Two nights ago, I was the booking officer again. As most of you know, I HATE this position, but have learned lately that I can at least DO it without feeling like I want to kill myself.

At around 6am, I got a call from the officer in charge that there was a suicidal subject on the 3rd floor that needed to be brought over to the new jail to be put on watch. I thought that was a bit weird since everyone over there is either on work release, where they get to go to their actual job each day, or they’re on work crew, which means they go pick up trash, clean things, etc., each day.

I went over and talked to the officer who told me that the suicidal girl was up most of the night, and hadn’t said anything to him about her death wishes until now. I went to talk to the inmate.

I asked the girl what was going on, and she started to answer me, then stopped and said, “Is your name Joel Treichel?”

I thought it was a bit weird, because I didn’t have a name tag on, and I didn’t recognize her at all. I told her she was correct.

She told me her name was “Dena Hunter.” WHAT????

Dena Hunter was a girl I went to high school with. Dena was a very petite girl in high school, so the heavier woman standing before me just couldn’t be her. Could it?

I looked real hard at her face and started to see the Dena I remembered. I couldn’t believe it. It was her.

In high school, Dena allegedly got mixed up in some serious “situations” with a male teacher. I have no first hand knowledge of this, but I also don’t have anything that tells me it’s not true either. It was pretty big talk for our high school of 94 students though. (yes, I said 94)

Anyway, I talked with Dena about why she told the officer she wanted to hurt herself. Apparently, her exact words were something like, “I just don’t want to live anymore.”

After talking to her for a while though, it was fairly apparent that she didn’t want to kill herself at all, only wanting to get out of work crew due to the workload. She said it was just too hard for her. Unfortunately, once the “suicidal bell” is rung, we don’t have an on-call mental-health person to un-ring it until the morning. This meant that Dena would have to go into the suicide suit and go on watch.

It was bizarre. I know that from time to time I will run into someone I know in jail, but every time it happens, I feel the same way. Just… Bizarre.

Last night I saw her in the normal female unit, so at least she wasn’t on watch anymore. I was right in my assumption about her suicidal ideation.

Our policies don’t allow us to make any judgment calls about the sincerity of suicidal threats. Once someone says anything that is suicidal-ish (I just made that word up), we have to act on it. Once it is said, the machine starts, and can’t be stopped. There are a ton of people who probably don’t need to go on watch. Most people are just pissed off and want to cause us some extra work. Interestingly, we could really care less about the work surrounding suicidal subjects. I do think the policy is a good one though. I would hate to be wrong about an assumption and have someone actually kill themselves. This way, the decision is out of our hands.

The only suicide I have personally been involved in was horrible, and I had dreams about it for quite a while afterwards. Suffice to say that it affected me. I can’t imagine how I would have felt if it was something I might have been able to prevent. With this policy in place, I shouldn’t ever have to know. Kudos to a good policy. (I don’t get to say that very often)