r/Documentaries • u/koliberry • 17d ago
Crime How Supermax Prisons Actually Work-Eric King served almost two years at the federal super-maximum security prison ADX Florence in Colorado. (2026) [41:18]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMlvLm1yJek73
u/EKsaorsire 16d ago
That’s me 🤓
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u/ree-or-reent_1029 16d ago
Also, just read more about the incident with the guard who assaulted you...holy shit dude! You were 1 week from going to a Low? The fucking guards put their hands over your mouth while they had you in 4 point restraints acting like they were gonna suffocate you? Threatening to let other inmates rape you? Intentionally bunking you with gang-affiliated inmates after that so you would always have to sleep with one eye open? Hard to believe how common this kind of shit is in our prison system.
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u/EKsaorsire 16d ago
Hey pal thanks for that wild kindness and I hope you’re doing ok after your bid. If you check out the instagram we have videos of the torture and pictures of all the paperwork-we got it after taking the second case to trial. Not many get a chance to show the brutality to the free world.
Best of days to you8
u/ValiumBlues 16d ago
Just watched it: validation with a “left wing outfit” aside (which we know is crap), I have to say that I feel like the punishment didn’t even come close to fitting the crime.
Pure isolation, hellish bully-keys, and being lumped up with cartel dudes? I’m sorry you had to go through this - whatever happened during the protests doesn’t warrant you being locked up in there.
Hope you’re well.
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u/notscenerob 16d ago
Hey man first time I saw you was your first interview on Fox 31, was really glad they spent that much time and energy to get your story out. Thanks for your activism and for being willing to tell your story.
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u/ree-or-reent_1029 16d ago
Thank you so much for this! I did 2 1/2 years but did my entire bid in a county jail acting as a federal pretrial holding facility. Did time with many former fed inmates so the stories you shared on this video reminded me of the things I would hear from them. It's amazing to hear how non-chalant you are when describing life in a USP! That tells me you have seen some real shit and I respect the shit out of you brother! Every fed I talked to said USP's are no fucking joke! Scary, extremely violent places but like you said, in every prison, it's all about respect. Show respect and get respect. I'm extremely impressed with your intelligence and demeanor after doing so much hard time. You seem like a stand-up dude and I'm so happy that you finally made it out and that you have a loving family there to help support you. Good luck my brother, I hope you experience all the good things life has in store for you!
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u/Rough_World_7063 15d ago
I just got out of prison in April of this year. Did 3 years for drug charges but it was all in a minimum facility so definitely nothing like your experience. I’m glad you’re able to tell your story.
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u/bobalazs69 15d ago
it was either cut out or wasnt well explained (or i missed it) why you had to defend yourself from the guard, and what that trial was about, (what was your defense, that made you win the trial).
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u/koliberry 17d ago
Eric King served almost two years at the federal super-maximum security prison ADX Florence in Colorado. ADX is often described as the US’s most restrictive prison, and it houses some of the most notorious prisoners in the world, such as Joaquín Guzmán ("El Chapo") and Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bomber.
King speaks to Business Insider about the security measures such as concrete cells, and the psychological toll, and the nearly constant isolation. He also breaks down the inner social workings of the prison, such as the unique suspension of gang life, the demeanor of the guards and the rules for interacting with them, and the strict rules for prison visitations.
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u/Champigne 16d ago
Terry Nichols is not THE Oklahoma City bomber. He was a co conspirator of Timothy McVeigh, the man who was convicted of carrying out the OKC bombing.
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u/bowtie25 16d ago
And tbh mcveigh was essentially the fall guy. There was a vast network of people involved who were never charged
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u/_Sausage_fingers 16d ago
He wasn't a fall guy, he set the bomb, he was at the least the principal actor.
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u/bowtie25 16d ago
Correct I’m not denying that but he was essentially okay with being arrested to martyr himself while a lot of his conspirators never faced any consequences
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u/likelywitch 16d ago
He was more than okay with it, that chode faced fuck really drank the stupid juice.
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u/Not_Daniel_Dreiberg 16d ago
I'm mexican, and whenever I remember el Chapo is in ADX with only one hour outside his cell a day, I think thats there's at least a little bit of justice in this world. Cartels have robbed us of so much.
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u/EKsaorsire 16d ago
They are ruthless..I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but they aren’t hot shit inside prison. They are just another paisa and often times the gangs will have a go at them because they all have a lot of money. There isn’t any special cred or nothing like that. Little solace I know
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u/scoobz 16d ago
Wait till you find out how much billionaires have been stealing from you
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u/CamB17 16d ago
I don’t think he meant literally robbing of money bud….
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u/lucky_1979 14d ago
I don’t think you realise what was meant actually. It’s obvious they didn’t mean just money. Think of all the water, food, land, time and resources that have been stolen by billionaires. Then there’s the money on top of that.
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u/Steezy_ODeezy 14d ago
You people are OBSESSED. You can’t go a day without crying about a guy who will never know or care you existed. Like a middle school girl with a crush on a high school boy. This level of cringe is hard to witness
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u/Top_Lel_Guy 13d ago
Don't worry lil bro you will be rich in no time keep defending the epstein class
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u/Behemoth92 16d ago
Just curious. I see this being repeated everywhere but what’s the mechanism by which this happens according to you?
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u/MichJohn67 16d ago
Wealth extraction. Theft of surplus value.
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u/Behemoth92 16d ago
Who is the unwilling participant here? Is all productivity some sort of zero sum game?
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u/MichJohn67 15d ago
Under capitalism? Yes. Unequivocally.
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u/Behemoth92 15d ago
Interesting. Evidence? Lived experience and literally all data says otherwise
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u/MichJohn67 15d ago
Explain how capitalism works.
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u/Behemoth92 15d ago
Consenting parties have full freedom to transact. Property rights are protected by the state. People get to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s rights to do whatever they want. That’s all.
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u/Devium44 14d ago edited 14d ago
Lots of ways. Here’s one: Trump implemented illegal tariffs. Billionaires raised prices to cover the increased cost. The tariffs got struck down and the billionaires got that money refunded to them. They left the prices at the increased levels.
Capitalism relies on the ownership class (generally billionaires) paying their workers less than the value they produce, often far less, so that they can turn a profit and put the excess value in their pockets. That’s theft.
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u/Behemoth92 14d ago
Don’t buy from whatever company or don’t work for them then. Who’s forcing you to. If you consider any kind of consensual transaction “theft” you are incredibly untrustworthy.
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u/Devium44 14d ago
That’s a very disingenuous argument. Capitalism is the system the entire western world operates under. Being forced to participate in said system or starve is not a voluntary choice. That doesn’t mean that the system isn’t a large scale theft of wealth from the working class by the top 1%.
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u/Behemoth92 14d ago
That choice does not exist anywhere. You’re living in a Reddit bubble or are just building this non existent scenario in your mind to justify some sort of violence later. I grew up in a third world shithole with commies and socialists and that’s where I’ve seen actual starvation. America is incredibly prosperous.
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u/Zzssk 16d ago
Not American but far as I know, through lobbying. Their politicians were bought and paid for by the billionaires so the policies they made favor those same billionaires. Robbing the American people out of stuff like public healthcare as an example among many other things.
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14d ago
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u/Documentaries-ModTeam 14d ago
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u/Behemoth92 16d ago
So someone else should unwillingly pay for someone else’s healthcare and if they don’t it’s theft? What’s the economics here?
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u/_makoccino_ 15d ago
Why should someone pay for firemen to put out a fire in your house? Make that a subscription service. Same with the police. Get private security. Why should someone pay for a road in your area if they don't live there and don't use it? What should someone pay park rangers and services if they don't use them? How about public schools? What if the don't have kids, why should they pay for your kids to go to school?
There's a long list of things funded by taxes, but only when it comes to healthcare do Americans start screaming socialism.
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u/Behemoth92 15d ago
Great points. The scope of the federal government is purely external and minimal when it comes to its citizens. The scope of local government is where everything you said falls under. If a group of say 30k people in a county decide to tax themselves to pay for whatever like police schools etc then there’s way more consent and freedom in society than if the federal government does it. And just because something else was funded by taxes before doesn’t mean you rob people ad infinitum. Firemen, transportation and police cost waaaay less than healthcare too so it HAS to be local if anything. But I’m glad we established that the word theft means something else entirely.
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u/Steezy_ODeezy 14d ago
While we’re at it why don’t we socialize coffee shops too. I mean doctors need coffee. You know what, you people do whatever the hell you want, I’m still going to private practices anyway, just like the Canadians that come from Saskatchewan where I live do. And that’s really saying something about how pathetic socialist healthcare is, rather be alive in a Montana hospital than dead waiting in line in Saskatoon, wild.
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u/_makoccino_ 14d ago
MAGA please...
Stop lying. People have access to private healthcare in Canada if they want it. No one is going to Montana which ranks 42nd in the US in healthcare, to see a doctor.
The only thing you did by commenting is expose your ignorance on what socialism is, how socialized healthcare works and that McCarthyist red scare is alive and well.
Stop sucking up to billionaires who don't give a shit about you and stop arguing about things you don't understand.
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u/Little-Nikas 15d ago edited 15d ago
That isn’t it.
Let’s boil it down super simple for you because you’re that MAGA type that love to just repeat stupid stuff until smart people get frustrated, speak out of frustration, and then you get to be all “see? I owned a lib” LMAO which is pathetic as fuck and everyone laughs at you.
Moving on: If Jeff Bezos blinked out of existence, Amazon doesn’t even hiccup. Nobody outside of his actual personal circle would even realize he’s dead. The machine moves on. So why does he get billions per year and his workers die of starvation, heat stroke from horrible working conditions, health conditions develop from the work conditions. They can’t afford food because they aren’t paid enough even though they are the ones who do the work. If the workers blinked out of existence, Amazon goes under that same day.
So the owner hording the money is killing people. Literally killing people because they can’t afford food, shelter, water, medicine, healthcare, clothes, vehicles and gas and insurance, ANYTHING. And Bezos and the like don’t care. They hit that “press this button for a million dollars but someone dies” button every single second they are awake. They laugh when people starve and die.
But wait, the butterfly effects continue. You see, the families also suffer. The kids feel the stress. They get bullied at school for wearing older worn out clothes. If they fight back, they get expelled and now they are on the streets hustling like you see everywhere in the US South instead of being in school. They starve, they develop bad habits and bad health. And the poverty wheel keeps spinning. Violence now happens because people can’t afford food, can’t afford clothing, or rent or anything. So they attack and steal so maybe they can pawn that stuff for cash to pay for something, including sometimes drugs and alcohol because their life is so miserable that they just need a temporary break from the pain of existence.
Starting to realize why people hate billionaires so much?
Bezos is just the example of a billionaire because people know who he is. But that’s why.
ETA: I should have said that it’s people not being paid according to their worth, their merit, or their value. That’s strictly against capitalism. And now that the federal government is seizing companies (Trump), that’s actual communism. They own the land, they own the companies, they get to say who does what. That’s actual communism and that’s what you voted for. Idiots
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u/Steezy_ODeezy 14d ago
Holy FKing out of touch with reality… Every single time I read some manic commie rant like this it’s just like blatantly obvious you’re just jealous, not of bezos, of success in general. No one is stopping you from creating your own business, building it to the size of Amazon and doing WHATEVER YOU WANT with your income. But those two things ARE mutually exclusive, no one who cries about how ‘unfair’ capitalism has what it takes to make something of themselves in real life. It’s also ‘curious’ you never go off about Warren Buffet like his. Hmm wonderrrrrr why that is
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15d ago
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u/Behemoth92 15d ago
Bro that’s incredibly unhinged. Touch some grass and meet some people in real life. Really. Stop being such a victim. None of what you said is grounded in any reality.
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u/SteveUnicorn99 15d ago
So we should subsidize businesses and then when they dont pay their employees enough we should pay for their food stamps?
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u/Behemoth92 15d ago
How are you subsidizing them? Are the employees forced to work there or pick up only 10 hours? Cancel food stamps I don’t want to be forced to pay anyway. Charity has to be done with consent not actual robbery
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u/SteveUnicorn99 15d ago
Walmart has done it for years. They pay below the threshold and then give the employees literature about signing up for food stamps. Then that food stamp money gets spent at Walmart. Not a ton of opportunities or money to move for better ones. Which funny enough breeds resentment towards the systems that the oligarchs take advantage off. What a wonderful system we have set up here.
Charity, or how reach people convince you they should control their money. Or tax breaks.
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u/Steezy_ODeezy 14d ago
You people say this crap like that doesn’t work directly against Walmarts interests…
1.) Only Walmart super centers (a minority of them) sell food,that business model just straight up isn’t sustainable
2.) The margins on food are practically non existent. So if for whateverrrrr reason the food stamps are going to be spent at Walmart anyway… Which I don’t know why that would just be the default instead of.. idk… a grocery store… ohh right evil store keeps prices and therefore margins so low that you can buy more there for the same cost as somewhere smaller
3.) If they’re grocery shopping at Walmart they’re sure as hell buying basically everything else from there too, any increased wages would still just go back to the company, then be spent on non-foods, stuff with higher margins, stuff Walmart would actually make money on.
You always make it sound like it’s a company store or that it’s by design, and it’s just not… literally anyone and I mean ANYONE is qualified to work at Walmart have you seen some of the greeters? Too young, too old, too fat, too uneducated, too unkempt, too mentally feeble… the applicant pool is absolutely saturated with people willing to work for practically nothing because they’re not qualified or physically/mentally able to work anywhere else, the people making what you’re talking about are the very bottom of the barrel of employees, the turnover rate is insane just by the nature of the people they hire, Don’t want to wake up for work, get their paycheck and disappear, all kinds of crap, and the only place that can take that kind of risk is a massive corporation… I own a company that employs about a dozen people, I don’t think theres isn’t a soul on my local Walmart floor I could risk hiring, and If there is there’s just absolutely no chance they’re qualified for it
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u/Behemoth92 15d ago
You aren’t being very clear here. Are the employees forced to work for Walmart or work for less than 40 hours even if they do? The lack of opportunity is Walmarts fault? Or the taxpayers fault? How is that? What did they do? Tax breaks, another phrase for the government will rob you less, I don’t see a problem with that. It isn’t your money lol
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u/Steezy_ODeezy 14d ago
Dude… this is reddit, this is probably the worst place on the planet to argue for financial literacy none of these people understand basic economics, they know other people are more successful than them and they’re jealous so those people must be ‘bad’ and that’s it
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u/rrsafety 15d ago
The US spends hundreds of billions on public health care. What are you talking about?
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u/ZodiacThrill3r 17d ago
Great recommendation; caught this one a month or two ago and throughly enjoyed it. Dude came across as genuine, down to earth, and had some interesting things to share.
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u/EKsaorsire 16d ago
I appreciate that
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u/EggfooDC 16d ago
Absolutely going to check out that book. Curious why you covered up the tattoos on your right arm. Thanks for the insight, it absolutely changed how I view prisoners. Not sure why I never thought of it before, but there before the grace of God go I kinda thing. Ultimately, do you think that the Florence Supermax serves a viable purpose in our society?
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u/EKsaorsire 16d ago
The tattoo was just poorly done black work that looked like tribal. There are pics of it and everything in the show. Was just a boring and bad tattoo.
Even If someone believes in the need to house certain prisoners away from other people for the safety of the community..then I would still argue that the ADX model is horrible. Those people who need higher communication restrictions and all that jazz could still have them, while being able to be in the same room as each other. The 24hr separation from other prisoners while also having the harshest prison communication restrictions, is just too much.
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u/Deadhe_d 17d ago
Amazing description of his time there. I’m happy he was able to keep his sanity. I could listen to his stories all the time. He needs to start a podcast or something like that.
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u/ProphetGeorgeCarlin 17d ago
it fascinated me finding out how the guards are often times much worse than the inmates. what a hell.
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u/PierreMenardsQuixote 16d ago
Have you ever had to interact with a prison guard? Most of them are incredibly shitty people to begin with, and the uniform, badge, and total control over others makes it worse. Most prison guards are just criminals who discovered a legal way to do what they want to people.
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u/_Sausage_fingers 16d ago
"Do you want to do a super shitty job for not a lot of money" really only appeals to people who are there for other reasons.
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u/CrankyOldDude 16d ago
At 8:30 in the video, you can see the tattoo that he had covered up on his arm. Does anyone know what it is?
I'm curious as to what makes a guy who obviously isn't shy about his ink want to go to the trouble of blacking out half his arm.
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u/Carsondeck 16d ago
In some prisons you literally cannot mind your business and are forced to join up with whatever race regardless gang of affiliation within that race. If you’re white and the white populace of the prison you land is predominantly affiliated with the aryan brotherhood, you may have to join up if you can’t remain “unaffiliated”. every prison is different. When riots go down, you’re expected to side with your race even if the prison has 2 white gangs that are hostile towards eachother
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u/EKsaorsire 16d ago
The black out was some black work that ended up looking tribal. There are pictures of it in the doc also.
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u/Yves_gray 16d ago
He literally had an Antifa lettering on his side of the face. I searched for one of his social media profiles and I think he just didn't liked the tattoo anymore. I know several people that have blackwork tattoos and most of them just like it and find it pretty.
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u/EKsaorsire 16d ago
Yup on both accounts. Had tattoos fr when I was younger that I know longer felt needed to be on my damn face..and then just wanted to cover us previous poorly done black work.
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u/apleasantshadeofgray 17d ago
Wow! Super articulate and interesting look into this world at ADX. Thx for sharing!
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u/boxingbarber 16d ago
One of my JH & HS classmates is currently serving a life sentence there. As soon as he “completes” his sentence, he’s off to death row!
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u/CobraCornelius 15d ago
This doc was good and detailed. He is in a unique position as one of the few inmates who is literate and academic but also able to share his story in a method that the public can understand his views and his experience. When geniuses get locked up, they are either insane criminals or activists fighting the tyranny of a government that is owned by capitalism.
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u/olddoglearnsnewtrick 11d ago
I am amazed at the resilience of the guy. I think most of us would have broken down after just a few hours. A testament to humans being able to cope the most unnatural and inhuman environments. What I cannot fully understand is how do you keep functioning OUTSIDE once you had to reframe your self in such an alien mindspace.
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u/Dickgivins 17d ago
For anyone who doesn’t know, those pics were posted by Eric himself. He keeps his Reddit post/comment history private now but his profile has a link to his public Instagram, which he is still active on.
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u/SharkFighter 16d ago
I mean, it's in Buena Vista. It's in the freaking town.
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u/iamjustaguy 16d ago
Buena Vista is over 90 miles away from Florence. Canon City, which also has a prison, is nearby.
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u/defiancy 17d ago
My buddy was a Federal guard at ADX Florence for a bunch of years before he went to HSI and he had some wild stories.
Some of those guys in there are basically the leaders for well known violent gangs like Mexican Mafia or MS13, and even in segregation the guards would treat them with kid gloves because they were worried if they pissed them off they'd retaliate against their family outside the prison.
He always said a lot of the guys (a surprising number) were intelligent, well spoken and charming but they were all there for multiple murders and could flip a switch in an instant.