We pull into the prison on the bus. I have been here once before when I was transferring from Fort Worth Low to Yazoo Low 2, so I am somewhat familiar with the process which is nice. When we arrive, an OKC BOP officer comes on the bus and asks if anyone on the bus is a Tongo or another gang affiliate. Apparently Tongos and other gang members have to be segregated in specific dorms because of beefs amongst the gangs. 2 guys respond and get off the bus. Then he starts calling the rest of us by name and as we exit the bus we have to recite our prison ID and he asks us if we are gang affiliated. He calls my name, I stumble up to the front, my ankles shackled, and recite my last name and number as well as tell him I am not affiliated. From there they put us all in a giant holding cell for about 5 minutes and then begin calling us, first come first serve (four at a time), to get our ankle and handcuffs off. I know this from last time so I am standing by the door to the holding cell waiting for the officer to say “first four”. I am one of the first ones out, get the shackles off. From there we proceed to pick up some intake paperwork and a pen and begin filling out the intake paperwork, mostly about our medical and mental health history. After everyone from the bus has their ankle and handcuffs off, they make us go into a room with open stalls and strip all our clothes off and change clothes into new clothes they issue us. From there we take our intake paperwork and meet with one person from medical and then meet with the Special Investigations “SIS” who confirm we are wanting to go into general population, ask us if we have any concerns regarding that, ask us again if we are gang affiliated, and then SIS informs you what prison will be your ultimate destination. The guy informs me that I am going to FPC Montgomery which is a stand alone prison camp on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery Alabama. It was my first choice I gave to my case manager (FPC Pensacola on the naval base in Pensacola was #2) and is supposed to be one of the premier spots in the entire Bureau of Prisons. This is great news and I am truthfully ecstatic! These are the type of victories I now celebrate, as I am overjoyed about the next prison I get to go to, LOL.

We go back into a different holding tank, where we wait for them to call us by name and take us to our dorm. The entire process takes about an hour, you would be surprised at the efficiency in which this happens. As they call our names to go to our dorms, we walk out of the holding cell, pick up a “bed roll” (a blanket, 2 sheets, and a pillow case with no pillow) and a sack lunch, and proceed to walk to the door where the officer is standing until we are all there. He then opens it and we get in an elevator and go up to our floor and then to our dorm. When we arrive in the dorm, we walk in, and all the inmates are of course eye balling us and checking us out. One white guy approaches me and asks me if I am on independent white time and what kind of charge I have. What he really wants to know is if I am a sex offender “S/O”. I inform him, which he is happy to hear, that I am not a sex offender and my charge is for health care fraud. He proceeds to help me find my room and get settled. However before I do, two different black guys approach me. One is trying to sell me a phone call for a dinner tray (because my phone doesn’t kick in until tomorrow) and another wants to know if he can buy my sandwich from my sack lunch. I politely tell them no and proceed to my room. As I start to get settled in my room with the white guy who greeted me helping me, two new guys from the bus (who happens to both be black) walk in and say that this is the room they were assigned. I am like “I don’t know” and the white guy helping me says come on, I will find you a white guy to cell with. He proceeds to talk to another white dude who is celling by himself who says “Tell the C/O to put him in my room.” So then I walk with him to the officers desk and they reassign my room.

I have to say that all of this is very disturbing and disconcerting, but it is how our prisons run and operate on the inside. It is troubling and needs to be reformed. From a race relation standpoint it is like taking a time machine back 100 + years. I have no issue celling with a person of any race, but prison politics typically disallow it and if you go against it you could be putting yourself in harms way. The other interesting thing about being in the Oklahoma Transit Center, which I think I touched on last time I was here, is you are housed with people of all security levels (minimum, low, medium, penitentiary, special violent penitentiary programs). You have to really be on your toes and watch how you move in OKC. A lot of the guys in the dorm I got to have been and are going to continue to do time in federal penitentiaries, which are very dangerous places and highly political. In OKC minimum and low security inmates who are housed at camps and low security prisons are intermingled with violent offenders who often reside in penitentiaries.

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