During her 10-year stay in prison for being a cat burglar, TikToker Jen (@jenjengomez2.0) declined an officer’s advances. He then retaliated against her for rejecting him.
At the time, she had only been in prison for a couple of days and was still trying to figure out how everything worked. As she was waiting in line at the bottom of a concrete hill to go to her appointment, she spotted an officer in his twenties who was wearing sunglasses.
He wasn’t speaking to the women very nicely. His tone and demeanor seemed aggressive. She could tell that he was not someone she wanted to come into contact with for any reason.
He was looking in Jen’s direction, which made her really nervous. As she inched further up the line, he put out his hand to stop her.
He removed his sunglasses and told her that her pants and shirt were too tight and asked if her uniform had been altered. She lied, saying that she had gotten the uniform from someone else, adding that she was new and didn’t really know the protocol yet.
He asked what dorm she lived in and wrote down the information on a notepad. He informed her that he was letting her off with a warning.
She was happy about that because she felt like she had narrowly escaped getting in trouble. But little did she know that the trouble was just beginning.
About 10 days in, she ran into him again. She tried to avoid his gaze as she approached, but he noticed her and wanted to talk to her about her uniform again.
He ordered her to follow him over to an empty pavilion outside. He sat down on one of the tables, and she stood in front of him.
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He began telling her that the friend she was hanging out with was bad news, and she needed to stay away from her. He proceeded to shower her with compliments, saying that she didn’t look like someone who should be in prison and that she was way above all the other inmates.
“The person he was talking about, it was a woman who had been in prison for many, many years,” Jen explained.
“I had met her in the dorm. She was an awesome individual. She was teaching me the ropes. She was trying to keep me out of trouble. But most importantly, she was a long-timer and an old-timer.”
“She had done 20 years in prison at this point. Everybody knew her. She was very well-respected among the inmates and among the staff members. A lot of the younger and newer staff members were really intimidated by her because she had a lot of pull in the prison.”
The officer must’ve felt threatened by their blossoming friendship, so he tried to derail it. She couldn’t really figure out why. When she got back to her dorm, she immediately sought out her friend and told her all about what had happened.
She told Jen that that particular officer was known for trying to sleep with the new inmates. He would isolate and separate them from the rest of the group.
She advised Jen to be careful and steer clear of him. Five days later, Jen ran into the officer again. He attempted to pull her aside and speak to her, but she told him that she had an appointment and kept it moving.
That night, she came out of the chow hall for dinner and was on her way back to the dorm when she saw him again. He ordered her to stop. He told her that her attitude was bad.
She responded that an officer and an inmate should not be conversing so often because they both could get in trouble. He stated that he thought she was special, but was wrong about her and that she was nothing more than an inmate.
She walked away, happy to have told him off. But for the next few weeks, he targeted and harassed her. Finally, a miracle occurred.
She heard through the grapevine that he had left the prison because he had been accepted into the police force.
“Moral of the story was my friend was right,” Jen said. “You never open the door. You don’t give an officer a chance at all. From the first day, they try to stop you and talk to you, you have an attitude.”
“You set your face in stone, and you do not let them in. Because if you do, and then you have to turn around and reject them, they’re going to be [mad] and make your life a living [nightmare].”
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
