THE PUBLIC CAN’T BELIEVE ANYTHING VIRGINIA PRISON OFFICIALS TELL THEM – PART ONE (2024) By Kevin “Rashid ” Johnson

LIES ABOUT DOG ATTACKS

In an Aug 1, 2021 article about lawsuits brought by Virginia prisoners who had been mauled by prison attack dogs, a prison spokesperson was cited as saying, “canine units are used solely for purposes of detecting drugs and other contraband, not for attacking or intimidating prisoners.” (1) An outright lie.

In contradiction of this claim that dogs aren’t used to intimidate prisoners, Rick White, past warden of Va’s notorious Red Onion State Prison (ROSP), was quoted in a 2023 Insider report on uses of dogs inside U.S. prisons as stating that dogs are in fact used in Va’s prisons for “presence,” or “in other words the implied violence of their growls and bared teeth is sufficient to frighten people into compliance.” (2) So, dogs are DEFINITELY used to terrorize Va prisoners.

Then, in total contradiction of the denied use of dogs to attack Va prisoners, the same Insider report, “was able to document 271 [dog] attacks in Virginia state prisons from 2017 to 2022, through court filings and incident reports.”

So why would Va officials lie to the public about using attack dogs?

Well, exposing the practice has many implications, including reviving and linking the present use of attack dogs in Va prisons to the hidden history of the widespread uses of dogs to hunt, terrorize, maul and often kill Blacks during slavery, especially in Va. This practice was one of the main outrages that motivated the slavery Abolitionist Movement.

Using dogs to maul humans was recognized even then as barbaric, prompting British officials who used dogs in this manner against slaves in Jamaica, to do exactly what Va officials are doing now. They lied. As one article noted, “Their public defense insisted that dogs primarily intimidated rather than attacked.” (3)

In fact the use of slave hounds was criminalized and punished by execution when the Confederates used them against white Union soldiers during the Civil War.

It is because this practice is inherently barbaric (and was even recognized to be so 200 years ago during the era of slavery and let’s not forget the 2004 scandal behind Amerikan soldiers terrorizing Arab detainees during the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq), and because it has a racist history which continues, that Va officials have lied about it trying to hide it from the public. Which brings me to another campaign of lies projected by them to the public.

A LYING DOCUMENTARY

This came with the airing of a Dec 2016 HBO documentary titled, “Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison,” which can be viewed on You Tube. This program was used to whitewash the abuses within this Va prison and its image.

The program has never been shown to Va prisoners, and with good reason. It was a coverup. Through considerable maneuvering I was able to watch it however, and IMMEDIATELY recognized it as lying propaganda meant to clean up Red Onion’s sordid image.

The film began with two guards, one Black one white, escorting a handcuffed white prisoner to a solitary confinement cell. This was the first lie.

I spent 14 years in solitary confinement at Red Onion, from when it first opened in 1998. The prison, which is situated on top of a mountain in a rural region of the state, has NEVER had more than three Black guards in its otherwise ENTIRELY while staff who come from segregated white communities; and its prisoner population has ALWAYS been almost totally Black. This racial contradiction has ALWAYS fueled extreme racist abuses by its staff of its prisoners; a dynamic and history these fabricated opening images were meant to conceal and which continued throughout the documentary with the interviews of prisoners at Red Onion. Four were white and one was Black. Again, a dishonest representation of the ACTUAL demographic makeup of the prison’s population.

One of the interviewed white prisoners, Dennis Webb, who I’ve done time around for decades and was in the block with me as I wrote this, revealed to me that he and the others were given free televisions by Red Onion administrators for doing the interviews, (since I originally wrote this article I obtained documented proof that Webb is actually an informant for prison officials). At Red Onion Webb had himself been beaten numerous times by guards in solitary while he was restrained and defenseless. He didn’t expose this however, and revealed almost nothing about the extreme abuses and isolation that were the everyday reality of living in solitary confinement at Red Onion.

Webb’s interview consisted of him talking mostly about his original criminal charges, he admitted to me that in the interview he was trying to bring public attention and support to his case.

When I watched the documentary myself several months before writing this, I was determined to expose the lying image it portrayed of Red Onion. It was the first thing I confronted Webb with when I ran across him when I returned to Red Onion in Sept 2024. I now realize that he allowed Va officials to use him to portray a false public image of the prison.

Va officials love to portray prisoners as unworthy of belief, just as Blacks were portrayed during slavery and segregation, where they could not dispute or testify against whites. It’s the SAME racist stigma used now to hide the outrages committed against a powerless racially targeted people, which Va has a long and sordid history of. The public must be made aware that it is officials who can’t be believed.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

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Endnotes:

1. Keith Sanders, “Virginia Prison Guards Attack Prisoners With Dogs,” Prison Legal News, Aug 1, 2021

2. Hannah Beckler, “Patrol Dogs Are Terrorizing and Mauling Prisoners Inside the United States, Insider, July 23, 2022

3. Tyler Parry, ” Slave Hounds and Abolition, ” Past and Present, No. 246, p. 85 (Feb 2020)