by Keith Soanes
I am writing regarding an Oct. 3, 2017, so-called suicide of a 22-year-old brother, Tabadrick Campbell. He was from Ft. Myers, Florida, where he is also known as TB. Everybody who knew him personally, in here and in the streets, will tell you that suicide was nowhere one of TB’s thoughts, tendencies or actions.
I knew TB only a few days considering the fact that I’m just returning to Charlotte CI (Correctional Institution) where I landed in G3-Dormitory on Sept. 26, 2017. This young brother was well loved and respected in the Dormitory, the compound and on the streets. He visited my cell regularly, being that him and my celly were really close friends.
On Friday, we started vibing when he told me that he was at South Florida Reception Center where he was cool with a young brother who looked exactly like me and even had the same first name as me, Keith. He said they called him “KV” from North Miami Beach. It was no surprise to him when I told him that KV is my son, and that he (KV) was just released from work release on Sept. 24, 2017, and already found employment. They were about the same age.
TB was very intelligent, free and high spirited. He loved football, he wore an Afro and had lots of tattoos. He was very respectful, not loud, not a troublemaker and he was damn sure not suicidal with only about 11 months left to go home to his family. Now he’s dead and they’re talking about suicide. Tell that lie to somebody else.
Between Sunday night and Monday morning, between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., I woke from sleep to someone banging. TB was banging on his cell door (G3203) with a combination lock. I remember TB telling Sgt. Roberts and the other staff members with him that he (TB) needed help.
The staff members asked TB to put the lock down and he immediately complied without incident, as G3-Dormitory video surveillance on the above-mentioned date and time in question will show and prove. TB left G3-Dormitory in one piece and without hostility on the morning of Oct. 2, 2017, in handcuffs per protocol, of course.
TB was very intelligent, free and high spirited. He was damn sure not suicidal with only about 11 months left to go home to his family. Now he’s dead and they’re talking about suicide. Tell that lie to somebody else.
He was taken to mental health unit in C-Dormitory. Word has it that while at the mental health unit, TB was told that he was going to be placed in confinement. For what reason? No one was allowed the time to know.
Word is, that upon being told that he was being placed in confinement, TB became defensive and prison staff jumped on him, beating him up. Video surveillance of TB’s entire stay in mental health unit will show and prove that.
Somehow, out of all places, TB was placed in Y-Dormitory confinement (where brutalized prisoners are hidden) rather than A-Dormitory confinement. Y-Dormitory confinement also serves as an isolation and excommunication tool. In A-Dormitory, TB would have been seen by prisoners, and his family would or could have been in contact.
Administration is claiming that TB committed suicide in a shower stall in Y-Dormitory – a shower stall that sits directly outside and across from the officer station. If suicide was the case, a staff member is always posted in that officer station and would have seen TB attempting suicide in time to stop him.
Another issue in relation to Charlotte CI shower stalls and TB’s death: It is normal practice for Charlotte CI staff to leave prisoners standing in shower stalls for very prolonged periods of time way beyond six hours. One prisoner just told me that he stood in an A-Dormitory shower stall for 11, yes, 11 hours over the weekend.
Administration is claiming that TB committed suicide in a shower stall in Y-Dormitory – a shower stall that sits directly outside and across from the officer station.
This may have been the case with TB. Video surveillance of Y-Dormitory shower stalls on the date and time relating to TB’s death needs to be objectively and independently investigated. Prisoners are kept in these shower stalls as a means of punishment in the guise of waiting for bed space.
A lot of prisoners knew TB. He has two uncles and one cousin here at Charlotte CI. I’m also told by one of his friends that his father is incarcerated at Okeechobee CI. And his cousin informed me that TB’s mother literally attempted suicide upon hearing the news of his premature transmigration.
Everybody here is talking about TB, but that’s as far as it goes for us. He’s just another passing soul to many who would love to wish it don’t happen. Many of us simply don’t have it in us to wanna know and do more about situations such as these.
We don’t know who to contact or how to contact outside sources. We are simply in fear of ending up like TB or afraid of retaliatory search-downs by administration, who will take away the little possessions we have left and call our own.
Everybody here is talking about TB, but that’s as far as it goes for us. He’s just another passing soul to many who would love to wish it don’t happen. Many of us simply don’t have it in us to wanna know and do more about situations such as these.
Most of all, we are overwhelmed by the feeling that nobody cares and nothing is going to be done about it. We simply give up at the thought. However, you will find many of us soon laughing and kicking it with the very same staff members involved in and/or responsible for TB’s death. The Stockholm Syndrome is the norm these days and by design in the Florida prison system.
As a result, our stories are told by our oppressors, liars who abuse, brutalize and lynch us just because they know they will get away with it. What could this young brother have done or didn’t do to justify him being now dead? It is clear now that we don’t have to do anything to be literally lynched, not only in the streets, but in here as well.
Since we are not entertainers, athletes or mercenaries, we are considered not even three fifths of a human, but non-humans to the system and its privileged loyalists. They are constantly proving to us that our lives are worth nothing to them and they want us to hate ourselves just the same.
Over and over, again and again, we are constantly shown that we don’t have to do a thing to end up lynched or brutalized. It can happen to any of us, at any time. And they beat us getting mad for not accepting this mis-justice.
Brutality and lynchings is what you get when you give systematic privilege and guaranteed unlimited impunity to a certain people over another. Fascism is what you get when you constantly and continuously keep finding ways to justify state atrocities against the poor, miseducated and defenseless.
Over and over, again and again, we are constantly shown that we don’t have to do a thing to end up lynched or brutalized. It can happen to any of us, at any time.
What do you expect, what can you expect from people who know that they are above and beyond the law? You constantly let them know that they can be thugs, goons, ruffians and even racketeers, and they will be covered, promoted to higher positions and receive higher wages as long as they perform for the state agenda and interest or ideal.
Charlotte CI is well known for its share of lynching and brutalizing innocent prisoners. FDOC is known for promoting to high positions and wages prison staff who prove their loyalty through brutality and lynching of innocent prisoners.
In the two years I’ve been at Charlotte CI, their hiring pattern has yet to change. It’s either there is a thing against hiring Blacks or there are no Blacks in the area, considering the high population of Black prisoners in Florida.
Charlotte CI is hiring mostly white males. Not saying that they are all racist KKKs upon being hired, but they are hired based on the fact that they are anti-egalitarian. In fact, the best hires are those who do not know and do not want to know the meaning of egalitarianism.
You can sit back and observe how these trainees get turned from regular citizens to fascist goons and deceptacons, ready to back up or lie for another colleague after admitting that that colleague is wrong.
You are no longer a regular citizen when the paycheck replaces the truth. You are a goon. Your integrity is for sale. We are street thugs; they are state thugs.
Charlotte CI is well known for its share of lynching and brutalizing innocent prisoners. FDOC is known for promoting to high positions and wages prison staff who prove their loyalty through brutality and lynching of innocent prisoners.
Then, too, we the prisoners play a minor and even major part in the transformation, from regular citizens to fascists, of these trainees. We contribute to the conditions we are in due to our miseducated and economically desperate behavior off of which only the system thrives and benefits.
Neither us (prisoners) or the prison staff ever realize that we are brought to the prison gates for the same reason they come to the prison gates, economic desperation and miseducation. They are just as poor as us.
Prisoners need help and genuine rehabilitation, not summary punishment and torture, and TB was just one small but ongoing example of how nothing has changed. Hidden sentiments still reign supreme.
Capt. Rediker, for example, can still be seen making trips back and forth between the captain’s office and confinement with fresh canisters of chemical agents. Gassing innocent prisoners is his way of having sex.
He was a “Gestapo Sergeant” at Okeechobee CI. Now he has been promoted to “Gas Master Lieutenant” at Charlotte CI. Florida is still gassing the life out of innocent prisoners in confinement cells as was the case here at Charlotte CI this past July 2017.
Prisoners need help and genuine rehabilitation, not summary punishment and torture, and TB was just one small but ongoing example of how nothing has changed.
How much of a threat can a prisoner be to anyone while he is locked in a confinement cell? How do you kill somebody in a cell to keep them from killing themselves? Thanks to Secretary Julie Jones, surveillance cameras have been installed, but as we can see, cameras are not as strong as systematic privilege and impunity. The cameras are not bringing egalitarianism to Amerikkka’s streets or prisons.
It has happened to many other prisoners in the past. Today it was TB, Tabadrick Campbell. Tomorrow, it may be me or you or someone you know and love.
And the investigation is going to be conducted by a prison friendly fascist agency. The story is going to be told by a prison friendly fascist news source or media outlet, who will paint a bad picture of TB and justify the wrongs of FDOC, as has happened repeatedly.
How much of a threat can a prisoner be to anyone while he is locked in a confinement cell? How do you kill somebody in a cell to keep them from killing themselves?
Nothing is going to be done. Mo matter how bloody their hands, they are still clean; no matter how criminal their acts, they are still innocent. They are systematically infallible.
I am incarcerated. I committed a bad act, so you may be considering me a bad person. Please feel free to not take my word at face value. Do your own investigation. My eyes have been trained to see these realities as what they are.
I don’t expect you to believe or understand anything I say here. However, I know, if you are reading this, you do want a better world for all people.
All I’m asking is that you send a public information request about the death of Tabadrick Campbell. From the time he was pulled out of his cell (G3203) asking for mental health help, his short stay in the mental health unit (C-Dormitory) and his placement in Y-Dormitory, where he took his last breath by so-called suicide in a confinement shower stall in which he stood for prolonged hours while still alive, in the pretense of waiting for bed space. Please help raise public awareness; change will follow.
All I’m asking is that you send a public information request about the death of Tabadrick Campbell.
It is time to let the state know that we are aware of our rights and we are ready to exert and enforce these rights as citizens. It’s time to let the state know that it was created to serve the people, all people equally, rather than the other way around.
It’s time we show altruistic interest in matters such as these. It’s time to let the state know that it is being observed with trained eyes. It’s time to let the state know that it can no longer pacify us with mock investigations, mock grand juries and mock trials.
Matters such as these require objective and independent investigations. People’s investigation and disposition. It is time to let the state know that no man is above, beyond or below the law. It is time to enforce egalitarianism.
Many prisoners who knew TB personally said that he did not commit suicide; he was murdered. And I agree 100 percent until proven otherwise with concrete evidence, not state lip service.
It’s time to let the state know that it is being observed with trained eyes. It’s time to let the state know that it can no longer pacify us with mock investigations, mock grand juries and mock trials.
Please contact FDOC and demand a public information request about TB’s death. FDOC Secretary Julie Jones can be reached at 850-488-7480 or by email at Jones.Julie@maildc.state.fl.us.
Just found out. Suddenly, they’re claiming that the cameras were not working. Don’t that sound familiar? Here goes our only hope for the truth. If TB had killed one of them, he would be on TV for life.
Revolutionary respect.
Keith Soanes
Send our brother some love and light: Keith Soanes, 191981, Charlotte CI, 33123 Oil Well Road, Punta Gorda, FL 33955.