Planted weapons and stolen property: Mounting retribution for continued exposures of abuses in Texas prisons

by Kevin ‘Rashid’ Johnson

The reality of retaliation

When in January 2016 ranking TDCJ officials sold the media the story that Alton Rodgers, a Black man who was imprisoned at the William P. Clements Unit in Amarillo, Texas, died from injuries sustained in a fight with his cellmate, rank and file staff knew different.

For one, they knew Rodgers was discovered in his cell in a vegetative state, covered in bedsores, and severely malnourished. Basically, they knew it wasn’t physically possible that he was involved in any recent fight, but that their colleagues had definitely left him neglected and unattended for quite some time – weeks even.

What’s pertinent is, although lower officials and medical staff told the media what they knew, as reported by Amarillo Globe News reporter Aaron Davis, who was then covering the story, they only did so under condition of anonymity, because they said they feared retaliation for telling the truth.

Think on that.

This is how real official corruption and abuse is in U.S. prisons. And if employees fear retribution for exposing what really goes on in these places, you can just imagine what sorts of mistreatments face prisoners who dare to speak out.

Here’s what I got.

The first wave of retribution

My regular readers know I’ve come under recent fire for exposing abuse and corruption in Texas prisons. Despite outside protests and support, retaliations have escalated and most recently culminated in officials directing outright criminal acts at me, including guards I’ve reported on recovering a weapon from the scene of an altercation and planting it in my cell the next day, and guards confiscating most of my belongings (again) with the intent of destroying them.

As previously reported, in early December 2016, I was threatened by ranking officials to have my property taken in revenge for and to stop my exposing abuses and killings of prisoners by officials here. Then, based on those threats, on Dec. 21, 2016, the same officials took a large amount of my property and had me sprayed with gas as I stood handcuffed from behind and locked inside a cell. I was left for several days with gas-contaminated laundry, bedding and cell surfaces in violation of law and policy.

The entire situation was orchestrated by Capt. Patricia Flowers and Lt. Crystal Turner. I was gassed by a guard, Andrew Leonard, under directions of Sgt. Arleen Waak. Remember these names.

Following reporting these mistreatments to the outside, a series of protests ensued, which led to the return of my property on Jan. 25, 2017, but I also received a retaliatory disciplinary infraction for having written about the Dec. 21 abuses, and its being posted online. The day after my property’s return I was compelled to dispose of some nine large bags of it as a condition to retaining the most pertinent materials.

Also, my confidential communication lines with publishers, media correspondents and editors were illegally severed to obstruct my writings.

A PBS journalist, Kamala Kelkar, then got involved, and questioned Texas prison system administrators about disciplinary retaliations against me and other TDCJ prisoners for exposing abuses. They first lied claiming I received no infractions, then when she presented a copy of the infraction, they changed their story but still lied claiming it had been overturned and declined any further comment.

I was next targeted with five more bogus and degrading infractions and not allowed to attend the hearings, resulting in automatic guilty convictions.

A PBS journalist, Kamala Kelkar, then got involved, and questioned Texas prison system administrators about disciplinary retaliations against me and other TDCJ prisoners for exposing abuses.

Following Ms. Kelkar’s article being published and mounting public protest, all six infractions were overturned in succession and the conviction records erased. But because I persisted in writing about abuses, the four most disparaging cases were refiled and I was re-convicted upon again being denied attendance at the hearings. I wasn’t even notified that the cases were refiled nor reheard until after the hearings and guilty dispositions and penalties were imposed.

The weapons plant

Following this I wrote an article, “The Abuse Goes On,” about the inherent corrupting influences of the prison environment on employees, and used several ranking Clements Unit guards and their conduct as examples, including Turner, a Sgt. Joe Preciado and others.

In response, Turner was quick to set the wheels of retribution in motion.

On the morning of March 23, 2017, she came to my cell with Leonard, the guard who gassed me on Dec. 21, and remarked, “I see you’re still being stupid,” and “writing bullshit about us.” And that this was “the reason I took your shit the last time.” She threatened that I’d be targeted again, of which I made record of complaint.

After denying me outside exercise and fresh air for some three months, the next day, March 26, Turner had guards take me outside.

While I was outside Sgt. Arleen Waak, and a guard, B. Perez, who also participated in taking my property on Dec. 21, staged a search of my cell, as Turner, Leonard and Preciado stood outside the cell watching as staged witnesses, and to block view of a surveillance camera positioned directly in front of the cell.

When I was returned to the cell from outside, Waak told me they were saying a shank was found in my cell. I responded that it was obviously planted by them.

But the rabbit hole goes way deeper!

In response, Turner was quick to set the wheels of retribution in motion.

After that, several prisoners in the cellblock told me Leonard had recovered a shank in the pod without formally reporting it or turning it in, just before he and Turner had come to my cell on March 25. The prisoner whom Leonard got the weapon from admitted giving it to him and that it was likely the same weapon they claimed was found in my cell while I was outside. In fact, several guards admitted knowing that it was.

The prisoner in question, Joseph Bailey, #1300260, gave me his express written consent (which is posted below) and requested to be identified and to have publicized the entire sequence of events leading up to and including him relinquishing the weapon to Leonard to expose the sorts of corruption and abuses guards engage in.

It all began on the morning of March 25 during lunch, when Bailey reached out of the open slot on his cell door with the object in his hand, during an altercation with another prisoner who was working the cell block and helping the pod guards John Stokes and A. Soe serve lunch. No one was injured, however. But both guards observed the altercation and it was captured on film by pod surveillance cameras. Soe admitted in my presence that he, Turner and Preciado reviewed the altercation on video footage after he’d reported it to them.

It was then that Turner and Leonard came to the pod, and Leonard went to Bailey’s cell and told him to hand over the weapon, which he did. Turner and Leonard then came to my cell. They didn’t report the altercation or weapon, but a weapon was claimed to have been found in my cell the following day as they both stood watching. In turn, I received an infraction for possessing a weapon.

I promptly grieved the planted weapon (but not mentioning Bailey), whereupon a coverup began. On April 6, 2017, a captain, Donald Dean, had Bailey summoned to an office to inquire about the weapon and altercation, apparently expecting Bailey would go along with everything being swept under the rug. He didn’t. So a rank and file investigator, Dann Rivali, was sent to stage a shakedown of his cell as if looking for an unrecovered weapon. But at the time several of Bailey’s neighbors, including David Valls and Nathaniel Carter, with his consent, wrote and gave Rivali statements about seeing Leonard recover the weapon on March 25th.

The property theft

On that same April 6 date, before Bailey was pulled out to see Capt. Dean, guards took me to a holding cell and confiscated nearly all of my property – 11 large bags. Most all of it was legal materials and related to my pending and anticipated litigation, which I told them repeatedly on audio-visual record. Several of my related litigation I identified to them as newly initiated in Texas and Oregon federal courts and Virginia state courts, including against recent abuses.

This was done in furtherance of the December 2016 threats to take all my property, which have since continued in retaliation for and to stop my writings exposing prison abuses.

They took my property in collaboration with a HQ official Michael Wheeler, who has in the past been involved in allowing the theft of my legal property under the false pretext that my legal materials related primarily to inactive litigation. This way they could speciously justify taking it under TDCJ policy.

It is to be disposed of.

This was done in furtherance of the December 2016 threats to take all my property, which have since continued in retaliation for and to stop my writings exposing prison abuses.

Taken were law books including my Prisoners Self Help Litigation Manual, volumes of otherwise unavailable legal cases; rules and statutes from Virginia and Oregon; volumes of handwritten legal reference notes; correspondence with numerous attorneys including involving pending cases of theirs in which I am a witness; all my legal addresses and all addresses, emails, and phone numbers of comrades, friends, supporters and editors and publishers; pending court files; work product materials; volumes of evidentiary documents; prison request, complaint, and grievance (evidence and administrative exhaustion) documents; witness statements and affidavits; discovery materials; my medical files related to medical claims and injuries sustained; learned treatises and much more, all related to active and pending litigation and also anticipated litigation – especially concerning existing illegal abuses, including those mentioned here – and disciplinary files, all my recent incoming mail including from attorneys and court officials which I haven’t yet answered, and volumes of other legal materials.

Also taken were my art supplies, manuscripts of several books I am working on with various editors including an autobiography and various articles, and a newsletter I am compiling with other publishers called Main Line.

Wheeler became particularly interested to give Clements Unit officials the green light to confiscate my legal property when he and they became aware that they and their respective “court access” departments are being sued by me in recently filed litigation brought in the Richmond, Virginia, Circuit Court. Indeed, all the Clements Unit law library staff who participated in confiscating my legal property are parties to that suit, namely Clements Unit Access to Courts Supervisor Darryl Glenn and law library guard Kenneth Holt.

They clearly had a retaliatory and obstructive interest in taking materials related to that case, which is contemptuous and illegal on its face. I’ll explain elsewhere and in greater detail the word games and outright lies they used to rationalize the confiscation.

Kangaroo court in session

To top it all off, the conspiracy came full circle when on the next day, April 7, I was allowed to attend the disciplinary hearing on the planted weapon infraction and found that my guilt or innocence was being decided by Capt. Patricia Flowers. This denial of even the pretense of an impartial trial as guaranteed by law, where she originated the threat to take my property and set up the abuses of late December 2016 along with the very same guards who were involved in setting me up on the weapon case; also she was a prime target of outside protests and complaints on my behalf, I still have grievances pending against her and she is the lead defendant in a recently filed federal suit of mine.

She refused to recuse herself when I pointed these facts out, dismissing them as “irrelevant.” She refused to allow me to represent myself and forced me to accept a staff representative, Julie Bristow, whose repeated lies were the basis on which I was denied service of prior cases and attendance at the hearings resulting in their being overturned on appeal, and she denied my right to call witnesses – I asked to call Bailey, David Valls, Nathaniel Carter and others.

When I pointed out that Bristow was openly hostile towards me in the hearing, Flowers kicked me out, claiming she didn’t like my attitude, although I was respectful throughout the hearing, and stating falsely that I was “interrupting.”

Following the hearing, she, along with a Lt. Narciso Sanchez, had me locked inside a small holding cell for over three hours and ordered guards to take more property from my cell, including my typewriter, all books, including law books, eating utensils, legal supplies like carbon paper and all my ink pens and more. I was returned to an essentially bare cell.

Prior to the April 6 confiscation, I possessed over 270 inches of mostly legal property. Afterward I was left with approximately 48 inches, and now have only about 18 inches. What I was left with is what they randomly chose to allow me, totally ignoring my every repeated effort to identify and receive what I needed and to explain how it all relates to active pending litigation.

While I was in the holding cell, Flowers walked past at around 4:45 p.m. and remarked, “Are you still in there? I told you I’d get you. I’ve got all your shit now! You won’t be doing much writing and suing for a while!”

While I do need all possible help and support in countering Michael Wheeler and officials at Clements Unit in getting my property back, even if I don’t, I stand firm on my commitment to serve the people and to continue shining a much needed light into the dark corridors of these corrupt and oppressive institutions where multitudes suffer as bad and much worse than me.

They also need help and a voice to the outside. Hopefully I have and am rendering them a service that will ultimately see an end to this vengeful criminal injustice.

Dare to struggle, Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

Send our brother some love and light: Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, 1859887, Clements Unit, 9601 Spur 591, Amarillo TX 79107.

Testimony of Joseph F. Bailey II

April 7, 2017 – My name is Joseph F. Bailey II, TDC #1300260. I’m a prisoner confined within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice at the William P. Clements Unit. At all times relevant to this statement, I was so confined. I am familiar with Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, TDC #1859887, who is also confined at the same unit, and we were both housed together on the same pod, K-pod, in the segregation section of the unit.

On March 26, 2017, I was aware that several officers conducted what appeared to be a cell search of Rashid’s cell, #201 K-pod, and claimed to have found a made weapon. The object that they claimed to have found recovered from his cell was the same object that I was ordered by Officer Andrew Leonard to hand over to him following an altercation on March 25, 2017, during the lunchtime meal that I had with another inmate working as SSI on the pod while Officers John Stokes and Officer A. Soe were serving our meals. The altercation was captured on the pod’s surveillance cameras, as well as my handing the object, as I was ordered to do by Officer A. Leonard when he came to my cell to retrieve said object.

I am writing this statement to give written consent to Rashid to expose through writings to the media and otherwise what happened, where said officers took an object, a made weapon, from me, that they left unaccounted for and unreported and falsely claimed the following day to have found said object in Rashid’s cell and/or property. I feel this corruption and abuse needs to be exposed and did not wish to see others involved in what transpired with me due to the corrupt actions of staff at the prison.

I was never shaken down after the object was handed over to A. Leonard, nor did any formal action follow. The officers who were serving the meal reported the altercation to ranking staff, including Lt. Crystal Turner and Sgt. Joe Preciado, yet no formal action was taken, but instead they hid the discovery of the object and used it to set Rashid up the next day.

By making this statement, I do not admit to any criminal actions nor rule violations and preserve all available defenses thereto. As said, my aim is to expose what these corrupt staff members did and involved me in without my knowledge nor my intending to do so.

Thank you.

Send our brother some love and light: Joseph F. Bailey, 1300260, Clements Unit, 9601 Spur 591, Amarillo TX 79107.