Whenever you’re forced to be around people you don’t particularly like, disagreements are going to happen. If you have a disagreement and you’re dealing with a teenager, they sometimes think it’s a good idea to have the camp counselor mediate the disagreement. This is always a mistake. The teenager thought that just “I” would get in trouble for our disagreement; the camp counselors thought it was both our faults and sent us both to the special housing unit (SHU) where we stayed for six weeks or so. It was a horrible experience BUT it allows me to say this about Elkton and the Transfer Center (not the BOP in general). In my personal experience, there is no way Epstein could have killed himself without “help” from the guards. Negligence and/or incompetence wouldn’t have been enough. In other words, I’m firmly stating that the guards would have had to actively help with his suicide or murder. So, anyone who tells you different is lying, IMO.
The BOP (during my kidnapping between Dec 2015 & Feb 2021) had substantial resources. Malfunctioning cameras on the compound were replaced the next day. Five guards entire job for their shift was to watch the camera feeds on their high resolution monitors. Malfunctioning toilets were fixed within a few days of being reported broken. Malfunctioning TVs were also replaced quickly. At Elkton, I personally saw a warehouse full of replacement parts. So the idea that all those cameras and the DVRs were malfunctioning at the MCC is (I believe) nonsense. The other obvious problem is, Epstein had WAY too much clothing and bedding. The only way to get all that extra stuff was a guard. When I was in the SHU, you had to take off your jumpsuit and underwear to get clean items. It was literally a piece for piece swap. Same for your sheets. You couldn’t even have more than one book. To get a new book you’d have to give them an old book. Unlike in the dorms, the guards took their responsibilities in the SHU very seriously, because some people were in the cells alone. Therefore, their only human contact was with the guards, so they made sure to check on us every hour. Sometimes I’d be on the top bunk just staring at the floor and they’s tap on the door’s window and ask “you OK?” I’d say “yeah, just hate it here” He’d say “Okay” and move on. So, from my personal experience, the idea that they didn’t do their rounds is not credible. In other words, if they didn’t do them, they did it on purpose.
Now, onto the Covid-19 fiasco. You may be surprised at my take on this situation. The main cause of the Covid-19 problem was mass incarceration, not incompetence. As I’ve mentioned before, everyone deemed to be at the security level required to be at Elkton shouldn’t be in prison – since we have something called electronic monitors. The cruel fact is that Elkton was a dormitory. So once Covid-19 entered the facility (we were told it entered via a guard working in commissary) it was going to infect everyone, end of story. Again, as I’ve mentioned before, there were people with severe medical problems at Elkton and as such, deaths were inevitable. So, from my point of view – having lived through it – I can say the Elkton staff did everything they could (within our cruel punishment system) to try and mitigate the problem. They shut down the yard immediately & kept us in the dorms 24/7. They put hand sanitizer everywhere, sprayed every touchable surface in the dorms with Lysol twice a day, checked our temperatures every morning and removed anyone with a fever. They even called in the national guard to help triage those that got really sick and placed them in the visiting room. Some of them weren’t that sick, because they broke into the vending machines, just like a teenager would. SMDH.
Anyway, once the lawsuits were filed, they went over and above. They quickly complied with Court orders and depopulated the compound to the point that it was underpopulated when I left in 2021. So I guess my bottom line about this fiasco is this – when your have a cruel and unfair justice system, you should expect to kill a few people. I think that we should have a prison system that only locks up people who are actually dangerous, not people we don’t like. Locking up people we don’t like has put us in the position of claiming to be the land of the free, but actually we’re the land that locks up more of its citizens than any other “first world” country in the world. America, Fuck Yeah! LOL