Lansing Correctional Facility input from Joe Howard
FxBxIsnoop
goings-on in this newsgroup I decided to
contribute something to the discussion. I have been troubled for quite some
time about things that have been done to me,
some of you are aware of what I am talking about.
Things have lately been going a lot better for me than before, but I still
cannot get some of it out of my mind and off my
chest. I want to know how people can be harrassed by their supervisor and the
administration does nothing about it,
instead they stick up for one another. Some of you know about the incident
where I called the FBI and what was done to
me as a result. Besides being involuntarily sent to a psychiatric facility
where they found nothing wrong with me, I was
written up for using a state-owned telephone to call the FBI and ordered in
writing not to do so again in the future. I tape
recorded the call to the FBI without their knowledge and am preparing to post
it to this newsgroup for all to download and
hear as soon as I get some of the things edited out of it that I don't want
anybody hearing. I was examined by 3
psychiatrists who found nothing wrong with me, despite the fact that the prison
alleged I was paranoid and delusioned, and
thought I may be dangerous. One of the psychiatrists told me that it was my
supervisor (Cpt. Les Ward) who claimed I was
paranoid and delusioned. Those of you who know me know that that is not true at
all. The last of the 3 psychiatrists I saw
told me that they tested me for paranoia and delusions and stated that they
found no trace of either within me and further
stated that they did not believe I am dangerous. I refused to sign a release at
the psychiatrist's office because the letter I
received from the Warden ordering me to undergo the psychiatric examination
stated that I would be "allowed to continue
my duties pending the results of the examination". I figured that if I refused
to sign the release allowing the prison to get the
results of the examination, the prison could not fire me. If my employment were
"pending the results of the examination"
then obviously I was on very thin ice if I failed the examination. So, refusing
to sign the release would guarantee that I
would not lose my job. I was terrified throughout the entire ordeal which took
a few weeks. I was also bitched at in writing
for going to the dentist for an emergency root canal when a decayed tooth broke
off and put me in extreme constant pain. I
skipped the psychiatrist appointment to get the root canal done and any of you
who have had a root canal done can
understand why. I was called into the Warden's office and asked by the Warden
why I refused to sign the release. I told
him about the part in his letter that I would be allowed to continue my duties
pending the results of the examination and that
I refused to sign the release so the prison could not see the results, assuring
that I would remain employed. The Warden
told me that I had no choice and that I am to go to KU Medical Center and sign
the release and if I did not, then "that's it for
you". I then went to KU and signed the release and told them that I was doing
so involuntarily, and noted that information
below my signature. Despite all that, KU still sent the results of the
examination to the prison. Also, they will not allow me to
see the results. I have no idea what the examination results say about me. LCF
personnel manager Walt Keene telephoned
me to tell me that the I need to pay the bill for the psychiatrist and during
the conversation I told him that they have not
given me a copy of the results despite the fact that I made 3 requests at that
point in time and he replied, "I don't know
why, I have my copy". I then asked him if I could come to his office and view
the results and he said "no, that is confidential
information and I cannot disclose it to you". I called a female psychiatrist in
Kansas City who told me that I am entitled to
the results, but the State of Kansas will not disclose the results to me. When
I first declined to go to the psychiatrist, I
called in sick to Cpt. Ward at 7:30 a.m. and told him I was not going because I
was sick with a migraine headache (which
was the truth). A few minutes later, Cpt. Ward and Walt Keene arrived at my
residence and Walt Keene told me that I had
no choice, that I was going to have to go to KU. He stated that I was not sick
and that I was just playing a game on him
and that he was not going to tolerate it and that he was not going to allow me
to take the day off sick to see my doctor.
For all of you LCF employees who may not believe this, you all know that I am
into spy equipment and I am the one who has the spy shop
on the main street of Lansing where the big sign is that says spy equipment
across from the lumberyard. I have a pinhole
lens camera in my livingroom concealed behind a picture which I use in case my
home ever gets burglarized, it runs 24
hours a day. I also have one in my living room window looking outside and
everybody around here knows it, and the Lansing police came and asked me for
the videotape the night Taco John's got robbed because they thought the robber
may have ran down the street across my camera. I videotaped Cpt. Ward and Walt
Keene when they came to my residence when I declined to go to KU. I have
told this story to a few of you at work who didn't seem to think it happened.
Well, keep an eye on this newsgroup story
because I am making an AVI out of it so you all can download it and watch and
hear everything that went on in my
livingroom that morning. It is a large AVI so I am going to have to break it
down into sections and you can download them
one at a time then you will know that I am not making up stories. The thing
that irritates me the most about all this is the
fact that I was preparing to try to get a job with the Leavenworth PD or the
Kansas Highway Patrol as a trooper. I can kiss
that idea goodbye now because when they come to read my personnel file and see
the psychiatrist incident and the other
damned lies that were written about me during that time frame they will cross
me off the eligibility list and I can't blame
them because I would do the same thing if I were them. I was told that Topeka
knew nothing about this but I came across
a letter on a Central Office letterhead signed by Judy Rickerson. Among several
things it says about me that I don't agree
with are that I am immature, and cannot control my temper. That is a bunch of
crap. It is true that I was angry for a long
time because of what I was going through at work but I never went off on
anybody or gave any indication that I would. I
also consider myself to be very grown up, not immature. My supervisor put me
through a lot of undue crap that drove me
down emotionally and mentally. I am still not feeling like I used to feel. I
also want to say to those of you who pass me in
the hall and don't say hello anymore because you think I'm crazy because I was
at the psychiatrist, or talk to me differently
than you used to because you think I'm a kook to knock it off. I am the same
person I have always been. I am a genuine
person who will bend over backwards to help anybody and a lot of you know that.
I learned from a ranking person that my
supervisor was laughlingly telling others that it took me 8 or 9 tries to pass
the psychiatric test and that JR (you know who
I'm talking about) passed it the first time. Well, frankly I don't know if I
failed the test the first 8 or 9 times or not, because
the State of Kansas will not release the results to me. I may have passed, I
may not, all I know is I am still working here. I
personally do not believe I failed a damned thing but I would like to know what
was behind all this and what all is written in
the file from Central Office that the psychiatrists were careful to make sure I
didn't see. I also would like to know why they drew blood
from me. I did not want them to but the lab tech said I had to. Was it a sneaky
way to do a drug test on me? I have never
used drugs in my life and don't care to but it would not surprise me to find
that my supervisor told them that he thinks I do. I
don't even drink alcohol. Some of you know that I get terrible migraine
headaches. I rarely get them anymore, but one of the psychiatrists asked me
what treatment I was receiving for them. I indicated that Dr. Stuart Grote, who
is an Osteopath, and Dr. Dorothy Emery, my Chiropractor took care of that. I
also take Imitrex. The psychiatrist replied "I don't believe in that science".
I knew then that I was screwed. Now I have a doctor disagreeing with a doctor
over my head. What was I supposed to do, ask him cut my head open and examine
my brain? Do crazy people get a lot of headaches? Well, I'm not crazy but I do
get headaches. I was scared to death and all I wanted to do was cooperate and
get the hell out of there.
I also want to comment on a couple other things. You may all remember when Mike
Emmendorfer taught a class a few
months ago on ethics, and how the class got just a little out of hand when some
employees started commenting on wrong
things their supervisors had done to them, including some job evaluation
wrongdoing, falsifying dates, etc. I seem to remember 5 or 6 officers including
Dees from nights making these claims. I think this is
something that needs to be addressed. Anybody want to comment on their
experiences on that isue?
As the facility's communications man, I have received complaints from many of
you that your walkie-talkies are not working
in certain areas of the prison, especially medium education, medium clinic, and
lower-Q. You may remember when the
repeater antenna was located on Tower-14. We took the antenna down so a new
roof could be installed. Afterwards it was
learned that the warranty on the roof would be void if we re-mounted the
antenna tower onto tower-14. We then mounted the antenna
onto the top of the water tower which put the antenna approximately 250 feet
off the ground compared to 100 feet on
tower-14. We then had the perfect radio system. There were no blind spots in
the prison at all, and we could call in from
many miles away while transporting inmates down the highway. One unit in the
transportation division actually called in from
Junction City which was around 300 miles away. That normally cannot be done,
but he was in the Flint Hills which has a
high elevation, heard the prison talking, and called in just to see if he could
reach Lansing. One day I was called into the
Warden's office along with the members of my chain of command, the business
manager, and the purchasing agent. I was
accused of allowing the antenna to be mounted onto the tip of the water tower
instead of on the catwalk of the water tower.
It was not me that authorized this to be done but they were accusing me of
doing it in an attempt to pass the blame to me.
Putting the antenna on the water tower was a contract job, we did not do it
ourselves. Specifications were written and a
plan was drawn up. The project was let out for bid. A former employee told me
one day that he was in Captain Ward's
office and Cpt. Ward got a call on his speakerphone. He told me a man was
trying to get the project changed, and I seem
to recall him saying that it was to get the cost down so he wouldn't have to
pay something. I researched the Kansas State
Statutes and found a law that says if a contractor contracts with the State of
Kansas for a project in which the amount
exceeds $10,000.00, the contractor must post a public works bond for the amount
of the project with the county clerk of
the county in which the job is being done. It appears to me this was the basis
of the call, to get the cost below ten
thousand dollars to get out of posting a public works bond at the Leavenworth
County Courthouse. This may not be the case, all I am saying is that after
painstaking investigation this is the only justifiable motive I could find for
that alleged action. They accused me of
authorizing the project to be modified, and Jim Dewberry remembers the day I
went out to the parking lot, I was mad
and told him that Cpt. Ward had just informed me that they had modified the
project without saying anything about it to me first.
The antenna was originally to have been mounted on the catwalk of the prison's
232' tall water tower. FCC license forms were
submitted and approved by the FCC to move the antenna. Mounting the antenna
onto the catwalk would require whoever
got the bid on the contract to sub-contract out to a private company to come in
and weld on the tower. Apparently, not just
anybody can weld on water towers. Instead of doing it the way the plan and
specifications were written, it was less
expensive to put the antenna on the top of the water tower and clamp it to a
stub. That deleted the expense of
purchasing a mini-tower for the catwalk to mount the antenna onto, and it
deleted the expense of sub-contracting out to a
welding company at the expense of the vendor who got the bid. Apparently, this
was enough to get it under $10,000.00. Although I was glad to see the antenna
go higher, because higher elevation gives us longer radio range, I am not
the one who authorized the project to be modified. Now, here's what happened
after that. When I got called into the
Warden's office over this incident, the Warden stated "well fellas, the bottom
line is, we have 24 hours to take the antenna
off the water tower or our license will be revoked". I can prove that this was
said if need be. That would mean that we
would have to turn in all our walkie-talkies and vehicular radios, and have no
base station. It would be telephone
communications only at LCF. The warden then asked me what we were going to do
for an antenna. I told him that I had an
emergency antenna (which isn't worth a crap) on the side of the water tower and
that I would connect the repeater to it.
The prison was not aware that I had a secondary antenna to hook up to. I had
planned to reserve this antenna in the event a
tornado knocked the main antenna down. I then switched the repeater to the
small antenna and we are still on it today. The
reason you people are getting bad radio range and in some locations no range at
all is because of the antenna our repeater
is currently on. That antenna was originally intended for the 155.475 Mhz
nationwide emergency police mutual aid channel
which was part of the antenna project. But Norm Bacon in Central Office said we
could not have it because the Kansas
Highway Patrol said they did not want us to have that channel. I do not believe
the Highway
Patrol made that statement. I then considered it a backup antenna in case we
ever needed it. It was not designed to reach
around the deep depths of the prison to 5 watt walkie-talkies. It was designed
to communicate with base stations of other
nearby law enforcement agencies. The next day I called the FCC and asked why
they gave us 24 hours to take the antenna
down. I tape recorded the call to the FCC without them knowing about it and I
will let any of you hear it if you want. The
field agent of the FCC who covers this area said he knew nothing about it, and
that he didn't care if we left it up
there. The FCC is the only agency that has the authority to take away our
radios, nobody else can. It is a fact that putting
the antenna on top of the water tower instead of on the catwalk caused it to be
14 feet higher that the FCC license allowed.
The agent from the FCC told me that he didn't care about the situation. I asked
him what he would have done if I had reported to
him that the antenna was 14 feet too high. He replied that first of all, the
FCC does not issue 24 hour shutdown notices
to public safety agencies, and that if he had been informed of the situation,
he would have sent us a letter advising us of the
situation, requesting a written response back as to what had been done to
correct it. He further stated that his
recommendation would have been to either leave the antenna where it was and
submit a new FCC application to increase
the antenna height an additional 14 feet to match the actual height of the
antenna, or to lower the antenna. The day after I
was raked over the coals about all this, a crew of maintenance staff and
inmates climbed the water tower and removed the
antenna, whacked the $6.00 per foot antenna cable all to hell, and that is why
you people have poor radio performance in
some areas and no radio performance in other areas. A simple act of submitting
an FCC license modification form is all it
would have taken, and the FCC agent said we could continue operating while the
application was pending. After the
meeting I asked Bob Herring, who was present at the meeting, what he thought of
it. He stated that it looked to him like a
tag team match between the Warden and Deputy Warden against me. I believe the
intent was to ask me what we were
going to do for an antenna, I would reply that we have no other antenna, and I
would be fired because we would have no
radio communications available. They did not know that I had a spare antenna.
I would like to know if any of you have had false derogatory comments placed in
your job evaluations. Remember when
they were tearing the old A&T building apart to renovate it for the TC unit?
You recall that either Secretary of Corrections
Chuck Simmons or Governor Graves (I can't remember which) came to LCF and gave
a big speech on the new TC unit and
commended everybody for getting the TC unit finished on time and within budget.
As soon as he left, they tore the place
apart again and continued the renovation. I wrote down names of staff members
and inmates and what they were doing for
a long time afterwards. Letters of appreciation were issued by the Secretary of
Corrections to all employees involved for
getting the project completed on time and within budget. I was the only
employee who did not get a letter of appreciation
from Chuck. Instead I got a letter saying that my actions prevented the TC unit
from opening on time. Now which is which,
either Chuck Simmons was lying or my supervisor Cpt. Ward was and I want to
know which. I ordered cameras with mirrored
domes for the TC unit. I wrote the specifications for the bid, the state let it
out for 30 day bid, and the bid was awarded.
When the equipment arrived I assembled, adjusted, and tested everything, then
installed it. The problem was that the
mirrored domes which were ordered along with everything else did not arrive.
The vendor failed to ship the domes. I
installed the camera housings and cameras, along with the monitors and VCR's.
Those of you who worked in the TC unit
when it opened remember the cameras hanging on the walls with no domes? That's
why. The vendor did not ship the
domes and I had absolutely no control over that. But I got an unsatisfactory
job evaluation and it said I caused the TC unit
to not be opened on time when either Governor Graves or Secretary of
Corrections Simmons said it was opened on
time. I seem to recall that the heating system hadn't even been installed yet
after the big ceremony was over and the inmates were complaining about no heat.
This was the
same job evaluation when, during my appeal hearing (which I won) I asked what
my supervisor meant when he wrote in my
job evaluation that I only do the work I enjoy and do not do the work that I
don't enjoy. When asked about this by the
appeal board, Cpt. Ward replied that there were no instances. I want it known
here and now that I have never declined to
do a job assigned to me and I am glad to assist others in doing theirs. There
has never been one incident in which I have
refused or failed to do a task. Despite the fact that I won the appeal and my
evaluation was raised to satisfactory, I still
remained on 90 day special probation which was supposed to have been null and
void when the appeal was won. I was
told be a ranking officer (and I can prove it) that Cpt. Ward stated that he
got me put on 90 day special probation and
would have me out of here soon.
I would like to comment further on the TC Unit camera system. I was given a
letter of reprimand for wasting money on
the TC unit camera system which was a damned lie. My supervisor told me to
order the camera equipment for the TC Unit.
He stated that the Warden wanted everything rack-mounted in rack cabinets. I
spent several thousand dollars on this
equipment. When it arrived, I assembled the monitors and VCR's into the
rackmount cabinets. I was later told by my
supervisor that the Warden changed his mind about the rack cabinets and decided
to have the prison's wood shop
construct a wooden cabinet to put the monitors and VCR's into and that I was to
remove the equipment from the rack
cabinets and put them into the wooden cabinets. I did so. I then did not know
what to do with the rack-cabinets and the
custom-made rackmounts for the monitors and VCR's. I asked a staff member where
to put them so they could be hauled
away to the trash. There is no other use for them, they were made especially
for the designated equipment and nothing
else. I set the cabinets out to be hauled away. Later on, Fox Collins called me
and said that he was told by Cpt. Ward to
haul the cabinets to the top floor of the old administration building for
storage. He asked me to help him move them
because they were too heavy for him to haul by himself. As we were pushing them
through Main Gate, Kathy Lynch came
out and started bitching to Fox about the cabinets running over the tile floor.
She never said anything to me at all not even
one word, despite the fact that the letter of reprimand stated that she had
counseled me about it beforehand. Afterwards, I
received 2 letters of reprimand over this. One was for wasting state money by
trying to throw the cabinets away, and the
other was for destruction of state property by destroying the floor tiles. I
went to the area where the floor was allegedly
destroyed, and observed a couple very minor scuff marks in the wax, nothing
more than what happens every day during
shift change at Main Gate when everybody walks through in their boots. The
inmate porter came by later and ran the floor
buffer over it and the scuffs disappeared. Officer Lou Hunt was a witness
because he was working at Main Gate and saw
the floor himself as it was right in front of him all day. When I showed him
the letter of reprimand he just shook his head. I
want to know who is wasting money, me by trying to throw away the video
cabinets or the administration for ordering
something which costs thousands of dollars then not using it. I don't mind
keeping my mouth shut about things but when I
get blamed and lied on I am not going to lie down and take it. Fox collins told
me that Cpt. Ward called him and told him to
take the cabinets to the old admin building to store them and that otherwise he
knew nothing about them. In the Letter of
reprimand it says that Cpt. Ward said that Fox wanted the cabinets because he
could use them. According to Fox that is a lie. This is the same time I was
sent to the psychiatrist and was on 90 day special probation. It is obvious to
me
that they were trumping things up in preparation to get rid of me. I also have
tape recorded conversations to support
that.
Has anybody at LCF been accused of doing something that did not even occur? On
2 separate occasions I was accused of
being at the prison after hours without authorization and demanded that I make
a full detailed report to I&I (Intelligence &
Investigations) as to what I was doing at the prison. At the last accusation, I
was made to turn in my take home keys. I'll be
the first to admit that I didn't have a terrible need for the keys. If you want
them back fine, that's no problem, but don't call
me in and accuse me of something that not only didn't I do, but that didn't
even happen at all, and then show me how
untrustworthy you consider me by telling me to turn the keys in. I also learned
a long time ago that I was suspected of
being the person who snuck in the Warden's office after hours one night. It was
not me and I've been unclear as to what really happened. Does anybody know?
Although I had a master key, I never used it
without getting authorization first. If somebody did enter the Warden's office
it was not me. And Dave, I know you're
reading this and I want you to know that I would never have done anything like
that to you. Despite the things I am writing
here, I like you very much and have too much respect to go sneaking around in
your office at night. I am one of the few
people who have been alone in the I&I and DWO office a few times and I never
looked at or touched anything that I
wasn't supposed to.
It's good that there is something like this newsgroup where employees can have
a collective discussion. It's too bad that
the public sees it though. About a month ago somebody at work suggested I call
the Kansas Human Rights Commission. I
did so, and the lady on the phone seemed uninterested. She then asked "Mr.
Howard, how long have you been an inmate
at Lansing"? I replied I am not an inmate, I am an employee. She then acted
very surprised and became extremely
interested in what I was saying. She said "that's bizarre, I've never heard of
these kinds of things happening to an
employee." After talking a while, she told me that she thought a supervisor
should handle this instead of her but the
supervisor was gone that day. She took my number and said a supervisor would
call me back tomorrow. Well, they never
called back but the next day the LCF K-9 unit brought a drug dog to the comm
shop and sniffed the place for drugs
including my desk and the refrigerator and he sniffed around in the
refrigerator where Bob Bigelow and I keep our lunches.
Bob was there at the time and we both had the feeling the dog was sent there on
purpose. I don't care if the dog sniffs
around my area but I feel that in this case it was the result of the phone
call.
I have 11 pages of stuff that I am going over. When I pick out what I want I
will add it to this post. If we are to discuss
things in this newsgroup, then let's discuss things. I think a lot of people
have something to get off their chest or bring out
so grow some hair and do it, just don't say anything bad about anyone
specifically and don't try to get anyone into trouble,
they will eventually do that themselves without our help. I would also like to
say to the Warden who I know has been
reading all this newsgroup stuff that although people are bellyaching about the
Governor and Secretary Simmons, nowhere
is your name mentioned. You have the respect of most of us and those who's
respect you don't have either don't know you
or they would never have a Warden that they would be satisfied with anyway. I
would encourage people to not say anything
bad about the Warden which if you know him like I do you wouldn't have anything
bad to say about him anyway. Dave and
Ray Roberts are the best Wardens Lansing has ever had and those LCF employees
who are on here should post an
attachment to indicate that. Dave has protected me from a few things over years
but he has people he has to answer to,
so don't blame anything on him, he would take the shirt off his back to help
you.
I also say that if I get called in over this, I will leave and go home. Leave
me alone and let me do my work. I know what I'm
doing and I cannot regain the good mentality I had a couple years ago before I
started going through hell at work and lost
most of it if you start giving me any more crap. Stay off my back and let me do
my work. I will not talk to any of you about
anything that doesn't pertain to a work task and I will not hesitate to
immediately go home if I am faced with any crap like
what went on a year ago. I cannot take any more of that and I won't.
Everything's been going okay the last 2 or 3 months
so leave it that way and leave me alone.
Twislok
Correctional Officer, not a convict, because the more I read the more that
convict feeling came over me from the way he was treated and his reactions to
that treatment.
God, no wonder the COs get so screwed up. They are, as I have implied before,
only about a quarter of an inch (if that) above the cons in the perception of
the administration.
Years from now AFTER the cons and COs have formed an alliance and reform from
it are in place, these days and these postings will be archival evidence of the
period of ":awakening: " and you folks in Kansas and folks like Bru will be
in the history books of how the LABOR movement was needed to correct basic
human injustice of our current day.
Bless all who join in such an alliance.
MAX
MAX>From: fxbxi...@aol.com (FxBxIsnoop)
>
>
>Hello everyone at LCF. This is Joe Howard from dayshift. After monitoring the
>goings-on in this newsgroup I decided to
>contribute something to the discussion.
<snip>
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PigPenII
yourself.....and I thought I had problems.....Hang in there Joe!!!
Gary
Damn, I can attest to the things i know are true in your posting. Yes i am the former co that heard the phone call. Hell we shared an office till the 'good capt. decided to screw me out of it so he could get his girlfriend in.
A former employee told me one day that he was in Captain Ward's
office and Capped. Ward got a call on his speakerphone. He told
me a man was
trying to get the project changed, and I seem
to recall him saying that it was to get the cost down so he wouldn't
have
to pay something.
THE BONDING THING SOUND RIGHT. SOMETHING ABOUT A PERFORMANCE
BOND.
SHIT, IT HAS BEEN SEVERAL YEARS.
How you have stayed there this long with all the shit, for your supervisor,
and other co's that resented the job you were required to do.
Honest co's had nothing to fear for your job, or you. if there were
excuse the expression "fucking up" they needed to be afraid.
Yes you do have one of the best wardens, that the facility has had,
he and Ray are number one. the only problem is their counsel, as administrators
of such a large facility, that must depend on their asst. and deputy's
to give them honest advice. When you have Capt.'s and other admin. personnel
that think they can do the job better. the advice becomes suspect.
if walt, john, and les were not in the mix you time there would be
less stressful. It is even hard for me to blame john, as i look in retrospect.
the info he gets from less is faulty.
Joe, I know that you work hard, and have Lansing's best interest at
heart, but be careful too many people have their own agenda, and you will
get screwed.
As a friend i implore you. Keep cool, do the things you know are right
regardless of what is going on around you. DON'T let les run you off. He
will try to do things just to piss you off, so you will walk off. DON'T
LET HIM WIN!!!!
Joe you know there are not a lot of people there that i have a lot
of confidence in, but i believe in you.
The others know who they are, and they know that i am there for them
in what ever way i can help.
To all the officers in this news group, stand together or they will
put you apart.
Gary
Tina Weasley
Mr. Howard, did you know a woman named Sherry E. in Kansas in your teenage years?