Carl Cannon - The Best at Keeping Them Out

 

 

I remember the first time I walked into the Fort Leavenworth maximum security prison. No, not as an inmate, [audience laughter] but as a military policeman recently assigned a prison duty for the first time. It made me think back to a time when I was 19 years old, and I raised this my right hand and I joined the US army to become a military policeman. This was 10 years later. 

 

10 years later, I was a damn good military policeman who didn't want prison duty. Why? Maybe because what made me good had some of the people occupying that institution, and I didn't want a reunion. [audience laughter] So, you got to know I did everything I could to get out of that duty. I even took an extra 30-day leave hoping that at the end of which an army would change its mind. 

 

When I returned from that leave, the sergeant major gave me two options. He said, “One, take your ass down in that prison. Two, or face a court-martial.” Suddenly, prison duty didn't seem that bad. So, I went into the four-wing housing unit with my trainer, a 15-year veteran by the name of Pierce. 

 

When we walked into that housing unit, I was stunned. They weren't locked down. They were all out and about. And do I need to repeat? I said maximum security military prison. That means Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. 40% of that population was there doing a life sentence for murder. A 100% of that population had been trained to kill. It's arguably the most dangerous prisons on the planet. And they weren't locked down. I was a little nervous. [audience laughter] It's not an understatement. 

 

We went into the guard cage and we were debriefed by the outgoing 12-hour shift. When they left, Pierce instructed me, “Go check the housing unit.” He said, “Look, sarcastically rookie, you're in the housing unit. It has five floors. 50 cells on each floor. 25 face out to the right, 25 face out to the left.” It's like a warehouse. “In the back of each floor is an unauthorized area for inmates. There's a clipboard. Sign off on it proving that you checked for trouble.” 

 

Never forget that. I went out into the population. I was there to observe the inmates. Moving amongst that population, I was quickly aware that they were observing me. I remember going by tables where they were playing cards, and they would slap the cards down on the table and then look at me, all of them. They would slap the dominoes down on the table and then give me the look. 

 

It took me about an hour to finish that check those housing unit checks. When I returned to the guard cage, Pierce looked at me and he said sarcastically, “Rookie, where you been?” I said, I was checking the housing unit like you told me. He said, “Look, rookie, all you have to do is go around the third floor, find that clipboard. There's a stairwell back there that the inmates can't use. Use the stairwell, go up to the fourth floor. Use that stairwell, go up to the fifth floor. You can be up to the eighth floor and back in this guard cage in 10 minutes. It's called a shortcut, rookie.” 

 

He was so condescending. I wanted to hit him in his mouth, but that option sounded better than what I'd just been through. About 10 o’clock that night, he gives me this training script to read over the loudspeaker. I looked and it was like music to me. I read it. “It's locked down. Lockdown. All inmates, lockdown.” He said, “When you shut the tiers down, shut them down in sequence. Start with the eighth floor.” I said, why the eighth floor? He said, “That's where the rookie inmates are.” He said, “When you close it, you hit these two buttons and all 50 cells on that floor will close at the same time.” It was actually the first time, it actually sounded like I thought prison was going to sound. Eighth floor, boom, those cages closing. Seventh floor, boom. Fifth floor, boom. Third floor, yay. 

 

They're locked down. I'm safe. A short time later, an inmate's coming around the third floor towards the guard case on the third-floor right side. He's wearing a towel. He's carrying a toothbrush. I looked at Pierce. Pierce gives me the look, “What you going to do?” So, I did what I thought Pierce would do. I cursed at the inmate, “What the fuck you doing out of your cell?” He surprised me, started cursing back at me. So, now, we're having this war curse words, except his curse words were better than mine. I was losing the battle of words. So, I went back to a training script that Pierce had given me, and I shouted, “Go to the bench.” 

 

When you send an inmate to the bench in the old penitentiary, you are effectively sending them to the hole. That's the jail within the jail. And truth be told, I could have let that inmate back in his cell. I'll be honest, I was power tripping. I was trying to impress Pierce. A few minutes later, the guard commander came into the housing unit, entered our guard cage, he said, “Cannon, what happened?” 

 

I lied. I knew the guard commander knew I was lying. He looked past me at Pierce and he said, “Pierce, tell me what happened.” And I'm thinking, oh. And then, Pierce stunned me and he said, “That's exactly how it happened, sir.” And I'm like, “Whoa.” That's when I started to understand the principle of us versus them. Us being the guards, them being the inmates, them being wrong no matter what we did, because Pierce backed me, I started lining up with us. I got a little size on me. 

 

So, anytime one of us were told no by an inmate, they called me. I was the best at turning a no into a yes. And because I lined up with us, I promoted up pretty rapidly in the system. Less than a year later, I was in charge of the shoe. That's a special housing unit, the hole. Unlike upstairs, where everybody is out and about in the hole, you lock down 24/7, maybe an hour in a cage. 

 

I had 16 guards. I'm in charge. Four of them ran the guard cage. Each other guard had 25 cells assigned to them. They reported to me. I got a call that the inmates had a revolt one of our floors, because we had us down there. The inmates had trashed a tear. That means they had blocked the toilets. There was feces, urine, water, food, garbage everywhere. I went down to restore order. I passed cell 138. The inmate inside said, “CO, can I talk to you?” I said, what you got? He said, “CO, I want you to know I didn't do this.” I believed him. I said, okay, don't worry about it. Clean up best you can. I'll handle this. 

 

About 04:30 AM, it was time for the breakfast guards to come into that very floor. It was my job to open the tunnel door to let those breakfast carts in. I had ordered that the lights come on in that housing unit. I was walking towards that door when I went past cell 138. And through my peripheral, he was hanging. I get on my radio immediately. The guard assigned it at roll cells was on his radio. We were shouting into it, “Open 138. Open 138.”

 

The cell door starts to move open slowly. I'm trying to muscle it open faster. As soon as there was enough of an opening, I ran into that cell. I hoisted the body up. The guard jumps on top of the toilet. He unties the sheet. There wasn't enough room to do CPR in the cell. So, we laid him out on the floor in front of the roll of cells. It was my job to do the mouth to mouth. The guard was going to do the chest compressions. I will never forget when I put my mouth on the inmate's mouth, how cold he was. We had to keep the CPR going until the medics came and pronounced it with one way or another. 

 

It was 10 minutes before they arrived. During that time frame, during that commotion, the other inmates on that floor woke up, came to the front of their cells. They saw us doing the CPR. He was so cold. They started yelling at us, “Killers.” He's so cold. “Killers.” I got mad. No, not at the inmates. I got mad at me. I knew somebody took a shortcut. I knew we had all been trained to take shortcuts. There was no way they were checking his cell, and he was so cold. 

 

I left the prison that morning, mad, determined never to return. The next day, I get a call from the captain. I told the captain, I do what you got to do. I don't care court martial me. I'm not going back. He said, “Cannon, you're going to be all right. I'm not worried about you.” He said, “You've been through worse. You've seen worse. You will get through this.” He said, “Where I'm concerned, cannon, is the men that work for you. If you don't come back, the amount of respect they have for you, I'm worried about what it'll do to them.”

 

I thought about that, and I thought about going back and I thought about that inmate and cell138, who I learned had gotten a Dear John letter that day. That inmate who was living in a life of despair, who was depressed, whose last statement to me was, “I'm innocent.” And that was important to him. 

 

I thought about those men that respected me. And so, a couple days later, I did go back. But I went back different. I went back with a battle cry called respect. And respect meant listening to people, listening to the inmates and their stories and their regrets. When I listened, I learned that most inmates, if they could go back in time to that first incident that led to the second incident knowing what they know now, I learned that they would not repeat the same act. I also learned that inmates are people, human beings. And human beings deserve respect too. 

 

So, I started using words that were different. Please. Thank you. And because we started using those words, the tone between the inmates and the guards began to change to a tone of mutual respect. I retired from the military and I left the Bureau of Prisons. It's been over 10 years since I've been gone, but I have never forgotten those stories. I have never forgotten that young man in cell 138. And I take those stories today and I support at-risk kids. Put your eyes on me. I was the best keeping them in. Today, I'm a part of you. I'm one of the best at keeping them out. Thank you. And God bless.