Yesterday I caught a pirate trying to bring some booty into the work release area.

Ok, so he wasn’t “technically” a pirate, but he did have a patch, and a wooden leg. Well, ok, not the leg, but at least he had the patch, and that’s saying something.

Anyway, I was on the third floor at around 4:30, when a work release guy came back from work. We have to pat down anyone coming into the jail from work, so I went to do my duty.

The guy wasn’t acting wierd or anything, and in fact, I had talked to him in the past, and found him to be fairly pleasant. If I remember correctly, he was doing some time for a DUI, so not really the hardened criminal type.

I patted him down, and checked his coat, and then I asked to see under his patch. I have always done that with this guy, and this time I noticed that his gauze roll underneath the patch was a bit larger than normal. I asked him about it, and he told me that it was just gauze, and made a show of showing me.

I had him hand it to me, and proceeded to unroll it, when “whoops”, a small bag of snuff tobacco came out.

I looked at him, and he looked at the bag sheepishly, and said that it was just some Copenhagen.

I pointed to the door and told him, “Let’s go”.

I showed the bag to the program manager, and he had the guy sent over to the jail to finish his time.

I felt sort of bad for the guy, but I couldn’t exactly let him go. I figure that I will never catch everyone. I can search the very best, and still miss things, so when I DO find something, I am sort of obligated to do something about it.

I like finding things, but I don’t like the consequences of finding things. In fact, I have a court date next month because of something I found. I guess it’s all part of the job though. Lucky me.

Last night was absolutely awesome. I was booking. Wait, what? But I hate booking.

“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!