“I know”, I say to myself, “but your fellow officers really stepped up and helped out without any need of threatened physical harm.”

“Oh yeah, you’re right. It WAS awesome”, I say back to myself.

So, I was booking, as you overheard myself say to… myself. Yet, I had a pretty good night. Wierd huh? I obviously thought so. But that’s not what I really wanted to tell you about.

Last night was busy, busy, busy. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the booze (the usual culprit). Maybe it was a secret government implant designed to incarcerate approximately 10-12% of the American population. The world may never know. Whatever “IT” was, caused lots of people to get stupid last night.

One particular offender really stood out though.

It was about 9pm when the control room officer told us that Kelso would be arriving in the sally port with a particular unruly subject. When Kelso PD arrived, we went to meet him and saw this little, tiny, young, drunk guy sitting calmly in the back of the vehicle.

Surely HE couldn’t be the need for officers to meet KPD in the sally port. He couldn’t be THAT bad. We had seriously underestimated his inebriation. He was drunk, drunk, druuuunk. On top of being quite drunk, he was accused of STABBING a guy! Well, I don’t care who you are, whether you stab a guy or not, getting caught stabbing a guy has GOT to suck. This guy was just beginning a long journey to a likely long stint in the clink. Fortunately, the guy he allegedly stabbed should be OK. It just wasn’t his night.

So, we pull him out, onto his unsteady feet, while he is telling us that he doesn’t want to fight. He is too drunk to be useful to book, so we put him into a holding cell out at booking to give him a chance to chill, and hopefully sober up a bit. Yeah, that didn’t work.

About 30 minutes after he was put into the cell, he decided that the door was his mortal enemy and needed to be pounded into submission. Since we like doors, we came to it’s defense, and put our guy into our restraint chair to cool off. He REALLY liked that, and it seemed to really do the trick.

Except for the continuous yelling and screaming, it worked great. It seemed that he hated Mr. Chair too. Fortunately, Mr. Chair didn’t care, and wasn’t a large black man, because our guy also seemed to not like the humans who were of less than European descent. What clued us into this little tidbit of info was the Pro-anglo/Anti-black songs he kept singing/screaming.

Not many of our bookings were this bad. In fact, most were quite easy going. Of course, a couple of the bookings offered to “quiet him down” by letting them go into his cell “for a minute”. Ohhh, if only that wasn’t against my moral code… or illegal… if only.

All-in-all, it was a pretty good night. Even with the bookings, and the drunkeness, and the occasional idiot, my fellow officers were awesome, and I can’t thank them enough. Booking can be brutal without help, but knowing the officers I work with, I don’t have to worry about that.

Go “A” team!

I was starting a round at about 1800 (6pm for the non-military-time minded) when an inmate handed me a medical request form. We call them kites: as in “fly a kite”. I took the kite, and went on with my round, and when I got to the next area I looked at what it said.

Some medical kites can be pretty entertaining. Sometimes it’s just the spelling, and other times it’s more about the actual “medical issue” they are having. I remember one kite complaining of starvation due to the lack of food. I think I might have “round filed” that one.

Anyway, the kite I was handed tonight said:

“I need to talk to the Sergeant, have medical call me out so I can talk.”

Interesting.

When I was finished with my round, I saw a nurse standing next to the unit the guy was from, so I asked her to stand by while I called the guy out. Once out of the unit, I walked down the hall with him towards the nurses station, so nobody could see he was actually talking to me, the enemy, instead of a nurse.

I asked him what he needed, expecting an issue with a cell-mate; instead, he told me that he had been asked to kill a guy.

Uhhh…

I gathered my wits, as they were in my shoes, and tried not to look too shocked. I asked “Gary” some details about what was going on, and he told me that “Seth” was testifying against “Bob” and a couple of other guys. Gary said that Bob knew that he used to beat people up for money, and asked him if he would “take care” of Seth by killing him.

At this point, you may be wondering if this is true or not. There are many times that I have been lied to while working at the jail, and I have heard some real doosies. This particular story had what I can only call the “ring of truth”, and although I was still slightly skeptical, I believed the bulk of what he was telling me.

Are you following? Let’s use some color codes to keep it simple

Ok, so we have:

Seth: The guy Bob wants dead

Bob: The guy who gave the green light to Gary to kill Seth.

Gary: The guy who felt blue about the notion of killing Seth, and talked to me

It seems that Seth, Bob, and a couple of other guys all got caught doing some nefarious things. Seth decided that it would be better for him if he told on Bob and the other guys in order to cut himself a deal and stay out of jail. According to Gary, Bob asked him to kill Seth a couple of days prior, and then Bob bailed out of jail. Gary didn’t say anything about it earlier because Bob was in jail, and there wasn’t much he could do to Seth from there. Once Bob bailed out though, he was now more capable and obviously willing to find a way to get Seth dead.

I took Gary to medical to have his blood sugar checked, and then had them take him back to his area. As soon as I got the chance, I called the communications center (what you probably call 911) and told them to send a deputy over to get this guys statement, and an hour or so later, they did. I talked with the deputy after Gary gave his statement, and he told me he also thought Gary was being truthful. Scary.

I can honestly say that tonight was my first time in a long time I have been shocked. It just goes to show you that no matter what, this job ceases to amaze. Who knows what’s gonna happen tomorrow?

Other people just pay the whole amount to the courts (via the jail). We call this “Cash Bail”. The courts will give the bail money back if they make all of their court dates. If you don’t have a high bail, or if you have a large savings account, this is the way to go. You don’t actually lose any money if you do what you are supposed to, and you still get out of jail.

Tonight, we got a cash bail for an inmate. The interesing thing is that it was almost all in quarters. $500 in quarters. You do the math. We had to count it all. Good thing we did, because they were 50¢ short. Cheapskates.

I love Skittles. I, at one time, owned a 3 pound bag of them, and they didn’t last quite as long as they should have. Well, my wife brought me dinner along with a small bag of skittles in honor of my first day of swings, and I made quick work of the bag, only handing out a few skittles to my fellow officers.

About an hour after my skittles fix, I started feeling them, and not in the good “wow, what a great sugar high” way, but the “uh oh, I think I’m gonna need a break to expel these” kind. I had to take about 3 extra breaks in order to purge my bowels of this candied delight. On one of these quick breaks I went down to the booking area. Mistake.

There was an inmate in booking that was just brought in. He was pretty obviously drunk, and didn’t mind letting everyone know about it. He also wasn’t happy, crying in fact, and let that feeling freely flow as well.

The booking officer was trying to get him to take off his piercings; he had quite a few. An eyebrow ring was causing him some particular trouble, so he decided that instead of unscrewing the end of the ring, he would just pull it hard… through his eyebrow.

Well, in keeping with our whole, “We can’t let inmates hurt themselves” motto, we stopped him from fully realizing his wishes, but not before he caused quite a bit of blood to flow from his newly minted tear.

Officers were on hand to keep his hands from his face, since he kept trying to yank on the ring. I came around the counter with my pliers, and when he saw me he started crying again, talking about how expensive the rings were. I sort of felt bad, but not bad enough to not cut the rings out of his bloody head. If we had let him, he would have yanked them all out, causing a great deal of blood and pain. Neither of which I like to see.

He ended up sobering up a bit after the whole ordeal, and even went to sleep a short time later. I managed to finish my original business, and sauntered back to the control room to sit out the rest of my shift. It was interesting to be back on Swings. I always forget that that weird stuff always seems to happen then.

Take tonight, for instance. I was the rover tonight. We had a couple of bookings early on, and after that there was 4 hours or so of pretty much nothing. It was nice. I commented to a fellow officer about the niceness of our situation, when suddenly we were knee deep in bookings.

I will keep my mouth shut next time.

Out of the bookings we had, 3 were suicidal, and one was a long-time recitivist. (is recitivist even a word?) Anyway, he has been to jail far more times than I can count on both hands. Tonight he was finally caught in some bushes after a lengthy foot chase.

It seems that this inmate, I’ll call him Lee, was trying to burgle some houses and got caught.

The funny, or sad (depending on how you look at it), thing is that Lee was having a pity party tonight. He complained of rib fractures, and of leg breaks, and of head-aches, and a “need to be taken to the hospital NOW”. According to him, he was beaten, and jumped on, and poor poor Lee was just misunderstood, because according to him, he had been told that those houses were OK to go into. He couldn’t tell anyone WHO told him that, but just that he had been told.

Our medical staff looked him over thoroughly and deemed him fit for jail. The exam took a little longer than it should have since Lee was fairly foul mouthed with everyone in near proximity. If he could see you, then you were a “Mother Fu****”. (In his defense though, I am married to a woman who is a mother of two. So, technically…)

Anyway, unfortunately for Lee, he also had some Meth on him, and when he ran from the officers, he didn’t exactly give up at the first available opportunity. You would think that someone who has been caught as many times as Lee has would know when to say when. If I was as bad at being an officer as he is at being a felon, I would be fired by now.

I have some rules I will follow if I ever decide to become felonious. Maybe I will write these down for Lee.

1. Don’t run from the cops unless, you know the particular cop chasing you:

a. has no radio.

b. is fat and out of shape.

c. doesn’t have a K-9 dog with him.

2. In the event that I don’t follow rule #1, I will:

a. not fight when I am caught.

b. not have drugs on me, or near me, or around me, or IN me.

c. run like I’m being chased by something worse than what is actually chasing me.

3. In the event I am caught, I will exercise my right to remain silent.

Of course, most of the population, like me wouldn’t BE felonious in the first place, but in the event of a moral slip, I think the above rules might come in handy. Just a thought.

Most of the bookings were what we call “commitments”. Commitments have already been sentenced, and typically they are only sentenced to 10 days or less. More often than not, commitments are only sentenced to 24 hours. These commitments get sentenced then ask the judge if they can report to jail at a later date so they can get some logistics worked out. If the judge is in a good mood, and they don’t have any reason to believe they won’t show up, he or she will allow it. We get about 5-10 of these every Saturday. We got 5 today.

Something else that happens every Saturday is what we call “Linens and Greens”. We change out half of the linens and clothes of the inmates in the jail; on Sunday we do the other half. Along with linens and greens, we also do “personal laundry”, which is exactly as it sounds. Most inmates come in with their own underwear and socks that we let them keep while they are in jail. If they want to, they can bag these up on Saturdays (and two other days throughout the week) and get them washed. It’s not fun, but it’s part of the job, and we always do it first thing in the morning so we don’t have it hanging over our heads all day. With the crew I’m with now, it goes pretty fast, which is nice.

At about 1pm, I went up to give a break to the control room officer. As soon as I sat down, I heard an inmate banging on a cell door, so I looked into our lockdown unit (the usual place to hear such noises). Inmate “Mady” (names have been changed to protect… me) was kicking and punching his door. His floor officer was in the unit talking to him, probably trying to de-escelate the situation. So I watched, and listened via the intercom.

Inmate Mady was having none of the officer. He kept kicking and banging, so the officer called for other officers to assist him. You see, we aren’t allowed to let inmates bang or kick or hit anything for very long. It’s very possible and likely that the inmate will hurt himself while doing so, and we are responsible for them. If it were up to me, I would let them bang until they broke a hand, then let them think about it in a cast for a couple of months, but seeing as we are charged with stopping bad stuff, not starting it, we aren’t allowed to do such things.

Officers understand the brief angry kick or frustrated punch. We know that at times an inmate just feels the need to do “something” to relieve the anger boiling inside. We don’t condone it, but we also know that brief instances DO happen. It’s the repeated, hard, potentially damaging aggression that we can’t allow to continue.

Well, officers arrived, and told the inmate to put his hands through the “cuff port”. A cuff port is a small opening in the door the inmate puts his hands through, so we don’t have to enter the cell and have a physical confrontation. It’s also good for other things…”the fogger”.

The fogger is a large can of OC spray. If you don’t know what OC is, think Pepper Spray times 10. It’s potent.

When inmate Mady refused to cuff up, we told him that we were going to fog him. He was warned many many times before the officer in charge directed the officer carrying the fogger to give him a 2 second burst.

Most handheld OC spray is the Stream type. It shoots out in a straight line. The fogger sprays a large amount of OC in a cone type.

The fogger was used, and the cuff port was closed. I told Mady, via the intercom, that as soon as he wanted to cuff up, we would open the port, and he could get out of the cell.

About 2 seconds later (literally) he was knocking on his door asking to be cuffed.

Now, there is a down side to using the fogger.

The entire jail smells like OC, and OC makes you sneeze and cough even in small amounts. It’s safe to say that the other inmates in the jail weren’t too thrilled that Mady needed to be fogged. If you can imagine the tickle in your throat that you get if you have a cold, that’s about the same as what smelling OC is like.

The nice thing about OC, is that from now on, Mady will do whatever is necessary to avoid having to get fogged anymore. It’s amazing, in a situation where OC use is threatened, the difference in action from an inmate who has been fogged before, and one who hasn’t.

The whole issue with Mady started because of personal laundry. Instead of giving his bag of personal laundry to the officer, Mady flung his onto a light hanging from the ceiling. He was told to cell in, and decided to get angry about it. All in all, pretty stupid, but that’s the job, and we do the best we can.

Then, out of nowhere I got a call from a friend asking if I wanted to fly to Reno for the day. Adventure, here I come!

At about 9pm, we flew out of PDX on a trip to pick up a car that was “too good a deal to pass up”, and it really was. The car was a replacement for a recently deceased subaru that was sputtered it’s life out in some horrible death throes. New car time for them, free Reno trip time for me.

Aaron, the now proud new owner of an Equinox, needed someone to accompany him to pick up the car, so that he:

1. Wasn’t alone.
2. Wasn’t mugged (alone).
3. Didn’t fall asleep at the wheel on his way home.
4. Wouldn’t get more physically ill than he already is. (trust me, you don’t want to know… ps. it’s not an STD)
5. ???????? ????? ????????Wouldn’t worry his wife.

Any of the aforementioned reasons are completely plausible, and probably equally important, but I was just glad to tag along for the fun of it.

We got into Reno at around 11pm, got our room in the Sands/Regency, and went to gamble our alloted gambling monies away. It took a couple of hours to do, but in the end, we went bust, and called it a night.

In the morning, we went to pick up the car.

The car was/is immaculate (save for a recently noticed scrape on the trunk), and we quickly paid the sweet woman who was selling.

She was moving to Costa Rica to be with her family, and was selling everything she owned. Her last major sale was the car, and it was visibly hard for her to part with it. She told us that she and her recently deceased husband had bought it together, just 3 years ago. It was sweet, and sad. We hugged goodbyes with the sweet old lady named Taffy, and started the trek home.

It was a great drive. No rain or adverse weather to worry about, no crazy drivers to swerve around, no real problems to speak of at all. It was smooth sailing.

I haven’t done something that impulsive since… I can’t remember, but I loved every minute of it.

Aaron says that he “owes me one”, but in truth I think it may be the other way around. I had a great day and a half, and feel energized and rested to boot.

Now, as Dr. Laura would say, “Go take on the day.”

I found a letter a couple of months ago during a cell search that resulted in charges of witness tampering for a certain inmate.

Now, tomorrow, on my day off, I have to testify that I did indeed find the letter. I wanted to get it over with today, my Friday, but alas, I am going to have to show up on my Saturday. At least I will get paid some overtime. Whether it takes 20 minutes or 2 hours, I will at least get 3 hours of overtime. Thank god for small miracles.

This past week was fairly uneventful. Sorry, but boring is good for me; bad for you.

I was in the control room, so it wasn’t like I had to deal directly with inmates all day. At around 1pm, I had to take an inmate to get some teeth removed (traditional METH mouth). Taking inmates to the dentist is like watching the discovery channel live. It’s fascinating.

Well, anyway, I had a good day at work, came home, and Jamie told me that I would be watching the kids while she played in a softball game. No problem. I AM SUPER-DAD.

I made the kids dinner. Good ol’ Mac-n Cheese, was the “special du jour”. They love it, and it’s easy, so double bonus.

After dinner, the kids played while I sat and caught up on computer stuff. They play pretty well together, but lately they have been a little testy with each other. All in all, they like each other though, and tonight they seemed docile enough.

Seth is still potty training, so we are always reminding him to go to the bathroom. He has really been doing well at remembering himself, but as the day inevitably wears on, he starts to forget and we have to remind him more. Tonight was no different.

At about 6pm, I reminded him to go to the potty. He went into the bathroom, when about 1 minute later, Ryleigh came running out, yelling, “Daddy, you HAVE to see what Seth did, it’s really REALLY bad.” (Serenity now, Serenity NOW!!!)

I walked down the hall to the bathroom, the same bathroom he flooded about 8 months ago, the same bathroom he dumped blue nail polish on the floor of. What possibly could he have against that bathroom? Anyway, today I walked down the hall to see him standing with his pants off, next to a fresh, still steaming pile of shit. It wasn’t the nice firm solid stuff either, it was the “I-ate-something-bad-earlier-today,-and-look,-there-it-is” diarrhea variety.

The nice thing about the bathroom, is, well, the bath. I plopped Seth into the bath, showered him off, and started a bath for him after the little danglers were gone. I (luckily) had some gloves in my work pants, so I used those and some toilet paper to scrape up the poo. I got it all up, and then used some bathroom cleaner to make sure the floor was actually clean. I then walked out the the living room and wrote this. Seth is still in the bath.

So, if you’re having a bad day, I hope you will use my experience to tell yourself, that at least your not picking up a slurry of human feces.

My Friday (your Monday) started fairly well. I was scheduled to be a transport officer. Lewis County and Clark County do a relay with us to get inmates to our surrounding counties, so on certain days, we transport inmates to and from each county jail. My job on Monday was to do this.

I absolutely love transport. It’s a chance to get out of the jail, and every second away from the hustle and bustle of the jail is a good time. Good for me, right?

Well, I strolled out to booking to find out how many inmates I was taking, only to find there was nobody. Nobody was going anywhere on transport that day. No transport officers would be taking anyone anywhere. Booooooooooo! Not cool. Bad for me. Good day, down the tube.

So I took the long lonely walk back to the locker room to take off my bullet proof vest, since I wouldn’t be needing it anytime soon. It sucked, and it also meant I would have to find somewhere to hide something else to do for the rest of the day.

Lucky for me, around 11am, Sgt. Frank told me that I WAS going to go on the afternoon transport after all. Whoo Hooo!! Some administrative snafu’s happened earlier in the day that got worked out which boded well for me. Yipeee!

Interestingly, when the officers dropped off the transport inmates they told me that one of the transportees had someone call and ask for details about the route we would be taking. Of course, the officers didn’t tell the person anything, but it was sort of unsettling. Needless to say I was a bit more aware of my surroundings on the freeway. Nothing happened, but it was just a bit freaky, ya know.

Anyway, it’s the weekend now. The week is done and gone. Good riddance, farewell, etc, etc. With only one day left of the weekend, I am staring in the face of my new week. Only time will tell how it’s gonna go, but one thing’s for sure… never a dull moment.

I know that people aren’t going to see my point of view on everything. I don’t expect them to, I don’t really even want them to. I just want them to respect my opinion and realize that sometimes what is right isn’t always what is best. Also, I am the “buck” for this website. Everything stops with me. I am the one who owns the site, and ultimately, I am responsible for what does or doesn’t happen there.

With great power, comes great responsibility.

Recently, an officer was promoted to the rank of captain. This person is married to the former president of our guild. (A guild is like a union) This former president served with dignity and honor for many years, and had a hand many actions that were a positive outcome for the officers involved. He recently accepted a position with a local law enforcement agency. According to our by-laws this former president is still a member of our guild: he is considered an “honorary member”. He has had full access to my officer website for the last month, and not one person has complained. NOW, in the last day since his wife has become a captain, he is considered a security risk.

I know all of the reasons to not allow him access. I know that he could show the captain the site if he wanted, and I know that people are afraid because of it. It just doesn’t feel right to kick him off due to something he has nothing to do with. He has proven himself trustworthy with some of our officers most intimate secrets. He has helped numerous officers with professional problems, and many officers have received benefits for things that he has done that they weren’t even aware of. He spent countless hours on his off-time dealing with officer issues, and never complained about it. Now, that his wife is captain, he isn’t to be trusted.

It just doesn’t feel right.

I also know that if the majority of people feel that the site is useless, as long as he has access, it will become useless. I am not happy about this. I am not excited to make a decision concerning this. Whatever I do, I will make people unhappy.

I have seriously considered shutting down the officer site. This whole experience has left a bad taste in my mouth, and it’s all because of something I have no control over. I just don’t know what’s right.