-Caveat Lector- Let the Riot Begin <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45536-2001May18.html> A defunct Gothic prison, stun guns, tear gas, beer and testosterone. Who says criminal justice can't be fun? by Peter Carlson Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 20, 2001; Page F01 MOUNDSVILLE, W.Va. -- SUDDENLY, THE STEEL DOOR SWUNG OPEN and somebody threw something in. It exploded -- BOOM! -- and then the SWAT team swarmed into the cafeteria of the West Virginia Penitentiary. They held Plexiglas shields that pumped out a pulsing, blinding red light. The inmates threw Styrofoam trays of food at them and little orange carrot cubes bounced off the shields. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, the SWAT team advanced, step by step, led by a snarling German shepherd who barked angrily. The inmates retreated, throwing chairs. One prisoner charged the advancing line and the guards slammed him to the concrete floor. The crowd watching from behind glass windows cheered lustily. "Nice move!!" one impressed observer muttered. The observers were guards from prisons around the country. Most of the "inmates" were also prison guards. The SWAT team was from Minnesota. And this was the first of 36 riot-training scenarios at the Mock Prison Riot here, a four-day festival of technology, testosterone and controlled mayhem. "Get down!" the leader of the Minnesota SWAT team screamed. "Get down!" His men fired tear gas and pressed forward relentlessly. One by one, the inmates gave up, lying facedown on the concrete. . The official "safety observer" blew his horn, ending the riot. The crowd cheered. But something was wrong. The inmates rushed outside, coughing and gasping for air, their eyes oozing tears. Somebody had screwed up and fired<em> real</em> tear gas. Lawrence Kosiba, the man who runs the Mock Prison Riot, was not happy. "They're supposed to use 'inert' gas," he said. Kosiba looked worried. The inmates were sprawled on the grass around him, sucking wind. And there were still another 35 riots to go. The fifth annual Mock Prison Riot had kicked off the previous night, which was Sunday, April 29, with a gala buffet dinner in the Ramada Plaza Hotel in Wheeling. . "Look around the room," Kosiba said from the dais. "There is a little bit of beef here."." He wasn't talking about the food. He was talking about the people. They were, indeed, beefy -- large men (and a few formidable women) with bulging biceps and military haircuts, some of them already wearing their combat boots and camouflage pants. They were correctional officers -- the term "prison guard" is no longer politically correct -- from 35 states. Most were members of tactical teams titled with curt macho acronyms: "SWAT" (Special Weapons and Tactics) or "CERT" (Corrections Emergency Response Team) or "SORT" (Special Operations Response Team).). "We are full, folks!" Kosiba announced. Between the correctional officers, the students and the vendors hoping to sell high-tech prison gadgets, there would be nearly 1,400 people at the Mock Prison Riot. "There's no more room!" " Kosiba is the director of the Office of Law Enforcement Technology Commercialization, the federally funded program, based at Wheeling Jesuit University, that invented the Mock Prison Riot in 1997. He introduced Ralph DiRemigio, the mayor of Moundsville, who had been a guard at the now-closed penitentiary where the Mock Riot would take place. "I want to give you a feel for the place," DiRemigio told the guards as they chowed down. Built in the 1870s and closed in 1995, the huge Gothic stone-walled state pen once held over 2,100 inmates, he said, plus a coal mine, an electric power plant, and factories that made mattresses and license plates. It was also the site of 85 hangings and nine electrocutions. DiRemigio remembered the last electrocution, which took place in 1959, and he told the crowd a story about it. On the day of the execution, the condemned man asked a guard to turn on the radio. The guard did. "And you know what the song was?" DiRemigio asked. He smiled and then started singing: "So long, it's been good to know you." The guards burst out laughing. . "So help me," DiRemigio said, grinning, "that's a true story."." Kosiba introduced Paul Kirby, the former head of the West Virginia Department of Corrections, who touted the advantages of holding mock riots in a deserted old prison: "In this facility, you can blow it up, tear it up, smoke it up. I don't care what you do." " The crowd buzzed with anticipation. "There will be more testosterone there tomorrow morning than you can shake a stick at," Kirby said. "You're going to have a great, great time!"!" When the dinner was over and the speeches were done, Kosiba urged the guards to have a nice, safe riot. Then he left them some final words of wisdom. . "This is your riot," he said. "It's not for us, it's yours!" Business Is Booming We're number one!! The United States of America currently incarcerates nearly 2 million people in jails and prisons -- a higher number than any other country in the world. We're number one! Our prison boom is relatively new. Until the mid-1970s, the American imprisonment rate had remained stable for decades -- about 110 prisoners for every 100,000 people. But then it soared, doubling in the 1980s and doubling again in the 1990s. By 1999, it was 476 per 100,000 (and that figure doesn't even include those in local jails). In the federal prison system, the number of inmates rose from about 24,000 in 1980 to 54,000 in 1990 to 122,000 in 2000.0. The reason for the rise in prisoners was a rise in crime during the 1970s and 80s, which caused politicians to increase penalties, to legislate mandatory minimum sentences and, in some places, to abolish parole. The increase in prisoners necessitated a huge increase in prisons -- about 1,000 were built in the last 25 years. Meanwhile, the number of correctional officers increased from 100,900 in 1985 to 231,800 in 2000. Today, what author Eric Schlosser termed "the Prison-Industrial Complex" is a booming $40 billion annual business. Like most industries in America, it holds conventions and trade fairs where folks gather to swap information and show off the latest nifty gadgets. Unlike other industries, it also stages riots and then uses those nifty gadgets to snuff them out. "The Mock Prison Riot has become such a favorite among corrections and law enforcement agencies that there is now a waiting list to participate," bragged a press release topped with the snazzy red-white-and-black "Mock Prison Riot" logo. As the event drew nigh, another press release, also topped with the logo, said this: "Let the Riot begin."." Dreaming Up the Perfect Cell "Okay," Hans Marrero told the guy from the SWAT team, "I want you to try to beat him with the bat."" The SWAT guy grinned. He was dressed in black pants, black combat boots and a black T-shirt that bulged with studly shoulder muscles. He raised his black baseball bat and moved toward his human target. . Marrero fired his Taser pistol, shooting two tiny metal probes into SWATman's T-shirt. Immediately, SWATman's arms and legs stiffened and he fell to the grass like a brick. The crowd cheered. Marrero, a former Marine-turned-Taser salesman, explained: "It overrides the central nervous system with electricity."." SWATman stood up and said he wanted to try it again. SWATman was a tough guy but maybe not a smart guy. Marrero smiled and shot him again. SWATman collapsed to the ground. The crowd laughed. The Taser was just one of many amazing items for sale at the Mock Prison Riot. There were rubber buckshot and nonlethal beanbag bullets. There were smoke grenades and smoke grenade launchers and bandoliers for carrying spare smoke grenades. There was "Point Blank Body Armor" and the "Titan Prison Riot Vest" and Gimbel puncture-resistant gloves -- "frisk without risk." There was even a bullet-proof Kevlar K-9 vest designed to protect dogs against "stabbings, slashings and handguns."." At a sign that read, "Stop to Shoot," guards could fire a gun that shoots little red balls that burst on impact, emitting a nasty dose of pepper gas. . "I got shot with it," said Kevin Serapiglia, the PepperBall salesman. "Six rounds put me on my knees."." Nearby, Dru Bora, a criminology teacher at Wheeling Jesuit, was selling baseball caps decorated with the Mock Prison Riot logo -- caps that in previous years went only to official Riot employees. "Last year, they were stealing them off people's heads," he explained, "so this year, we decided, 'Let's sell them.' " Among the most popular items in the exhibit hall was the "Porta-Cell" -- a waist-high, six-foot-long wire-mesh cell that looked like a dog cage mounted on wheels. . It was designed to transport unruly prisoners, said its inventor, Bob D. Hamlett, a construction contractor and former policeman from Shawnee, Kan. Hamlett touted the Porta-Cell's unique features -- a shatterproof plastic shield to prevent the prisoner from spitting on the guard, and a black cloth cover that could be fitted over the cage when transporting the inmate to a hospital. "You can cover him," Hamlett explained, "so the little old ladies don't get offended." Rob O'Neil, a West Virginia corrections officer, was impressed. "That's the way to go, buddy," he said, grinning. "Cage 'em up." "They'd never let us use that in Minnesota," said a guard from a state prison there. . "I'd like to put my wife in there," said a guy strolling past. Hamlett ignored the comments and continued. "I just made this a week ago," he said. "It cost me just under $4,000 to make. I haven't decided on a price yet." It was not his first invention, he said, pulling out a picture of his other invention being hugged by a woman in an orange bikini. It was his life-size artificial plastic palm tree--available for sale or rent, the perfect accessory for pool or patio. How, somebody asked, did you get the idea for the Porta-Cell? "I dreamed it one night," he said. "I woke up and told my wife over coffee: 'I've got this idea.' At 8 o'clock, I was in the police chief's office, showing him a drawing." The Last Rioter Standing "Forward!" the commander barked and the West Virginia SWAT team marched forward, shoulder to shoulder across the prison's exercise yard, chanting "Move! Move! Move!" They wore black helmets, black shirts, black boots and green camouflage pants. Some of them carried shields; some carried yard-long nightsticks; three held German shepherds on long leashes.. "Move! Move! Move!" " For a half hour, they'd been advancing across the yard, shooting smoke grenades and driving a dozen pseudo-rioters back toward one wall. The rioters had thrown grass at them and tossed smoke grenades back in their faces and taunted them:"Are you wearing your daddy's helmet?" Now, though, all but one of the rioters had been captured and were lying facedown in the grass, their hands hog-tied behind them. "Move! Move! Move!" The last rioter standing was Chris Dinger, 23, a student at Bluefield State College in West Virginia. He danced out of range as the SWAT team closed. Finally, backed nearly to the 30-foot high wall, he knelt penitently. "You, on your feet!" the commander ordered. "You, on the ground," Dinger yelled back sarcastically. "Bring the dog!" the commander ordered. A guard holding a nasty-looking canine lunged forward. Terrified, Dinger flopped facedown on the grass. A guard grabbed his arm, dragged him off and cuffed him. The crowd cheered. A woman ran out and stood over Dinger. "May I have your autograph, please?" she asked, smiling. Dinger was in no position to comply. He was lying on his face, with his hands cuffed tightly behind his back. "I'm proud of you," the woman said. She was Sheila Hallman-Warner. After 15 years as a counselor in Georgia prisons, she now teaches criminology at Bluefield State, and she'd brought Dinger and four other students to the Mock Prison Riot. . Many of her students plan on careers as corrections officers, and she figures it's a good way to show them what prison work is like. "It's important for students to know what they're getting into," she said. "Corrections is not for everybody."." It's not for Dinger: He's a psychology major who never had any interest in prison work, and being hog-tied by a SWAT team did not change his mind. But another student, standing nearby, was more gung-ho. Tosha Jones, 19, a criminology major at Allegheny College in Cumberland, Md., had just played an inmate in a mock riot on Cellblock M, where she was grabbed by a SWAT team and thrown into a cell.l. "They just tackle you down and beat you with their little sticks," she said. That delightful experience confirmed her desire to work in corrections. "It makes me a lot more interested," she said. "At first, I wanted to be a state trooper but prisons and corrections seems more interesting to me. You're doing things. You're not sitting around."." Cumberland has two prisons, Jones said, and she knows people who work in them. "They love working in that atmosphere," she said. "They said it's a lot of fun. You get to meet a lot of interesting people." Party Time After the first day of arduous mock-rioting, the guards gathered in a dining room at the Ramada for a party sponsored by Armor Holdings, a company that makes bullet-proof vests. The folks at Armor know the secret of attracting correctional officers to a party: Free beer. There was a big gleaming keg of free draft beer in the room. There were also free barbecued ribs and free pizzas but they were scarfed up so fast that latecomers found only empty dishes bearing forlorn little puddles of grease. But the beer kept flowing and the guards kept drinking. The ratio of males to females in the room was about 20 to one and soon each female correctional officer found herself surrounded by a scrum of extremely friendly male correctional officers. The women looked happy, perhaps because these men, unlike the ones who surround them at work, had not been convicted of any major felonies. Angus Reed stood alone in the middle of the room, beer in hand. Reed is not a prison guard. He is the "environmental health coordinator" at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia. In that capacity, he has rid the jail of bleach, which can, he said, be used as a weapon by inmates. He replaced the bleach with a cleaning agent that is far less toxic.c. "You could drink it," he said. Reed is a portly, courtly man who thinks deeply about prison-related matters. He talked about inmates with AIDS and inmates with drug problems. He lamented the increase of mentally ill inmates who, he said, should be in hospitals, not prisons. Most of the folks at the Mock Prison Riot, he lamented, were not interested in such topics. "These guys like the body-contact sports," he said. "They don't think much about the humdrum aspects of the job. They live for the disturbances." A few moments later, there was a minor disturbance in the room. It was caused by a correctional officer who walked in yelling, "Look at me! Look at me!" He grinned and pointed at the two women who accompanied him. The women were young and blond and slender and scantily clad. They did not look like correctional officers. The male guards took one look at the women and started cheering and whistling and yelling "Woo! Woo! Woo!" The man and his blondes took a quick victory lap around the room then strolled out. And the beer flowed on. Dungeon of Horrors Outside, in the prison yard, it was sunny and hot, and tired Mock Rioters, sweltering in heavy boots and bullet-proof vests, retreated inside, to the ancient stone cellblocks, where it was nice and cool. The damp, dank cellblocks rose four tiers high, with 20 steel cells on each tier. Peeling paint drooped from every wall and gathered on the concrete floors in piles, like dead leaves. Even in a country full of overcrowded prisons, it wasn't hard to see why this relic no longer shelters felons. In the maximum-security unit, which had housed the hardest cons, a cyclone fence was hung horizontally from wall to wall, about eight feet above the floor, to prevent inmates from bombarding their keepers with deadly objects. The cells were tiny -- five feet wide, seven feet deep, eight feet high -- and their cold steel walls held chilling graffiti: "Welcome to the Jungle" "Aryan Brotherhood" "The Sex, the Drugs, the Shocking Truth. She broke my heart so I ripped hers out." The sound of footsteps bounced off the stone walls in eerie echoes. A half-dozen guards from the federal prison in Schuykill, Pa., were tromping by. Their prison is a modern one and they marveled at this ancient penitentiary. "Our guys wouldn't know what to do if they came in here," one of them said. "They'd cry like little girls."." These days, the former West Virginia Penitentiary is one of the Greater Wheeling area's major tourist attractions, advertised in brochures that urge visitors to "Do Hard Time" and "Experience the Shock." From April through December, there are guided tours, and before Halloween the place is transformed into a haunted house called the "Dungeon of Horrors." The prison is also, according to the brochures, "Available for Corporate and Party Rentals." The guided tours were suspended during the Mock Prison Riot, but the penitentiary museum was open and the visiting corrections officers wandered through it. They particularly enjoyed the display of weapons seized from inmates. There was a "Head Knocker," a lock tied inside a long sock, a "Head Chopper," made with a chain and a piece of pipe, and a "Throat Cutter," which was a razor blade taped between two tongue depressors. . Another display showed tickets to a public hanging held at the penitentiary in 1913. Next to the tickets was a newspaper account of the last public hanging there, the 1931 execution of Frank Hyer, a 55-year-old wife-killer. Hyer's hanging was spoiled when his head popped off, grossing out the execution buffs in attendance, and ending public executions in West Virginia. . Dangling beside Hyer's story was a thick rope noose. A sign read "Do Not Touch!" The museum's main attraction is "Old Sparky," the wooden, inmate-made electric chair that killed nine killers in the 1950s, before West Virginia ended capital punishment. On a pillar in front of Old Sparky was a home-made sign: Tipping of Tour Guides Is Greatly Appreciated. Blood and Bone In the medical tent, blood dripped off Charles Spencer's forehead and dribbled over his left eye.. It wasn't real blood. It was stage blood. Spencer, a West Virginia prison counselor, was about to play an inmate in a mock riot scenario, and Kim Singleton, professional nurse and amateur makeup artist, was getting him ready for his role. . She painted blue-green bruises on his forehead and his knuckles, then dripped rivulets of fake blood off his brow. "Go like this," Singleton said, stretching the skin beneath her nose taut. . He did it, and she painted a trickle of blood running from his nostrils. When she finished, she wiped her bloody hands on his inmate costume, a dirty gray jumpsuit. Spencer looked like he'd gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson, but his fake wounds were minor compared with Wayne Shook's. Shook's forehead was decorated with a hideous gaping wound that dripped blood through his gray hair and his gray beard. And a bloody chicken bone protruded from his left arm -- a pretty good facsimile of a painful compound fracture. Shook was delighted. He's 45, a maintenance man at Wheeling Jesuit, and he loves the Mock Prison Riot. Every year, he takes vacation time so he can play an inmate in the riots, and he's quick to point out that his face is visible right smack in the middle in the official Mock Riot poster, which hangs in the prison museum. "It's my 15 minutes of fame," he said. "He's been doing this for four years," Kosiba says, "waiting for Hollywood to discover him." The riots are thrilling, Shook said, but they were a lot more fun in the early years. Back then, rioters could set fires and break chairs and fight the SWAT teams. He loved that. But a couple years ago, a woman had a nervous breakdown after Shook took her hostage in a mock riot and that sort of ended the wild years. "The scenario said that I was an inmate who was taken off Thorazine and I was raising hell because I wanted my Thorazine back," he recalls. "I stabbed a doctor and took a nurse hostage. When the SWAT team rushed in and shot me, it got too much for her. She was crying. At first, I thought she was acting but she wasn't. It shook her up good. They took her to the hospital and she didn't want to be in no more scenarios." But Shook's drive to participate was undiminished. "It's fun," he says. "It's a time when you can scream and yell and throw things at authority and not be held responsible." Do-Over Suddenly, the steel door swung open and somebody threw something in. It exploded -- BOOM! -- and then the SWAT team swarmed into the cafeteria. It was a do-over. The first time the Minnesota Special Operations Response Team stormed the cafeteria was the incident when somebody had screwed up and fired real tear gas. Now, Minnesota was trying again. This time, the inmates were played by guards from Alabama, who turned out to be incorrigible hams. They threw food and chairs and strutted theatrically in front of the advancing Minnesotans, taunting them and yelling that age-old inmate refrain: "I got my rights!" One inmate picked up a chair and charged the Minnesota line. He was thrown back and dragged off by his feet, howling in feigned pain. "Kill 'em all," said one spectator, laughing. "Let God sort 'em out!" The Minnesotans fired gas. It was fake gas this time but the Alabama inmates rolled around the floor like they'd been poisoned, moaning and screaming for water. . "It ain't over," one inmate promised. The Minnesotans advanced relentlessly. When they'd handcuffed all the inmates, the horn blew. The riot was over. This time, they'd done it right. . Outside, on the grass, the Minnesotans were taking off their helmets and flak jackets. "Who were those guys?" one asked, laughing. "They were Alabama," somebody replied. "They were great inmates. I got my rights!' Where have you heard that before?" "'It ain't over. I love that." After stripping off their battle armor, two of the Minnesotans wandered over to the exercise yard, where another riot was scheduled to begin soon. Mark Lembeck and Dave Zapzalka were both sergeants on the SORT team at the state prison in St. Cloud. They were enjoying themselves at the Mock Riot, they said, and learning valuable lessons, too. "I got a bunch of different training I'm going to try back home," said Lembeck. "Different formations we can line up in."." They'd been in one real prison riot, they said. It differed from these mock riots in one respect: It was easier. The real inmates quit quicker. The real riot had occurred when the prison cut back on recreation time. The prisoners barricaded themselves in the day room and painted gang symbols on the walls. They were having a great time until SORT showed up. "We started putting in gas," Zapzalka said. "And then we opened the doors and tore down the barricades. And by the time we got in, they were giving up." Across the field, another riot was beginning to unfold. A group of inmates had taken a guard hostage in the "All-Faith Chapel," a white cinder block building topped with a steeple and a cross. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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