"The Con Crew"

Inmates Find Freedom Fighting Fire

The Montana State Prison fire crew, or the Con Crew, is regarded as one of the state's best, its members motivated by the cherished chance to be in the wild, uncuffed -- the "big freedom," as one prisoner calls it.

By Dillon Tabish, 8-22-08

	Members of the Deer Lodge Fire Crew stand proud for a group portrait before they set off to work on the Goose Gulch Fire. Photos by Alexia Beckerling. Click here for a slideshow.

"In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows." - Emerson

The night before leaving to fight a wildfire, Tiffany Crow Shoe lies awake in bed, his heart punching against his chest. It's the end of July, but for Crow Shoe, it feels like Christmas Eve.

He closes his eyes and sees wild flames torching up into tree crowns. Chainsaws roar, making room for firefighters to hump line around the perimeter. Crews chase the fire as it climbs up the mountain.

It's organized chaos, and it makes Crow Shoe feel alive. And free. He's been waiting and preparing for this all year.

Crow Shoe is one of 15 members on the "Con Crew," a fire crew out of the Montana State Prison near Dear Lodge. Its official name is the Ridgerunners Fire Crew. Led by supervisor Tom Gillibrand, the Con Crew is the State of Montana's only inmate fire crew, managed by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the Department of Corrections.

The crew's senior member is Crow Shoe, a Billings-native once described by police as a transient with a criminal record, including assault for biting a security guard's finger off. Now Crow Shoe, muscular and covered in tribal tattoos, spends his mornings working with fellow crewmembers, getting them ready for fire season.

"This program has been nothing but good for me," Crow Shoe says. "I don't mind hard work, especially digging line. It passes the time, and you're doing something."

"It doesn't hit you right away that you're off prison ground until you're sitting there at night and you see the stars above you," he says. "Being out there you're just like ‘Whoa!' It's different. It just brings you back down, you know. You say ‘Hey, look, I could be doing this on the streets instead of doing other criminal activities with alcohol and drugs.'"

For others, the first moments of freedom hit like an ice-cold wave, frightening but refreshing at the same time.

	Tiffany Crow Shoe

"It was scary," Joseph James Paoni recalls about the first time he went out with the crew. "It was a shock just leaving the prison uncuffed after being transported from regional to regional shackled and cuffed, you know. It was kind of a different feeling."

Paoni stands 6'3" and wears a barbed wire tattoo around his neck and "Outlaw" is branded across his chest. He's been in prison for over 1,800 days, a little more than five years, with 11 more to go. This summer is his second on the prison crew, and like Crow Shoe, the whisper of fire, even when it means hours of humping fireline in extremely tough conditions for weeks, ignites wild anticipation.

"I remember the mountains and the [Blackfoot] river," he says, recalling the three weeks spent camped out at the DNRC Clearwater Unit. "I get a lot of peace and freedom out in the wilderness. It's nice. It's just nice to be away from it all. There's a lot of negativity when you're in prison, and when you're out there, you're away from all that. So…it's a big freedom out there."

The last time Paoni really was free was the night of Dec. 29, 2003 in Stevensville, Montana. He hit his pregnant girlfriend and thumped a brother-in-law over the head with the butt of a rifle -- assault with a weapon and two felony counts of criminal endangerment.

After being convicted, his behavior had him jumping from jail to jail and he eventually ending up in the Montana State Prison.

"When I first got here, I could give a shit about getting out," he says. "If somebody musclin' me, we're fighting."

But after a few years, he realized there might still be a chance to try and make things right. The motivation came from having a young family, a wife and five kids, and hope that someday he'd be able to return to being a husband and father. It led him to turn his life around, and the best way to do that, Paoni was told on the inside, was to join the Fire Crew.

In Montana State Prison, being on the Con Crew is highly sought after because it offers the best pay ($12 a day working fires) and a sense of freedom, however fleeting.

For these reasons and others, it isn't uncommon for crew members to be harassed by jealous inmates, so the crew sticks together, meeting every morning in an old Korean War tent working on tasks assigned by Gillibrand, including occasional visits to nearby sites around the valley that need cleaning or fix-up.

"I tell the guys every year, this is the fire crew. You have the elite job in the prison. This is the hardest job to get here, so don't screw it up," says Gillibrand, a 6-foot-5 brick-house of a man who takes great pride in his crew, like a father demanding nothing but the best from his sons.

	Joseph James Paoni

Every spring, Gillibrand gets heaps of applications from hopeful inmates, but only about one in ten meet the security requirements. There are strict guidelines, like keeping a squeaky-clean record on the inside, having no prior convictions of arson or sex offenses, and being classified as minimum security.

Beyond the DOC's requirements, Gillibrand has a few of his own. If an inmate is considered safe enough to be on the crew, and passes the physical tests, they must sign Gillibrand's "Inmate Pledge," composed of 24 declarations, including: "I will complete all assignments; pledging to do my best from time of departure until the time of return to the institution and will perform in a manner to bring credit to the program and myself…I understand that there is a ZERO tolerance for any substance abuse. Any usage of drugs, alcohol or tobacco will result in my removal from the program…I pledge that I will not have any one-on-one conversations or contact with any female on any fire or project."

"We have guidelines," Gillibrand says. "I have my own line. I work pretty friendly with the inmates. I know the inmates pretty well. But they know they have this line and if they cross it, there's no going back."

After the pledge is signed, the crew is assembled, sent through a week-long fire class with DNRC officials. Then they wait for a spark.

Terry Vaughn, the fire supervisor at the DNRC Anaconda Unit, considers the Con Crew to an asset to the state and the program a success, both monetarily and physically.

"The Deer Lodge crew is a benefit because its overall cost is less than federal crews," Vaughn wrote in a 2003 memo to state fire officials. "This crew can very often get to a fire while it's still in the initial attack phase and thus have the opportunity to keep it a smaller and less expensive fire. In many instances, I think the crew is more productive than others."

In 2006, the average cost of a 12-hour shift for the inmate crew was $1,718.92. An equally trained Type 2 hand crew cost $3,065.76, plus transportation.

Montana is not the only state to utilize prison crews. In fact, almost every Western state does, with both positive and negative results. Across the country in fire camps, stories of inmates running off into the woods or sneaking contraband into their packs are common. However, the Con Crew in Montana, since restarted in 2002 after an eight-year hiatus, has seen no walk-offs, no major incidents or severe crimes committed, despite countless opportunities.

But the faith in convicted men is weak, and second chances are few. For some men, like Crow Shoe and Paoni, it comes back to the river, and the stars and the "Big Freedom" and the realization that this could be their only second chance. They don't risk that.

A few years ago the crew was briefly sent back to prison after a member was caught with marijuana. The law of the land for any prison crew states that the second even a hint of misbehavior turns up, the entire crew is sent back, no questions asked. One bad apple ruins the bunch. Besides being kicked off the fire crew, the inmate caught with marijuana was put in temporary lockup, otherwise known as "The Hole."

"Situations like that, when someone gets caught with something, anything, it makes the crew look bad," Gillibrand says. "But they're all inmates and they're all here for not being, well, they've all done things, and some guys just can't stop their criminal thinking. When something like that happens we all look bad."

	Fire Crew Supervisor Tom Gillibrand teases Holland Red Star about his immaculate appearance. "My work shirt is dirty," replies Red Star.

The high standard Gillibrand keeps with his crew, for the most part, has ensured them a very high mark with state fire officials. The Con Crew arrives on a fire with the reputation of working hard and long without a single complaint from any member.

In his memo to state officials, Vaughn reiterated his satisfaction.

He wrote, "While some crews will lose their focus and commitment during the later stages of a fire, sometimes even requesting release to their home unit, the Deer Lodge crew is more than happy to stay throughout the tedious mop-up stages of a fire. They continue to work hard, don't complain about adverse conditions and remain productive because they are in no hurry to go 'home' and want to do well so they get ordered again for the next fire."

Longtime DNRC employee and Clearwater State Forest Supervisor Steve Wallace seconds Vaughn's assessment of the Prison Crew.

"That crew works," says Wallace. "Those guys will bend backwards before screwing up. I've never had a problem with them."

For the crewmembers, the time spent waiting for fire season can't always be endured. Some tarnish their records and are removed from the crew. Others keep their records clean, which can result in acceptance into rehab clinics or half-way houses. Out of the fifteen inmates from last summer's crew, Crow Shoe, Paoni, and two others, Holland Red Star and Donald Deal are the only returning members.

Paoni remembers standing among the tall Ponderosas reading his Bible he keeps in his fire pack. Back home in Illinois he had a ranch with trees as tall as those and a young family. There's a long road back to that ranch and family, Paoni realizes, but he nods his head with powerful affirmation these days.

"When [my kids] get a little older, I'll tell them why I was fighting fires," he says. "I'll explain to them that I was in prison, because you know I got nothing to hide. I've done some wrong things and it turned out I'm learning from it."

"If I'm walking straight and narrow in here, I'm going to be a better father for my kids when I get out."

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