The last couple of days I have worn the taser. I don’t mind wearing the taser. I feel I have enough knowledge to know when it’s use is warranted and when it’s not. I’m not afraid to use it. I think that it’s a handy tool. Just it’s presence alone can calm some situations.

On Sunday, officers were called to the medical unit for an unruly inmate. Apparently the inmate had just been moved into the medical unit. He wasn’t happy about being in jail, and it later became apparent that a female officer telling him what to do was an apparent insult to his manhood.

Well, about every officer on shift skeedadled over to the medical unit to see a grown man throwing an absolute hissy-fit-tantrum. I mean, he’s stomping, and yelling, and creating quite the disturbance. It was business as usual sad to say. Tantrums are fairly commonplace where I work.

So this guy is brought out into the main hallway, and we try to talk to him, but having none of that. He is seething mad, and feels that he has every right to do whatever he wants because he’s “IN JAIL” (his words, not mine).

The tantrum started when a female officer moved him from the booking area. He wasn’t happy about having to get up at the crack of noon, so he started in on her about this, and about that. The injustices brought against him were as long as his arm, and he wasn’t afraid to tell you about them, whether you wanted to hear them or not. The poor officer was just trying to get the booking area cleared out for swing shift. I can’t imagine she knew what she was getting into, or she might have let sleeping dogs lie.

So, he gets moved into the medical unit, and is huffing a puffing. He flings open his door and throws all of his stuff into the room. Mind you, there are about 3 other guys in the room getting along swimmingly up until this point. The officer who was moving him saw the guy do the throwie thing, so she goes upstairs to let him know that he can’t act that way. People don’t like it when you disturb the quiet. It’s rude, and not really necessary.

Well, that was just about the last straw for this guy. He started in with the tantrum, and the injustice, and how could we treat HIM this way, etc, etc.

Well, we got the call, came to the unit, like I said earlier, and proceeded to walk him out.

In the hallway, he threw his bucket down on the ground about as angrily as he could, and started talking with one of the male officers who had responded. He told the officer some story about how the female officer was disrespecting him and calling him this name, and that name.

The female officer stepped in and told him that he was lying. He started clenching his fists then, and that’s when I took the taser out of my holster. I had never done that before in a real scenario. It was sort of interesting, to think that I might just have to tase the guy.

Anyway, long story short. I didn’t tase him. He was put away in the lock down unit. I’m sure the guy’s cell mate just loved us for that. He eventually quieted down, and I didn’t hear from him again, until today.

At about noonish, I heard some pounding coming from an area. I had just been joking with my sergeant that I hoped the banging was ‘maintenance personnel’ fixing something. Well, it wasn’t. Who did I see kicking his door with vim and vigor? You guessed it.

So, I go upstairs and step up to the window of the cell, which is shaking on it’s metal hinges, and I just stand there for a second or two watching the same grown man throw yet another fit.

When he looked tired enough to talk to, I asked him if he was finished, and if he was, if he could please not kick the crap out of his door anymore. According to him, he had been let go by the judge that day, and he was mad as hell that we didn’t have him out yet.

In his defense, the paperwork was taking an extra long time that day, and I told him so. I asked him if we left, if he was going to be able to not kick the door anymore. He told me that he was going to give us “1 hour to get [him] out, or [he was] going to test the limits of the door.” I took that as a “No”.

I opened his cuff-port (a small opening in the door) and told him to back up to it and put his hands through so we could handcuff him and take him out of the unit. Well, he did put his hand’s through the port, but only to flip us all off. (ahh, nice touch)

I told him that I wasn’t going to ask him to “cuff-up” more than a few times before action would be taken. He looked at me, and then at my belt. He took a look at the taser I was carrying and took a second to decide to cuff up. It was nice. He didn’t go quietly, but for someone who was only brought in for a warrant for Driving While License Suspended, he was awful close to getting tased… twice.

After he was taken to booking to wait for his paperwork, it was only about 5 minutes before it actually came. I thought it was funny that he had caused such a big scene over something that nobody had any control over, especially him.

He left without incident, and hopefully we won’t see him anytime soon. Judging by his actions over the last few days, however, I would venture to guess that I’m probably going to end up being dissapointed on this one.