by Kevin ‘Rashid’ Johnson
”We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people, other people of color, and all oppressed people inside the United States.” – Point 7 of the 10 Point Program of the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party
Huey P. Newton made an accurate comparison when he stated that police in Black communities are an occupying army, no different from the foreign militaries that invade and occupy the communities of people of color in underdeveloped countries. Stan Goff, a retired member of the U.S. Army’s special operations units who has written many critiques and exposés on the crimes and imperialist bent of the U.S. military, made an equally important observation when he pointed out that every branch of domestic U.S. “law enforcement” aspires to be and imitates the U.S. military. This includes prison guards.
Virginia’s militarized prison guards
Within the Virginia prison system, which disproportionately targets communities of color, there operates a select group of guards who are both organized like and think themselves to be an elite military unit. They are called the ‘Strike Force’ or SRT group. They dress in special uniforms cut like military fatigues, tuck their pant legs in their boots like Nazi SS stormtroopers and wear special patches with insignia that look like neo-Nazi symbols. Their culture imitates special operations groups: They operate independent of “normal” prison rules and protocols, engage in closed circle physical training (which like the military they call PT), train with special combat weapon systems (including assault rifles) and in close quarter physical combat (with and without weapons), which regular guards do not receive.
They are supposed to serve as a rapid response special intervention force in “crisis” events like hostage situations, riots, special targeted contraband and weapon searches, and so on. But they are actually used, just like occupying armies abroad and police in the communities of people of color and the poor in Amerika, as a force to violently terrorize, brutalize, kill and contain us, to suppress any independent efforts on our part to challenge our abuses, control our own lives, and have our needs met.
Like today’s US mercenary military forces, the SRT is an all-volunteer unit drawn from guards across the state’s prison system who are accepted based upon passing a high-intensity training course and receive an additional wage for their SRT-related activities. Also like the military they refer to their field engagements as “ops.” As Stan Goff observed of most military-idolizing domestic law enforcement units, the SRT’s performance and imitation of actual military units is often laughable; however, this unit’s treatment and abuse of prisoners is no less lawless, heinous and murderous than actual military occupation forces in foreign lands.
Furthermore, within the Virginia prison system, SRT guards operate as powers unto themselves. They enter any prisons at will and have no accountability to anyone working in them, including the wardens. Their “controllers” are two white men working out of Virginia Department of Corrections (sic!) [VDOC] headquarters, Marty Bryant and another man named Fletcher. Fletcher I personally knew as a racist and abusive guard at Virginia’s notoriously abusive rural supermax Wallens Ridge State Prison, from the early 2000s.
Recent events which exemplify their abusive impunity occurred here at Virginia’s Greensville Correctional (sic!) Center where I am presently imprisoned. (Rashid has since been moved to the notorious Red Onion State Prison – ed.)
The assault of Joe Harris
At around 3 a.m. on Aug. 14, 2024, as Joe Harris III, #1444683, was sleeping, some 20 SRT guards along with a prison investigator and a drug dog rushed his cell. Three of the SRT guards escorted Joe to a shower and ordered him to strip naked. He complied. When nothing was found on him or in his cell, one of the SRT guards claimed he’d swallowed something. Joe protested that he did not swallow anything.
The head investigator of the prison, Loki, appeared at the shower and told the guards to spray Joe with tear gas, although he was cooperating and no force was warranted nor justified. Two of the SRT guards repeatedly and maliciously sprayed the completely naked and defenseless man in his face and genitals. If there were a legitimate belief that Joe had swallowed anything the prison has an airport-style body scan machine that can detect most any foreign object inside or on one’s person. This wasn’t used.
Joe was not decontaminated of the gas, as is standard procedure by VDOC policy and federal constitutional law anytime caustic agents are used on a prisoner.
He was put in a dry cell, an empty cell with no property or clothing, for 72 hours. The cell was filthy, with mice running around in it, and the commode which he could not flush was full of someone else’s urine and feces. No one ever came to check the toilet to see if he passed anything that he’d supposedly ingested. After he was able to contact his family and they called the prison, Joe was released back to general population, having received no disciplinary infraction, no incident report having been filed etc. The entire event was swept under the rug as if nothing happened. This is typical SRT behavior.
An intentional accident
In fact, I recently experienced treatment at the hands of SRT guards that was just as lawless.
On June 21, 2024, I was chained up and transported to the Medical College of Virginia hospital (MCV) in Richmond, for a cardiology appointment. Five SRT guards were specially assembled from across the state to take me on this and other medical appointments outside the prison. This is an ongoing use of these guards, since my recent 71-day-long hunger strike, as an attempt to harass and intimidate me from bringing undesired attention to abuses in the Virginia prison system.
I was transported in a “Freddie Gray Van,” namely a transport vehicle the entire inside of which was lined with unpadded thick steel. This despite that the VDOC is under a federal consent agreement (a still-binding contract) to not transport prisoners inside unpadded vehicles, because of the known dangers of serious injury. (1)
Not only did these guards deliberately take me to the wrong location causing me to miss my appointment (I was supposed to have been transported to a cardiac clinic in South Hill, not Richmond), but they crashed the transport vans into each other in route back to the prison. The van I was in was rear ended by another SRT van that was trailing us. I was caused injuries during the crash from impacts with the steel surfaces inside the van.
Worse still, upon advice of Fletcher, these guards immediately fled the scene of the accident, preventing any State Police investigation of the crash site as required by law to impartially determine what happened, why, and any potential liability. In Virginia it is a crime to leave the scene of an accident in this manner. (2) But of course SRT and Virginia prison officials deem themselves to be above the law (lawless law enforcement), which is the nature of occupation forces.
Since this event and upon obvious and valid concern for my safety in the hands of these abusive guards, I have since declined transport runs with SRT guards, which has now been used by VDOC officials to falsely claim that I have been refusing my outside medical appointments related to life-threatening illnesses, when I have not.
Since my hunger strike in 2023-2024, I have been repeatedly targeted with special supervision by the SRT unit – indeed by the same SRT guards who planted a street weapon in my cell at Sussex 1 State Prison on Oct. 19, 2023, then assaulted me with tear gas because I asked them to honor medical orders for oversized handcuffs when they were sent to transfer me on Oct. 30, 2023, to the notoriously abusive Virginia supermax Red Onion State Prison.
VDOC administrators have used SRT guards to specially target me and others with abuse. Indeed most guards who sign up for SRT membership are people who have an especial bent to abuse others and seek out specialized positions where they can use violence against others under pretexts of enforcing the law, which as demonstrated is the opposite of the function of Virginia’s militarized SRT unit.
Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!
Endnotes
1. In a federal class action lawsuit brought by VA prisoners in the U.S. District Court in Richmond, VA styled Brown v. Sielaff, Civil Action # 81-0853-R, the VDOC entered into a settlement agreement where it stated among other things at paragraph 26:
“The DOC agrees to maintain four (4) inch padding in appropriate places in transportation vehicles and will make a good faith effort to explore other possible measures designed to prevent accidental injury to prisoners during transportation.”
2. Under Virginia Code section 46.2-894 any driver who is involved in an accident causing injury or death must stop at the scene or as close thereto without obstructing traffic and summon and report the accident to the state police or local law enforcement agency. Violation of this provision is a class 5 felony punishable by 1 to 10 years in prison in Virginia.
Send our brother some love and light – letters addressed to him alert hostile guards that he has supporters who will complain to authorities, who may fire or penalize the wrongdoers: Kevin Rashid Johnson, 1007485, Red Onion State Prison, P.O. Box 970, Pound, VA 24279.
