Chronicles of March (March madness and mailroom mayhem)

Chronicles of March (March Madness and Mailroom Mayhem) 
 Frederick Mason [ID] USP Tucson PO Box 24550 Tucson, AZ 85734 
 Ok, we've got a lot to cover here, because this entry is a bit lengthy. The idea here is to try to share with you some of the things that go on in prison. There are lots of things that are "every day", much like you'd experience at home. But then there are things that prison officers don't tell you, things that if the public knew, would get them in some trouble. Well, that's some of what we'll discuss here today. As I always do, I'll "pause" at points of the journal to try to color in some details as needed. Let's begin: March 3rd, 2018: Close to 10am on a March Madness Saturday. A bunch of games today; my Catamounts play Furman. They're giving us 14-15 points! Ugh! But we're playing in Asheville, an hour from the campus. (PAUSE: If you know your geography, you might be able to figure out where I went to college... the clues are there...) I heard a 19-year old student shot and killed his parents at CMU campus; horrible to hear. Sigh, so what's new? Grandma passed away last Tuesday, and I couldn't even send a letter to the family in time. Everybody was there, except me, and I didn't get to talk to anyone. Frustrating. ("PAUSE: Guys; it's hard enough-to lose a loved one when you're on the streets; imagine how hard it is when you're in prison. My grandmother was 94 years old when she passed. The good thing was that a month or so before, I was able to talk to her when she was at my mom's house" What's difficult is that in prison, there is very few venues to mourn; the prison is unforgiving when it comes to a person's family's death. Sometimes they won't even tell the inmate if he had a death in the family, even if the family calls the prison. Believe me, it's happened. Let's continue...) Meanwhile, I'm firing with all my ammunition at the prison for this mailroom cover-up. I've never seen people so hell-bent to protect the prison even when they're dead wrong. The Complex Warden is side-stepping the very obvious fact that USP Tucson Mailroom staff is rejecting mail simply based on how the stamps look. Their excuse is that it's "dirty". DIRTY?? Are you kidding me? Why not say it's not in the color you like, or that it's not affixed exactly the way you want? So the idiots are kicking back letters, cards and legal documents simply because they don't like the look of the stamps. That's not their call to make; that's up to the US Postal Service, of which the USP Tucson mailroom is NOT. Yet, this prison is doing everything possible to avoid the obvious questions by restating policy. We KNOW staff isn't supposed to reject mail based on the appearance of the stamps - but that's what they're doing! ("PAUSE: I hope you are getting an idea of how upset I was, and still am, about this foolish situation. Let me be very clear on this; staff has no right rejecting mail because of the so-called appearance of the stamp. I mean, how would YOU feel if you went to the post office, and the person working there rejected your letters because "they look dirty"? We have had problems with the mailroom for years, because they were stealing inmate's magazines, opening legal mail, sitting on time-sensitive documents, rejecting religious mail, and all kinds of things. All this is clearly known to the staff - ALL OF THEM. Yet they continually give us the old runaround, talking about what the policy says, but not doing anything to enforce it. So, if you sent me a letter, and if the mailroom didn't like me, they would throw it away. Why? Because they can, and the staff would do nothing about it. Oh, they'll act like they are going to "look into it"...yeah right. This is a clear violation of inmate rights, but the staff here clearly neglects to honor the laws they must go by, while clearly allowing abusive officers to practice their crafts, Ok, let's continue...) I wrote an email to the Complex Warden, and made a copy, I've no faith that they're gonna resolve the issue; they never do. JB had 2 legal certified envelopes returned - not by the Post Office - but by the Mailroom. Yet, they're saying the Post Office rejected it. LIARS! Any documents, letters or so forth sent back by the US Postal Service would have had professional post office rubber stamp marks on it, or an RTS sticker. There would have been some markings by the Post Office to PROVE it was from them. But JB (and many others) had writing in a black pen; "not enough postage", or similar wordings. This would have NEVER come from the post office. JB had $4 on each envelope and had to go back to the mailroom to put $4 MORE on each, to which they told him that it was "dirty"... but using a more profane word based on "crappy", ("PAUSE: I think you know what word I'm talking about, if the word isn't "crappy" - Now understand what's going on here; the prison mailroom is lying to the inmates, telling them that their mail is being rejected by the US Post Office, yet there's not one trace of any markings on any envelope from the US Post office; only writings on each letter or envelope by a black pen. What really makes me upset is the audacity of these people to break the law by violating inmate rights, then lying to us, expecting us to be fools to think that our mail has all been rejected by the US Postal Service, with NO OFFICIAL MARKINGS, simply because "the stamps are dirty". Hell will be excited to receive people like this... Ok, let's continue... before I say something else...) So, JB put $4 more on each, and they told him, "I'll send it, but if it comes back, it's on you"... JB got it back the next day - with NO US Post Office markings or rubber stamps on it. It never LEFT the prison, because these idiots simply sent it back... ("PAUSE: So, the guy I mentioned, JB, had $4 on two different envelopes, and the mailroom sent it back. He put $4 MORE on it to try to send, and they claim that the post office might send it back, but it never left the prison. They're rejecting it simply because they can. JB wrote to the warden, in fact I WROTE that email for him, and the warden promised that the mailroom was not violating the law, that they weren't rejecting the mail. But after they did it again, and we emailed the warden, he never responded. It's like I say, "sometimes the worst people in prison don't come from the cells they come from the parking lots". Let's continue...) 10:01am as I listen to classical music on a radio Jeff loaned me... Thunderhawk lost mine when someone stole it... anyway, JB gets his 2 envelopes back, and gets Ms Flores to find out why these stamps are being rejected. Mailroom tells them that "It's dirty" - again, they've no right to do that. They force JB to put another $10 on those 2 envelopes... he spent $32.00 in stamps for what only should have cost him $8! This is the prison's fault - clear and simple, and this proves that no matter how wrong the prison is, the staff will support it. Idiots! I'll have to write more essays on that, as I get more stamps and copy cards. ("PAUSE: Again, let me be clear: USP Tucson Mailroom was COMPLETELY wrong, yet no one in the prison is going to do the honorable thing and respect our rights. I suppose if 10 officers beat a man down for nothing, and he tries to sue, they'd put him in segregation, then ship him off to time-bar him from suing... Don't laugh... they WILL. Ok, let's continue... Meanwhile, Cesspooch is acting foolishly for trying to write a BP on the officer here. He asks for my help to type email to the Complex Warden about how he had his cell searched as a form of harassment... but Cesspooch was leaving out some things. He said the officer, after Cesspooch went out, wouldn't let him back in because it was a one-way move. Then, as he put it, they went and searched his cell. Cesspooch claims he is being harassed and denied his due-process. Due process?? What's that got to do with this? He's making that up! And Richard told me what Cesspooch DIDN'T say - that Cesspooch, angry that he didn't hear "one-way move", cussed out the officer, which resulted in the cell search. He omitted THAT part, which he knew he was wrong to do. If you're gonna fight with these people, make sure you haven't given them bullets to shoot you with. Cesspooch is wrong here; he didn't pay attention to the announcement, cussed out an officer, and doesn't even know what he's arguing about. Due process?? Are you kidding me? Ugh, oh well, it's 10:12am... End of journal entry. 
 Just to note, when we have recreation, they will often call for a "one-way move". This means that once you leave the dorm, you cannot come back in until recreation is over for the period. Cesspooch wasn't paying attention, and his pride prevented him from acknowledging that. Then, his temper got the best of him, and he cussed out an officer... Funny, we talked about the staff being idiots, inmates can be foolish too. So in insulting an officer, he gets a cell search, and had property taken. In anger, he wants to file a grievance, but doesn't tell me the whole story. This is surely an argument he can't win. So much going on in a day; I tell my cellie, "there's not enough paper for me to write about it all!" Oh. and as I write this, the NCAA Tournament is in the Sweet 16. Go DUKE! Until next time...