Texas Corrections Officer Contemplates Murdering Inmates

[sevastase]

Drue Myers
The Christian Radical
May 20, 2008

BOLD UNDERLINED TYPE INDICATES CODY BASHAM'S QUOTES ON UBER.COM

23 year old Cody Basham is a correctional officer with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Cody says, in his blog entry on uber.com, "all I think about is taking the first chance I get to blast an inmates face off with a shotgun." Basham's comment is among several disturbing comments made during an April blog entry that has since been removed from the site. With Texas prisons short-staffed to the tune of 4,000 corrections officers, it appears the lone star state is scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to hire anyone it can to fill the open positions. (...)

Basham seems to enjoy being a power player in the prison as he describes it, "in prison I force my will upon the unwilling without so much as a thought for their desires. In prison a guard is the guy that everyone hates but everyone needs. Much like the government. Inmates may hate me but they will still obey, because failure to comply results in "assisting them to the ground" or "applying chemical agents" to gain their compliance."


   
   
   

Basham not only feels that inmates are worthy of death, he describes his supervisors as "retarded" and seems to hate his job...heres more..."being a guard is the lowest position within a prison. Most of the people above you are retarded and have unrealistic expectations of your work. Example; we have doors which partition parts of the hallway called crash gates. These are to keep a riot or disturbance isolated in an emergency and allow greater control. But where I work we moved the keys to those gates away from the people that need them, and into the hands of people much further away. Crash gates are always closed and locked unless inmates or officers need to go through, you open them then lock them back after you let someone through. Now however the people who are responsible for opening the gate are no where near the gate. Thats just one of many examples of the mild retardation in my supervisors."

"Unrealistic expectations which I mentioned earlier here is a few examples. Pat search 200 inmates a day (you are supposed to do this in a 2 hour window of your day) while maintaining surveillance and security. First off, while you are bent over with your face in some guys ass who just ate greasy chilly mac, the last thing you are worried about is some people talking 30 yards from you. Second 200 people in 2 hours is over 1 person a minute during that window, its PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. pat searches take 40-seconds for the search time alone which does not include time for picking the inmate out of a line or checking for a safe zone to put yourself in (proximics)."

What is clear, upon reading this trash, is that this correctional officer poses a direct and immediate threat to the safety and security of ANY inmate in ANY institution. It would seem incumbent of the State of Texas to immediately remove this asshole from his job and FIRE him with extreme prejudice. Unfortunately, this blog entry is likely just the tip of the iceberg. How many Cody Basham's are there? With the hiring practices going on in TDCJ, probably quite a few.