Robert Todd
It all started on April Fools day, 1985 when I reported for duty at USP Lompoc. I drove away from USP Lompoc and retired on April Fools day, 2006. I performed 21 years as a federal law enforcement officer working for the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The BOP is part of the United States Department of Justice. It is older than the FBI.
When someone is convicted in federal court, and are sentenced to serve time, the care and custody of the convicted, then becomes the job of the BOP. The BOP has several levels of custody and places that inmates are housed.
A penitentiary provides the highest level of custody and security. It can be a real surprise to an outside visitor when they are able to visit inside a penitentiary. The prison is clean, with good lighting, and most of the time is quiet. When things go bad, well they go real bad.
In the old days, only 20 years ago, the saying was you were still a rookie until your responded to your first killing. For some staff, the event was sooner than later.
Some weeks it was quiet inside the penitentiary. Some weeks it was 2 to 3 calls for assistance a day, fights, assaults, man down, drug OD's, and so on. Some of the longest hours of duty was morning watch in a gun tower in a corner of the prison. Very hard to stay awake and alert. Working a double shift from evening watch to the end of a morning watch, 16 hours from 4:00 PM to 8:00 AM. A very long, long, long, time.
Some days are really great days to work, enjoyable, and things go right. That seems strange for a shift to go fast and you feel you have done something. Working a unit, a corridor, or working any post can be very demanding.
If you want to be busy, and be precise in your actions, then work the control room. A control room officer is very busy. During an emergency time can either go very fast, or almost stop. Want to have a bad day in control? Have a bad count, have a missing inmate, then have an inmate escape.
Want to really have a bad day in control, have a call for assistance on a staff member being assaulted, or staff down and bleeding. The control officer can not leave his post. Want to have a very bad day, get the order to abandon the control room because of a riot and inmates have taken over.
Most of the time, control is busy.
It seems like only a few days since retirement in 2006. The 21 years went by quickly. Each shift was 28,800 seconds long, but who is counting the time. That is 480 minutes, or 8 hours. You start on the job, work the job, then one day, you walk out the gate, done, end of watch.
Enjoy the book.
