Five hundred thirty miles is a long way to travel for a visit, but if I wanted to see my firstborn that’s just what I had to do. So, Joe and I made plans to travel to Ocala, Florida to see Matt. Ocala is only about 30 miles from Orlando, but we did not ever visit Disneyworld on our trips down. We usually left on a Friday morning and traveled all day. We would visit early on Saturday morning. Leave after lunch and return on Sunday morning before we left to return to Alabama.
Our first
visit turned into a memorable visit for all of us. My middle son, Jeffrey, decided to make the
trip with us, so the three of us set out around 8:00 on a Friday morning on
what we thought would be a 9-hour road trip. We thought we would save time by
avoiding Atlanta which proved to be a big mistake. We pulled into our hotel
around 9:00 pm exhausted from the long ride in the backroads of south Alabama.
Atlanta might have traffic but at least there were places to stop for restroom
breaks and snacks along the way.
There was
little time to rest in the morning because we had a new adventure ahead of us
with numerous unanswered questions. Our hotel was about 20 miles from the
prison which was quite a way out in the country. I would not have expected any
less considering the acreage the FCC covered. We ate the complimentary
breakfast, grabbed a few snacks for later and headed out on our journey to
visit Matt.
The GPS on
the phone directed us most of the way until we were so far out from
civilization that we lost cell service. I would assume there was a reason there
was only spotty cell service on the prison grounds, since the prisoners were
forbidden to have cell phones. The lack of coverage assured there would be no
calls made from within even if bootleg cell phones managed to find their way
into the facility. Inside, the concrete walls and metal fences guaranteed no
calls would ever penetrate the airways.
I must say
that the awesome expanse of the complex was most impressive. As we drove the
long drive past the first gate, I felt a small twinge of xenophobia that
actually lasted until the experience of the first visit was complete. That feeling
would return slightly each time we made the turn into the facility. It is a
feeling associated with the uncertainty of not knowing the rules or what to
expect. After all, there is no operations manual that goes along with prison
visits for inmates. No matter how many times I visited the website and read the
rules for visitation, there was something I missed on each visit.
We were called up one by one to check
identification and have a picture taken for the BOP files. We then returned to
the room to wait for our turn to be called. Visitors were taken back in groups
which usually contained all family members of prisoners but never more than
about 7 at a time. Which meant, if there was a large group waiting to visit it
could be hours before we got in to see our person. In a maximum-security prison or United States
Penitentiary (USP), visitors were issued a locker with a key. Any items could
be locked in the locker before entering the gates to the prison. That meant, we
could bring reading material or something to pass the time while we
waited. The only thing we could take
back was money for vending machines and the key to our locker. Which may have
been what caused my snag on the first visitation.
We would find out the hard way that
money in south central Florida is not always clean and free of drug residue. So
much money trades hands with the illegal drug trade that money can often contain
traces of drugs that show up on sensitive scanners that detect drugs and drug
substances. I know firsthand that this can happen.
On a normal visit, Joe and I would
sign in, wait to be called, go through the metal detector and proceed through
the process of gate checks and on to the prisoner visiting room, but not on this
visit.
Since this was our first visit,
everything we did was a new experience. We were learning the process so we took
careful mental notes of how things worked. This day after registering and
having our picture taken, we, Joe, Jeff and me, returned to the room to wait
for our call. We were fortunate because our wait was not as long as expected.
The registration had lasted a bit longer since we needed to know the tag number
of our automobile and Joe had to walk outside to retrieve it. We had waited
maybe 20 minutes when “Hobby family visitors” was announced on the loudspeaker.
All three of us slowly made our way
to the metal detector. We took off our shoes and any jewelry and placed them in
the plastic tub that ran along the conveyor belt beside us. Joe passed through
first because he was quicker getting things off, then Jeff. I was last to go and,
of course, the alarm went off when I passed through the bars. I stepped back
and tried again. Another alarm! I could feel my anxiety level beginning to
rise. The guard asked me to step aside.
Joe and Jeff had passed the clearing
and were waiting to be sent with the guards to the visit, but I was not with
them. The guard check all my pockets and patted me down and I tried a third
time. Still, I set off the alarm.
After a quick review with the guard,
he decided it must be the underwire in my bra setting off the alarm. Easy fix,
I thought, just give me some scissors. I was quickly informed that there were
no scissors in a maximum-security prison…. DUH! well, I can just take off my
bra, right? Once again that was not an
option because women had to be fully clothed for a visit. (Like they could tell
a 57-year-old plus size woman was not wearing a bra!) Well, what did he want me to do? Chew them out
of my bra? His response was a classic, “well, women have been known to do
that!” What! I had to chew the wires out
of my bra if I want to see my son. I hesitated about 5 seconds then asked for
the restroom key. There was also no key, and no locks, on the restroom facility
at FCI Coleman II.
I entered the restroom just off the
lobby and quickly disrobed from the top down. Since I knew it would be a while
and there was a possibility of exposure from the unlocked door, I slipped my
top back over my head. I sat down on the toilet and began my gnawing and
twisting. It was easier than I thought since my adrenalin was surging from the
excitement. I snapped the threads with my teeth and broke the wire with my
hands. I managed to get a sharp point of the stave through a small hole I had
chewed and both sides of the wire came free. I repeated the process on the
other cup. Success!!! I quickly dressed and returned to my spot in line, but I
would face a second obstacle on my quest to visit my son.
As I
approached the counter one of the guards asked to see my front pocket. What? My
front pocket? What could be in my front pocket? He pulled up a small device
that I would later learn was an ion scanner. He touched my pocket with
something that looked like the receiver of an old dial-up telephone and I had a
strange feeling that things were not going according to my plans. The machine
the scanner was attached to began making a strange typing sound and a long
piece of paper that resembled an adding machine tape fell from the printing
device. The guard tore the paper from the machine like a clerk pulls the
receipt from the cash register. The
guard examined the printed paper and asked me to take a seat. He signaled for me to sit away from the
others who were ready to make the move across the grounds to the prison
entrance so I knew I was in some sort of trouble.
As one guard
escorted the group to the proper channels for entering the prison, I sat
quietly by myself pondering my fate as I watched the others leave the building.
The first thing the guard did was to stamp each visitor with imperceptible ink
that showed the code for the day. A machine with a an ultra violet light read
the stamp at certain points. They held up the stamped hand and the photo ID and
were given the go ahead to proceed to the next point. I watched as the group
waited for the first set of doors to open and they entered the chamber as the
metal doors closed behind them. Now I was all alone.
My turn
finally came to be addressed and that was where I was told that a substance was
found on my clothing that was used in the production of the drug ecstasy. Ecstasy!
Really? Why could they not catch the real drug pushers? I was just an old
school teacher who wanted to visit her son. How could I test positive for
ecstasy? Surely this was a mistake.
Mistake or
not, I could not visit in the normal manner, which meant I had to visit behind
glass like I did in the county jails. I was fortunate that I could visit
because the medium facilities did not even have a glass room for visitation. If
I tested positive at a medium, I would simply be denied entrance all together.
But WAIT! Joe and Jeffrey had already gone back. Could they continue with their
visit? Did my positive test affect them who were already inside the walls of
the prison? The answer to my question was yes and no. Yes, it affected them and
no, they could not visit with prisoner contact. In the visiting room, Joe and
Jeff were quickly separated from Matt even before they were able to hug. They
were separated and ushered into the visiting room with glass windows. Neither
one had a clue what was happening to me in the lobby.
The device
that detected my “drugs” was an Ion Scanner, probably and Ion Scan 500 DT. It’s
a machine that uses ion spectrometry analysis or some sort of scientific method
I can’t even pronounce much less understand to detect even the smallest amount
of drugs or explosives. I read in an internet
article in the Prison Legal News that Ion scanners are able to detect trace amounts of illegal substances as
low as 0.01 nanograms, or 1/100 billionth of a gram – an amount smaller than a
single grain of refined sugar, and completely invisible to the naked eye. The extreme sensitivity of the scanner has led
to many false positives of the people that were tested. Those affected have taken legal action against
the manufacturer. The lawsuits also
argued the machines could not distinguish whether a trace amount of a substance
was used in a legal product or an illegal drug.
While
they moved Joe and Jeffrey to a special visiting room with Matt, I was
instructed to wait in the lobby waiting room. So, I took my place back where I
started in a room filled with about 25 other anxious guests. While there, all I
could do was wait. Joe had the keys to the locker and anything I had brought
was locked in there. The guard had told me that only two visitors at a time
were allowed back in the special room, so Joe and Jeffrey could visit for a
bit. Then, Jeffrey would come out and I could go in and visit with Matt and
Joe. Meanwhile, no one other than me had a clue what had happened. They had
only been told that I had encountered a problem in the lobby.
I sat
quietly for what seemed like an hour just waiting. As Jeffrey made his return,
he could see me through the long glass window. He had a puzzling look on his
face that seemed to say, “What in the world happened?” He communicated through
his eyes and his facial expression. I held my angst as long as I could and when
he entered the room, I burst out” I TESTED POSITIVE FOR ECSTACY!” He snickered, I cried, and the entire waiting
room began to laugh out loud.
I
finally made it back to see Matt and we even had a normal visit the next day.
We hugged until the guards told us to take a seat. As we exited on Sunday, we
asked what we needed to do to prevent this occurrence from happening again. We
were told to wash our clothes at home and place them in plastic bags, shower
before the visit and change into the clothes right before entering the
facility. We were also told not touch any money before we enter the
building. We followed their suggestions,
but would find out on the second visit that even that was not enough to prevent
a positive detection by the Ion Scan 500 DT.
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