Dear Garrett..

Within a week after receiving my Commercial Pilot Certificate, I began flying the prisoner transports for the Santa Cruz County Sheriff Department. On each transport, I either picked up a prisoner in Santa Cruz County and fly them to a designated prison somewhere in the state of California – or I would pick up a prisoner at one of several California prisons or jails and fly them back to Santa Cruz County.

Most often I flew one prisoner at a time. Occasionally I would have two prisoners on board. With the exception of one transport, I flew the prisoners by myself. I did have one trip to fly with a police officer and a deputy district attorney on board. It was a prisoner run to Houston, TEXAS to pick up two extra dangerous prisoners. More about that trip later.

We would have a woman prisoner to transport occasionally. A matron would fly with me to transport the women prisoners. It was up to me to find a matron for those trips. It could be any woman I could find who was willing to fly the trip. Most of the time my bosses wife, Gwen Carroll, would fly with me on those trips. If Gwen wasn’t available, I would get my girlfriend (when I had one) or my brother’s wife, Elaine, to fly a trip with me.

There was no shortage of prisoners to fly in Santa Cruz County. I usually had multiple prisoner trips to fly each week. Santa Cruz County gave me an ID card designating me as a Prisoner Transportation Deputy. With the Transportation Deputy designation, I was authorized to carry a weapon while flying the prisoners. Some of the Transportation Deputies would carry a pistol with them. I did not. My logic was that if no one, including me, had a pistol on board the aircraft, no one on board could get shot.

Sometimes a prisoner was brought to me at an airport by deputies. On other trips, I would have to go into a prison to pick up or drop off a prisoner. At the airport pickups, deputies would drive out to my aircraft with the prisoner. At the aircraft, deputies would remove their handcuffs from the prisoner. As the deputies removed their handcuffs, I would place a looped chain around the prisoner’s waist and then slip my handcuffs through the loop on the chain and handcuff the prisoner. Once completed with my handcuffing, deputies handed the prisoner’s paperwork to me and released the prisoner into my custody. I would promptly load the prisoner into the aircraft and depart for the prisoner’s new facility.

The prisoners came in all ages – young, middle aged and elderly. Some prisoners were juveniles. The juvenile prisoners were flown to various CYA (California Youth Authority) facilities around the state of California.

Although the prisoners could have given me plenty of trouble, none of them ever did. If any of the prisoners were to try anything, I was prepared to incapacitate them. During the flight, I maintained a continual vigil on how a prisoner was doing. Should a prisoner loosen their seatbelt and attempt to cause some trouble, I would only need to abruptly maneuver the aircraft applying alternating positive and negative G forces making it difficult for them to cause trouble.  With a seatbelt unlatched, a prisoner would be tossed about in the aft cabin area by the application of alternating G force loads imposed by my abrupt maneuvering of the aircraft. 

There was no talking during a flight other than a prisoner asking me if it was okay for them to smoke a cigarette. I’d always let them smoke once we were airborne. They could light up and manage the handling of their own cigarettes. A prisoners range of motion was limited due to the looping of the handcuffs through the waist chain. To smoke, a prisoner would lower their head to light and puff on a cigarette.

Though I didn’t speak with the prisoners, I did feel a sense of compassion for them. Some of the prisoners looked rough – others refined. They all sat quietly in their seats simply looking out the window as we flew to their various facilities. I don’t recall transporting any prisoners who appeared to be afraid of flying though I’m sure some of them were fearful. The prisoners seemed quietly resigned to cooperate with the current circumstances they found themselves in. Being in constant confinement and constraint didn’t give them much choice but to accept and cooperate with the officials including me in charge of their imprisonment and transportation.