Today I was supposed to be off of the floor doing extra work, which is a long way of saying I was working with computers for the jail.

Unfortunately, one of the printers I was working with ran out of ribbon and a certain sergeant I work for hadn’t thought to request any more. I could have probably worked on other things, but I decided to quit and work the floor for the rest of the day.

As soon as I got through the gates, the sergeant called a shift meeting. He wanted us to shake down G-unit because he had some information that there was someone with tobacco and a lighter in the unit. We had scoured the area the week prior and didn’t find anything, which was frustrating, but we don’t always win, so it was sort of nice to be able to try again.

We all went in and herded the inmates out into our yard to pat them all down. This was done to ensure that nobody had anything hidden on themselves. Then we set them all into a separate unit so we could search in peace.

For the next hour and a half, we searched high and low. We found the hand rolled cigarettes in the toilet, and quickly checked the video to see who our little smoker was.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able (or wouldn’t) to tell us where the lighter was, because he said it wasn’t where he had hidden it. I think he was probably lying, but he looked scared too, so who knows.

We also found tons of extra crap that the inmates aren’t supposed to have. We call this stuff nuisance contraband. Typically it consists of extra blankets, towels, sheets, pens, old food, etc, etc. Mostly stuff that isn’t considered a security issue, but they still aren’t supposed to have. We usually just take that kind of stuff and let them off with a warning, but today we moved some people out of the unit because we had already warned them the week prior.

Just as we were getting ready to let them all back into the unit for the day, I thought I would take one last look around. I’m glad I did, because I saw a place I hadn’t thought to look. It was a small void that was inbetween the wall and the stall door. It was a bracket to hold the stall door to the wall, and it was hollow.

I stuck my pen up into the void and felt something. I pulled it out, and stuck my pen in again. There was still something up there, so I yanked that out too, when out fell a rolled up piece of toilet paper. Inside the paper was a light blue lighter. JACKPOT!!!

I was pumped. Is it sad that I got a rush from finding a lighter? If it is, I don’t care. It was fun, and made the whole ordeal worth it. Sifting through 50 guys bunks and property buckets sucks, and it was nice to have that work validated. Too bad we’ll have to do it all over again next week.