Sergeant James Booker
speaker
93 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Sergeant James Booker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So, you know, a lot of that went on, you know, because they couldn't relate to these guys. It was a different environment.
Well, like I said, we won't name any names, but this particular fellow happened to be out of Miami. And this guy was in there, if I recall, he was in there for a trip of murder. And this guy had huge hands, big hands. And what they did when I was working there is guys, if you had a beef with a guy, we would actually have boxing where guys could actually box.
Well, this guy was like the champ of the prison. He was the champ of the prison. So when this guy went to take a shower, he went with an entourage of people to take a shower. I mean, this guy was like a kingpin, basically, in prison when he called the shots. He was a shot caller.
And if it was food, if it was drugs, if it was hooch, whatever moved through that bus, it had to go through him in order to move. And us working there, we knew who was who. But that's actually his question. If he can't be there, where would we send him? That was the worst of the worst. It's not like we can say, okay, we're going to send you to another camp. No, this is it.
There's no other place like this place. And I mean, that place is an amazing place. And I think you never see any documentaries on it. You never see people telling stories about it. You never see cameras there because the thing is, society really doesn't want to know.
There's more rapes, more assaults, more murders that happen at that prison than all of Bradford County, which is where the prison is located. It was assaults every single day. Every day. But it was never reported. Nothing ever got to the newspaper. Nobody never knew about the assaults. Because basically nobody really wanted to know. Right. Nobody really wanted to know.
They're already there. At that time, there was no reporting system to say, okay, well, we had 80 assaults this month. It was just assaults. Yeah. you know, and we clean it up and we go on to the next day, you know, but it was, it was a serious environment, you know, very serious. Yeah. But they ran, they, like I said, they ran everything.
I mean, you know, and the thing was like certain officers, like if they say, Hey, I don't want this guy working here, we couldn't put him down there. And it's not because they're telling us what to do. We need to protect this person. Because we don't want him getting killed. Because I'll tell you this. I'll never forget this story, man. When I was working there, we had this officer.
He was coming on shift. Prior to him coming on shift, it was visitation day. Where back then, an inmate only got one visit per month. So they had to shave. Well, you know, Black men, they suffer from shaving problems. Their face gets swollen. So this guy said, hey, I can't shave. So if you don't shave, you can't have your visit. Okay.
So he said, the next officer come down here, I'm going to kill him. We changed shifts. The officer came down. Disinformation wasn't passed on. He got killed. He got killed that day. He had a wife and two kids. I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. I'm into some stories, man. And I'll never forget this story. When I first started working there, it was Christmas Eve night.
These teammates had an argument from back in 1978. They got a vent system. Now, I remind you, I told you I didn't start working there until 83. Right. It was a five-year buildup. Yes. And what they would do is they got this thing where they talk through the vents, where you can be on a whole separate area But the vets, they travel. So I can have a conversation with you and not even know you.
And we can get a beef going because there's nothing else to do but have a beef, right? So these two guys ended up getting housed together. Staff didn't know they had a beef. And this guy took a homemade knife that looked like a sword. And he ran it through this guy. On Christmas Eve night, that is the first time I ever seen someone get killed in prison. Blood flew out of him like it was water.
I'd never seen anything like that. Now you're talking about something that looked like a movie and you want to see how fast blood goes out the human body. Get the right organ and see how much blood come out of it. He killed right there on Christmas Eve night. I'll never forget it. That was my awakening to the prison system. And it was something to see because it was like, man,
He just killed this guy like it was nothing, you know, and he was never getting out anyway. Right. Where else is he going? You know, so it's a lot of stories, man. I mean, I could load you up with stories that I saw, man, that things happen in that place, man. And it was just like just like business, normal business, you know, like it was nothing.
The main factor was I wanted a better environment because at the time I'm young. In South Florida, like I said, from What I've gotten was, hey, man, that place is really progressive. So coming out of, and I don't know if you're familiar with the location of where Florida State Prison is, but it's in Bradford County, which is right outside of Gainesville. Well, it's country.
And so it's not a lot to do there for a young person. So the Sheriff's Department, Bradford Sheriff's Department was hiring. So I made the decision. I said, you know what, let me put an application in. And obviously the pay was a whole lot better. And so I put in and I got selected and I went down, I took the job. So that's how I ended up down in Briar County.
Getting there, the Broward Sheriff's Office was in a transition where they just built a brand new facility. So they were in need of a lot of people because, like I said, because of cocaine and all those different things, everything was exploding there. And the facilities were, you know, bigger facilities were needed for, you know, to accommodate, you know, the arrestees.
So coming in there, I came in with a lot of young people my age. And I also was there with some people that was a little bit older, but most of us are pretty much around the same age in diameter. But the good part was I had already had experience. So coming in from a prison system, coming into a jail facility was night and day. It was totally night and day where, you know, it was no discipline.
It was no because these people were coming off the street. So they weren't like, you know, acclimated to being incarcerated. I should say, you know, it's not like they were like, OK, you know what? I know what to do when I get here. Some of these people are new to the system. Some of these people have been previously, obviously, you know, we arrested.
But it wasn't the kind of structure that you would have in prison. Everybody know we eat at this time in prison. Everybody know we go do this at this time. Things in jail is fluid because people don't stay. You know, they come and go. It's transit. They bond out. They go to prison or whatever the case may be, you know. So it was always overchanging. And that's something I had to get used to.
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