Wow. Yesterday was absolutely crazy. From the beginning to the end, it was a frenzy.

On Saturdays and Sundays we do linen and clothes exchange. While the inmates are changing clothes and sheets, officers go through the cells looking for obvious violations and contraband items.

So what happens to me? The first cell I go into has a huge gash in the light fixture. The light fixtures are welded to the walls and are encased in metal. Someone had to have some sort of metal to be able to pry such a large hole in the encasement. Not good. An inmate with metal is dangerous. We bolt or weld every piece of metal down just for that reason.

So, my find started a chain reaction that ended in a total area search. This meant that every inmate was brought out of the area, searched, and set into a different area while we meticulously searched every cell from top to bottom. That’s not easy on the best of days, but yesterday wasn’t the best of days.

Before we got done with the rest of the exchanges in the other areas, a call came over the radio for officers needed in the medical unit. Aw geesh.

Our resident violent sexual predator was on the fritz. He has trial on Monday, and has been doing everything possible to get out of it. I don’t think it’s done on purpose, he’s just decompensating. See, the guy is about as intelligent as a 7 year old. He’s severely mentally challenged, and probably was abused tons while growing up, so he’s “not all there”. It’s sad, but it’s also scary.

Well, this guy tried to hurt himself, so we needed to get him into our “suicide suit” in order to assure he wouldn’t use his clothes to hang himself (something that HAS happened before). When the officer tasked with the “detail” tried to get him into the suit, he started to fight. Officers responded and we ended up putting him into our restraint chair to cool off and to stop him from hurting himself.

After lunch, we started doing our cell searches. We moved most of our inmates into our yard, some went into our group meeting room, and the rest went into our hearing room. It took about an hour just to get the inmates patted down and out of the area, so by the time we started the searches, it was about 1pm.

I started searching cells, and I came across a note in one inmate’s property.

It was a note from an inmate in a different area, telling the guy to lie in a deposition.

This is the second such letter or note I have come across in the last month. The first one was telling a person on the outside to testify to a false alibi. This one was having an inmate take responsibility for someone else’s charge. Can anyone say “felony”? Yep, lying in a deposition is as bad as lying on the witness stand. Not good.

Well, we called the Captain who told us to make a copy of the letter, put it back, and take the person who sent the letter to the lock down unit.

While all of this was going on, we received another call for officers to the medical unit. The guy who was in the chair that morning was now changed into our suicide suit, and no longer in the restraint chair. Apparently, he had stuffed some toiled paper into his ear far enough that it warranted medical attention.

This meant a couple of things. The guy was going to have to go back into the restraint chair, but before that, he was going to have to get seen by medical. The problem, is that he didn’t want to go into the chair, and getting him to medical would mean taking him out of his cell (a controlled environment). What to do.

I figured the best thing to do would be to keep him controlled before he knew we were going to put him into the chair, so I told him that our policy was to cuff up inmates going to the medical office. I lied, but he bought it, and we were able to put him in the chair after medical yanked the pieces of paper from his ear. At least it wasn’t poop in his ear, and YES, that HAS happened before.

I was one of the officers who took him to his trial today. It was pretty horrible. I’m not going to even talk about that. It’s just too much bad stuff.

Lot’s of other crap happened yesterday, but I figure the highlights would be good enough for now.

Have a good week, and Happy Monday.