Author: Standing Bear
WAYNE GARNER GDC COMMISSIONER
In 1996 we had a new commissioner appointed to run the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC). His name was Wayne Garner. Word was, that he was a mortician by trade, and that he had a hard-on for prisoners because he’d had a daughter who had been raped.
So when a recently convicted GDC inmate wrote Mr. Garner a smart ass letter which was published, thanking him for his new vacation behind bars while spending his days lifting weights, shooting pool, and going to the gym, etc. etc., Wayne Garner saw it as an opportunity to assert his newly appointed authority. Correctional officers soon came and took it all…
The first thing taken at Georgia State Prison (GSP) was the ice machines and coffee pots in each and every dorm. Replaced with plastic ice coolers to be filled daily. Hot water dispenser were later mounted to the water fountains. The regulation size pool tables in each and every dorm were then taken out. As well as the two dozen or more foosball tables in the gym. All the gyms band equipment and guitars were taken. To include the Gold’s Gym type weight room and equipment that movie actor Burt Reynolds had purchased for the GSP prisoners during the filming of his famous movie there in 1973 “The Longest Yard.” Even the punching bag and boxing gloves were taken. Everything but the basketballs, footballs, and softball equipment.
Each and every small yard attached to every cell block’s living quarters at GSP had a complete set of steel dumbbell weights, two weight lifting benches and hundreds of pounds of steel plates. All was taken, including each dorms punching bag stored in each of the dorm’s mop closets. Within a month all the weights and weight benches in the entire prison had been taken.
Wayne Garner then sent a “Goon-Squad” of GDC officers up to Hays State Prison in north Trion Georgia with specific orders to beat inmates… During the raid prisoners were dragged from their bunk beds unto the cell floors and were beaten unmercifully just because they were given authority by Commissioner Wayne Garner to do so under orders, and with impunity. Many were left with both broken arms and legs. They then tried to cover up what they did with denials and lies. But the Georgia State Patrol helped to take those seriously beaten to the local hospitals for treatment. State Patrolmen and prison counselors did affidavits and were subpoenaed to give testimony. Wayne Garner had caused too much unfavorable publicity for the GDC. He had to go, and was soon removed as the Commissioner of The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC).
Soon after the beatings at Hays, I was transfered from GSP to Smith State Prison. As is often the case whenever lawsuits are filed by inmates, they are transfered far away from the incident. At Smith I met three of the inmates who had been beaten at Hays and were transfered away down south to Smith. All three let me read the letters they had received from an attorney who was representing the GDC. Each was offered out of court settlements ranging anywhere from $8,000 to $12,000 dollars. When their attorney Brian _____ ? from the Southern Center For Human Rights (SCHR) was on his way to take affidavits from other prisoners, his car was mysteriously ran off the road by a big truck. Killing both him and his secretary, all three plaintiffs then decided to settled out of court. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction….