Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [47]
“A few days later, we were out in the yard. It was snowing that day with about six inches of snow on the ground. Patty asked Joey Urgitano to take a walk with him to talk about the drug thing. I watched them as they walked across the yard. I could tell there was a heated exchange of words and then Patty hit Joey. Joey fell to the ground and Patty jumped on top of him. I ran through the snow toward them as fast as I could and pulled Patty off Joey. Patty started swinging at me and we exchanged blows. Joey got to his feet and tried to go after Patty with an ice pick he’d had concealed in his clothes. But in the melee he wasn’t able to get close enough to use it. And then one of Patty’s friends joined the fight.
“As we were scuffling, someone grabbed me from behind in a bear hug. I reached behind me, grabbed the guy’s hair, and flipped him over my neck. When he hit the ground in front of me, I saw it was a goddamn correction officer. He was screaming in pain and I saw his arm was bent in two directions. Then the response team swarmed us. Me and Joey were handcuffed and taken to the prison assembly area, then to the nurse’s office where we were stripped down and photographed. And then my troubles really began.
“I was taken to the bathroom and placed in one of the stalls with my hands cuffed above my head. The goon squad then went to work on me with fists and nightsticks for hurting one of their own. They beat me until I was a bloody mess and unable to stand. After what seemed like an eternity, they carried me to the Special Housing Unit, otherwise known as the Hole. When we got there, they put me down and told me I had to walk the rest of the way and carry my property that they’d taken from my cell. I was in tremendous pain and as I walked, I called the officers everything I could think of. That brought on an additional beating. Here I was after only a couple of months in the facility, facing charges for assaulting an officer and a shitload of time in Special Housing.
“At my hearing a few days later, I was sentenced to eighteen months in the Hole. Eighteen fuckin’ months! I intentionally shot a guy in the goddamn head and got a short end of five years. They gave me almost a third as much for something that was an accident. It was ridiculous. I told the hearing officer what I thought of his decision, that I intended to file an appeal and that I’d win.
“Four months later it was determined that my civil rights had been violated and an order issued that I be released from the Hole immediately. They had to let me out, but they weren’t real happy about it. They wanted to give me another tuning up before I left the unit. I told them that if another officer raised his hand to me, I’d arrange to have him shot after he got off work. I said if they didn’t believe I had the connections to make that happen, all they had to do was read my file. After that, staff left me alone like I had the plague.
“So I got back into population and Joey wasn’t charged for possession of the ice pick he tried to use on Patty. In fact, the weapon was never found that I know of. I can’t prove it, but I’ll always believe our buddy the sergeant made that ice pick disappear.”
RESOLUTION
Upon Andrew’s return to general population, he was reunited with his friends Joey Urgitano and Fat Philly. But as the euphoria of being out of the Hole wore off, Andrew realized that the root cause of the December incident was still smoldering under the surface.
That feeling was confirmed by Joey Urgitano, who told Andrew that the animosity from December was rising out of control. Any day things were going to pop between them and Patty O’Keefe’s small group,