Protest CDC corruption

A prisoner in California wrote the following letter to Senator Gloria Romero to protest the conditions in prison there. We encourage others, both behind the bars and on the outside, to send similar letters. If you want to use a form letter, MIM has letter against the Security Housing Units in California on our web site that you can download and send Senator Romero (www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/agitation/prisons/campaigns/ca/ca.html).

To: Senator Gloria Romero

Before you were appointed as chairperson to oversee, operate CDC prisons, Senator Richard Polanco received many complaints from me concerning conditions of confinement. I also wrote complaints to the above case numbers hoping that someone with authority would correct CDC guards' abuse against me and others. Now that I see I'm not going to get help from state officials (like Michael Bowers), are you going to allow CDC guards to set me up and assault me against because they refuse to follow the regulations?

Before Michael Bowers took his own life in January of 2001 he too wrote Senators asking for help against CDC guards' abuse. He did not get the help from Senators, but when he was released from prison he ran his big rig into the state capitol taking his own life. Can one of the state senators help correct the situation with CDC guards?

An inmate who used to live next door to me was getting confidential information from CDC guards about other inmates during his debriefing process in exchange for his information. For some strange reason he picked a fight with me. He is now on the protected custody yard and when I'm escorted in restraints he could freely attack me.

Officer Tennison, Riely, Wachter, Eck, McClendon, Martel, Morrow, Stewart and many of their coworkers have a strong dislike for me because I speak out about the things they are doing against the regulations. I also have other protected custody inmates who used to be highly gang affiliated, who are willing to inform the state legislative body about Officer A. May and others passing confidential information, endangering the lives of inmates like myself.

I'm asking advocacy groups and senators to help me stop some of the corruption in CDC.

--A prisoner in California, April 2003