“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

— Winston Churchill

As we view the parade of corruption watching Trump “clean up the swamp” and we appeal to the conscience of the “deplorables” among us to open their eyes, I am reminded that our society is looking more and more like my prison experience where, in retrospect, my erstwhile friends and associates resembled the current American government. As the inverted morality of Jean Genet meets Conrad’s cops and criminals, the obvious similarities to our politicians become more and more pronounced. Certainly like the Hamptons District Attorney’s Office under Thomas Spota and now under Tierney which has done little to reject that paragon of criminality. And Spota is now buying a pardon with the money he stole after only three years in prison.

Morality in government has become more vapid and non-existent as the greed and thievery becomes more obvious. Here’s a clip from my book about real prison where some of the current politicians belong as we move on into oblivion. We’re no longer the perceived beacon of freedom for the world — perhaps more like light from the oncoming train heading our way in the tunnel.

After all, it was my search for Truth and exercising my Freedom of Speech that they put me there.

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No Place for Old Men

A long line of inmates in their green shirts and pants snaked along a wall waiting for their medication from the nurse. Inmates in their twenties, thirties, and forties as well as several in their fifties, late sixties, and seventies stand in line and then shuffle behind each other. Only five at a time are allowed to get up from the wooden benches.

The 79 year-old white guy, Murray, shuffling along on the line, is in prison for having hit his wife. His hearing is bad. He suffers from dementia and often does not know where he is. Correction Officer Plowman screams, “You deaf? I told you to get the fuck up!”

The media reports that thousands of non-violent inmates in their sixties, seventies and eighties were being considered for early release in the New York prison system was a fiction emanating from Albany’s PR machine. Everyone inside the prison knew that. Albany knew it, the Corrections bureaucracy knew it, and the Corrections union knew it. There was no value in having fewer inmates since that reduced overtime, especially in the face of the many prison closings. While the prison population was reduced, more of the older inmates were being imprisoned. Correction Officer (CO) Plowman, himself in his early sixties, and soon retiring after twenty-five years, showed no sympathy for the aging inmate. To him, the old man is just another paycheck, and he’s long ago been numbed by what is around him.

Plowman is balding with a goatee and has eighty pounds of adipose fat strapped around his belly. He looks pregnant as he sits with his feet up on the desk, chewing on his fourth donut that morning. He’s known as a ballbuster among the inmates, and he laughs at the old man shuffling along as he heads for the nurse’s station. Plowman enjoys harassing the old guys.

The nurse and her assistant, two plain, white, middle-aged upstate women in their forties look grim-faced and worn. They’re working at the only job available in upstate New York, where the town has grown up around the prison like a cancerous carbuncle. The women hate the inmates, especially the Blacks and barely acknowledge their existence – yet they know that this job is easy and well paid. And, that this is their only career choice. Like the COs, they know that a job making $75,000 a year plus overtime somewhere else upstate is a fantasy.

At the nurse’s station they hand out little tan envelopes of pills to a few of the guys before Murray reaches them on the line snaking along the wall. The noise is deafening because the floors are being washed and waxed by an inmate who is oblivious to anything going on around him. One of the nurses hands the old man his packets of meds after he recites, “Thalberg, G-2, 11A3675.” The nurse is about to hand him two envelopes, but the assistant drops one of them and the pills roll out onto the floor. A few land under Murray’s standard-issue black boots.

He steps aside to locate them, and bends down to pick up the pills, nearly losing his balance.

He hands them back to the nurse. She takes the pills from him, then shoves them all into one of the envelopes, and hands it back to the old man. Looking askance at her, he watches all of this, and then, without uttering a word, takes the envelopes and walks away.

“Next!” the nurse calls out.

Murray notices a black, 30-year-old man in a wheelchair in the corner on his way out of the infirmary, past COs Plowman and Zimmerman—the latter being the cop who runs the Law Library and works The Box, where he is known as a “Beast.” He has the affable demeanor and look of Dudley Do Right and is also known as “Timber” by the few who knew he’d been the victim of a falling tree. He had been cutting a tree down with a chainsaw one winter in minus twenty-nine-degree cold when it landed on his head. He hadn’t been quite right after that accident, and proudly talked about his 250 over 125 blood pressure and incessant headaches ever since. The head pain was often alleviated by beatings he was rumored to have administered in The Box. It served as therapy for him.

The inmate in the wheelchair appeared to be nodding off and wasn’t moving. One end of a tube was sticking in his vein, and the other end was lying loose in his lap, unfettered or connected to anything. Blood is slowly leaking from the tube but is partially absorbed by a blanket thrown over his lap. All of this is within the sightline of CO Plowman who’s lounging at the desk with his feet up, busy cursing out inmates and joking with Zimmerman and a nurse who just came on duty. The shapely nurse is giggling at the attention from the two COs. Murray is too confused and afraid to say anything to them about the guy in the wheelchair, so he saunters out.

The floor-buffing machine continues to whir. Cleanliness is very important in prison, but it is also noisy, and no one can hear anything. Debris is being blown all about the Infirmary—into its treatment rooms, pharmacy and waiting area. Domo, a young inmate being treated for asthma (a black male of medium height, slim, 20s, with a bald head), is sitting next to Bigs, who is there for chest pains (a 30-year-old black guy weighing 325 pounds). They both pull their undershirts up over their noses to try to avoid the noxious air they are forced to breathe. The smell of rancid mop water and cheap floor wax permeates the Infirmary.

Domo is here in prison on a five-year bid. He was not too bright and had been making his living on the street by breaking into vacant homes—foreclosures, known as zombie houses—and stealing the copper pipes to sell to a junkyard. The last time he did this, however, he decided to lay down in the basement of the vacant house for a short nap after cutting and removing the pipes. When he awoke, he failed to notice the smell of gas. According to him, he was watching television two days later, and learned that the house had blown up, erupting into a ball of fire.

He was ratted out by a friend and arrested. When the cop asked why he didn’t leave after ripping out the pipes he told them, “I was tired.” Of course, other versions of this story unfolded as time went on.

Ignoring the noise, he is making as debris is flying all over the Infirmary, the inmate operating the buffer is staring intently at the young nurse’s ass as she talks to the two COs. Dirt is blowing into inmates’ faces as they wait in line for medication. Plowman sees the inmate staring at the nurse’s ass and screams, “What the fuck are you looking at, shithead?”

The inmate operating the buffer looks at Plowman and then looks away. His job in the Infirmary is considered a good one and would soon be over. He’d gotten a ticket, a disciplinary notice, and his punishment was to be transferred to the Mess Hall, considered the worst job in the prison. Up at 4 a.m., back to the dorm at 7 a.m., then back to the Mess Hall again at 10:30 a.m., and off again from 3 p.m. until 6 p.m. Working with food, cooking, cleaning, preparing the meals, was a job that only the least educated prisoners got. And the civilians working in the Mess Hall were the most abusive. “Shitty,” as the buffer was called, didn’t really like to work. This was partly because everyone knew he was a little fucked up. Physically, that is. He constantly needed to use the toilet and emitted a tremendous amount of gas. No one wanted to be near him because he smelled of shit—he had trouble controlling his bowels.

Some inmates were convinced he had some kind of illness, possibly a parasitic infection, or perhaps even Hepatitis. Literally, he was known to shit in his pants and had been observed with feces trickling down the cuffs of his pants. His dorm mates barely slept due to the farting noises and smell. So, he was given a job in the Mess Hall!

Another line of inmates formed along the hallway wall, opposite the medication office, heading towards the sergeant’s office. This was near the room by the exit door where buses were boarded, and ambulances arrived. It was the room used for strip-searches, and today there was a lot of commotion and yelling by the COs. 
There had been a surprise search in the prison, and a couple of dozen inmates were rounded up for a “piss test” to find evidence of drug use.

“You refuse to piss, you go to the Box, you piss dirty, you go to the Box, you don’t shut the fuck up on line, you go to the Box. Now, line up and if you can’t piss when you’re told, you go to the Box. You got that? Now, you,” he motions to the first inmate in line, “go with him.”

A CO wearing blue plastic gloves and holding a little plastic cup leads an inmate to the single bathroom and leaves the door open where everyone in the Infirmary can watch. He hands the inmate the little plastic cup and says, “Okay, piss.”
The CO stands next to the inmate with the plastic cup and stares at the black guy as he unzips his pants and pulls out his penis. 


“Let’s go,” he says, “we don’t have all day.” The cop smiles as he focuses back and forth between the inmate’s penis and his anxious face. “S’matter, ya dick not working. You a homo? Don’t give me that shy-bladder shit.”

Later they all learn that the nurse assistant who’d been watching the guy in the wheelchair had gone out for a cigarette and left him unattended. She’d simply forgotten about him and gotten into a conversation with another nurse.

Suddenly, the exit door swung open, and two orderlies arrived to collect the guy in the wheelchair. They unhooked the tube from his arm and placed him on a gurney, zipped him up in a plastic bag, and wheeled him out the back door to take him to the morgue, as the inmates and C.O. watched.

He’d bled out in the hallway while the nurse’s assistant was having a cigarette and bullshitting.

Copyright 2018

Address letters or donations to The SoHo Journal, P.O. Box 1032, New York, NY 10013. Agent or publisher inquiries are welcome.

Vote No on Ballot Proposals 1 & 3

Plus,Three Traffic Items Affecting SoHo/NoHo

During this year’s voting, there are five proposed changes to the City Charter, the city’s constitution. Two are quite insidious: Proposals  #1 and #3. They look like a routine government efficiency exercise. In fact, they will have very real consequences on how much say you will have on the future of your own street, our public spaces, and our neighborhood. Proposal #1 seems straightforward; make the government work faster. The question is: what checks on government are being removed to make it work faster?  This proposal ostensibly seeks to speed up approval of roadway dining sheds and sidewalk cafes. However, in doing so, it will remove the current public-review process, as well as removing existing City Council checks on the placement of these private setups on public land.In other words, if passed, these proposals will take power away from us and our elected city councilmember, and hand  it over to functionaries at the Department of Transportation, whose agenda might clash with yours. The system works well now; why change it to appease the restaurant lobby. Proposal #3 deals with street infrastructure, including placement of bus lanes, bike lanes, and so-called “Open Streets” (which are actually closed streets).The proposal would remove existing public input. The Open Streets aspect is particularly troubling and in 2008 SoHo served as the prime example of its potential for abuse.That was when the Department of Transportation tried to impose an “open” Prince Street on us.The agency announced that it was closing six blocks of Prince Street from Lafayette Street to West Broadway to cars in order to create a pedestrian mall. DOT representatives came to the community board to provide details.Well, the SoHo Alliance mobilized over 150 residents to attend that meeting and residents so vehemently opposed the venture that the Transportation Department backed off and moved their plan elsewhere.Guess where they set up the pedestrian mall instead of SoHo?Times Square!!Yes, that mass of tourists, hustlers, Elmos and Naked Cowboys would have been dumped on SoHo had we not intervened. We cannot hand over control of  street projects to bureaucrats with an agenda.Vote NO on #3 and be sure to turn your ballot over in order to vote on these proposals. Proposal #2: Reduce City Contractor Paperwork: Yes. This is just a paperwork reduction bill. It will speed the process of contractor approval and thus save the city money. Proposal #4: Simplify Building Permitting: Yes. This proposal will streamline permitting at the Buildings Department, but does not remove any community input procedures Proposal #5: Contribution Targets for Rainy Day Fund: Yes. This merely allows the Mayor to set targets for saving city funds in the newly-created “Rainy Day Fund.” *********************Three Traffic Items That Affect SoHo/NoHoThis Wednesday, October 21 at 6:30pm, the Traffic & Transportation Committee of Community Board 2 will hold its monthly meeting, devoted to three items from the Department of Transportation that directly affect SoHo and NoHo.The first item is the chance for public input on the recent redesign of Lafayette Street from Prince Street to East 15th Street. We have been hearing from residents and small businesses that the new design has made traffic congestion and noise worse. This is your chance to comment.The second item is the DOT’s response to the community board on the agency’s proposal to install a two-way bike lane on narrow Grand Street. You can hear their response and voice your opinion.The third item involves Crosby Street but has major implications for the rest of SoHo/NoHo.It is a request from the Target store at Houston and  Broadway to extend the hours of its designated loading zone on Crosby Street from the current 8:00am – 6:00pm until 8:00am – midnight, Monday through Saturday. This loading zone is directly across from people’s homes on Crosby Street.Needless to say, no one wants to have their sleep and quiet disturb by truck noise and sidewalk loading operations going on at midnight. However, the implications are that if Target gets its way, then other retailers in SoHo/NoHo will expect the same flexibility to unload their merchandise at these ungodly hours. That means it could happen on your block, in front of your home! If you would like to speak on any item at the meeting (either in person or via Zoom), please sign up to speak here. Register to join the Zoom meeting by clicking here. The meeting will be held at P.S. 130, 143 Baxter Street, between Grand and Hester Streets. PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS. Sincerely yours, Sean Sweeney Director SoHo Alliance A Volunteer Community Association PO Box 429 New York, NY 10012212-353-8466info@sohoalliance.orgsohoalliance.org

“Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.”

— Honore de Balzac

The greatest fear among the thieves, pedophiles and con artists that now operate and populate our government — is winding up in a prison cell. Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, even Thomas Spota, the Hamptons D.A. who prosecuted me for allowing Blacks and Latinos to live in houses instead of the woods while working in the Hamptons, were petrified of prison. Supervisor Patrick Heaney, Investigator David Betts and Town Attorney Joseph R. Lombardo brought the grievance of racists in the Town of Southampton to the D.A. to criminalize humanity.

Some of the characters in that D.C. cabal avoided prison, some did a few months in a country club. But some are like Spota in the Hamptons who did less than 3 years on a 5 year sentence and is buying a pardon with the money he stole while running a criminal enterprise out of the District Attorney’s office. His Chief of Police Jimmy Burke did almost 4 years. By and large, though, it is the threat that counts. Like the people that Trump goes after but who have the balls to point out his own crimes and misdemeanors.

And, can afford to fight.

It’s not always like Orange is the New Black‘s Piper Kerman who did less than a year in a federal camp where you have to put your name on a list for tennis and who now advises people on prison life after collecting millions. Having connections and a family that got her a media deal doesn’t hurt.

But if you think all of the public prosecutions now going on are primarily an attempt to put people in prison — although that would be desired by Trump using the Justice Department at no cost to him — think again. While that might be icing on the cake, the real reason is to do to them what the Suffolk D.A. did to me called A Civil Death — the financial and emotional destruction caused by endless investigation, prosecution, persecution and the COST of defending yourself against a deep-pocketed adversary is the point. If taking a plea is the only option — if you do not have the money to put up a full-fledged defence simply because you are innocent — that’s when the fun begins. And ends, sometimes 20 years later.

Being taxed for foreclosed property, being taxed and losing your driver’s license, losing employment and not being able to find a new job, being defamed by newspapers like John Sutter’s The Villager, Joseph Louchheim’s Southampton Press, Newsday, New York Times, Daily News, New York Post — as I was, is unavoidable. And, it continues for decades since there is no requirement to ever take down defamatory articles appearing on the internet. Add to that any judgments as restitution for outrageous money never owed because you took a plea. When there is no money for the $1000 per hour ($2000-3000/hr. in Washington) defense lawyer if you don’t take a plea. The threat of prison is always there if you cannot afford to fight.

This is why the Justice system is a rigged game. And why the persecutions as Revenge goes on.

Here’s a little outtake, a chapter from Prisoner of the Hamptons, a taste of life in the Big House if you can’t afford justice.

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Balls in Prison

Cuba was one inmate among several with the same name in the prison. If you were Cuban, no matter what your real name was, it was likely you’d be called “Cuba.” This particular Cuba was a late thirties, 5’10” tall Spanish guy (in prison there are no Latinos or Hispanics, only “Spanish”). His father had been a successful drug dealer in the Bronx and had trained his son to help in the family business of selling heroin and cocaine. But Cuba got caught shoplifting in a CVS trying to steal razor blades while high as a kite and was jumped by a zealous clerk and set upon by another customer. While trying to escape, he was grabbed by a cop. He tried to get away and fought with the cop because he was on parole from a previous conviction and was seriously high from the “speedball” he’d done earlier. He liked speedballs, a mixture of cocaine and heroin. This became his third theft while on drugs. He drew yet another 2-to-4-year bid while he was still on parole. The judge had not been at all amused.

Cuba was uneducated, but smart and intuitive; he had the demeanor of a character actor and was charming. His mercurial temperament and mannerisms were likened to the Al Pacino character, Tony Montana, in Scarface. While in prison he became a translator, and because he was bilingual and political he translated very carefully. Only certain information reached the ears of the COs when Spanish gang members confided in him. 

He relayed only what was necessary for credulity, being careful not to make the inmate’s situation worse. Both the Spanish guys and the cops trusted him implicitly. He only lied enough to stay alive—and to do business.

Cuba operated a store out of his cube. It was his “office” in this medium facility, where he sold Honey Buns, coffee, sugar, and cigarettes. As a result, he got to know all the Spanish guys who hung out together. Most of his teeth were being systematically removed, five or six at a time, since they rotted out from drug use, and lack of dental care. The four spoons of sugar in each cup of black coffee he drank, of course, didn’t help. Implants, while available in the street, like root canals, were unknown in prison. And they would not have worked for him anyway, since his gums and dental bone were rotted from the drugs.

Cuba didn’t smile much due to his missing teeth, a habit he’d learned from reading about the French court in the early 1800s. Marie Antoinette had nothing on him.

Cuba assisted Spanish inmates who had immigration problems that threatened them with deportation. He also helped them with tickets that they’d received (disciplinary notices) from a Correction Officer for violating the rules. Cuba had also developed a positive reputation among members of gangs like MS-13, the Mexican Mafia, the Latin Kings or the Trinitarios.

“Chauty” or Shorty, as was his name pronounced, was a slim 5’4” goateed Puerto Rican inmate.

He had a scar running down his left cheek. He was one of the inmates that Cuba befriended while doing translations. Shorty was an important member of the Latin Kings, a gang with substantial power throughout the prison system. Shorty asked Cuba to help him sue the prison for his medical treatment. He was an influential and powerful inmate, but only among his people and other gangs on the street. He had no power over the prison system or the COs. In prison, he was an inmate, an offender—and at times a victim.

Shorty had visited the Infirmary for groin pain. He was immediately diagnosed as having a hernia by the “General,” a member of the Reserves and a part-time doctor, and was told he needed to go to a North Country Hospital in upstate New York, which treated all of the facility’s prisoners. None of the prison staff or administration would go to that hospital if they could avoid it. They knew better. 

For security reasons, he had no idea when this hospital trip would occur. After waiting about two months for medical treatment, Shorty was awakened unexpectedly at 5 a.m. one morning and told to report to the infirmary. He was strip-searched at 6 a.m., fitted with handcuffs, manacles and chains for his feet, and then placed on a bus headed for the hospital. He was also chained to the guy next to him for the trip, which made using the caged toilet at the back of the bus difficult. The cop sitting to the right of the open toilet area had a shotgun resting on his knees. This armed guard watched any inmate who needed to relieve himself. 

He watched Shorty drag his new partner, chained to his own ankles, to the unenclosed toilet.

After breathing diesel fumes and squirming in his manacles and chains for five hours, Shorty arrived at the hospital where he was disconnected from his new inmate friend, and then again chained to a bed in the operating room. A CO sat in the room to observe him, for security purposes. Once the hernia operation had been completed, he was again handcuffed and manacled, this time solo, and transported back to the prison on the same bus. But Shorty soon suspected, after bouncing around for the five-hour trip back, that something was still wrong. He was in serious pain, which grew worse after the operation. He felt his testicles starting to swell, and it became difficult to move. They had grown from the size of lemons prior to the operation, to the size of oranges as the pain increased over the next few days. 

When he complained to the CO in his dorm, he laughed and said, “S’matta, I thought you had bigga balls annat?” He leaned over his desk in the Bubble and stuffed a wedge of chewing tobacco in his cheek and spit into his coffee cup. “Fuckin’ spic,” he added. 

Shorty murmured under his breath, “Asshole.” 

Of course, the CO realized he could never say shit like that to an inmate in Auburn or Attica; he might get cut. But here, in a Medium A, no one wanted to take a chance on getting a ticket. 

Even murderers that had been transferred here, to a Medium from a Max, knew that they had a chance of being released some day – unless they were pushed too far. No one would attack a cop or slice his cheek with a razor blade when there was a possibility of getting out unless the cop was too abusive. So Shorty visited the Infirmary again after waiting several days for an emergency appointment. The nurse gave him Ibuprofen, but refused to inspect his testicles, as he requested. He didn’t push it, because he risked getting a ticket for a sex charge if the woman made a complaint of any sort. Civilians were extremely dangerous in prison. Anything they said would be believed by CO’s anxious to prove how macho they could be against blacks or Latinos, even while they were in chains. She asked someone else to assist her, however.

“I don’t want to see your fucking testicles,” said the male nurse assistant, who had been leering at him while sporting a small mustache. “The General will handle them,” he laughed viciously. “Sit up straight, asshole, or I’ll write you up.” Shiv, as the nurse called himself, was gay. He took pleasure in being abusive to inmates. Like a Priest pedophile he’d been transferred around from one prison to another.

No prescription medication containing narcotics was ever given to inmates for simple pain. It was well known that inmates would often forgo taking the narcotics so they could sell them to others. 

They were known to hide drugs under their tongue, under their armpits, or up their ass and pull it out later for a paying customer. Shorty just needed it for pain.

After very serious consideration by the nurse and the General, who feared a lawsuit—not that their patient would be mistreated—it was decided that Shorty needed to go back to the hospital. Again, he was handcuffed, chained, and shackled at 6 a.m. the following week for another five-hour trip back to North Country Hospital in upstate New York, with swelling testicles, where he was again diagnosed. The surgeon decided that the operation had failed. 

Apparently, during the hernia operation, a complication had occurred when the surgeon had gone out for a small pick-me-up and, during his absence, a nerve from the right testicle had inadvertently been crossed with the nerve from his left testicle by an assistant. Essentially, they’d switched his balls. 

This was corrected in the second operation.

And, once again, manacled and chained, Shorty was placed back on the bus to the Infirmary. He sat, wistfully      watching the cows and pick-up trucks go by as he breathed in the diesel fumes on the poorly maintained bus. He’d never seen cows in East Harlem, where he lived after moving from Puerto Rico, and this bucolic scenery was almost pleasant, as long as he was drugged. Mercifully, they gave him four Percocets at the hospital. 

And now he would be staying in the Infirmary while he healed and would be receiving the narcotics and opioids he needed. It was a better deal than at home where, growing up, he’d been sexually abused and beaten. He had drugs and a TV, and the nurses monitored him. No one bothered him. 

Ever. 

He was left alone in bed with a TV. The nurse-assistant who had gone out for a cigarette while the inmate she was watching bled out in his wheelchair—was assigned to watch him. He shared his room with only one other patient—an inmate in a coma. The roommate had smoked some K-2 (synthetic marijuana) that had been smuggled in by someone who’d stuffed a small quantity of the drug up their anus. This process, known as “boofing,” was dangerous, since the integrity of the latex used to encapsulate the drugs were suspect; not to mention the fact that smoking any feces-soaked herb is just as liable to induce coma as to make you high. Hepatitis was not usually far behind.

Despite his euphoria, Shorty’s testicles now grew to the size of grapefruits. The hospital and the COs, as well as the inmates used fruit sizes instead of metrics as the diagnostic tool to describe size. Nobody was good with math. So Shorty writhed in pain between opioids and could not walk. His speech became garbled and incoherent, but this wasn’t much of a problem. The prison staff neither understood nor spoke Spanish, nor were there any black or Latino COs anywhere in the region, let alone in the prison.

“Can’t you talk English, you stupid fuck?” asked the CO on duty in the Infirmary. He turned to the other CO, “Dis’ guy’s inna gang?” Then he turned to Shorty again and asked, “You Larry or Moe?” Over coffee the two cops laughed, and then switched to talking about retirement benefits. They only had fifteen years to go. Divorce, and the fact that their income was published online for lawyers and everyone else to see and use to prepare child-support and alimony motions, was a popular conversation among COs.

This medical situation lasted for a few days. The COs thought that Shorty’s malady was hysterical. Here was an influential drug dealer and Latin Kings gang member who had “Elephant balls.” But they realized that he might die and make them all look bad. There was also the fact that a lawsuit might uncover some seriously fucked-up treatment. Eventually, the General, as the doctor was known, was called in again from maneuvers at the nearby Fort, where Agent Orange had been produced during the Vietnam War. Again, the nurses refused to inspect the gang member’s testicles. Because they were so large and delicate, it was decided to quickly ship him back to the hospital where they specialized in handling only prisoner’s medical needs, as they had done in two prior operations

Shorty was again placed on the 6 a.m. bus after going through the same ritual strip-search. They affixed handcuffs, manacles, and chains. The COs lifted his body onto the bus by the groin as they laughed about his “big balls” and impending treatment. 

Shorty groaned and screamed Spanish obscenities, and the COs just laughed. Of course, they had no idea what he was saying. The cops were not required to communicate with Shorty despite the growing population of Spanish-speaking inmates. Many of them were there because they had taken plea deals with pro bono prosecutors. Neither the Spanish inmates, the prosecutor nor the judge handling the cases knew why many inmates were taking a plea. 

Upon arriving back at the hospital he was re-diagnosed and treated in short order. He underwent yet a third operation by the same surgeon although it was discovered that during the second hernia operation—which uncrossed his testicular nerves from the first botched hernia operation (a result of the doctor’s incessant manipulation of Shorty’s testicles and nerves) had caused a new DOUBLE hernia, where originally only one previously had existed. This was cause for several new jokes among the doctors and nurses about who was the biggest ballbuster among them. It was also of some amusement when they realized that “in the street” Shorty probably might have had them all killed.

It was after the third operation occurred – the undoing and doing of Shorty’s twisted, infected, swollen balls – that a new medical chief had come on board at the hospital. Like Dr. Bailey, in “Grey’s Anatomy,” she sailed through the operating rooms with a sly, dry wit, telling it like it was. Dr. Sin White (Sin short for cinnamon, or sincere as the rumor went, and who, it was suspected, purposely misspelled her first name for effect).

She had arrived after graduating from Cornell and had spent a few years at Bellevue’s trauma center. She was 5’5” tall, black, sarcastic, and smart. She literally knew where the bones were buried, especially in the upstate prison system. She hailed from Harlem, and told everyone around her what to do. She had no patience for complaints about deprivation or poverty. Even though there were no other black doctors or nurses at the hospital, she had taken the job. The Governor’s office had appointed her Chief because, with an inmate population that was 85% black, overseen by 0% black COs, administrators, or civilians – and a tsunami of lawsuits for discrimination and abuse – they realized that something needed to be done. The fact that her father was white, and her mother was black – an obvious benefit from the Governor’s point of view – made her unassailable from a racial perspective.

Dr. White reviewed Shorty’s history and held a very brief meeting with the doctors and nurses who’d treated him. She was direct.

“What the fuck did you do to this guy?” They all looked at each other. “Are you stupid? Or do you jess fucking hate prisoners? I ain’t seen any cops or locals bein’ treated here, did you?”

Sin, or Dr. White, as she was variously known, was never really at a loss for words. She adjusted her speech pattern to the audience she was playing. Although from Harlem she was as linguistically capable as “Arthur’s” butler, John Gielgud, when it suited her. 

She often played her own “race card” when she wanted to berate inferiors without their consciously understanding that they were being abused.

“This inmate may be a drug dealer, he may be a gang leader, and maybe he’d cut ya throat if he hadda chance, but you muthafuckas been playin’ with his balls an’ nearly killed ’im. This system’s been killin’ guys fa decades, and if you pull this stupid shit again I’m gonna fire ya’ asses. You got dat muthafuckas? I got a degree in medicine,” she sneered. “An’ I also got a degree in muthafuckery. You hear me?”

They’d had to do everything all over again on Shorty’s testicles. They corrected his nerves, fixed the two hernias and, finally, had eliminated the infection. He was then chained and manacled and placed back on the bus and returned to the prison.

Cuba was hired by the Latin Kings in prison to do the paperwork for Shorty’s lawsuit against the State. 

He was paid in drugs. 

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Copyright Prisoner of the Hamptons

Address letters or donations to The SoHo Journal, P.O. Box 1032, New York, NY 10013. Agent or publisher inquiries are welcome.

Donald Clark MacPherson is an investigative author, commentator, and real estate veteran who survived a highly publicized, retaliatory prosecution by the Town of Southampton’s notoriously racist and corrupt politicians as well as the imprisoned former Suffolk County’s District Attorney for the Hamptons, Thomas Spota. After enduring four and a half years in prison and a total emotional, familial and financial “Civil Death” for exposing government corruption, he has dedicated his life to documenting the weaponization of the judicial system. In his eighties, he continues to write while actively battling health conditions from the revenge prosecution and imprisonment, ensuring his vital narrative of resilience, institutional exposure and criminality is permanently recorded.

“If you’re going through Hell, keep going.“

— Winston Chruchill

I always thought of notoriety as publicity. In other words, if someone wrote about you, people took notice. I wasn’t up on the concept of schadenfraude. Naivete is possible at any age. What I wasn’t aware of was that the media was more than capable of creating what really got people salivating. Among those who were far more sophisticated about that were people like Donald and Joseph Louchheim of the Southampgon Press, John Sutter of The Villager, and above all, Robert Clifford of the Suffolk County D.A.s office under the now convicted criminal Thomas Spota, his prosecutor Thalia Stavrides, Deputy Emily Constant, and the crowd in the Town of Southampton and Westhampton Beach Village.

Eventually, after doing nearly five years in prison at the hands of Spota and his crew the plan for my destruction was set in motion by Patrick Heaney, David Betts and Joseph Lombardo (who I wrote about) I was released. After Search Warrants of a journalist and the Press (SoHo Journal), illegal searches of my properties, creating the supposed crime of mortgage defaults by telling tenants not to pay rent (Code Enforcement Police), and my attempting to solve the affordable housing crisis for the poor and immigrants. Racism and revenge are big in Suffolk, including among the judiciary like F.X. Doyle, Thomas Whelan and Hector LaSalle and support for my destruction came from Supervisors like Anna Throne-Holst, Jay Schneiderman and Maria Moore with the help of Village Attorneys like Anthony Pasca.

What I have experienced is known among the legal profession as A Civil Death. It is the time-honored plan to destroy someone who does such things as Expose Corruption and Criminality among our politial leaders and elite. Here’s the intro to my True Crime novel about the 20 year-long experience without interruption and as Dr. Pangloss writes, it is “The Best of All Possible Worlds,” — which I and my family have endured without money or support from any source.

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Preface

It was the summer of 1969 in New York City. Free Love, hippies in Washington Square Park and Greenwich Village and artists in SoHo were all beginning to lose their luster. I’d been brought up in Brooklyn and had worked and practically lived in my family’s printing and publishing company in lower Manhattan from the age of four. I was ready for something more. Something more rewarding than toxic chemicals and ink on my fingers. That’s when I first heard about the Hamptons.

My family life was steeped in alcohol abuse, religious hypocrisy, chronic poverty and constant hard work. I began to develop outside interests. It was a time of sexual experimentation, psychology and music. Although I never used any drugs, more out of fear than any moral objection, they were a constant and a part of the culture. Swan dives from high places on acid and overdoses on heroin were not uncommon among my friends. I remember descending in an NYU elevator as my friend described being drenched in a subway tsunami on a couple of tabs done that morning.

I avoided the draft with the help of a musician friend whose father pulled a few strings through the CIA – so instead of dying face down in a Vietnamese rice field I was able to remain a student at NYU and planned to become a therapist.

I had several internships at NYU, during my second Master’s degree and was first assigned to gang-pervasive South Bronx in Probation where Fort Apache was our Police precinct. Small gangs walked around together carrying what I thought were stickball bats since I’d been brought up in Brooklyn, but were the weapon of choice. My next year of internship was at a State psychiatric hospital where I treated cops, mobsters and suicidal patients and wrote prescriptions in that experimental setting. The psychiatrist at South Beach Psychiatric Center was gay and eventually hung himself. When I began to work in the field my first job was at Bellevue where the patients were more interesting than setting type and running printing machines. While the patients at Bellevue were interesting it was the staff that was challenging. Many of them were psychiatrically challenged themselves and I found myself dealing with therapists who were prone to mental illness, sexual harassment and even S & M. Patients were more congenial and interesting than my father’s printing shop so I continued to pursue a path as a therapist and furthered my training as a Psychoanalyst. My overriding concern, though, was in helping people, helping them find homes and helping the poor live harmonious lives. 

In my free time I also entertained people with my guitar playing and singing and occasionally played with a friend. Our harmonies reached a professional level and we performed at parties and later traveled across Europe for a few months. We performed our way from London and Amsterdam to Florence and Copenhagen. We played the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on our Martin acoustics and harmonized professionally. There were lots of appreciative listeners and girls in the impromptu audiences.

By the early seventies, I was immersed in helping poor Spanish immigrants in the South Bronx and schizophrenics in Manhattan at Bellevue. But it was a stressful career choice. When a friend invited me to join him and a few friends at a summer house they had rented on the south shore of Long Island I was ready to hit the beach. My father had died a painful alcoholic death which I’d anticipated, located a smaller apartment for my mother in Brooklyn, and sold the family business. I really needed a break and decided to head for the beach instead of further travel through Europe after making the trip once with my friend and again on my own.

When I first arrived in the Hamptons the fresh air and sunshine was a welcome relief from printing presses, toxic chemicals, and psychiatric patients. 

I’d rented an apartment in Greenwich Village and then moved to SoHo, where art and creativity still was vibrant. But I was unprepared for the transition from city life to the quiet and unblemished shoreline of Southampton where mansions and understated but obvious wealth existed. The open land, the fresh sea air, the beautiful houses, the celebrities, musicians, poets, painters, writers, and even the summer residents were a stark difference from the workers in the printing plant. The printing subcontractors and finishers had been eastern European Jews who handled printing materials, the plant workers were people who constantly fought poverty and the patients I treated were depressed psychiatric clients. For a poor working-class child of immigrants from Scotland and Sweden, the Hamptons was like The Great Gatsby. 

As I got to know the people in the Hamptons, I realized that despite what appeared to be a pervasive laissez-faire attitude, there was a strong conservative attitude in the towns and villages. Local law enforcement mentality too conflicted with the liberalism of the summer people. In addition, these bedroom communities were often families or New York City police who had a requirement to live in the City but whose families were ensconced in the Hamptons. The houses were affordable and were intended as retirement for the NYPD. 

These residents were receptive to the financial advantages that came from the wealthy summer renters and tourists but they elected conservative politicians and police nevertheless.

The politicians and law enforcement tolerated the summer vacationers and real estate investors because they filled the coffers. The word was out among white workers, handymen, police, firemen and politicians that this was a nirvana of sorts. Plus, nobody was minding the till and the Civil Service allowed second pensions.

There was no oversight and no legitimate press to speak of. What happened in the Hamptons, stayed in the Hamptons – especially in the summertime. The divisions between the nouveau residents and the New Yorkers who paid the bills, the Civil Service, and the politicians from elsewhere, up the Island, or even the five boroughs who saw opportunity and the entire economy was palpable.

The Southampton Press was one of the few newspapers in the Hamptons in the 1960’s. They published mostly fluff; articles about minor local politicians, real estate and minor crime like theft and D.W.I.s. Their editorials were attempts at describing the local economy without ruffling any feathers. And, consequently, their ad revenues increased. The coverage was elaborately planned in tandem with police and local politicians and edited so as to avoid offending anyone of any importance. 

Despite the fact that there were important artists and writers among the summer people and year-round residents, they seldom were covered by The Southampton Press. Little of any real substance got covered because that’s what the local residents wanted. They had heavy real estate and development dollars to protect.

Other publications such as Dan’s Papers which began in 1963, courtesy of Dan Ratner, and The Independent started by the flamboyant Jerry Della Femina were also publishing, but hard news was only available in The New York Times or Newsday. They all kept it light. It was entertainment, not news, even though they claimed that it was.

In the late 1960’s, what is now The Hampton Jitney, a major bus service in and out of the Hamptons, was still just a cart being pulled behind a VW bus for bicycle riders wanting to travel from town to town. Like Sidney Korshak, the mobster attorney who represented Capone’s “Outfit” in Chicago and opened up California to organized crime, mobsters and con artists who considered Long Island to be their fiefdom began to take notice of this media void and lack of scrutiny. They flocked to the Hamptons like lemmings. They ran for office, supported local attorneys, joined the burgeoning Civil Service and infected Law Enforcement. The mob knew full well that it would take decades to catch up to their antics. 

By the early seventies, East Hampton and Southampton were infiltrated by organized crime. Real Estate became the focus of the Hamptons.

Developers, brokers, politicians and con men of varying shapes and degrees, focused on the ever upward spiral in values of beachfront and ever-diminishing available land. The potato farmers in Bridgehampton and Southampton watched helplessly as farmland where they grew their families along with their potatoes were being lost to development.

The Community Preservation Fund was initiated to buy vacant land in order to protect it from development. However, that too became a controversial slush fund with billions of dollars funded by real estate from New Yorkers – and politicians attached themselves to the fund like a succubus.

When I first joined a summer house there were single men and women who threw pool parties, went to nightclubs and visited friends on the beach. Once the Hamptons became popular those fun summer houses became a business. Lines would form outside of real estate offices to rent a house for the summer and Sheridan Square, where The Village Voice was distributed, became ad-central for singles looking to buy a share in a summer house.

By the eighties, the politicians were envisioning a huge windfall from real estate development and those pesky singles were interfering with the vision of high hedges, stately mansions and Gilded Age fundraisers. So, the politicians decided to rid themselves of those less than wealthy summer folks by becoming even more exclusive.

First a law was passed that limited the number of people who could share a house. This was the first step down a road that led to implied criminality for both the singles and the owners of the houses. As the nightclubs and share houses began to disappear a new blight arrived to trouble the developers and politicians who enabled them for a price – immigrants and poor minority workers who were imported to service all of the new mini-mansions cropping up on every parcel of available land.

Meanwhile, articles appeared in The Southampton Press and Dan’s Papers, describing the wealthy and nouveau-riche middle-class who rented their homes to Russian oligarchs and political celebrities who posed for photos at parties and fundraisers – while developers sold them million dollar mini-mansions. Politicians like Manafort, celebrities like P. Diddy, and Bill and Hilary rented houses. The singles got the message and left the Hamptons like the artists in SoHo had left their lofts. 

But, the workers continued to arrive in large numbers responding to the clarion call of desperate local businesses and expanding landscape companies. The hoi polloi tolerated this for a while. It seemed that even the locals realized that someone had to clean toilets, plant hydrangeas and trim the grass. It was poorly paid, backbreaking work that local residents would not do themselves.

But the influx did not make Civil Service, Law Enforcement or politicians happy. The year-round residents had been happy that their tax base was low due to the expanding number of high net worth New Yorkers buying houses. – who were additionally taxed for the privilege. School taxes remained low and so were property taxes – for the local residents. Until the workers moved in with their families next door. Those low taxes then began to rise. 

While the families of these newly retired city workers were not going to do landscaping themselves, having them living next door and increasing the cost of schooling was not what they had in mind. Where were these laborers and their families going to live? In the woods?

As long as they weren’t going to increase taxes or live next door, why not?

The solution was a political decision that grew out of the new rules and laws that had helped the local politicians and law enforcement eliminate share houses. The Summer Rental Permit law was updated to include not just summer houses but also tenants and owners occupying houses all year long.

While this was going on I’d met a local attorney who was well-known and revered by residents, politicians and law enforcement as well. He was a former Assistant D.A. himself and knew all of the local real estate players. He had clients who were developers and both he and his wife were prominent players and local fundraisers for worthy causes.

While I was still involved in the mental health field I started a small publication in SoHo which satisfied my interest in printing and publishing. I had also developed an interest in real estate as both an investment and an occupation. This attorney, Tom McVann, also had a developer client who was building new houses at a rapid clip but could not always sell them as quickly. It was at that point that Thomas T. McVann approached me. He explained his idea about my buying another client’s new houses. In my mind I was performing a public service in buying and renting houses during Southampton’s perennial affordable housing crisis during the Wall Street-driven banking boom. 

The demand for housing by workers flooding into the Hamptons had become critical. While writing I was providing a community service which was solving a dire need that was being avoided by The Towns of Southampton and East Hampton. For reasons that I did not yet comprehend. While I divided my time between my apartment in SoHo and a house in the Hamptons I kept my finger on the pulse of the local political scene. I even began writing about the Hamptons economy and its politics which no one had done before. My articles were not fluff pieces. 

I delved into poverty, racism, political corruption and the criminality of the mobsters, con men, thieves and social misfits who were hypocritically taking money from New Yorkers and lining their pockets. People who were activists and even journalists, however, were prosecuted. The courts were compromised and the judges were not only bought but were owned by the Town Attorneys in Southampton and the District Attorney in Riverhead. This became known as a pay-to-play scheme but never talked about or written about – until I did in my Hamptons Politics blog and SoHo Journal.

But I was tilting windmills, solving social problems and writing about the Hamptons as it really was, not as the residents or politicians wanted it to appear. I was naive.

None of the other so-called newspapers in the Hamptons delved into any of this or ever quoted me or any of my writing. I was becoming a nemesis, known as someone who housed poor minority workers that the Town preferred to leave living in the woods. I was also developing a name as someone who was exposing corruption in the DAs office and naming politicians in the Town of Southampton and Westhampton Beach who were stealing money and perverting the justice system.

My First Amendment protections were breached first. My office and home were searched – looking for my interviews and news sources. My properties were investigated and searched and tenants were told not to pay rent as the Great Recession took hold and the Wall Street Financial Crisis began. As a result, all of my property was forced into foreclosure by the Town of Southampton and the D.A. prosecuted me and my family.

This revenge prosecution flowed from my housing poor workers and writing about local corruption in Southampton, East Hampton, Westhampton and the DAs office. Since I’d exhausted all of my money on paying mortgages I was forced to take a plea for having partnered with others and accepting mortgages that were handled by a mortgage broker who submitted applications that were highly creative in order to earn a huge commission.

That the properties were forced into foreclosure, of course, was inevitable given the Town’s effort to prevent tenants from paying me any rent and forcing me to stop paying mortgages. The Financial Crisis had been caused by the banks’ fraudulent loans. I was awarded a 4 year prison sentence in lieu of harassing or abusing my family. My SoHo landlord joined with the D.A. in trying to help evict me and my family so the rent could be raised.

I became the first person to be prosecuted and imprisoned as a direct result of the Financial Crisis of 2009.

My Revenge Prosecution by a corrupt prosecutor at the direction of the District Attorney turned the ordeal into what is known as A Civil Death.

I spent almost five years in prison paying for my initiatives and for publishing the Truth (Prisoner of the Hamptons). The results were total financial and legal devastation for me – which resulted in emotional destruction for me and my family. These were the results of my commitment to the Truth.

Due in part to my writing – D.A. Thomas Spota, his associate, Christopher McPartland and sadistic prosecutor, Thalia Stavrides, tried to destroy me. They succeeded.

Ultimately, the D.A. was prosecuted and was imprisoned for conspiracy to tamper with witnesses; obstruction of justice; and being an accessory to former Suffolk County Police Department Chief James Burke’s deprivation of a prisoner’s civil rights. Burke was subsequently picked up for attempting to sexually proposition a cop in a Long Island park. These were the cream of the Hamptons law enforcement community.

Thalia Stavrides, the prosecutor, was promoted and Deputy D.A. Emily Constant resigned. The Conviction Integrity Bureau to which I applied and was created to overturn D.A. Spota’s revenge prosecutions but has not even acknowledged my application after two years.

This is the story of my introduction to the Hamptons and how they destroyed me and my health – took all of my property and assets – and shattered my family for helping people find housing and writing about Truth. 

None of the money which they claimed I stole was ever located simply because it never existed. 

The bank loan proceeds went to my attorney’s builder client, Michael Belesis and his family and his lender Sokol. I paid mortgages faithfully until the Great Recession collapsed the economy due to the fraud perpetrated by the bank’s greed and the Town of Southampton telling tenants not to pay rent.

This is the true crime story of A Civil Death in the Hamptons. Where justice truly does go to die.

Donald Clark MacPherson

SoHo – New York

Copyright A Civll Death 2025

Address letters or donations to The SoHo Journal, P.O. Box 1032, New York, NY 10013. Agent or publisher inquiries are welcome.

“Forgive your enemies but never forget their names.”

— John F. Kennedy

I spent almost five years living with killers, drug dealers, gang members, pedophiles and gangsters. It was payback for writing Truth about Hamptons politicians and the illegal, racist policies adopted in order to continue collecting money from tourists, New Yorkers, and homeowners who have been footing the bills for decades (the so-called land Preservation Fund has more than $1.2 Billion dollars in it). Surprisingly, many of the natives emigrated from New York City and have used the conservative mantle in the service of ongoing greed and corruption. Patrick Heaney, Anna Throne-Holst, Jay Schneiderman, and currently Maria Moore.

The Toxic Plume which describes the PFAS infiltration, a river of poison, which primarily sits below and flows under Westhampton (as well as Quogue, East Quogue, Hampton Bays and East Hampton) — is rarely discussed — and is symbolic of the political rot that pervades the Hamptons. While the current water supply has been addressed, since the chemical companies have expeditiously settled with Suffolk County Water Authority to the tune of $170 million dollars from 3M alone — of which $34 million has already been paid — DuPont is next. But residents, who are ill and dying, have years to go before seeing a dime, if they see anything. Homeowners and residents can go scratch their asses. One wonders how much cash found their way into politician’s pension funds or campaigns?

What’s even more interesting is the fact that with the entire area sitting on this deadly river, Westhampton Beach has spawned some of the most illustrious politicians who have never addressed the issue or done anything to warn homebuyers, real estate agents or tourists about the poison. From Gabreski Airport — identified as a Superfund site by Cuomo — it flows as far south as Dune Road where $10 million dollar mansions sit by the “Roger’s Beach Run-off.” While ‘Affordable Housing’ condos are selling briskly ($1 million each) on Montauk Highway.

Mum’s the word. The cancer deaths from PFAS “forever chremicals” aren’t really a problem, are they?

Maria Moore is the current Supervisor of the Town of Southampton who is running for re-election. After a series of greedy politicians that never saw a New Yorker they wouldn’t rob or give a shit about, why upset the applecart? These Supervisors have prosecuted journalists and activists for asserting their Civil Rights (as I learned first hand) — and have assiduously worked with the criminally prosecuted Thomas Spota to manipulate and destroy Free Speech. Absurdly, Spota is currently applying for a pardon since he stole so much money he collected a $9000 a month pension while in prison and was released to a $17 million dollar pot of gold after doing half of his sentence. Clearly he can afford to buy a pardon. There are no real Democats in the Hamptons.

After handing over the Village of Westhampton to the Trustees who have made millions on real estate, Moore moved on with the help of her husband, an advisor to one of DA Thomas Spota’s Judges (who prosecuted me for exposing corruption) involved in the as yet unexposed judge-picking pay-to-play scheme. If you think Judges prosecute gangsters in Suffolk County, think again folks.

So, you get what you pay for in Suffolk County. Gangsters, corrupt politicians, thieves, judges on the take, and avoidance of truth at all costs. I was the only Truth in the Hamptons news and look what happened to me.

Be careful when you fill your pool or drink the water in the Hamptons. No one will ever warn you about the dangers. And it could kill you if the justice system doesn’t.

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Send comments to Post Office Box 1032, New York, NY 10013. Literary agent, publisher and media inquiries are welcome.

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”                                             

 — Fyodor Dostoevsky

There’s no better way to relax than to look back upon good times. And, I’ve found just the solution by remembering my stay in an upstate New York prison after having been the victim of former D.A. Thomas Spota and his friends in the Town of Southampton and Village of Westhampton “where justice goes to die.” The corruption is mind boggling and these politicians no doubt taught our President a thing or two about prosecuting journalists, corruption, and raising the bar on what is known as a Revenge Prosecution. The truly fake news appeared in The Southampton Press and our very own The Villager in SoHo — compliments of the Louchheims and John Sutter, stellar examples of journalism and publishing charlatans.

The cabal that forced me into prison, led by Spota, Stavrides (prosecutor), Patrick Heaney, Anna Throne-Holst, Joseph Lombardo and others were good conservatives in the Town of Southampton, the Mayor and Trustees Office in Westhampton Beach — and the courts up to and including the Appellate Division. Affordable housing in the Hamptons takes the form of million dollar condos. Those who try to address racism, poverty, and social injustice wind up in prison as I did by exposing corruption and publishing articles about it.

Here’s a brief selection from my stay among murderers, rapists, pedophiles, con-artists and gang members. This section is one among many in Gulag.

True Crime at its finest.

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“It was difficult at Auburn,” said CO Ward, who had worked there for eight years. 

I mentioned what had just happened, a fight in another dorm. But, of course, the CO already knew about it. All of the cops carried radios. It was like a part of their uniform — baseball-styled Corrections cap, matching blue shirt and pants with the New York State Corrections emblem on it, and black boots. Like the Gestapo. It was “Springtime for Hitler.” With no gun, dangling handcuffs and other assorted paraphernalia hanging from their belts, the CO outfits were reminiscent of Victor Willis, the cop from The Village People video from the 1970’s. But, not nearly as entertaining.

“How?”

“This bullshit about putting people in the Box for a fight over a missing or stolen razor,” he laughed, “in Auburn they’d just go back to their cell.”

“Why was it different there?”

“In a Max, it’s a whole different story,” said CO Ward, and as he turned toward the glass separating the dorm from the Rec room and then relaxed behind his desk. The scar on his right cheek was evident, even though partially hidden by his beard. The hair wouldn’t grow there. “You got guys who are never going home in a Max. They don’t give a shit. What’re you going to do to them? Putting them in the Box is like threatening to kick someone in the kneecap after they’d lost the leg.

“So, what is the place like?”

“Completely different,”  he continued.”You’ve got three, or, I don’t remember, maybe four levels of cells stacked on top of each other with walkways around them, two yards — both concrete, no grass, trees or any other sign of life on it — and Rec time with maybe 600 or 700 guys milling around at one time.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“Yeah, great. So, they all have individual cells — there were no T.V. ‘s in each cell when I was there, but, I don’t know, maybe they do by now. Lots of other Max’s have them. Keeps them occupied and out of trouble.”

“I’ve talked to guys here who were there and say they prefer it,” I said.

“You gotta understand,” he said, “for those guys and the Lifers here, it was better since there’s privacy in the cells. There’s none here.” 

“Here, you’ve got cubes with half walls, a Rec room and a dorm. No privacy at all except, maybe when you take a shit. A lot of guys can’t tolerate that.”

“Yeah, I gather.”

“It WAS interesting, though,” he laughed. “But, the knifings and killings were not fun.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Couple times a week the guys in the Tower would announce to get down. Inmates had to get down, or else,” he said, smiling.

“What?”

“If there was a problem, you know, a cutting, a fight, or a knifing, especially in the Yard. They’d tell everyone to get on the ground with their hands behind their necks. If anyone stayed standing, the sharpshooters in the Tower would just shoot them. They didn’t give a shit. It was fun for them.”

“Nice.”

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Black had been at Auburn. He was one guy who talked little about why he was in prison. He was a 5’9″ black man of about 45 who had already done 20 years. He expected to see Parole in roughly 4 years. And, they usually “hit” guys like him the first time — meaning he would get another two years before being able to come back to see Parole, and see if they would release him. Likely, they would “hit” him again. Some had already been “hit” five or six times. It was a routine that Lifers had to come to expect. Any inmate with a 20 to Life or a 25 to Life sentence knew to expect it even if they convinced themselves they were different. Only one guy, who had a 15 to Life sentence had gotten out at fifteen years. 

It was talked about as if it were miraculous. Of course, when he shot and killed that drug dealer, he was only 17 years old.

But, Black had an animalistic quality about him. Not because of any stereotypical racist analogies about black people — but, because of his muscular look and slightly stooped, forward manner of walking. He had that look along with a halting, rapid, staccato speech which was very polite. But, after all, the inmates knew he was a killer.

He cut my hair.

“Yeah, Mr. M,” he would say, simultaneously buzzing the back of my head with the beard trimmer in the  bathroom — where everyone hid to get haircuts — watching for the Sergeant who routinely patrolled the area. No one wanted to get a ticket for having their hair cut. It was illegal to cut hair or let someone cut your hair except at the barber shop. 

In the barber shop you had to tip or wind up looking like you’d gotten trimmed at Dachau. Tipping was also illegal. 

“S’better in a Max,” said Black. “Dis’ is boollshit, alla dese keeds, no respec’, s’much betta’ there Mr. M — got privacy, got you own T.V. Dis here’s  boollshit.”

“You actually liked it better there?”

“Yes sir, Mr. M,” as he continued buzzing the back of my neck, starting to shave the part near his ear. 

I was hoping that Black didn’t decide to use the razor next on my throat. “…s’much better in a Max, no kids, dis is boollshit” he repeated himself over and over again. I realized that this was no doubt due to some kind of psychiatric problem — certainly, in addition to PTSD — complicated by a very dull mental capacity. But, he was circumspect in dealing with an older, married, solid-citizen type of white guy to whom he showed some deference. Yet, all during his brain fog of mental illness and questionable intelligence he had a razor at my throat.

One needed to pay attention, I thought.

Black was a Lifer. He might not ever go home. The Parole Board could jerk him around for another 10 or 15 years if they wanted. There were no appeals left, attorneys or family members to help him out. This was it for him. Not quite nothing to lose, but close.

According to prison gossip Black brutally murdered two guys for making eyes at his girl. It was grisly because he’d used an ax and continued chopping for nearly 15 hours according to the police report. 

But, who knew? 

I wondered — how you could even manage something like that? What do you do, chop for an hour then take a break? Go out for a drink and then come back to finish up? It seemed physically impossible to keep chopping for 15 hours straight, didn’t it? 

The place must have looked like an explosion in the back of a butcher shop in Bensonhurst after one of Vinny The Chin’s murders. 

If you looked at Black, who had a certain resemblance to King Kong, he certainly looked capable of overcoming any physical adversity and getting the job done.

Black continued to chatter as he trimmed my hair. Others in the bathroom moved about, moving off into the stalls instead of the urinals which were blocked as he worked on me. Seeing Black, they quickly moved away. 

They all knew to respect his minimalist way of making his wishes known with “doing Mr. M’s hair now, go ‘way,” — and they left immediately. They all knew, or sensed, the protocol and danger. His obvious strength was not hidden and his level of intelligence just made him more dangerous.

They knew about the ax.

It felt like I was having my hair done by a brute of unimaginable strength. I could only imagine what Black was like after he did drugs, had some booze and was pissed off.

When Black was done, I offered him a chocolate and marshmallow mini pie. One of those chemicalized goodies sold in the prison commissary. Black looked at it, very straight-faced and without any obvious emotion. 

I began to worry. He looked at it like he was trying to figure out what it was. There was no disguise, no filter. It was just a fucking pie, for God’s sake, I thought. 

Fear started to rise up in my throat like an attack of GERD, and I envisioned Black throwing the saucer shaped treat on the floor, stomping on it and jamming the trimmer into my mouth while it buzzed, chewing up my tongue. 

Black continued to stare at the treat in his hand for another minute without saying a word. 

Was he pissed off? Was he insulted by the offering?

No, I realized. He was just slow. 

He didn’t know what I had given him.

“Well, thank you Mr. M. You don’t gotta’ give me dis.”

He shifted from one foot to the other like an animal rebalancing its weight, “you a good man Mr. M, you don’ hafta gimme nothin’, Mr. M.”

I exhaled, relaxing now, “Don’t be silly, take it Black, and thanks for doing my hair, my wife’s visiting and I want to look presentable.”

“You look fine, Mr. M.” he patted me on the shoulder, “ya wife’ll love it, looks good, you good man Mr. M,” he repeated several times, always saying the same thing, over and over, never smiling, continuing to pat him on the shoulder. 

Then he put an arm around me with a hug as if to say “you okay, man.”

Of course, being hugged by a brutal murderer wasn’t a relaxing event for a 70 year old middle-class white guy. It wasn’t like having a drink with a friend at the bar in the Peninsula Hotel or at the Patio Bar in the Hamptons when that friendly hug unexpectedly occurred. 

It was the kind of conviviality that could kill you with one wrong word or gesture.

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Copyright Gulag 2025

The SoHo Journal accepts donations and comments at Post Office Box 1032, New York, NY 10013. Literary agent, publisher and media inquiries are welcome.

“Crime doesn’t pay. Unless you work for a corrupt politician in the Hamptons”

— Anonymous

Those of you who’d like to know what prison is like after the criminal justice system works you over, here’s an outtake from my five volume work entitled Gulag. This was what it was like in Riverhead jail before being sent to prison near Canada where minus 35 degrees was the norm.

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Chapter one.

“The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.” 

— Joseph Heller, Catch-22

March 27, 2012

The descent began in a courtroom on Long Island. After three years of emotional torture and the decimation of my finances — planned by District Attorney Thomas Spota and his subordinates Thalia Stavrides and Emily Constant — I was offered a way out. Through the side door in a courtroom leading to Riverhead Jail. The construction of such a convenient corridor from court to Jail was a source of pride among the judges who the D.A. had installed with the help of a con artist by the name of Frank McKay, a political operative and radio announcer. Judge F.X. Doyle was among the coterie of political sycophants who had played his part in my drama and was part of the pay-to-play scheme after the political hacks in the Town of Southampton, Patrick Heaney, David Betts and Joe Lombardo got tired of reading about themselves in my work. 

They all wanted revenge for exposing their corruption in my articles and blogs – and they got it – with the help of  distortions by The Southampton Press and the DAs press person, Robert Clifford. 

To poison the proceedings, in open court before sentencing, prosecutor Stavrides described me as ‘The Lord of Darkness.’

Through a series of tunnels worthy of a gothic novel, I was dragged from the court in chains after sentencing to the local jail. It was a dark, filthy place full of recovering drunks, murderers, drug dealers, gang members, pedophiles, and assorted criminals. The Hamptons, where I had been prosecuted for writing about corruption, did not distinguish between killers and journalists. I would be staying at this vermin-infested facility and then transferred to an upstate prison. To do my time. In a class-action lawsuit, the horrendous conditions were described in Butler v Suffolk County Jails which settled for $18 million dollars.

My sentence was four to twelve years as I approached my 69th birthday. One of my triumvirate of attorneys, George Guldi, had already been imprisoned. Another, Tom McVann, was depressed, but he knew the D.A. and had once worked as an Assistant District Attorney. They’d cut a deal for him and he didn’t do any time at all. Ethan Ellner, the third attorney on that illustrious team became the D.A.’s confidential informant, or C.I., and was getting a walk. 

Not only had Ellner lied about me but provided details of his criminal deal with Steve Levy, the County Executive, exchanging title work for campaign cash. Spota got all of the $4.1 million dollars in return for no prosecution or jail time.

I had written about corruption in the D.A. ‘s office and, therefore, was far more dangerous.

“Hey Professor!” I heard from behind me.

“Professor,” came the call again. I turned towards the voice and could see him through rusted metal bars. It was one of the guards, a Correction Officer with his shiny gold star and a smile.

“Yes, sir?” I had quickly learned to respond, with trepidation. Even in my brief career behind bars I knew that being singled out by a CO, as they were called, was not good.

“Professor, what the fuck are you doing here?” he said. “I saw you in court, taking that plea — and I read about it in Newsday. It doesn’t make sense. What the fuck was this about? You stole money from the banks?” He seemed serious. 

“What’d you do, drive up with an armored truck?” 

“How’d you steal $82 million dollars? How was that even possible? And then not go to trial?” He laughed.

I was about to ask him why he believed anything written by Spota’s publicity and hatchet man and then published by Newsday. But, then, I remembered where I was. In the heart of the beast — Suffolk County — where Hamptons money controlled the media. While I had interviewed and written positive articles about the Sheriff, Vincent DeMarco, who ran the prison I was in — Riverhead Jail – counting on him for support would be nothing less than magical thinking.

“I was a mortgage broker,” said the CO, “believe me, I understand what happened.” 

I smiled. Was this guy for real or was this just a set-up — a cop looking for information to use against him?

I started speaking in tongues. Not on purpose. I just couldn’t sync my mind with speech, truth versus coping. The fantasy of being beaten to death lurked. On my way into the jail I’d watched a guy who’d hung himself being removed on a gurney. 

“Well, sir, you know, in 2007, the Investment Banks, CDO’s, synthetic CDOs, credit-default swaps. Liquidity all dried up. The Great Recession had begun. Nothing could be financed or re-financed, foreclosures started…,” I said.

“You know. Everything fell apart — they decided my partners and investors were straw buyers — after the foreclosures started and after the mortgages had been paid. For six years.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” said the cop. “I was making $200 grand a year writing mortgage loans. And, now…,” he waved his arm around with his nightstick in it, as I watched nervously, “this shit.”

“Yes, I can understand, sir,” I said, sympathetically, but cautiously.

As I spoke, I thought about my new neighbor in the adjoining cell.

He was a young black kid who had just been extradited from down south for killing his wife, eating parts of his baby and then storing the uneaten remains of the child in his freezer. I empathized with the guard. I thought of the line in The Shining. “Things could be better Lloyd, things could be a whole lot better.”

“Everything stopped. So, they decided I stole the money from the banks.”

MortgageIt, one of the lenders owned by Deutsche Bank, a source that one of his mortgage brokers located, had even been sued by the Justice Department for a Billion dollars — for mortgage fraud. They settled the case without admitting guilt, criminal or civil, for $203 million dollars. Angelo Mozillo of Countrywide and unwitting shareholders had paid a $67.5 million dollar fine and Mozillo walked — on Long Island where the D.A. had direct control over whether to criminally prosecute the bank for its flagrant fraud. But, that would have been an expensive case. 

Mozillo then sold the company to Ken Lewis at Bank of America for $4 Billion dollars. Included with the sale was a vault full of worthless mortgages. 

Meanwhile, I got three years of bad publicity plus four to twelve years for the $82 million dollars I’d never received. Not to mention the perversion of what actually was on the books and constituted grand larceny. DA Spota bent and twisted the interpretation of that crime until the definition fit the crime and the crime fit the law. Just for me.

By the time I took a plea I was the poster boy for the Great Recession and a valuable target for the D.A. And, of course,  I had destroyed the Hamptons and had “brought the country to its knees.” 

I was the first and only person imprisoned directly as a result of the 2008-2009 Great Recession bank fraud.

“Well,” I said, “at least you have a job. And, I’m here!”

“Okay, Professor,” he said. “I knew they railroaded you. And forced you to take a plea. They had no case, but they were just doing a favor for Spota and his buddies in the Town of Southampton. They’re all crooks. Everyone in the country would be in jail if they really had a case against the borrowers. But, that guy Doyle, who’s one of Spota’s judges – if you hadn’t taken a plea he would have buried you. They jes’ tell’im what to do an’ he does it.” 

“But you shoulda’ seen my office when I was doin’ loans, though.” 

“We had one guy who just made up all of the paperwork. All those for Liar Loans, as they called them. A couple of the borrowers were dead. And, those banks in California? Those guys were all doing drugs. There was a whole crew at WaMu who were snorting methamphetamines, and now they’re saying that it was drug money from the cartels that saved the banks….Well, good luck to you. And, watch out for that guy in the cell next to you.” 

“He’s nuts. Look out he doesn’t take a bite out of you, too,” he laughed and moved on, raking the bars with his baton as he left.

My first four days were spent in a jail cell by myself with a rusted sink and a moldy toilet. Then, suddenly, I was awakened at 4 a.m. one morning for the trip to prison.  I got dressed and was chained to a couple of Spanish guys who were members of MS-13 and then spent several hours crammed into a vehicle driven by two cops who enjoyed insulting inmates. The eight guys in the van, including me, were transported in a six passenger van to the next stop in Fishkill, New York, at a prison known as Downstate. It was euphemistically called a Reception Center. 

My clothing was confiscated, sprayed down for lice, forced to shower, and had my head shaved. We were then brought to a large room that had what appeared to be individual lanes leading to interviewers posing as mental health counselors, followed by several medical examinations. There was a lot of sphincter-checking for hidden items. 

There were many reminders that no one was permitted to speak and constant questions about whether anyone wanted to kill themselves. 

I met a few interesting characters along the way and, fortunately, spent no more than a few hours with any of them. I’d already decided that I would try to take mental notes and later commit my experiences to paper. I knew that despite the horrendous experiences I’d already been through and more that I now faced — that I had a unique opportunity to describe some of the inner workings of what was euphemistically called the criminal justice system – from the inside. Not the intellectualized, Hollywood version. 

I waited in a large holding cell while the tests and interviews were done which was shared by twenty to thirty other prisoners as they left and returned. Anyone needing to use the toilet was referred to a metal bowl cemented to the floor in the middle of that large cell — surrounded by guys sitting around with nothing to do but watch each other and argue among themselves. I was briefly reminded of my Stella Adler Theater Studio stint studying Method acting. Shitting on command for an audience took practice. 

Especially, without toilet paper.

Copyright 2018 Gulag

“Never trust a writer who hasn’t been indicted or imprisoned.”

— Donald Clark MacPherson

If you have sympathy for the NY Times journalists who’ve been served by the DOJ let me tell you that there are worse things. Such as a search warrant, an indictment by a grand jury operated by a criminal (like former Suffolk County DA Thomas Spota and associates) and a poisoned court system with endless deep pockets and total media control to put you in prison. The Southampton Press was glowingly complicit in this criminal enterprise that targeted me. I had the pleasure of just such a revenge prosecution at the hands of Hamptons D.A. Thomas Spota, who was ultimately prosecuted and imprisoned himself. They extorted a plea deal from me so I could stop them from torturing my family. The Suffolk County D.A.s office is still a Hamptons criminal enterprise.

But it’s really a money game. While the current administration is hammering people they’re not happy with poor schmucks are not protected by BIG money (like the NY Times). In my situation, I’d been writing about the corruption in Southampton, Westhampton Beach and in Riverhead and Hauppauge where the District Attorney has offices. Like the real estate and political ploys that still go on, primarily in Westhampton Beach and Southampton, if you don’t have the money, no matter whether you’re innocent or not, they’ll fuck you and you’ll do time.

All of the notoriety that the midwest newspaper got — the Marion County Record — over the search of its offices and the owner’s home and searches done on Bolton, Bannon, Michael Cohen, Flynn, Manafort, Stone — pale by comparison to the fucking I got from D.A. Thomas Spota and his prosecutor Thalia Stavrides, a former sadist with power who should still be prosecuted.

Whatever. So here’s what it’s really like doing almost five years for exposing corruption in a Suffolk County jail (where inmates won an $18 million dollar civil rights lawsuit — Butler v. Suffolk County Jails) and in an upstate New York prison with killers, drug dealers, mobsters, assassins, pedophiles, rapists, bikers, cartel members and gangs. If you’re doing real time with no back-up and no money it’s dangerous — especially when ill at seventy years of age as I was. Enjoy my book, Prisoner of the Hamptons for a real taste of what it was like. Genuine True Crime genre. Later this year my novel about how they did what they did will be published. Maybe you’ll learn something about American justice and the prison system. Or, perhaps you’ll enjoy what you’re missing.

It’s not “Orange is the New Black.” It’s far worse.

Neither this blog nor the magazine are non-profit. Donations are accepted: Post Office Box 1032, New York, NY 10013.

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”

― George Carlin

Don’t worry, it’s all under control. Not ours. But it is under control. Maybe.

The problem is — few want to face the fact that we now live in a faded democracy. And, the only solution, for this moment, is to fend for yourself. We sit and watch the theft going on in front of our faces. That’s what happens when the wheels come off — as they already have with the help of SCOTUS. When the politician-thieves see an opportunity, as they all now see, it’s fight like hell to take money as our Dear Leader is doing. All of our politicians are now directed like a laser beam trying to accomplish one thing: getting elected — or re-elected. That’s it folks. That’s the whole game. Nothng else matters. And, it’s why you can never get anything done. Because they don’t give a shit about you. Democrat, Independent, Republican, Socialist, or Nihilist.

Of course the most attractive way to describe our current philosophical zeitgeist is first, to ignore all politicians. We need to reflect upon where our billionaire oligarchs have led us in the service of their personal runaway greed and technology fetish. And, who they’ve purchased along the way to extend their control. This has ensured that the flock of sheep which we’ve become realizes that we are what they have envisioned for us. But will eventually bite them in the ass.

The philosophy of political Nihilism is like Entropy. The power of politics which we are now living through is, more than anything else, stupid. Destroying institutions, bureaucracies, accomplishments, art, music, a sense of well-being, justice, equality, morality — cannot be replaced only by obsessive destructiveness. It can only destroy, not build anything like the America we have had.

So sit tight, pay the escalating price of food and gas — and wait until you are asked to help build something. Right now, there is no such talk because building requires intelligence and leadership. Maybe you’ll help. Maybe you won’t.

We’re all reachng our ‘Fuck You’ point for anyone requiring our help.

The SoHo Journal 25th Anniversary magazine has recently resumed publishing and “Prisoner of the Hamptons” will be available on Kindle in the near future. Neither this blog nor the magazine are non-profit but donations are accepted at Post Office Box 1032, New York, NY 10013.

“Do what you love and let it kill you”

— Henry Bukowski

Since the Pedophile-in-Chief has a green light (and a green reflectging pool) to do anything including rig markets, lie, cheat, steal, murder — it is instructive to pay attention to that old homily by Tip O’Neill which stated that “All politics is local.”

If that’s really true we’re all in trouble because downtown is a political cesspool. Even with Democratic, liberal claims BEFORE the midterms.

Let’s talk about the current state of rent-stabilized apartments in Manhattan. We have the Buildings Department, HPD and the courts. The Buildings Departent is tasked with the physical condition of structures, HPD is responsible for maintaining apartments and reviewing landlord responsiveness and the courts are, of course, where lawsuits, non-payment actions and evictions play out.

Our current Mayor Mamdani was elected with strong support from housing activists. So, I sent some information about my landlord who managed to use the courts to evict 95% of the rent-stabilized tenants in the building. That did not help a tenant who recently WON her appeal but was nevertheless evicted by the court because she could not pay the landlord’s legal fees for trying to get rid of her. And, by the way, she had been the head of the former Tenant’s Association. You see a connection here? Are you following this? Does it look like maybe the landliord, who spent $200,000 to evict one tenant, maybe bought himself a judge through the law firm?

Let’s back up.

I myself managed to survive seven years in court with the same landlord — who gossip has it — stole the building from the former owner’s family WHILE I was in prison. Yes, for shooting my mouth off as a journalist and being the target of a vindictive prosecution by the Hamptons D.A. Thomas Spota and his buddies in Southampton — whom I exposed for corruption. He recently was released from prison. But it didn’t stop my landlord and his corrupt flunkies from trying to help them indict and prosecute me so that I’d be evicted. And then interfered with my Parole in a prison system that makes racism look good. Torture is the operative concept in DOCCS.

The building now is mostly market rate tenants who never complain because the landlord does not have to renew their leases — and who retaliates in spades. Especially, for telling the Truth. Their law firms (Belkin. Burden & Novick Edelstein) managed to empty the building of rent-regulated tenants. Try paying rent PLUS legal fees, folks!

Mamdani are you listening? Does this sound like a criminal enterprise endorsed and supported by the City? And, Buildings Department is a corrupt entity which helps landlords defy the law and accepts cash. HPD is corrupt and is staffed by idiots whose inspectors barely speak English and enforce NOTHING. Cea Weaver ignored my book about this corrupt landlord.

The Community Board under Tobi Bergman ignored my direct complaints about this criminal enterpise in Hudson Square — and then moved to Greenwich Village after bagging $20 million for his neighborhood SoHo building. Now he’s telling us how our area should be developed.

The Department of Innovation and Technology which is responsible for the 311 system is a fraud. We have not had access to 311 system for years. With no 311 there can be no complaints.

And, the courts work for landlords in Manhattan. Through law firms and party politics.

I contacted WNYC to report this story of a landlord that permitted constant illegal AirBnB sublets, violations of American Disabilities Act, apartments where Sex Trafficking was occurring because one of the landlords was involved, where seniors and disabled tenants are harassed, and where it is possible that the building was stolen.

But, with big money — especially if it’s stolen — Nothing Works.

In the next issue: Westhampton Beach Village. The most corrupt village in the Hamptons.

— Donald. Clark MacPherson

The SoHo Journal 25th Anniversary magazine has recently resumed publishing and “Prisoner of the Hamptons” will be available on Kindle in the near future. Neither this blog nor the magazine are non-profit but donations are accepted at Post Office Box 1032, New York, NY 10013.