of them wrote, "He taught us about change and forgiveness but never judged us. He would always say, 'If your heart is good, you are good. If it ain't good, you need to assess what's inside and make a transition.'”
At Dodge’s funeral, hundreds of people signed his guitar case. His kids put his remains in the case. His ashes were walked through the prison in his guitar case. Officers and inmates stood in silence and saluted as he passed by.
Sgt. Dodge had told his kids that he wanted a Viking funeral. The Vikings would pile up a lot of combustible material, put the body on top and set it on fire. His kids set the guitar case on fire with Sgt. Dodge’s ashes inside. They spread the ashes over Lake Superior.
He was just one of many good men that most people will never know about, but in Stillwater Prison, his legend will live on.
DON’T FUCK WITH BASHAM
We got word that we were getting a new sergeant in the block. Word around the institution was that he was an asshole. I prefer to form my own opinions. He wasn’t very social and neither was I. That upsets some people when you do your job rather than chatting all day.
Before he came to work in A-East, an officer that I worked with in B-West figured he'd help both the sarge and me out. He told the sarge, “Don’t fuck with Basham. Just let him run and he’ll work his ass off for you. You tell him what you want and you can just sit back and watch it happen.”
My time with the sarge was good. We worked well together and got a lot accomplished. When the other sergeant wasn’t around, things went great. Offenders created fewer problems, because they knew we would take care of business. They knew we were watching and doing our jobs.
I found out that he was bucking the old boy network too. There were times that officers left him no option other than to write them up. The old boy network screwed with him and he wouldn’t back down. I know how that goes. It gave him a bad rap. If there were more officers like this guy in this place, it would be a lot calmer nicer place to work.
A CALM SERGEANT BLOWS
Everyone has their limits. I was working for a really good sergeant. He was laid back, intelligent and handled this job very well.
On this morning, he had something important going on in the morning, so he was allowed to come in at 0900.
I was OIC until then. An officer that was a bit of a screw off was working in the block this day. I informed him that he was supposed to cover canteen at 0900. Instead, he left the block on a break. I was trying to shag him down when the sarge came in. The sarge had previous instances with this guy’s laziness and insubordination. When the screw off came meandering into the block, the sarge got on his case. The screw up gave him lip. The sarge blew up and called him a fucking asshole and a slug. They both wound up in the watch commanders office. Nobody could blame the sarge for blowing, but it was one of those things where the watch commander had to chew them both out.
If the sarge hadn’t blown up and been inappropriate himself, he could’ve written the guy up and not gotten in trouble himself. As it was, he basically did the jerk a favor. Nobody wanted to get the sarge in trouble, so they had to let the jerk off too.
GREAT STYLE
One of our larger officers was working the door post. This officer was intelligent, not easily rattled and a real decent guy. He had a good sense of humor, but was a no nonsense type of a guy.
Looking back on how I did things, I would’ve played it more like this guy. I should’ve been pushing that button a whole lot quicker and I wouldn’t have had to put up with so much crap. But it’s too late now. I don’t want to go back just to check out to see if a different style would’ve been better for me to use.
When he noticed an inmate out of his cell that was not supposed to be, he said, “Why are you out of your cell?
“I’m going to talk to the lieutenant.”
“You were ICR’ed this morning. You have to switch in.”
The inmate became abusive and said things like, “You fat fucker, I’m going to kick your ass.”
The officer just pushed his radio button and called for the A-Team to remove him.
The inmate was yelling at the officer and kicking the door on his way out to be housed in segregation.
The officer charged the inmate with being disorderly, verbally abusive and disobeying a direct order.
This officer did not write a lot of reports, but when he did, it was a slam dunk on the inmate not liking the results.
OFFICER FRACTURE
During a training session, I saw a video of an officer getting beaten by an inmate at Oak Park Heights. The inmate, who was a murderer, had received a bad review from the officer who was an industry foreman. The inmate was angry about it, so he grabbed a foot long crescent wrench and a screw driver. He attacked the officer, beating him with the crescent wrench. He fractured the officer’s skull. Another inmate in the area saw what was happening. The assailant wasn’t letting up. The other inmate threw a box at the assailant to try to stop him from killing the officer. The assailant then attacked the other inmate.
This action had to have saved the officers life. It’s amazing that he wasn’t dead already. Imagine the pain you would feel if you just dropped a foot long hunk of steel on your foot. Then imagine the damage a hunk of steel like that could do if an enraged murderer was smashing it as hard as he could into your skull. Not a pleasant thought. Not a pleasant video. Not a pleasant officer after this incident.
Officer Fracture needed over 40 stitches in his head and had recurring seizures afterward. The assault took place December 3rd of 1999. The inmate was convicted of assault charges in September of 2000 and after that attempted to kill himself. He succeeded. Too bad he didn’t try and succeed in this endeavor before he ruined this officer’s life.
Officer Fracture was upset that an officer that should’ve been with him was giving a tour at the time. Oak Park was the first Super Max prison ever built. There is a lot of interest in this facility. People from around the world come to see this place. They are able to give lots of tours, because it is relatively safe for visitors to go through it.
Another officer was talking on the phone about fantasy football. An extremely difficult part of this job is to keep focus even when you are bored. It’s tough and a total head game trying to stay alert, but that is a big part of the job. We have to be ready for anything at any time.
Officer Fracture filed charges against those two officers, the Department of Corrections and MINNCOR. MINNCOR is the prison industries program that the officer was a foreman for. When you file a lawsuit, you cast as wide of a net as possible and hope you catch something.
He never discussed the results of this lawsuit with me.
The way that I wound up knowing him and what makes an Oak Park story quite relevant to Stillwater is that part of the settlement got him a prime job at Stillwater. He did not want to go back to Oak Park. Most severely beaten officers that I have known and heard of, find it difficult to walk back into the place where they were beaten.
He
