“Murder of Prisoners and Guard Protest at Great Meadow.”
For the last three days, the guards here at Great Meadow have been protesting for lockout of several of their own who were implicated in the murder of a prisoner back in January. Only one local news station reported on this. Very rarely does the murder of prisoners at the hands of guards ever make the news.
The death of a kid at Greene Correctional Facility in Coxsackie back in New York made the news because celebrities, like Cardi B, posted about it on social media. Without such attention, our lives are expendable.
The guards in New York state can’t legally go on strike, but here, they disrupt facility operations by running things slow, forcing the facility administration and the two captains to come on the scene and give orders and to observe what’s going on. If we prisoners ever slowed down facility operations by not going to our work or program assignment, we’re going to solitary confinement—the box.
All of this stems from an incident back in January. A prisoner, who was clearly having a psychotic breakdown, bumped into a female guard and allegedly touched her breasts. Other guards responding to the incident beat this man savagely. He died.
Guards lied on their reports, claiming he suffered a heart attack resulting from being high on synthetic marijuana. And supervisors, tough to cover up the murder. Well, an autopsy report, and the valiant effort of [inaudible] Moses, a young lady whose husband was incarcerated here, who was being framed for the murder, forced further investigation.
What it’s at is that prison guards murdered and brutalized prisoners regularly. Without the Cardi B’s or the [inaudible] Moses’s, these deaths and beatings will go unreported. But there aren’t many Cardi B’s or [inaudible] Moses’s who will speak up. I hope to interview [inaudible] Moses in an upcoming segment, so you can hear in her own words the harassment she endured to clear her husband’s name.
This is Dontie S. Mitchell better known as Mfalme Sikivu, reporting to you from Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, NY. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @freeDontieMitchell. Thank you for listening and God bless.
(Sound of a cell door closing.) These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
