former corrections officer releases book about the Baltimore City Jail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJioGEST4MAA man who spent more than 18 years working as a correctional officer inside the notorious Baltimore City Detention Center has written a book about his experiences.
It's called "CO -- the True Story of the Baltimore City Jail.”
The city detention center made national headlines about two years ago, when dozens of detainees and correctional officers were indicted. Author Ralph Johnson says the environment that led to that scandal had been developing for many years before that.
“You basically try to do your job,” he said. “But to be honest it's all about survival. Every day you go in there it's about different adversities.”
Adversities including fights: “We would go in sections where it looked like an all out Neanderthal battle,” he said.
And pressure on correctional officers to commit crimes themselves: “You have to have a serious sense of dignity and pride in what you do because the temptation is there,” he said.
Johnson's book details gang wars in the early 2000s, between the Bloods gang, and a gang that was new to Baltimore -- the Black Guerilla Family, or BGF.
“So much blood, so much gore came out of this back gate that it was just incredible,” he said.
Eventually, the BGF took control of the jail itself, with gang leader Tavon White in charge of an operation that involved tens of thousands of dollars in smuggled drugs, tobacco and other goods.
The state prison system called in federal authorities to investigate. That investigation led to and convictions of more than 40 inmates and correctional officers.
Ralph Johnson knows many of them.
State officials say they have added more cameras to BCDC, and hardened searches of employees as they enter and leave the facility.
Johnson says there are many brave men and women working here. “I'd just like to put on the record that there's a lot of brave men and women who go in there and put their lives on the line every single day,” he said.
But the state should focus more on who gets to work at the jail, so they don't need to do so much monitoring after they're hired.
“I think it's about changing a culture and recruiting people because if you look at a lot of the officers, the CO's that were indicted in the corruption scandal, a lot of them had prior records,” Johnson said. “A lot of them had a lot of issues that didn't make them suitable for this type of environment.”
Everything in the book, he says, is true.
“When I went home crying that was true,” Johnson said. “When I saw CO's carried out in an ambulance that was true. When I saw inmates hanging, on the floor with knives in their neck all that was true.”
He says he wanted to let the public know what correctional officers go through on a daily basis -- putting their lives on the line, under constant stress.
“It's very brutal,” he said. “Very brutal, very graphic because I wanted the people to feel the pain, the anxiety. I did not want to sugar-coat it. I wanted people to know what this animal is over there that's called the Baltimore City Detention Center. You're coexisting with human beings that do not want to be locked in. They do not want to be confined, it's against their nature.”
Johnson is also calling for more rehabilitation programs for inmates. And he wants kids to know there is nothing glamorous about being locked up inside BCDC.
The book is available online.
