About 5 or 6 months ago, I was the medical unit officer, and I was in the middle of my round when I noticed an inmate acting odd.

The guy acting odd was recently brought in for trying to stick up a lady in a drive through with a knife. Unsuccessful, he ran from the scene, to be caught some 3 blocks away. His attempt to steal money was most probably an attempt to secure funds for drugs. I only say this because he looked like a habitual user. Sunken in face, open sores… gaunt.

Anyway, this guy was looking odd, so I decided to stop and talk to him get his baseline or ”pulse”. He was pretty frustrated with himself, and said so. He said he felt horrible for what he did, and he was distraught that he was most likely going to prison for quite some time. He wouldn’t see his grand-kids grow up, and he would miss seeing his children grow into better parents than he was. It was a typical rant. The seeming clarity that always comes from a few days of sober living and in the face of felony charges. Of course, this didn’t mean there would be any actual change, but more of a lamenting his inability to do so.

After talking to the guy for a while, I decided to put in a request for him to speak with a counselor. He said he wasn’t suicidal, but he was clearly upset; he thanked me for taking the time to speak with him and have the counselor talk to him in the morning. I continued my round and a minute or two later, I was back in my officer “hut” writing his referral to our counselor.

There are 30 minute checks required on some inmates in our medical unit, and during the day, officers are only required to check all inmates every 60 minutes. This results in doing a half round every other 30 minutes, and doing a full round the other times. Since the medical unit is fairly small, I sometimes do a full round every time, since it’s not really that much more work, and it also affords me the ability to pick when I want to do just a half round.

It had been about 5 minutes since I talked to Odd Guy when my half round was due, and since it had only been a few minutes since I had been upstairs, my intention was to just do a half round. I didn’t need to do a full round, and there was no real reason I should HAVE to do a full round, so I set out with my mind made up that a half round was all that was going to be done.

I finished checking my half hour inmates, and started back to my “hut”, but then thought twice, and decided to just do it all again, even thought I really didn’t need to.

I went upstairs, and at the door of the Odd Guy’s cell I saw him on the floor looking like he was having a seizure. I tapped on the door to gauge any response, and when I got none, I opened the door.

Coming closer to Odd Guy, I could then see he had tied a noose around his neck, and was starting to turn purple. I called for officers…

“OFFICERS, OFFICERS, OFFICERS, TO D-UNIT!!! OFFICERS TO D-UNIT”

I pulled out my hook knife, a knife all officers carry for just such emergencies, and tried getting it under the noose, but it was so tight I was unable to do so on my first few attempts.

I then figured that any cuts my knife might make would pale in comparison to this Odd Guy dying from my inability to get the noose off. I tried a final time, and was able to just barely get under the noose to cut it off, while also nicking his neck in the process. A huge gasp was let out, and Odd Guy was breathing.

Officers arrived and we took him away to have suicidal protocols started. It was over. He would be fine.

Thinking back, once again, it is amazing how this Odd Guy was saved because I made the decision to do just a little more than normal. Had I been just 1% more tired, or lazy, or in a hurry, Odd Guy would be dead. I’m not attempting to tout my “great work ethic”. I’m not especially “above and beyond” material. I simply marvel at the fine line Odd Guy’s life teetered on, and marvel at the coin flip decision that saved him, or just as easily could have condemned him.

I sometimes wonder how many decisions like that we make daily.

 

Last week, I was in working in the medical unit. There are a trio of inmates in this unit who are seriously mentally ill. They see things that aren’t there, they talk to people who don’t exist, and some poop on the walls. It’s interesting, but not the most fun.

It’s inmates like these that I mostly feel sorry for though. Being locked up in a cell only makes their symptoms worse. Most are picked up because they stopped taking their medications. Since they come in with little to none of their medication in their system anymore, their ability to say yes to medications from us is severely hampered. Most mentally ill inmates refuse to take any medications once they enter our doors.

This fact causes them to downward spiral into a total loss of reality. There are times when they come back from the secret places of their mind and become lucid, but those glimpses are few and far between. Most of the time they just scream and pound on the walls and doors.

If they get too out of control, looking like they could hurt themselves, we have to take action. Usually, this action takes the form of placing them into the restraint chair, but often just getting them to comply enough to place them in the restraint chair forces us to use OC spray, or even the TASER. It makes me sad to use force on a mentally ill inmate, but if the alternative is them hurting them self, then I do it.

I’m not known as a “hug a thug” officer, who thinks the world could be a utopia if only there were programs for every inmate, but these kinds of people do not belong in jail. There has to be a better way.

I don’t know what the answer is, but warehousing mentally ill inmates in jail just doesn’t work. It’s costly, it doesn’t solve the problem, and the inmate usually re-offends in short order.

I know that other counties have enacted a “Mental Health Court”, which is like our county’s “Drug Court”. Our drug court makes offenders accountable to the court and allows them the chance to get their lives back on track, minus the drug lifestyle.

A mental health court could do the same kind of thing, but with the mentally ill offender. It would ensure they were taking their medications, and that they were taking care of their obligations. I don’t know the full details of what other counties do, but I would imagine that it’s probably better than simply locking them up all the time.

The problem, is that our Drug Court is woefully underfunded, and has had to seriously think about closing it’s doors more than a few times since I started working at the jail, so it’s hard to envision another court starting up to take care of yet another slice of our population.

If there is a better way, then we should be looking at it. One of my mantras at work, is to “Work smarter, not harder”.

Of all the officer assitance calls that I hear, I would venture to guess that 75% are directly related to a mentally ill inmate.

We aren’t working with the mentally ill population very smart, but we sure are working hard.

So, I suppose an explanation is in order…
I’ve been quite the busy little bee over the past couple of months.
I can’t exactly talk about what’s been going on, because it’s not really ALL about me, but suffice to say there have been some pretty life altering changes going on.

As far as work, it’s been business as usual. There’s the occasional interesting happening, but all in all, nothing new ever happens… ever.
One fairly notable thing was that I was threatened with litigation from an angry attorney. Interesting, but not really too scary, since I was acting in good faith, and in accordance with our policies. Still though, odd to see a little man become so angry over something I had no control over.
Something else I have found statistically interesting is that I have had to go to the hospital with inmates about 3 times in the past 3 weeks. No too exciting, but statistically very un-ordinary.
Thanks for reading. Take a look at the archives for some REAL tales from the jail.