Sorry, but for that I am not sorry. I will not restrict myself to only having opinions about teaching English in Saudi Arabia, or being a retired Army officer, or knowing a bit about marshmallows.
In the same way, I am eager to hear your opinions about things you are not completely expert with.
As citizens, heck as people, we are called upon to make decisions about things outside our immediate circle of activity. Every couple of years I vote for school bond in Las Vegas for Pete’s sake. Ought I not to vote? Should you not vote?
No, the idea that a person should not express an opinion about things unless he is an expert is a very bad argument. I promise I will not use it against you.
(Especially tonight as it is time for my evening swim and then to bed. If you would like to reply, please do not think I am ignoring you. )
You don’t get out of that so easily, you made a statement, which was opinion dressed up as fact, in which you condemned the morals of folk such as myself, you specifically condemned the morals of the people I work with every day - people who I trust, do you seriously expect me to accept such slanderous comment without response ?
Especially when you actually admit you are not expert in this matter.
Your first post makes it clear, the immoral are of such low calibre that prison work is the only work they can get, and that people of higher values do not become prison workers because the pay is greater elswhere
You appear to take the attitude that prison staff are not far off being criminals themselves, for I cannot see why else you would make such an untrue statement.
So it seems to me you are saying that my colleagues are low quality, low morals, you probably include me in that sweeping statement too, my take on this is that you need to take a long hard look at yourself, and see if you are so superior to me, since you didn’t take up prison work you must presumably regard yourself as being somehow intrinsicaly better than I.
It is not the issue that you made a bad argument, you condemned myself and my colleagues, its not just that you made factually incorrect statements, you did it on the basis of not actually having any real knowldge of the subject.
You made an extroadinary claim about prison workers, without basis in fact, and without evidence.
You can have wrong or misguided opinions about anything, as long as you have a logical reason for doing so, but when you start to criticise my proffessionalism, you better bring some goods to the table or you are liable to be justifiably criticised.
…or, do you have any evidence at all that a significant percentage of prison workers are, low quality, lack proffessionlism, have poor morals, are low paid etc etc etc
(I have reprinted my post that is causing such excitement for your reading convenience.)
I do not see this as an attack on you casdave or on prison-workers as a group. I see this as a lament that they are underpaid and work in a morally challenging environment. If my writing did not convey that thought then it is my fault as a writer.
The first paragraph is a statement of how I feel. It cannot be argued.
On the other hand, and upon further review, the last sentence of the final paragraph is a bit of a zing. It does paint all prison-workers with the same broad brush. I was wrong and I apologize.
Paul, here’s the reality about being a prison guard. It’s a job. It has its good points and its bad points. The majority of my fellow guards are good people. And some of them aren’t. The prisoners I work with are generally not good people but I’ve learned to work with them anyway.
And I’m completely serious when I say that the worst thing about my job has nothing to do with my job. The worst thing about my job is the way most people who have no idea what they’re talking about feel free to assume that I’m a scumbag because of my job. There’s something wrong with their perception of reality when they figured there’s a hundred people in a building and the only one of them who isn’t a convicted criminal is the bad guy who’s causing all the problems.
I’ll admit when I first read the linked article, it somehow eluded my attention that the arrests had been made inside the prison. I had assumed the guards were being arrested at home. And having said so, it would be amazingly unusual for anyone in a prison I’ve worked in to be carrying a gun inside a prison.
There is some sort of cultural strangeness about the values that a lot of people have.
The idea that there is the type of criminal that is just a bit of a rascal, that those who get fed up with the antics of the criminal are somehow repressing them.
Why is that ?
The truth is, that prison staff are for the most part worthy individuals, they are human and have their faults, but working with prisoners is corrosive to the soul and it takes a certain sort of well grounded and realistic person to be able to resist the slow drip, drip of moral laxitude and flexible morals of the prisoner.
Somehow, there are those who imagine that prisoners are somehow ‘cool’, of course when confronted by the reality of their home being burgled, or someone selling drugs to their children, they will then take a differant tack, right until the latest tv show about prison escape, or perhaps some really cool planned bank robbery or confidence trick if broadcast.
The ‘gangsta rap’ artist cool is part of that culture, and by accepting this shite, you are condoning it.
Prison staff do not compromise, we work with these persons every day, criminals are not cool, from the multi $Billion Enron fraudster to the street junkie, they are just horrible exploitative persons, who give not one jot of respect to all those who grind out their days trying to get by, the avareage prisoner thinks that Joe Public is a fool to work, and that the public is a resource to be used to provide pleasure for them.
Its strange how those in the armed forces get so much respect, but prison staff are on the front line every day(with real risks of both physical and mental harm) with the most evil individuals alive today, and yet somehow so many of you seem to feel that its the prison staff who have to justify their roles.
Don’t believe me ? then start up a conversation with some work colleages, or try it down in th elocal bar, where alchohol loosens the tongue and the tightly controlled prejudices are given full reign.
We deserve respect,and we damn well earn it - there should be a measure of status attatched to prison work, we deal with all of societies failures, from mental illnesses, to personality disorders to simple old fashioned venality, and we try to ensure we maintain decency and dignity for ourselves and our charges, we try to put right what parents, schools, and psychologists cannot, we deal with human beings who are regarded as waste, and yet its us who have to defend ourselves.
What the fuck is wrong with your values, because I’m reasonably sure that what I do is worthwhile.
Really? I can understand why, but I can also see it being like with the cops I know, all of whom carry at least 3 other guns on their person other than their service piece.
We don’t have service pieces inside prisons (at least not in NY where I work). We rely on our charm, our intelligence, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
There are no guns inside the prison where my husband works, either. A gun can be taken away from a guard, after all. Similarly, ths staff have no clubs or pepperspray. They are armed, as Little Nemo said, with their wits and the “aura of authority.” They also take martial arts training once per year. Every staff person inside the fences wears “man-down alarms.” These electronic devices have a button which can summon assistance if pressed, and also have a sensor inside which automatically triggers an alert if the guard falls to the ground.*
The prison does have firearms but they are carried by those who patrol the outside fences and the guards in the towers. The weapons and ammo are tightly controlled. (If a bullet is lost, the place has to go into lockdown until it’s located.)
Funny story: Once, a guard dropped his alarm in the toilet as it was flushing. The thing sent out plantive distress calls as it swirled down to a watery grave. The panicked employee didn’t think to call and tell them it was a false alarm-- he was desperately trying to retrieve it from the toilet.
When the alarm came into the control room, they dispatched emergency teams to rescue the guard in distress. Employees from all over the prison dropped what they were doing, and ran to the sector where the alarm was coming from . . . which turned out to be a sewage pipe.
You mean that real loud noise made by a gun in the hands of a serial sex offender who is in the middle of shooting a Federal Agent who went to work that day just like he was supposed to, to arrest some really really bad men?
That lots of noise? Yes. Well. Fuck them, fuck their " compadres on the job" fuck the rapist cheating immoral drug-dealing useless insulting civil servant lot of em.
So there. I have a lot of respect for you, QtM and always have, but there is no strength in the straw man argument, " oh shush up you silly- I KNOW these men, they are honorable men. The bad bad correction officers in my prison? Oh they stick together and make lots of noise, you always know who they are".
Do you have any idea at all how utterly inane that statement was? Here. Let’s try this. How about if you find the family of the murdered Federal Agent, send a certified letter to them by way of their attorney and say word for word exactly what you said in here. Because, if it is what you truly believe and feel, why you’ll have no moral quandries at all sending off that letter.
Maybe you need to believe the position you posted up there because admitting any other reality might very well make it exceedingly difficult to go to work every day. I can’t argue with that rationalization in terms of sanity and protecting your own career, but I can argue with it here, on this Board.
The “few bad apples” thing really does fall apart when you are discussing people in positions of immense power.
Like prison guards. And police officers. And priests. And military personnel.
Well congratulations to you, our new hero- as long as what you do to feel worthwhile does not include making prisoners under your watch suck your dick in return for either transfer/lack of transfer favors or drug delivery favors.
Then again, maybe not so worthwhile. You are so pissed off at the posts in here that I get the distinct feeling that you really don’t give a flying fuck about the Federal Agent murdered by one of those angelic hero Corrections Officers you keep rattling on about.
This thread is about this crime. You show some motherfucking respect to the Agent who was murdered by your Heroic Angelic Brothers on this side of the pond, yes?
Asshole. What is wrong with our values? Gee. Let’s see here. Let’s do a quick tally, yes?
We expect those in power not to abuse it to the point of felony.
We expect those in power who get caught not to commit murder in order to legal capture.
Our values demand that those who wear a badge abide by the same laws as the convicts you had a good time slagging.
One other point, on a purely personal note. This is not the You May Only Talk About What casdave Says You May Talk About Message Board. You’ve been around here long enough, it’s just truly insulting to tell people to shut the fuck up because they don’t do what you do for a living. We have folks who do a remarkable number of things around here and it’s considered in poor form indeed- even in The Pit- to tell someone to shut up and stop posting unless they have the same career as you. Just a side thought from a regular old Doper. I tell people they’re wrong if I think they’re wrong, sure. I get called on my shit all the time, and try ( usually… ) to apologize when I’m wrong. I don’t tell anyone to shut the fuck up because they don’t do what I do for a living. And no…in writing this I am not telling YOU to shut the fuck up. I’m asking you to think harder about how you are saying what you are saying, because you ARE making some good points. Telling folks to shut the fuck up just kind of blows it all away. YMMV.
On a lighter note… I’ve been in a few prisons as a working E.M.T., and in close to a dozen in my job as a professional cameraman. ( And, I live in NY as well. )
The only guns I’ve seen inside the walls proper that were worn on their person was sidearms worn by Deputy Sherrifs, and it sure did unnerve me to see them. As a non-C.O. , I didn’t know till i started being inside various prisons ( Rahway, Phila. Correctional Facility, Hudson County NJ Jail, Sing-Sing, etc. ) that guns were not carried around. Makes perfect sense, of course.
There were guns in the bulletproof-glass enclosed Guard Surveillance Rooms that cornered each residential dorm at the Phila. Correctional Facility. I assume they were only grabbed when bad things happened.
Look despite my anger in the last two posts, I know CO’s; I know it must be an insanely stressful job. It does not mean you get to take a pass on the most appalling criminal behaviors. It just means it’s a stressful job. I also believe what I am told by the CO’s I know and have talked to- a lot of shit goes down that everybody let’s “slide” on the inside , just to keep the lid on the powderkeg. A lot of things slide that involve CO’s. That is what I have a problem with.
What the fuck crawled up your ass and died, Cartooniverse? The posts by Qadgop and casdave were in reaction to the notion that all prison guards are like these six. Would you care to attempt some sort of coherent reasoning that all prison guards are like those six? If that is not what you believe, then I have not the slightest idea of what you are going on about.
Cartoon, I just want to point out that casdave and Qadgop and wring and myself all acknowleged the obvious - there are some bad people working in prisons. And none of us had one word of defense to say about those pieces of shit that were arrested in Florida. And none of us said anything to suggest prison guards should get a pass on breaking the law. Go back and read the posts again if you want to confirm what I just wrote.
Now read the post where it said 999 out of 1000 guards are immoral. If I said that 99.9% of teachers or EMT’s or cameramen were immoral beings who only took their job for the opportunities it gave them to commit rapes, would you feel I was insanely biased? Or would you just figure you must be the one in a thousand who was okay, so no personal insult was intended?
In post #31, I directly quoted what I felt was a completely inane statement by QrM. Come on now. Seriously. We can all tell who the Bad Men are because they group together and are noisy. What the heck ?? That is, in fact, exactly what he said, and what I took to task. I never said all prison guards are like those six. What I did say without using numbers ( 999 out of 1,000? Cite that post, if someone would be so kind? ) is that the problems identical to those that came to light in the Florida investigation are immensely bigger than six bad apples. What I was irked by was the desperate knee-jerk reaction by those in that business who presented the argument of, " come ON, it’s six lousy bad men out of thousands of otherwise perfect CO’s. Six. Just six. nobody else out there doing this shit, ok? Just six bad men. "
In the next post, I addressed the " What the fuck kind of values do you have" issue raised by casdave. The fact that he invites us down to the local public house to get drunk with a bunch of CO’s so we can feel some sympathy for them really has zero to do with the situation in Florida. I outlined my values that applied to this situation ( knowing better than to say they are the values of all Americans, since, well, the murderer was an American, as are the other rapist CO’s, right? ). However, he got pissy, I got pissy.
Little Nemo, I did go back and read. I read casdave’s post very carefully. I do realize that it may be impossible to read it as an objective reader since you are in same business he is in, but his entire post was constructed to get non-CO’s to have more sympathy, to understand the difficult job, etc. etc. And, as I replied in my post directed to him, I know CO’s and have a lot of respect for those who don’t go strolling around breaking the law and then hiding behind their badges and guns. ( well. badges. as we all agree, it is rare to find loaded guns inside a prison. Apparently not so rare in Florida, eh?? :rolleyes: ). I understand why he defended his profession but this isn’t Great Debates. He and I are not compelled to calmly provide cite going back to the Magna Carta supporting the validity of our respective positions. ( However, as you see below, I have done exactly that anyway. )
I think there are an awful lot more astonishingly corrupt prison guards out there than the three of you are willing to say, and I understand why. It is very very important to close ranks and deny, deny and deny. No dout it took an awful lot of good police work in Florida by the F.B.I. to get to the real truth about the rapes and blackmailing.
Or, are we to believe that the Corrections Department of the State of Florida threw open their doors and computers with wide-eyed excitement at the very idea of letting the F.B.I. root out those few ( what is the number I am supposed to believe? One in one thousand? Is that it? ) bad apples. -cough- Sorry but I’d call bullshit.
Bet the F.B.I. had one heck of a time prying the truth out of the other CO’s and prison officials. Now. You can hardly go stomping around being all pissy at posts I wrote about how protective the community of CO’s is in one breath but then insist that it’s only one in one thousand, and they are all so noisy and loud and obvious that everyone knows who they are and they are just so easy to ferret out.
How long were those rapes and blackmails going on in that prison? How many women who were incarcerated were victimized by the very men they were supposed to be safely guarded by ?
I am interested in seeing you quote my post where I stated that 999 out of 1,000 are corrupt.
Just six bad men, eh? How about if you stop screaming at me and start reading the facts, m’kay ?
And…so on. 12 cites, all verifiable. At least 12 CO’s ( at least one case cites more than one perp who is a CO ). Now, going by the numbers floated by others ( 999 out of 1,000… ) we are up to 18 criminals and that took me no time at all ! 12 I cited, 6 cited in the Florida case. So, 18,000 CO’s are very very nice men, and just these bad bad 18 men slipped through the cracks?
Given a day or so, I suspect my cites would top 50. I guess that doesn’t matter because there are more than 50,000 CO’s in the country? Are there? Is the point not taken that 18 is appalling and 50 would be worse?
Stop pointing the angry finger at me for pointing out the facts, and start looking in the mirror. The sooner the CO’s posting in here each admit as fact that they are fully aware of crimes committed in the facilities where they work BY other CO’s, the better off the fight against ignorance will be.
Because it is almost inconcievable that any of them are totally ignorant of any crimes committed by other CO’s in their facility. I understand why they wouldn’t want to admit such. It doesn’t change the facts.
Let it be noted that Frank, a Moderator on these boards, asked me if I cared to attempt some sort of coherent reasoning regarding my posts up there. In this post, I believe I have done so. It will not be a problem to provide further evidence of felonious activities on the part of CO’s across the United States. I hope the cites provided do in fact support my comments. Which is what I was asked to do. At no time did I attack that Moderator, nor did I say directly or indirectly that any of the Dopers posting in here were in fact criminals. Nor did I infer such.
Congratulations. You’ve proved there are some bad apples. No shit, Sherlock. Nobody is saying there aren’t. But somehow, you’ve decided that the vast majority are.
Why do you assume such a thing? Personally, I would consider that someone who knows of such crimes and does not report them is complicit in them. Why do you assume that casdave, et al are?
You have. It’s still inane, blithering bullshit, but it’s much more coherent. (By the way, did you see “Moderator Notes:” in the title of my post? I don’t.)