“Thunder!”
“Hoo!”
“Lightning!”
“Hoo!”
“Now who rock, who rock this house?!”
“We rock, we rock this house!”
“Who rock, who rocks this place?”
“We rock, we rock this place!”
“Now lean back and strut!”
“The Tac Squad’s comin’!”
“Now lean back and strut!”
“The Tac Squad’s comin’!”
-- A Georgia prison Tactical Squad, marching into Valdosta State Prison, January 2008

The moon was full or nearly so, and the same could be said for a substantial section of a parking lot at a South Georgia weigh station by Interstate 75, brimming in the early morning darkness with men and women in black fatigues and with white vans topped by bars of blue lights.

Photographer-producer Josh Wade and I had pulled out of Atlanta the night before, just after I finished my story in the 6pm show. We’d been given the name of a motel in Tifton where we’d meet up with high-ranking Georgia Department of Corrections official Arnie DePetro, knowing we’d cover a prison shakedown in the morning, but not which prison would be targeted—until, late at night, in a meeting with DePetro and prison system special operations chief Rick Jacobs, we learned, on condition of secrecy, we were headed to Valdosta State Prison.

Shortly after 5 a.m., we headed from the motel to the weigh station where Tactical Squads from across the state assembled. Josh shot the briefings—excerpted in our special assignment report posted elsewhere on this website-- then headed out with one of the canine units to be in place moments ahead of time and get one of the morning’s money shots, the long, blue-light-flashing caravan snaking down the road to the prison before disgorging roughly 200 Tac Squad officers and canine handlers from around the state. I drove Josh’s truck so we’d have extra equipment nearby if we needed it.

The Tactical Squads formed up and marched through the back gate and toward the cellblocks in fearsome fashion, officers in front carrying big pepper ball guns, ranks tight, colorful cadences called with deep-throated exuberance.

“ Here comes a steamroller, baby—"

“’Comes a steamroller, baby!”

“Rollin’ down the line!”

“Rollin’ down the line!”

“Well, ya better get outa my way—“

“Well, ya better get outa my way!”

“Before I roll all over you!”

CLICK HERE FOR THE TACTICAL SQUADS’ MARCHING HITS. If you click, and if you gaze upon their focused mien, maybe you’ll wonder as I did, where it comes from, the mettle in these correctional officers that makes them submit themselves to extra discipline in a prison culture already based on discipline, to look for more rule breaking among those whom juries or judges have already decreed couldn’t follow the rules. An official says the “hand-selected” Tac squad officers all work regular shifts at a prison and get a pay supplement for the extra work and risk, but I doubt the esprit d’corps comes from the pay.

There’s no escaping the controversy that dogged Georgia Department of Corrections shakedowns in the ‘90s -- we surmise safeguarding against potential rights problems is at least part of why the D.O.C.’s lead in-house lawyer, Bill Amideo, was on the scene for the Valdosta shakedown, as were video cameras besides ours.

Our main camera was on Josh’s shoulder, but if we needed to be in two places at once, I carried a small handheld. Generally, you shouldn’t have a problem discerning who shot what in this story—Josh is one of the best shooters around; I’m an ex-newspaperman who is challenged programming a VCR. But when we learned canine teams were pouring over employee cars in the front parking lot, Josh stayed where he could get shakedown video inside, and I shot shaky video outside. Rick Jacobs said the employee cars were clean this time, though he confirmed that hasn’t always been the case at other prisons. Lest one think the reason for the clean bill this time owed to the dogs’ inability to find dope, CLICK HERE FOR THE CANINE UNIT’S DRAMATIC ON-CAMERA TEST. It is one thing for a handler to talk about his dog; another to put it to the test with a newsman’s camera rolling to record success or failure.

Back inside, Josh was rolling for a couple of dramatic discoveries—a cell phone in a dormitory wing, for one. Zero tolerance for those, Jacobs said.

“Inmate in the possession of a cell phone,” he said, “would allow an inmate liberties to contact potentially a victim in a prior crime, intimidate witnesses in a potential pending case, to rally a single cause in an institutional setting.”

Josh mentioned he’d seen pay phones.

“We turn those on and off,” said Jacobs. He explained inmates have to submit to prison officials for screening a list of everyone they wish to call on the pay phone and the calls are recorded and subject to monitoring by prison staff.

We heard a shank and a hypodermic had been discovered out back one of the cellblocks, which is where we ventured with Warden James Darrell Hart, Tactical Squad officer Joseph Catanzariti and Lt. Sherman Maine of the Valdosta State Prison’s special Correctional Emergency Response Team. More contraband turned up while we were out there, apparently tossed out of cell windows earlier. The shank was the eye catcher. Warden Hart described an attack on a sergeant by several inmates. “The sergeant was stabbed,” he said, “with a similar shank.”

“He was stabbed in the back, but he was hit in the eye with a lock in a sock.”

Lt. Maine added startling detail to the picture when he described the dimensions of gang presence in the prison, and explained how contraband relates to the gang scene. CLICK HERE FOR THE PRISON GANG RUNDOWN.

In the end, the amount of heavy-duty contraband seized in the Valdosta shakedown seemed to be significantly less than in a number of other recent shakedowns at Georgia prisons. CLICK HERE FOR THE WARDEN’S REACTION, and take a look at the basketball shoe with the hidden compartment in the sole, along with other tight shots of contraband.

CLICK HERE FOR STILL PHOTOS FROM A SHAKEDOWN AT ANOTHER GEORGIA PRISON.

But a paucity of pot seized, for instance, didn’t mean the prison had been dope-free all along. Jacobs told us there were seven canine alerts during the shakedown—which he suggested meant drugs had been where the dogs alerted, but were no longer. He said thirteen inmates were drug-tested as a result and one tested positive, for marijuana. While finding the dope may have been tough, Jacobs suggested getting it in the prison may be tougher than it used to be, thanks in part to some gee-whiz technology. CLICK HERE FOR THE DRUG-DETECTION MACHINE SHOW-AND-TELL.

After it was over, lots of days and miles away from the shakedown, Josh commented on how safe he’d felt while shooting, no matter how close he stood to a convicted killer. He attributed it to the utter control the Tac squads exerted. There may have been some shouting here or there through a metal door in the lockdown unit in a bid for our attention, but I recall no disrespect from any inmate in the place, not toward us, and not to the face, at least, of any corrections officer. We asked two inmates for formal interviews; both agreed and appear in our main broadcast piece. I was in prison and ye came unto me, says the Book of Matthew. So what happens there is important. The inmate’s world is concrete floors and metal furniture, jailhouse pallor, dingy t-shirts, chain-link fence and maybe neighbors a lot of folks wouldn’t choose—and, for a time at least, fewer shanks. Safer though it may be, Josh and I agreed, it’s a good place to be able to leave.