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Judge
Hatchet Show
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As
an Army National Guard soldier, Staff Sgt. Gordon
Spears has a day job like everybody else. Well,
maybe not like everybody else. Staff Sgt. Spears,
a Company C, 1st Battalion, 12 1st Infantry squad
leader, is here in Bosnia taking a break from his
normal job as a corrections drill sergeant |
at
Lee Arrandale State Prison in Alto, Ga. “It’s a maximum
security prison for juveniles,” said Staff Sgt. Spears.
“He is in charge of an intensive therapy program. It’s
modeled after a boot camp,” said Sgt. David Croft, with
Co. C, who also works at the correctional facility. |
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“It’s
for the kids who don’t mesh well into the prison
system,” added Sgt. Croft.
Staff Sgt. Spears has appeared on TV talk shows
in his drill sergeant role to help troubled teens.
“I’ve appeared on the ‘Dr. Joy Brown Show’ and most
recently the ‘Judge Hatchet Show’,” |
said Staff Sgt. Spears. “A mother asked the show to help
her with an intervention for her two sons,” he added.
“We call it ‘Scared Straight’.
The goal is to wake the kids up — to prevent them from
going to prison or dying,” said Staff Sgt. Spears. Before
he goes on the show, Staff Sgt. Spears studies a profile
of the people he will be in charge oL he said.
“The first thing we do is teach them the position of attention
and to say ‘Yes sir’ and ‘No sir’,” said Staff Sgt. Spears. |
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“We
get their attention right off the bat
the rest of the day and how they are going to per
f o r m while you are in charge of them,” he said.
Putting the trou bled teens at the posi tion of
attention tends to take away some of their agg ressiveness.
“A lot of these kids use their hands |
to talk. When you lock them up at the position of attention
they can’t move their hands,” said Staff Sgt. Spears.
“They
find it harder to act up because they are not used to
the position.” “Communication is eye-to-eye. I get right
in their face and let them know what I want. It’s similar
to the techniques used in the military,” he said. For
the Judge Hatchet Show, Staff Sgt. Spears traveled to
Chicago and took two teen boys to visit the city morgue,
he said. “Both of them had either been stabbed |
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or shot before, so we showed them photos of people
who didn’t get a second chance, said Staff Sgt.
Spears. “They saw the bodies of people who had beçn
stab bed, shot and died in car accidents.
The ladies at he morgue show ed them what would
happen if they died and had them lay in a body bag,
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said Staff Sgt. Spears. The purpose of this was because
they were flirting with death. “I spent eight hours with
them and Judge Hatchet". Staff Sgt. Spears spent
12 years in the Marine Corps and has spent eight years
in the Army. “Both services have helped me out a lot.
I’ve used a little from both services to get me where
I am today,” he said. “The training is to Army standards.
We do drilling procedures like the Army and the fitness
requirements are the same.” |
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Gordon
Spears © 1997-2002 |
