Police – Love, Justine

MUNCY STATE PRISON

February 24th, 2025

Monday

9:15pm

Well–it must be official that Zuko and I are in a relationship because I got moved downstairs today.

Fuck.

The rumor mill says it was Bambi and Martha who complained to the cops about us. It wouldn’t surprise me at all. Cinnamon and her girlfriend got separated too. Different floors, different bathrooms, different roommates. My one new roommate is obsessed with Mel Gibson, so Zuko calls her Melanie Gibson. She has pictures of cats, trucks, and Mel Gibson next to her bed.

Weird.

Zuko has an adorable hand signal she uses to say “I love you” to me. She does it all the time.

February 26th, 2025

Wednesday

11:29am

Yesterday I had my one-on-one with parole, where you meet with an on-site parole agent and go through your entire criminal history. It took an hour and was exhausting. I have a Cosmo appointment today to get my hair cut and maybe dyed brown. I don’t know if I have enough Cosmo tickets to get it dyed. Right now it’s half blonde and half dark brown. I guess we’ll see at 1:10pm.

I never get to kiss Zuko anymore.

I miss her.

Look up: Caring Collectively for Women Prisoners and Interrupting Criminalization

Book:

Abolition for the People

Edited by Colin Kaepernick

P. 152

The Trump era has provided some of the starkest examples of this dynamic. Throughout the Trump presidency, Trump and his associates were able to break the law and violate the Constitution–including documented crimes against humanity–in full view of the public while he proclaimed himself the upholder of law and order. Wealthy celebrities involved in the college admissions bribery scandal have gotten away with a slap on the wrist for orchestrating a multimillion dollar scheme while a dozen NYPD officers surrounded a Black teenager, guns drawn, for the ‘crime’ of failing to pay $2.75 for a subway ride.

The propaganda that depicts this type of policing as being essential to public safety and order is fundamentally classist and anti-Black. It traces its roots to the Black Codes that were passed immediately after the Civil War to control the movements of newly freed Black people. It relies on the racist assumptions that Black people would run amok and pose a threat to the larger society if not kept under the constant surveillance of a police force that has authority to kill them if deemed necessary, and with virtual impunity. That’s why we are inundated with a narrative that depicts the police officer who regularly patrols predominantly Black communities as being an essential part of maintaining order in society.”

P. 176

“The 13th Amendment ensured the continuation of slavery by another name–in the guise of the carceral state. Today, prisons are the third-largest employers in the nation, according to sociologist Loic Wacquant–and Black people are, once again, its currency. The consequences of this barbarity are suffered in incalculable ways by the disproportionately Black American and Latino people housed in these cages and their families.

Ironically, the consequences are also suffered by the managers and employees of this gargantuan apparatus, who ostensibly benefit from it. The daily duties of the foot soldiers of the prison industrial complex are to control and contain, with repressive violence, other human beings–those at the bottom of society. Not surprisingly, higher incidences of suicide/domestic violence, and substance abuse are reported among prison guards and police officers.

In the final analysis, can a country that professes to be the land of the free, but which holds 25 percent of the world’s prisoners and only 4 percent of the world’s population, truly reflect its promise of happiness and democracy?”

P. 184

“According to community organizers and the ACLU, ‘nearly 60 percent of people in women’s prisons nationwide, and as many as 94 percent of some women’s prison populations, have a history of physical or sexual abuse before being incarcerated,’ Additionally, ‘Women of color and low-income women are disproportionately affected by mandatory arrest policies for domestic violence.

Of survivors in a New York City study who had been arrested along with their abusers (dual arrest cases) or arrested as a result of a complaint lodged by their abuser (retaliatory arrest cases), 66 percent were African American or Latina, 43 percent were living below the poverty line, and 19 percent were receiving public assistance at the time.

Carceral institutions further this violence by punishing community members who are already survivors of racial colonial wars, genocide, poverty, systemic violence, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and gender-based violence.”

9:30pm

I got my hair cut three inches, dyed brown, and straightened. Zuko’s reaction was that she walked into a table because she was looking at me. She really likes it. The she made me a “Sprout’s Mixed Tape” on her tablet, with all of the songs on it that I write lyrics to in my notes to her.

She’s incredibly sweet.

I love her.

I haven’t gotten to kiss her yet today, which is torture. We’re supposed to meet in the downstairs bathroom at 9:45pm, but the CO hasn’t done his round and shut the upstairs bathroom yet.

Our Mixed Tape Date got interrupted earlier by the mental health person from BA side calling me in for parole stuff. Stuff about my kids and my mental health.
Stupid interruption.

Zuko was really worried, but it wasn’t a big deal. Now that we’re on the radar, bad things are happening.

It’s 9:47pm

Ugh.

February 27th, 2025

Thursday

8:08am

Book:

Abolition for the People–Edited by Colin Kaepernick

P. 205

“Participating in the electoral process is about creating policies such as decarceration for marijuana and other drug use, ending pretrial detention and cash money bail, stopping rent hikes to prevent homelessness, and the BREATHE Act to end police violence and invest in a new vision of public safety. It is also the creation of programs that prevent violence through community-led efforts of violence intervention like the Credible Messenger and Cure Violence models.

It is the creation of community-based services that tackle the effects of poverty and its criminalization by creating community land trusts and housing cooperatives, worker-owned and cooperatively led businesses that get at the root cause of economic injustice, instead of building more prisons and jails to lock up poor, Black, and mentally ill people for profit and to legitimize the need for warlike city police. It is beautifully about a Vision for Black Lives, a comprehensive and visionary policy agenda endorsed by over fifty Black-led organizations.”

THE END

9:09pm

Zuko wrote me:

Good morning, my [not ownership, we choose each other] beautiful Love ♥️🙂

I was gonna write you some last night, but I fell asleep. I love you so much Sweetheart. I’m so grateful for every moment we get together. Your smile lights up my soul + I know you can see it when you look into my eyes. I love holding each other in our arms when we hug + kiss. We fit together perfectly, + it feels amazing. ♥️I’m sorry your bones hurt sometimes. I would kiss every one of them (even your tiny ear bones!) if I could so you’d feel better ♥️ And I’d give you my blood + bone marrow stuff + even my kidney to help you. I love you. I’d do anything for you Sprout, you’re my penguin. 🙂

I would build you a pebble nest…with my face. Lol.

People keep telling me they were concerned about who I was sitting with because they didn’t recognize you. Lol. It’s fine. I’m cheating on my gf w/my gf. 😛 They all say you look nice. Agreed. 🙂You look run-into-a-table-hot 😛I miss being able to kiss you and touch you like we used to. My fingers ache to feel your body. I want to feel you against me + kiss you so passionately. You are sexy AF, no matter what you do with your hair. You’re an amazing kisser + I can’t get enough of you. I can’t believe how lucky I am to be yours. All yours. I give myself to you. I can’t wait to make love together. Holy fuck that’s gonna be good 🙂.

Over + over + over again. ♥️

*sigh*

I love you Baby.

♥️

So fucking much.

I gotta go get ready for our date. 🙂I’m gonna put my foot on yours and do it so hard. Lmao.

I love you Sprout. You have my heart.

♥️,

Meeeeeeeeee 🙂

I wrote her back, but gave it to her before I could write it down.

All the love stuff.

🙂

When the boys were about a year old, my friend Felicia from the EB community lost her 16-year old son to Dystrophic EB. Also, bizarrely, there was a set of twins born to a neighbor of hers, one of which had EB, and they were struggling to care for him. They already had one set of twins who were six years old, so their hands were full. I decided to go to Lancaster, PA to see Felicia and the new baby, and offer my support. I took the boys with me. My friend Folly had loaned me her car. We stayed for three days, during which time I taught the new family how to take care of their new EB baby.

However, the boys were refusing to sleep in this foreign environment, so I got very little sleep. The second night, I had a migraine from stress and not sleeping, so Felicia gave me a Percocet, which I gratefully took.

The boys and I then headed home.

My bipolar symptoms were in high gear because of not sleeping, and although I didn’t know it, I was in a full-blown manic phase. My apartment was a wreck. I had left dirty dishes in the sink, and there were clean clothes hanging everywhere because my dryer was broken. I called my friend Din to see if he could fix the dryer, and he came over.

The boys, once home, fell immediately to sleep. I laid on the couch and also tried to sleep, but I was so uncomfortable and stiff from driving for five hours that I couldn’t sleep. My brain was also running wild with delusional thoughts.

Din noticed that I was having trouble getting up the stairs, and offered me some of the joint that was in his pocket. I thought about it and decided that it was harmless, as the boys would be sleeping for at least two hours.

I smoked a little of it.

Around this time, a teenaged boy appeared in the front a lawn that I shared with the neighbor tenants–we lived in a duplex–and began trying to mow the lawn. This was no easy feat, because the grass was nearly a foot high, and all he had to work with was a rickety old push mower, which kept stalling, while burping out big clouds of black smoke. This was also creating a huge amount of noise. I tried to tell the neighbor, a young woman with a three-year old of her own, that my windows were open and I couldn’t shut them because it was 80 degrees outside, and my kids were sleeping and my son was asthmatic, so please stop with the mowing, which wasn’t doing any good anyway.

This somehow devolved into a screaming match about the 10 pit bulls she had in her house and how my kids couldn’t play outside safely anymore. She called the police and told them that I was harassing her.

The policeman, Officer Copperhead, came, and when I asked him why he was there, he screeched, “Well, I wasn’t going to write you a ticket, but NOW I AM!!”

He did.

By this time, Jaxon and Henry had woken up. They scooted out on the front stoop (they were developmentally delayed from being preemies and weren’t yet walking) to watch me carry stuff from our “vacation” from the car to the house. They were wearing only diapers because it was so hot.

The neighbor called CYS and the police this time to report that my boys were “running around outside naked unsupervised,” none of which was true. The police came again and wrote me a ticket for misdemeanor child endangerment.

I was livid.

CYS came and interviewed me and took pictures of both of the twins.

Then they demanded to come into the house.

This was the last straw, as far as I was concerned. I’d had an Early Intervention teacher in my apartment that morning, and it was still a disaster of a mess. Also, legally, I do not have to let them in my house and I know this, so I said no, deadbolted the door, and took the twins upstairs for their bath. It was almost bedtime.

If they wanted to see the inside of the apartment so badly, they could come back tomorrow, when it was cleaner.

NO.

The local police then called the state police, who flooded my front yard in riot gear with flashing lights.

I didn’t know this.

I was giving the boys a bath.

When I came back downstairs, my phone was ringing.

I answered it.

It was Copperhead, screaming that he was going to take my kids.

Then, in slow motion, I saw the deadbolt lock on my front door turning to open.

I dropped the phone and ran for the door, throwing myself against it.