Transcript
Robert West Illinois No Title My legal name is Robert West and I'm an inmate in the United States of America and of the State of Illinois and presently I am incarcerated in the Illinois Department of Corrections ("IDOC") under their alphabetical numerical identification system as B-03903. I was sentenced to an aggregate 60 years @ 50% for armed robberies and I have been in continuous incarceration since August 19, 1991, and there was no violence in those cases or my background. I subsist within a culture of abuse and intimidation perpetrated by corrections employees against noncombatant inmates, and the more they abuse us, the more we become lickspittle and ingratiating towards them. As a person held in imprisonment now nearing a quarter of a century, the reason for my writing this missive is to revel facts, with aim to mention the injuries and ruins to people cause by the macrocosmic indifferences of society, as transferred into the microcosmic penal culture of corrections. "The degree of civilization in society can be judged by entering the prisons." (Fyodor Dostoyevsky). From my conversations with fellow inmates, and also of my own personal experiences, during the entire period of imprisonment, IDOC inmates has been and is presently subjected to a continuing course of arbitrary or oppressive treatment, as the result of mismanagement on the part of state prison managers that is so gross, it must be considered to be willful. The unwritten policy and practice of the daily maltreatment of Illinois inmates stems from the infamous "Richard Speck Tapes," aired in the year of 1996, by CBS television station and Chicago's Channel 2 news reporter, Bill Curtis, who exposed the irrefutable reality of an IDOC penitentiary, where prison managers at Stateville Correctional Center were caught compromising control of the inmates by allowing for an environment for homosexuality, and a place for illicit drug parties, where male adult inmates filmed themselves creating gay porn and apparently snorting narcotics while housed inside a maximum security prison. Corrections employees are given enormous power, and often they're so myopic with that power, to they have lost ability to see that many of them has no idea what to do with it, other than to use their authority arbitrarily or as an instrument of oppression. They are legalized bullies who expects for inmates to respect the co-called peace officers badges when they themselves won't respect it. Nefarious faustians whom serves no penological purposes other than to further psychologically damage people by: a) instilling within pusillanimous inmates profound pessimism and deeper despondency to discourage protest; b) manufactoring bitter sociopaths consumed by irreparable animosities; c) metamorphosing even themselves into narcissism and diabolical sadists; and, d) et cetera, etc. While doing time inmates perfect their predictions of officers behavior. They tell only what is acceptable and they conceal their true beliefs, impressions and ideas behind masks. It is better in a survival sense, to tell officers what they want to hear and continue to go unharmed than to tell unpleasant facts and be falsely accused of misconduct or held by mechanical restraints, beaten, tranquilized by psychotropic drugs, placed in 24-hour days confinement, or lose good time credits. Just illustrating one example, IDOC rule, ? 504A, Offense 304 Insolence, it's defined, in part, in quote, as "talking,... gesturing, or other behavior that..., annoys, ... [a corrections employee]." End quote. Maximum penalties are one month segregation and one month good time revocation. Solely speaking for myself, I was psychologically raped on May 3, 2014, by the IDOC' Special Operations Response Team ("SORT") tactical unit officers with impunity from prison officials, who gave strangers voyeuristic viewing of parts to my body that I myself can't see - (i.e. anal sphincter). In addition to that, I'm also emotionally damaged as a result of by having been emasculated by SORT officers. Moreover, responsible for my mental decompensation is the fact that state legislators gave to the IDOC the army, the armory, and carte blanche authority, cause there's no statutory sanction to be levied against the IDOC for the unnecessarily and wantonly manhandling of inmates for the malicious purpose of inflicting gratuitous fear. 730 ILCS 5/1-1-2(c) (West's 2014). By authority of Illinois Administrative Code ? 501.220 b) at all times, corrections officers has unlimited and unwelcomed access to inmates bodies. And, by sword of Damocles an adult male inmate can be ordered to disrobe unto nitty-gritty nakedness, and under duress must capitulate to orifice inspection, to include being compelled to show his anal sphincter to the officer. On May 3, 2014, an IDOC unprovoked lockdown operation had been in effect. While I was in my assigned cell obeying the IDOC rules, an army of SORT tactical officers stormed the housing unit and an officer, in full riot gear and having a bellicose disposition, ordered me to disrobe. The compulsory nudity was exercised in the manner of a strip show willy-nilly. By sword of Damocles, the officer forced me to open my mouth and stick out my tongue, raise my top lip and lower my bottom lip, comb through my hair with my fingers, turn my head right-to-left for him to look into my ears cavity, raise my right & left foot and wiggle toes, lift my scrotum, hold my penis by the shaft and peel back the foreskin, turn around 180? with my bare buttock facing him and bend forward at the waist without bending the knees, grab my rectum with my hands, separate my butt-cheeks and hold it in that wideopen posture until he gave permission for me to release the grip. The officer then gave to me to wear only an undershort, pant, shirt, socks and boots, and thereafter I was handcuffed and compelled to stand soundless and motionless with my nose and eyebrows pressed to the wall's paint as officers stood behind my back fidgeting with billyclub sticks. As inmates had turned in a cursory look behind them at the SORT's uncalled-for activities, they was yelled a forceful warning to face the wall and not again move! 720 ILCS 5/12-1. After standing still for many minutes as a sphinx and thereafter the degradation meted finally appeased the officers' fancies, I then was ordered to walk in tandem step, in temperature below 60?, between two rows of officers down a long and narrow corridor connected to the dining room. When I entered into the dining area I was held there for several hours in handcuff and the absence of heat or warmth. An elderly and infirmed inmate, to, wit: Albert Sullivan, asked for his coat or a blanket to cover the loss of his body heat and the officers denied his request via their mockeries. Upon my return to the cell it was clearly obvious my clothing, books, papers, and purchased commissary items were strewn all over the place as though the officer had tossed and Frisbee-flinged my personal property everywhere. Mental cruelty is defined under Illinois law as - "a course of unprovoked offensive conduct toward [a person] which causes embarrassment, humiliation and anguish so as to render the [person's] life miserable and unendurable, and which actually affects the [person's] physical or mental health." Christian v. Christian, 26 Ill. Dec. 326 N.E. 2d 1254 at 1257. I was in such a distress by staff conduct to a degree I couldn't even recognize whether or not the SORT officer had a name tag identification visible. In addition to that, the officer's name wasn't legible on the copy of the shakedown record gave to me. Furthermore, the grisly stripping exhibition and supererogatory abuses described, exasperated my dysthymic disorder and the images has continued to plague me with intermittent depressions during my confinement in the IDOC. An IDOC Offender's Grievance report was filed June 21, 2014, titled: "staff conduct." I had asked therin the complaint for IDOC staff members to "cease oppressive treatment of inmates and desist from tampering with the emotions of voiceless, helpless, powerless, and defenseless human beings." The grievance was exhausted at the local level on June 23, 2014. I appealed to the IDOC Director in July of 2014. It was denied by the IDOC Administrative Review Board cause their office determined that there were "no violation of [Departmental Rules] 120 or 501c." And, on January 7, 2015, the Director concurred with the Board. The federal court have ruled that the constitution provides no protection to inmates falsely accused of misconduct. The court held it doesn't violate the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment to punish inmates for absolutely "no reason at all." Leslie v. Doyle, 896 F. Supp. 771 at 774 (N.D. Ill. 1995). The SORT officers at the IDOC prisons were more egregious. At other correctional centers the officers grabbed the back of each inmate's head and slammed it violently into the back of the inmate ahead of him in line. The officers ordered the inmates to stand in such a way that one man's genitals were in direct contact with the buttocks of the man ahead of him in line - referred to by the SORT officers as "nuts to butts." The officers forced the inmate to straighten his leg while keeping his back bent over at a 90-degree angle onto the inmate in front of him. This hand the effect of forcing the men to place their genitals directly against the buttocks of the men in front of them. The officers then ordered the inmates to march in that formation. Every time that an inmate's head came off of the back of the inmate in front of him, the SORT officers responded with violence. Although I'm upset about procrustean officers ogling my private orifice, I now feel luckier to have been abused at Dixon prison than to been at other IDOC prisons having had a possibly unwashed penis touching one's posterior. To verify the accuracy of the claims herein, see the civil case # 3:15-cv-00309 of Demetrius Ross v. Greg Gassett, et al. filed March 19, 2015, in the Southern District of Illinois, East St. Louis Division. As British historian, Lord Acton came to see - "power corrupts, and absolute power, corrupts absolutely." Please know that I would be glad to send to anyone anything of relevance, because I have documentary proof of the asserted "facts." "The Dixon facility provides all inmates with access to photocopying services at a cost of $.10 per copy." Accord. June 4, 2015, Dix. C.C., Gen. Pop., Orientation Manual page 77. On September 26, 1991, in case number 91-CR-20440, Cook County Circuit Court of Illinois - Criminal Division, Judge Thomas A. Hett determined I was an indigent. The IDOC allot nine dollars and sixty cents ($9.60) monthly stipend to each inmate for the purpose for indigent inmates to buy hygiene products. But, deductions are taken out of it for every day the prison was on a lockdown status or for the duration of an inmate's time of confinement in the disciplinary segregation unit. Plus, deductions are made for all legal photocopies and postage costs. I've done an introspection and have undergone an exorcism. I am the beneficiay of a soteriological experience and I now eschew all wrong doing prohibited by the KJV-bible. Furthermore, I also have observed a number of inmates whom by divine providence have reformed themselves, and became a decent human being advocating for what's right, and they are gentlemen. U.S. v. Virginia, 518 US 515, at 602-603 (1996). We welcome all prayers and support. "Any man can triumph under adversity but, if you want to test his true character, then give him power." (Abraham Lincoln). If anyone find the merits of my claims worthy of their response, my address is: Dixon Correctional Center 2600 N. Brinton Avenue Dixon, Illinois 61021 Thank you for your time and attention. Transcribed by Tyler A Boudreau, 2017
