Wednesday November 13th started as a typical morning. My alarm was set for 5:50. I dressed in sweatpants, put a coat over my tee shirt, then walked from my residence unit to the administration (admin) building, got my half gallon jug of ice, dropped my ID at the control center (a requirement for my offsite Unicor job so they can put together a count sheet) and then headed to breakfast where they typically open the door at 6 and close it at 6:20. At the control center I noticed a bunch of corrections officers (COs) that looked to be from SIS. While in line for breakfast, I saw small red and green lights in front of the units, which meant they were waking everyone up, asking them to leave and checking them when leaving the units with metal detectors. At the time I was thinking great, I guess they are raiding and I can’t go back in to workout in my cube, change and grab some new reading material and snacks for work. In the back of my mind, I was wondering how my bunkie was making out. He did fine during the July raid, which also occurred at the same time on a Wednesday.
After breakfast I headed to the gym to perform my 20 minute ab workout, an extended version of P90x Ab Ripper, which Patti and I have been doing on and off since 2010. I typically just put a blanket on the floor of my cube and do the workout there a few times a week, ever since they initially closed the gym. After my workout, I headed back over to the admin building where it was very crowded with all of the non-RDAP camp inmates. I got lucky and a PC was available, so I responded to some emails from Patti and also gave her a heads-up about the raid. Upon arrival at the Unicor warehouse we are searched, which apparently was unrelated to the raid at the camp. We walk through a metal detector, get patted down and then strip searched. That was the first time we ever got strip searched at work.
Upon returning from work, my name is not called. No-one’s name was called, so I was relieved. I immediately head back to my cube and on my way folks say my bunkie got locked up (sent to the special housing unit (SHU.)) Our cube is tossed. All of our stuff that was in our lockers is all over the floor, bed and desk. I immediately noticed 5 of my 11 large hershey bars and half a pack of Reese’s peanut butter cups are missing (I like my candy and apparently others do too) , but my books of stamps are safely where I hid them. My bunkies stuff is still there, so I focus on sorting through what is his and mine. Luckily they left most of his stuff on his side of the cube. A CO stops over and drops me some bags and authorizes me to pack up my bunkies stuff. So I sorted through all of his food (he has a lot more than me) and I put all unopened food and sodas in bags. He came in late June from Fort Dix low and folks here say the food portions are much smaller there. There are many more inmates and I guess more food workers stealing food. So inmates eat more off the commissary there and seem to continue the habit here. My bunkie also had thousands of pages of legal paperwork and was in the middle of requesting a sentence reduction from his judge based upon a law that went into effect November 1st, 2023. First time offenders within a certain criteria qualify for a two point reduction in sentencing guidelines which averages about 12-14 months off a sentence. A lot of inmates at the camp requested it and quite a few have received this reduction. Many are still waiting for a decision, almost a year after they submitted the paperwork to their judge. I don’t qualify based on the criteria, so I never requested it.
So I finished packing up all my bunkies stuff and I am left with quite a bit of his opened food and soda. If I sent this with the CO, they would have just thrown it out. I spent the next few hours going through my items and finding more things missing. My alarm clock runs on a AA battery and I had two extra which are gone. Plastic forks, knives and spoons, Ibuprofen, scotch tape, photo tickets for visitation pictures, half a bag of peanuts, a pair of basketball shorts I workout in, camp issued items like boots, Jackie Chan type canvas shoes, and many of my tee shirts, khaki shirts and pants are all missing. Two weeks earlier they posted a bulletin on the PCs about limits for personal and camp issued items. I was way over on the 6 book and 3 recent magazine issue limits. So I was focused on those before the raid and gave away or donated extras to the library. I was still over, but luckily my books and magazines were spared. I had about 8 white tee shirts and 2 were left. The limit is 5. I had 2 pairs of khaki pants and 1 was left. The limit is 3. I had about 5 khaki shirts. They left 1 long sleeve and 2 short sleeves. (Short sleeves are not issued and need to be custom made by inmates.) The limit is 3. I had 4 pairs of camp issued long socks, 4 pairs of no-show athletic socks and 4 pairs of crew socks from the commissary. They left 2 camp issued, 4 no-show and 1 crew. The limit is 3 camp issued and 5 commissary socks. It’s a bit cold for short sleeve shirts and no-show socks this time of year. I heard many inmates in our unit had similar issues with the raid. My neighbor was missing some of his Reese’s, Mike and Ikes and a book of stamps. Many other inmates went down to the CO who handles camp issued clothes after the raid while I was at work and got replacement clothes. I heard there was a line down the entire hall of the admin building, but the CO stopped at some point handing out these clothes.
The next afternoon I went to that CO asking for clothes. She seemed upset about what occurred in the raid, didn’t provide clothes or boots and told me to see the unit manager, who is responsible for the entire camp and is just below the warden of Lewisburg FCI. Starting around this August each month a different CO has been covering this position. Apparently, the previous unit manager retired and had several months of vacation being paid out to him. So starting around January when the vacation payout is done a new permanent unit manager will start and get the wage increase. The unit manager this month is a lead CO within SIS. I went to him and he referred me back to the clothing CO. I went to see her again and she gave me the same reaction. Then I went back to the unit manager who said she and him spoke and I should get the clothes from her and if I’m not happy I can file a complaint against her. He also told me I could ask other inmates for boots as there are likely extras around. The clothing CO is very nice and I assume she is just trying to have SIS take responsibility for the incident, which caused issues with her camp clothes inventory for new inmates and clothing exchanges, which inmates are eligible for every 6 months. So at this point, a week after the raid, I decide to ‘dumpster dive’ where I look through a bin filled with random clothes and shoes, where the extra clothes end up from inmates who either leave or get put in the SHU. I eventually find and wash everything I need except a pair of boots. I don’t wear boots, except when there is snow on the ground. Guess what? It snowed for the first time yesterday morning November 22nd, but it did not stick. Other areas of PA north and east of us got 3-6 inches (Patti’s niece Katrina and George are at exit 273 (Lewisburg is 210) and they had 13 inches) So I’ll continue to work on getting boots somehow.
For the record, I’ll put a claim in for the approximately $60 worth of personal items taken. My claim from the July raid was denied, so I put in an appeal. Our assumption is my bunkie got charged with having a cell phone and/or vape and took ownership of the charge. They called over the loudspeakers for our cube to report to the control center while I was at work. Often they lock both of us up in this situation, but him taking ownership likely helped me. I heard a similar situation had occurred during this raid with another cube and they took both inmates. A total of 8 inmates out of approx 325 inmates in those residences got locked up from this raid, a rather low number from my experience here. Four of them were from my wing. My bunkie will likely be in the SHU for 60 days and if his custody points are too high, they will ship him to a low security prison. He will also lose 41 days of good time credit.
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