THE BAY LOCKED DOWN
We're a little late on this one. Two days, late. But we waited until we had something more than the bare bones reported in the press about the lock down in Pelican Bay. What the CDC has released to the public is that they uncovered a plot to assassinate three corrections officers and the prison would stay locked down until they complete the investigation. The LA Times didn't report who planned to do the hits or why.

We still don't know why but we've been reliably informed that the plotters are all Eme brothers. So far, prison officials have confiscated four prison-made weapons (we assume they're shanks) but COs are looking for at least ten more. It sounds like there was a snitch in the mix.

With the information we have in hand, we're not ready to believe that there actually was a conspiracy to kill three COs. It's possible, of course, but it doesn't seem to make sense. First of all, greenlighting COs is bad, bad, bad for business. The whole institution is locked down. Virtually all communications, except with lawyers, is banned. All privileges are suspended and pretty much the entire system grinds to a halt. Plus consider the aftermath of three greenlights on COs. Talk about a shit storm of heat directed like a flamethrower at every shot caller and camarada. There doesn't seem to be much percentage in it for the plotters.

So if it wasn't an aborted plot, what was it? One possible scenario that comes to mind is that POs were handed misinformation by somebody who suddenly found himself in the hat and needed immediate PC. He comes up with a wild story, he's put in PC and starts debriefing. Whether his story is true or total bullshit doesn't matter. He shot his mouth off and that qualifies him for PC. Maybe it was even misinformation he was "ordered" to provide to get POs to put some enemy under the microscope.

Another possibility is that POs used the pretext of an assassination plot to go after somebody that needed going after but didn't want to make it look like they were targeting this particular person or persons. So POs do a general lockdown, toss everything and everybody and come up with what they were looking for in addition to all the other stuff they find in the course of searches. It's been done before in prison and on the street.

The scenarios, while not infinite, can get fairly extensive. And practically anything you can think of already has a precedent. If we've learned anything about the pinta and the people who live there is that truth is way stranger than fiction.