Speaker 0 00:00:00 Exercise 1, 2, 3, 4.
Michael Cantrell 00:00:07 Welcome back to the Prison Officer Podcast. My name is Mike Cantrell. And, uh, welcome back to the basics where we're gonna cover what it takes to be a correctional officer. The things a rookie needs to know when they first start. And, you know, I hear from all over the country as I travel that I hear some of the old timers say that the rookies aren't listening to 'em, and I hear the rookies tell me that, uh, nobody's taking the time to show them anything. So hopefully this might fill a little bit of that gap there. And maybe I can, uh, put some of the information out there that you guys need in the field. And, um, maybe you'll pick up a few tips. So tonight we're gonna talk about security checks. Now, security checks covers a lot of area. It's not just one thing. Security checks, covers fence checks, building checks, lighting checks, roof checks, and various other checks that we have.
Michael Cantrell 00:01:04 Tunnels and bar taps. And all these are part of our security checks. And I know each agency's gonna do it differently. Each agency has different buildings. You know, they have different setups. So you may not have a fence in an area, you may have a wall, you may not have a tunnel, but you may have a basement. As we talk about this, just think about, um, what's in your area, what's the best way for you to search it and to ensure that there's nothing wrong that ensure that it is intact and that it is preventing escapes because security checks are, we're checking our facilities, we're checking the things we have in place that prevent escapes when we're not standing there. Does that make sense? You know, the fence, the fence is standing there 24 7. There's not somebody standing there looking at all moments at that area, but that fence does and it prevents people from, uh, getting out of the prison or at least making it difficult for them.
Michael Cantrell 00:02:11 The same with the other areas in the prison. You know, roof checks. Are there accesses? Are there drain pipes? Are there, are there things that could, you know, facilitate and escape? So that's what we're doing security checks for, is to make sure that those, uh, security devices, that those, uh, things that we have put in place to prevent, escape, to prevent inmates from getting outside that prison, that they're viable, that they're working and that they're doing their job. Let's start with fence checks. And fence checks is kind of a little, I don't know, maybe it's become a pet peeve of mine over the years. Um, you know, as I got into supervision, I would, uh, once a week try to go do the fence check, you know, with the officers. And I like to go look at the fence. It makes me feel secure about my prison.
Michael Cantrell 00:03:00 Uh, when I get out there and I look at it and I, you know, I make sure there's no holes in it and I know that it's doing its job. So even when I became a lieutenant and as a captain, I would go out there and do those fence checks and I'd do 'em with the officers. And a lot of times I noticed that the officers seemed to be out for a walk. Uh, you know, they were kicking rocks and looking here and looking there and, but they weren't looking at the fence. Now the fence is probably one of the most important areas of security that we have. Uh, and if it's not a fence, it's a wall, whatever it is in your area, that's what I'm talking about. The, the outer perimeter, whatever is in place to stop. Escape is the outer perimeter. Most days, most places these days, unless it's an older institution, it is a chainlink fence.
Michael Cantrell 00:03:52 Normally there's gonna be an outer chain-link fence with razor wire at the top. There's probably gonna be some distance, and then there's gonna be another fence farther in with razor wire at the top. And sometimes in between those areas, there may be gravel, there may be more razor wire. Uh, some people call it a waterfall where you have stacked razor wire. And that's also to prevent escape so that they can't jump over it. And if they try to get in it or up on top of it, it's just gonna tangle. So that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the fence. Well, as we walk the perimeter and as we're looking at the fence, there's several things that we're looking for. Um, the first thing I mean, is just obvious. I'm looking for a hole in the fence. Has something happened as a vehicle hit it?
Michael Cantrell 00:04:40 Has anything happened? Uh, somebody got a hold of some wire cutters and cut a hole in the fence. So that's the number one thing we're looking for. That's something big that's gonna catch your eye. But there are some smaller things that we should pay attention to. Look up in that razor wire as you walk through there, is there anything in that razor wire? And I think the scourge of all correctional facilities and jails these days is Walmart bags. Cuz those things blow in from everywhere. They get caught up in our razor wire. So that might be something normal that you see. But I'm talking, do you see a strip of clothing up in there where maybe somebody crawled across that fence? Do you see flattening of the razor wire? Is it flattened where somebody's been on it or moved around it or pulled it down?
Michael Cantrell 00:05:26 Um, and you might also see stuff like things left over from, I saw basketball once that was stuck in the razor wire. And, and sure enough it was where, uh, people from the outside were trying to throw contraband into the prison. We're looking at the, uh, razor wire on top. We're looking for that type of stuff. We're looking for holes in the fence. We're looking to see if anybody has tried to undermine the fence. Is anybody trying to dig under it now, most good exterior perimeter fences, that chain link is going to be in a footer and it's gonna be a footer that goes down several feet. And that is to keep somebody from digging in or digging out, and animals too, but more importantly, people, inmates. So, but that's something we're looking for. Has anything been moved? Another thing we're looking for is all of the hardware that holds wire together.
Michael Cantrell 00:06:22 Now, a lot of prisons and a lot of correctional centers, if they've done their job well, those outer perimeter fences, those clamps that have the nut and bolt on 'em, that hold chain link stretched and taught those, the nut on those should be welded so that it can't be taken off. And if it is, it can't be taken off easily. So that's something you wanna look for. Has anybody tried to, you know, take the nuts and bolts out to loosen the chain-link areas of the chain-link where, you know, it's loose or, uh, the tension is bad or areas that we need to pay attention to? That may have happened with weather. It may not actually be a, uh, an actual attempted escape, but when we see those areas, those need to be fixed because a lot of chain link, when it's installed, the one piece of chain link, how taut it is affects the next section, affects the next section, affects the next section.
Michael Cantrell 00:07:24 So if one section's going bad, you could pretty soon have several sections that are, you know, failing because of that first section. So if we see things like that, we need to get somebody in there and get that repaired. Um, of course look for contraband. Constantly people, and especially in some of your mediums, uh, you're gonna see a lot more of this than you will your maxes. More and more you're seeing drones, you're seeing people throw basketballs and footballs over the wire trying to get contraband into the yard. Another one of the reasons I didn't mention this early on, that these security checks on the fence are so important. You know, three decades ago when I walked into prison, and if you are working a penitentiary, more than likely there was a tower within site of you, wherever you were at on the perimeter. And a lot of those towers have went away.
Michael Cantrell 00:08:19 Facilities have decided that, uh, electronic monitoring can replace those towers, can replace those people. Um, it's cheaper to have, uh, fencing and alarms and maybe a roving security patrol that goes around the prison than it is demand four or 5, 6, 7 towers. So that's changed a lot. But that also means there's not as many eyes on the fence. So when you go do that fence check, it's important. You may be the only person that's gonna look at that fence for 24 hours. So when you do it, do a great job. Another thing that you might do with, uh, depending on your systems and depending on what's installed at your, uh, correctional center or your prison, is alarm tests, uh, fence alarms. A lot of our institutions have went to having electronic alarms attached to the chain link. So there's something bounces or bothers or kicks or whatever on the chain link.
Michael Cantrell 00:09:17 It's gonna set off an alarm in that zone. So a lot of you are going to do zone tests as you go through there. It's important that you do those correctly. It's important that you do it at a time where control has time to do it correctly. Cuz more than likely you're gonna, you know, tap the area, it's gonna set off an alarm. Control's gonna call you on the radio and they're gonna say, alarm zone three. And you're gonna say clear alarms zone three. Well, we want to do that at a time where everybody's paying attention. We don't wanna do it during chow and stuff like that where control's busy. We want to do it at a time where everybody has the time to spend with making sure that's done correctly and that each one of those electronic alarms works. So that kind of covers the fence checks and alarm checks.
Michael Cantrell 00:10:06 Now, roof checks, um, some areas do this, some don't. Uh, a lot of times when we had towers, areas were seen by towers, okay? You had towers up in the air and they could see the roofs. So roof checks, you might have areas that weren't seen as well, but roof checks weren't as necessary. I don't think back then when we had all those towers and they could see the roofs. But now who's getting up there if it's not maintenance? Nobody sees the tops of our buildings. So it's important that somebody gets up there, does those roof checks. And depending on your structures, that may take somebody with some specialization. It may take somebody from, uh, maintenance. Uh, there may have to be safety lines in place, but we need to get up there and make sure that any roof hatches are locked. You know, there's a lot of maintenance hatches on the tops of these buildings.
Michael Cantrell 00:11:01 Need to make sure that they're locked. Make sure that nobody's tampered with anything. Make sure that nobody's, uh, you know, busted out bricks or blocks or anything like that. So we need to get up there and do those roof checks and be, be aware of the little stuff. That's what's gonna give you clues to the bigger stuff. You may not walk up there and just see a place where, you know, 14 concrete blocks are missing. But you might see a trail of concrete dust or, uh, a place where a lot of, uh, grout is laying there, where somebody's been picking at it or messing with it. And those may be clues for you to look a little bit closer. Another one of the checks that we're gonna do on a, a regular basis is building checks. And when I say building checks, there's a couple of, uh, different areas.
Michael Cantrell 00:11:51 One is just searching those buildings that are out of the way that people don't normally go to, to ensure that they're staying locked and that they're secure, that nobody's messing with that in the in between. When I worked at, um, U S P Leavenworth, we had a time in there where, uh, we were finding alcohol. And this wasn't just prison hooch. This wasn't just apples and oranges and, you know, some bread put in a trash bag. This was alcohol, it was like moonshine. And nobody was figuring out where this was coming from, but it was several weeks of it. And what eventually they found out was there was this doorway. Um, it was a, uh, hall closet and the hinges had the hinge pins on the outside, so they were accessible. Well, the inmates had figured out how to knock those, uh, hinge pins out, and then they were able to just open the door that way with the hinges.
Michael Cantrell 00:12:47 Well, they had a little still built in there. They had plugged into the wall, they'd go through their stuff, then close it back, put the pins back in. Nobody was the wiser. Nobody used that door. Nobody checked that area. So area and building checks are for places where staff don't go all the time. And to make sure that something's not being messed with, that inmates aren't getting in their unnoticed and doing things that might take a little bit of time. Uh, they'll do a little bit at a time trying not to be noticed. Along with building checks, I'm gonna say, uh, door checks, and I've talked about this, uh, I believe on the podcast before, but door checks are another little pet peeve of mine. As a correctional officer, as a basic correctional officer, as you walk through the prison and lieutenants and captains and other stuff, staff also.
Michael Cantrell 00:13:38 But as a correctional officer, as you go about your day, you want to go through there and ensure that locked doors are locked. You know, I, I used to do door poles. They used to have us do that when we were rookies. We'd go down the range and pull the doors and make sure everything was locked. And you know, you almost never, ever found, uh, one that didn't lock. But those were old lever halls and sometimes they didn't quite catch. And you might find one of the grills on an inmate's cell that didn't catch, and that's dangerous. It's important. I mean, we're talking about staff safety there. Well, door pulls are the same way. If inmates can get into areas they're not supposed to. We've spent a lot of time figuring out where they're supposed to be and where they're not supposed to be. But if the door's left open between those areas, it's kind of useless, right?
Michael Cantrell 00:14:29 So get in the habit is you walk through the, uh, institution every day, do those door checks, do those door poles. One final thing I'll talk about is bar taps and bar taps are another form of security checked. Uh, a lot of places don't have bars anymore, but many of you do. Um, even if you don't have bars, you may have, you may have windows that have metal supports in them and, and things that can be cut in order to facilitate and escape. So, bar taps, the way I was taught as I was coming into prison, we would take a rubber hammer and then you walk by and you'd tink tink tink tink and what you're, it doesn't matter how hard you hit, you're not hitting it hard enough to knock it loose. That's not what a bar tap is for, but you're making that noise, tink tink tink.
Michael Cantrell 00:15:23 And when you get to a bar that's been cut or that's been tampered with, you're gonna hear Tink, Tink, Tink to, and it's gonna make a different sound. So that's what you're looking for with bar taps. It's not necessarily hitting that bar to make sure that it's secure, it's listening as you hit that bar and you're listening for a different sound. Cause that different sound is gonna tell you that tampering has happened. Uh, they may have been cutting that bar, the weld man broke loose. There are several things that could have happened, but it's gonna tell you that that bar is no longer secure in that grill or in that window. Well, that's it for this week. That's the, uh, next episode of The Basics. If you are enjoying these, please check into our Facebook page or go to www the prison officer.com. Drop me a note, tell me what you think we should, uh, do a, uh, a basics episode on, and maybe we'll be able to use your idea, give us some feedback, drop us a review, and until next week, be safe out there.
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Exercise 1, 2, 3, 4.