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.

The jail uses inmates to do quite a bit: they help make the food, they keep the areas clean, they do the laundry, they mop the floors… you get the idea. Not all inmates are allowed to work in jail though. Inmates are classified into different units, and if they do well (keep out of trouble, etc) they are allowed to become what we call an “Inmate Worker”.

This inmate worker status is fairly beneficial to the inmate because they get extra time off of their sentence. If they don’t get into trouble, the inmate will get an extra 1/6 off of their time. If an inmate is sentenced to 6 months, that means they would get a whole month off for being an inmate worker. In jail, a major bonus for them is they get double the food a non-worker would get. If the normal inmate gets one sandwich, the inmate worker gets two; if normal inmates get two sandwiches, they get four, etc, etc.

This is what happened today.

Today, I was eating lunch (we had just finished feeding the population) when I got a call from control. He told me that while the female laundry workers walked back to the laundry, they grabbed some food off of a spare cart in the hallway. WHAT!?

The officer told me that the cook had spotted it first, and let the control officer know, just in time to watch the second inmate worker swipe a couple bags of Cheez-its® and a sandwich. The control room officer told me that he listened to the girls after they returned to the laundry room, and heard one of them say, “That’s how I roll“, as she opened a bag of Cheez-its®.

I waited until my next round to confront the inmates.

I walked into the laundry room and told them that they knew what they did, and that they needed to pick out some greens (inmate workers wear blue). One of the workers looked at me like “What are you talking about, I can’t believe you would think I would do anything wrong”. I told her that I wasn’t going to say what it was she did. I knew what she did, and she did also. (I wasn’t going to explain what she already knew.)

The other inmate looked sheepishly guilty, so I pointed at her and asked if she knew what I was talking about. She said she did. I pointed out to the indignant inmate that if the other girl knew what I was talking about, she did too. Uh, duh…

So, I had them get some greens (what we call our normal jail clothes) and walked them back to their area. They asked me if I wanted them to put the food back. I told them no. I figured that they “paid” for it, they might as well get to keep them. I also figured that the sandwiches wouldn’t taste as good as they thought they would.

Just as I got to the door, I turned to them and said, “And that’s…. how WE roll.”

I could see a glint of a smile in each of their faces. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we had heard their conversation. Very little was said after that.

I know that the allure of breaking the rules is sometimes overwhelming. I know that sometimes there may even be a good reason for breaking said rules. This case just baffles me though. Each girl had full bags of food when I went to get them. They each had food left over from the last meal also. Why in the hell do anything that is possibly going to result in not getting out of jail as soon as humanly possible? They won’t get more time, but they won’t get all of their goodtime either. How stupid!

I guess this is an age old problem; Lack of forethought. Is it that easy to forget what got them there in the first place? Is it not a constant reminder to not forget to think before acting? I guess not. At least it wasn’t for these two girls. Jail sucks. If being in Jail doesn’t stop you from doing stupid things, then I don’t know what it’s going to take.

Overall, I had a nice week. It was fairly benign, yet interesting enough to keep me un-bored. Nothing is worse than bored Officers. Just ask any Officer on the receiving end of a bored Officer joke.

I was the control room officer on Saturday. It was about noon, when I got a call from a woman. I can’t remember her name, but for the sake of this post, I’ll call her Maggie.

The phone rang, and I picked it up:

ME: Cowlitz County Jail. Officer Treichel. How can I help you?

MAGGIE: Hi there, I’m Maggie Smith, and I heard my son was picked up a couple days ago, and was just wondering what his charges were.

ME: Hold on a second, and I’ll look them up for you.

I got on the computer to look at his charges.

Aw jeesh! They were all sex charges. Worse yet, they were all felony child sex charges.

I could tell by the tone of the mother, that she didn’t think the charges could be serious ones. She probably thought he was brought in on a DWI, or an MIP, not something like this. I was going to have to be the one who let her know that her little boy was accused of horrible things. I took a deep breath…

ME: Maggie, I am showing that your son is here on $50,000 bail.

MAGGIE: Wow, what did he do!? That sounds like a lot.

ME: That is quite a lot. Ok, here are his charges. (I take a breath, and try to sound as professional as possible.) He is currently being held on charges of Child Molestation 2nd degree..

MAGGIE: (cough)

ME: ..Child Pornography..

MAGGIE: (holding back tears) no

ME:..Sexual Exploitation 1st degree ..

MAGGIE: (audible crying)

ME:.. and Communication With Minor For Immoral Purposes.

MAGGIE: (she sobs) Oh no.  Oh my god. Why? How could he think that is ok? What do those charges mean? Oh my god.

ME: I’m so sorry.

I know that my job isn’t easy at times, but truthfully, this phone call was probably the hardest thing I have had to do so far. I just told a mother that her son was an alleged sexual predator. It was horrible.

I tried to explain what I knew, which was very little, and pointed her to the local law enforcement agency that brought him to jail. The most we usually know about someone’s charges is what we see on our computer screens; no narrative, or story to go with it, so my information was limited.

Maggie asked me how he could think that this kind of thing was ok. I tried to explain that these types of charges typically bring a lot of shame to the offender. There is a good chance that he didn’t think it was ok, but maybe got caught up in something that he lost control of. It was an attempt at some sort of explanation. I’m sure it fell short of the mark.

She wondered what it was that she did to cause him to do these things. I tried to tell her that at some point her son had to be responsible for his own actions. She can’t take responsibility for his actions. (By the way, I’ve been told that would be called co-dependent behavior.)

She said that he was such a good boy, and that he was taught better than that. I can only go off of my brief conversation, but I got the impression that she was a “good” mother, and that this wasn’t a result of obvious family issues. (I guess I could be wrong though) I told her that my philosophy is to do the best I can until I no longer have a voice in my children’s lives, and then let them loose to make their own mistakes, hoping that I instilled the right combination of values. She sobbed, and sobbed. How could I even begin to understand what she was going through?

To make matters worse for her, she was calling from a different state. I can’t readily remember where she was from, but I do remember thinking that she probably wasn’t going to be able to visit her son anytime soon.

At the close of the conversation I asked her if she had someone she could go and talk to about this. She was distraught, and probably needed to talk a little more than I was prepared to listen. I did still have my actual job to do. She said she did.

As I started indicating I was going to need to go, Maggie thanked me profusely for my information and sensitivity. It made me feel good, but not good enough to forget I just told a mother the worst news she had probably ever heard in her life to date.

MAGGIE: Thank you so much for being so nice. I really appreciate it. You have been so patient. I am so sorry for you having to deal with me.

ME: Maggie, I am so sorry. I can only imagine what you are feeling. It was a pleasure talking to you, and you are no problem at all. Call again if you have any questions.

Yes, she was difficult to deal with. Not for the reason she was eluding to, but because I absolutely hated having to tell someone such horrible news. She did call back later and asked about visitation. Maybe she was going to visit after all. She thanked me again for our previous conversation. I still felt horrible.