Yesterday, Friday, I picked up George’s mother at 9am for our visit with George. Evelyn, was in town for her grand-daughters graduation. She usually gets down to Florida 2-3 times a year, while here she gets in as many visits with George as she can.

The ride from my house to Coleman is about an hour and a half, depending on traffick. We arrived at the prison around 11am as I stopped for gas on the way. After filling out the visitation forms and “waiting” for 40 minutes to be processed, we were finally called to the counter and scanner. After clearing, we sat and waited for the few others to be processed. While sitting and talking with Evelyn and an attorney that was waiting with us for what seened like 1 hour but was only “45 minutes”, I noticed alot of chatter on the “radio”s” and the phones ringing off the wall. Time now had advanced to 12:25 – The officer came over and told us there was an incident and it was going to be at least another hour before we would KNOW if we would get in, no gaurantee’s.

Damn, I thought, here is George’s mother, 1200 miles from home and she can’t visit her son because of an incident. I looked at the other “potential” visitors and could see the saddness tha they too were going to miss a visit. While I understand that there was a situation and it needed to be tended to, but did ALL the inmates and their visitors need to be PUNISHED?

George was not involved, and as of this posting I don’t believe it happened in the visiting room, so WHY??? I will tell you why I think it happenes – Many if not ALL “incidents” are BLOWN out of proportion so that the “public” believes that behind those walls are “monsters” – Bullshit, they are not all bad guys folks, some are good guys just like me and you-some just made a bad choice (mistake)-some really should’nt even be there-BUT, when an “incident” happens it’s broadcasted as “inmate up-risings” so that the “public” OK’S the (harsh)treatment of ALL the inmates (and their loved ones).

Needless to say, due to this incident, we did not get to visit. Hell, maybe monday, if we’re lucky.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 19th, 2007 at 2:04 pm and is filed under George Martorano, coleman correctional facility, federal prison, inmate, visiting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.