"In Obama America, girls guard you!"

13 corrections officers indicted in Md., accused of aiding gang’s drug scheme 

By Ann E. Marimow and John Wagner

More than a dozen Maryland state prison guards helped a dangerous national gang operate a drug-trafficking and money-laundering scheme from behind bars that involved cash payments, sex and access to fancy cars, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. 

Thirteen female corrections officers essentially handed over control of a Baltimore jail to gang leaders, prosecutors said. The officers were charged Tuesday in a federal racketeering indictment. 

The indictment described a jailhouse seemingly out of control. Four corrections officers became pregnant by one inmate. Two of them got tattoos of the inmate’s first name, Tavon — one on her neck, the other on a wrist. 

The guards allegedly helped leaders of the Black Guerilla Family run their criminal enterprise in jail by smuggling cellphones, prescription pills and other contraband in their underwear, shoes and hair. One gang leader allegedly used proceeds to buy luxury cars, including a Mercedes-Benz and a BMW, which he allowed some of the officers to drive. ...

The Black Guerilla Family was founded in California in the 1960s but now operates nationwide in prisons and on the streets of major U.S. cities, including Baltimore. ... 

Have you ever noticed that white prison gangs are always described as "white supremacist," but black prison gangs and Mexican prison gangs are never described as "black supremacist" and "Mexican supremacist?"

In a statement Tuesday, [Gov.] O’Malley said the indictment arose in part from the efforts of a Maryland prison task force that includes state and federal officials. 

It comes at a sensitive time for the Democrat, who is weighing a 2016 presidential bid. Aides have said that part of O’Malley’s political pitch would be his record as a “performance-driven” manager of state government.  

At the center of the investigation was an alleged leader of the Black Guerilla Family, Tavon White, who prosecutors said fathered five children with four of the corrections officers — Jennifer Owens, 31, of Randallstown; Katera Stevenson, 24, of Baltimore; Chania Brooks, 27, of Baltimore; and Tiffany Linder, 27, of Baltimore — since his incarceration on attempted murder charges in 2009. 

Five kids fathered by an attempted murderer in prison. Anybody want to bet whether these five will turn out to be, on the whole, net taxpayers or tax consumers?

In one wiretapped cellphone call in January, White, 36, of Baltimore, told an acquaintance: “This is my jail. You understand that? I’m dead serious. I make every final call in this jail.” 

Four years ago, federal authorities in Baltimore targeted the BGF gang at the state prison in Baltimore, sending its reputed leader to prison for 12 years.

I'm not totally clear on the concept here. You're sending him to prison, where he already is, for the crime of living luxuriously in prison? (It does seem like it would make a good paradox in logic class.)

“Correctional officers were in bed with BGF inmates,” he said. “We need to be able to rely on people within law enforcement — to make sure they are on our side.” ...

According to an affidavit for search warrants for the homes of the prison guards, who were arrested Tuesday, gang leaders strategically recruited female officers who they thought had “low self-esteem and insecurities.” 

Gang leaders also relied on other inmates, known as “working men,” whose jobs throughout the prison gave them greater flexibility to pick up and deliver contraband. Inmates then paid for the drugs and cellphones using 14-digit numbers from prepaid debit cards that had also been smuggled into the prisons.

George Gilder wrote a book, Visible Man, about a charming young inner city black man who idled his days away in low brow stupidity, except for when he was in prison. Suddenly, he would turn into a King Rat-style business mastermind, only to relapse into a layabout sponge as soon as he was freed to return to the company of women he could exploit with his looks and personality. (Of course, they didn't have gender-integrated prison guard staffs back in the 1970s, so we're more advanced now.)

... In one instance, prosecutors described Officer Jasmin Jones allegedly standing guard outside a closet while Officer Kimberly Dennis had sex with inmate Derius Duncan.

Maynard said department policy prohibits such relationships between inmates and correctional officers ...

Sen. Lisa A. Gladden (D-Baltimore), who works as a public defender in Baltimore when the legislature is not in session, said the large percentage of female corrections at the detention center contributed to the problem. “A lot of times, they become smitten with the inmates. [The inmates] talk really sweet and say really nice things, and the CO’s fall for them. You need to have a bunch of rough, ugly men.” 

But Maynard, the state prison chief, said that the sex of the officers was not the issue. It is not uncommon, he said, for detention centers across the country to employ women. The issue, he said, was this particular group of “bad actors,” who were strategically targeted and were willing to break the law.

Peter Hermann contributed to this report.

In another account, Jane Miller of WBAL-TV in Baltimore reports that none of the 13 female guards named in the indictment has been fired: see the 2:15 point of this video. The text story says:

Officers can be fired for associating with inmates, but the women in this case are suspended and still employed.

More from WBAL:

According to the indictment, White allegedly had a sexual relationship with four correctional officers — Jennifer Owens, Katera Stevenson, Chania Brooks and Tiffany Linder — impregnating all of them at least once. Owens and Stevenson got "Tavon" tattoos, the indictment states. ... 

On Oct. 24, 2012, Owens is heard saying, "I understand you stressed out cuz you locked up, OK? But I am, too. You locked up and I'm (expletive) pregnant again. Who the (expletive) does that?"

From the Baltimore Sun:

An indictment unsealed Tuesday names 25 people — including 13 women working as corrections officers — who face racketeering and drug charges. ...

It alleges that Tavon White, an inmate known as "Bulldog," took control of the prison gang soon after his arrival in 2009 on an attempted-murder charge. He is accused of building a network of corruption inside of the jail that both enabled a smuggling operation and allowed White to manage gang activity on the city streets.

... "Once a violent offender is sent to jail, law enforcement's hardest work should be behind it," said. "This is not the case in Baltimore City." 

By this spring, White was confident of his supremacy in the jail, according to summaries of intercepted calls included in the affidavit. 

"I hold the highest seat you can get," he told another alleged member of the gang. "So regardless of what anybody say, whatever I say is law. Like, I am the law. My word is law." 

... "These sexual relations cemented the business ties and the association of the corrections officers with the enterprise," prosecutors wrote in the indictment.

A spokesman for the department said 13 correctional officers have been suspended without pay. The department is recommending that they be dismissed, the spokesman said. ...

Sen. Verna Jones-Rodwell, a Baltimore Democrat, said she is supportive of "anything that would eliminate the transport of contraband … into the prisons."
"We have to make sure appropriate training takes place and we are paying our corrections officers to make sure they are not engaging in negative behavior so they don't feel they need to take risks to help them out financially," she said. 

Archer Blackwell, a senior staff representative with the union that represents the jail's officers, said the management of the detention center should do more to screen and prepare workers. 

"The administration really doesn't do a good job of hiring quality people," he said. "They need to do more psychological examination, they need to do more in the academy to actually train and discipline people." 

I knew a guy once who had a job as head of a maintenance department at one of the huge prisons outside of Chicago. He said that lots of the guards were paid off by prison gangs to smuggle stuff in. He suggested that small rural towns that imagine that having a prison built there would be a great employment opportunity for their young men and women should think twice about what being a prison guard and being around prisoners all day does to a normal person's morals. He told me this while we were sitting in his lovely and quite lavish house. Hey, wait a minute ...

P.S., But this whole affair will be worth it since it will undermine the stereotype of women prison guards as lesbians.

My wife says, "But I thought all women prison guards were lesbians?"

"Apparently, just women guards in the women prisons."

P.P.S. Speaking of the Black Guerilla Family, I strongly suspect that the primateprison gang scenes in 2011's clever Rise of the Planet of the Apes were inspired in part by this phrase "Black Guerilla Family." It's not the kind of thing the screenwriters can admit in public, but the more I read up on the once-famous history of the Black Guerilla Family, the more it sounds like one of the inspirations for the movie (along with the brilliant "Patient Zero" ending).

Rise, like many of the original Planet of the Apes movies, is in part a Black Power allegory. The Black Guerilla Family was the most intellectual of the prison gangs, founded in Northern California by George Jackson in 1966 as a Marxist revolutionary movement.

Jackson went on to be the prison boyfriend of Professor Angela Davis — they first met on visiting days, but exchanged passionate love letters. (Chicks dig guys on Death Row.) After the Jackson Brothers killed some guards in various escapes with guns she had bought, Professor Davis was put on trial for first degree murder. She was famously acquitted.

The whole story of George Jackson is just insane, but I don't recall anybody else noticing any connections between Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the Black Guerilla Family. David Horowitz knew most of these folks so I wonder what he would think of Rise.

P.P.P.S. Imagine that you are a Chechen Mafia vor sitting around in the rubble of your Grozny strip club, and a Yakov Smirnoff-type underling rushes in to announce, "TV say black vor in American prison had five babies with four lady guardettes! In Obama America, girls guard you!"

Being a rational mafioso, you would have to conclude that you owe it to your crime family descendants to get out of the Chechnya-Dagestan-Russia rackets rat race and come to America, so rich and so stupid, today.

As Neil Diamond ominously warned:

Everywhere around the world
They're coming to America
Every time that flag's unfurled
They're coming to America
Got a dream to take them there
They're coming to America
Got a dream they've come to share
They're coming to America
They're coming to America
They're coming to America
They're coming to America
They're coming to America
Today, today, today, today, today