and eyes. The victim, as always, was a black prisoner.

This policy and practice clearly amounts to summary brutality, battery, excessive force. See Danley v. Allen, 540 F.3d@1309: “Once a prisoner has stopped resisting, there is no longer a need for force. So the use of force thereafter is disproportionate to the need.” The issue here is the fact that these prisoners are not resisting, they are being gassed and beaten, only after they have peacefully submitted to handcuffs. Other prisoners are looking on, but there is no telling how long prisoners can remain tolerant being caught in such bias and no-win-situations. Our backs are being forced against the walls here. Please do something before the worst comes to pass.

2/13/19: Submitted informal grievance RE: 2/6/19 and prior issues in Sgt. Lobo gassings. Grievance still pending. Legal mail being intentionally delayed, haven’t had legal mail in 2 days. Can’t get out of the dormitory, no reason other than abuse of authority and collective punishment.

RE: FDOC/Martin CI security, and other staff members blatant and rampant convenient disregard of Chapter 33-401.401 and Fla.Stat.944.115. Use of tobacco prohibition.

With respect, I’m serving a life sentence for armed robbery, currently housed at Martin CI, where prisoners, (myself included) are facing a very detrimental issue regarding continuous risk of contracting cancer and/or other tobacco related illnesses due mostly to constant exposure to second hand smoke from staff members openly smoking cigarettes here and basically at every Florida prison. FDOC staff members are smoking and/or chewing tobacco on prison grounds with only convenient or selective regards for health concerns and F.A.C. Chapter 33-401.401 and Fla Stat.944.115. Per policy and practice, prison staff are blessed with the legal but unrighteous double standard guarantee of unlimited administrative impunity. Their behavior is condoned and encouraged by administration, they are basically above the law. They smoke and/or chew tobacco as they please while prisoners are subject to confinement for use or possession of tobacco products.

I have grieved this issue to the highest level to no avail. See appeal grievances log #18-6-37611, originally informal grievance log #430-1807-0194 regarding Overseer Swain smoking on numerous occasions. See also appeal grievance log #18-643906 originally informal grievance log #430-1808-0351 regarding Colonel Lankford chewing and spitting tobacco juice in an E-4 dormitory garbage can on 8/27/18, approximately 7:45 PM. All grievances were biasly and conveniently denied. This policy and practice continues blatantly and rampantly as of current by almost every staff member from trainee to warden(s).

On 8, January, 2019 I was issued a low bunk pass by medical Dr. Y Resilard. I submitted this low bunk pass to C-dormitory Sgt. Gilbert, who said that she would call housing and have me reassigned to a low bunk. However, a few hours later, upon inquiring the status of the bunk change, Sgt. Gilbert snapped out loud stating, “I’m not helping any fucking body any more, someone stole my pack of cigarettes from my bag in the officer station.” Thereby, punishing me for someone else’s action by refusing to call housing to honor my medical issued low bunk pass because someone stole her cigarettes, which are prohibited by Chapter 33-401.401 and Fla. stat.944.115. On 1/19/19, as a result, I submitted a grievance on the issue of mentioning the cigarette incident. I’m still assigned a top bunk because of my grievance despite my having a medical issued low bunk pass.

Considering the fact that this is an ongoing issue, there is much more. Martin CI administration are going all out in war on contraband, tobacco. However, this crusade only applies to and against prisoners rather than all within the gates, including administrative higher-ups whom are fully culpable.

On December 22, 2018, for example, two prisoners were hauled off to confinement from CSB medical building lobby for being in possession of tobacco. This incident subsequently resulted in the termination of a medical staff member, a male nurse Mr. Duke. Fired in connection with introduction of contraband, tobacco, and probably prosecuted while prison staff are smoking and chewing tobacco in convenient violation of the very same introduction of contraband rule, Chapter 33-401.401. Thus exposing prisoners, whom are not allowed to smoke or chew, to constant to second hand smoke and serious risk of cancer.

In the administrative war on contraband, tobacco, the rules are subject to change on the fly, depends on which shift is working, the prison is operated this way one hour/day and that way the next. The only thing consistent here is inconsistency. Prisoners are being sent back to their housing units while in the middle of their CSB appoints, being constantly rescheduled. Property, library, chapel, housing, even legal mail gets no priority in the name of limiting prisoner movement in attempt to “stop the so-called passing of contraband,” as claimed by Assistant Warden J. Holtz. All this while Martin CI staff members, Warden down to trainee, are the main ones smoking cigarettes and exposing prisoners to second hand smoke and risk of cancer. The rules here are simply being adhered to or applied conveniently only against prisoners.

Prison staff are highly addicted to tobacco products making this a very sensitively and dangerous issue for prisoners to grieve due to knowing staff full tendency to retaliate. Prisoners are in real fear of prison staff retaliation. Prisoners also have permanently instilled justified lack of faith in the grievance process. Prisoners have gotten so used to being ignored, rubber stamped, denied to the highest level. For example, S. Millikens in central office is 100% anti-prisoner, no matter how timely, factual and/or meritorious prisoner’s claim(s), it is denied, rubber stamped. I am totally aware of the danger I face for writing this letter. I know what could happen to me. I don’t smoke, but I will still end up cancerous, dead, whether I submit this or not. All prisoners may as well resort to smoking cigarette butts dropped by prison staff and catch cancer. We’re all going to get cancer from prison staff second hand smoke anyway.

REMEDY: That you in higher office move to objectively enforce lawful adherence to mandated Chapter 33-401.401 and Fla.Stat.944.115 if prison cancer rate and money for cancer treatment of Florida prisoners is a concern, enforce the rules all the way, not just conveniently abasing prisoners, but against all within the gates.

A copy of the foregoing is being submitted to Martin CI mail personnel to be first class mailed to FDOC South Regional Director, FDOC Secretary and Fla Governor Office on 2/18/19.