I HAVE TO SAY IT: FLORIDA’S BEAUTIFUL !
The state of Florida is an absolutely beautiful place! Swaying palms (even in winter!), palmettos, white-sand beaches, and sunshine. Sunshine! Everywhere, all the time, it’s sunshine! And, it is glorious!
I always wanted a pet. Once, in my 25th year of prison, (1999) I had a friend who brought me a baby rabbit he had found in the fields. I called him “Floofy”, and loved him…he was so small, and soft, and warm. You could hold him in your hand and feel his heart racing.
EVERYBODY loved him, as well. People would come over to my bunk after work and ask to see him, to hold him, to pet him. They all helped to feed him. Floofy never got hungry, and never felt alone. I had him for almost 3 months, and he was one fat and fluffy rabbit! Then, reality set in. A brutal, redneck, uncaring, unfeeling, CO, known for his stupidity more than anything else, came in and found him during a shakedown.
Floofy was gone. Just that quickly.
It broke my heart, and took me a long time to get over. Many years later, (2019), while I was President of the Camp F VETS, I encountered the PAWS Program, a prison program that allows certain chosen inmates to raise, care for, and train service dogs for disabled Veterans. I wasn’t chosen but I had several friends who were involved in the program, and brought their dogs around for training. We were told NOT to pet them, that it would distract from their training.
But, the human spirit and the capacity for love – even in the midst of the darkness and despair of prison – is indominable. I always ‘snuck’ pats in and smuggled them a treat once in awhile. I vowed to one day, if I ever got out, I would get a pet, cat, dog, fish, whatever…just a pet that I could love. I have found that here.
SOLITARY IN FLORIDA
In 2017, Craig Riley was beaten so badly by two Florida correctional officers that he was left paralyzed from the neck down. Riley maintains that the beating was retaliation for a complaint he filed against a guard who threatened him. Although the officers who beat Riley maintained the injury resulted from restraints, medical staff found evidence that one of them had stomped on his neck. Despite the severity of his injuries, twelve hours after the attack doctors at the Reception and Medical Center cleared Riley to be placed in solitary confinement instead of being transported to the hospital. Riley’s case is just one of many illustrating the inadequate and sometimes deadly state of healthcare in prisons and jails in Florida and beyond.