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.

Not me. I’m not talking about suicide for me.

An inmate tried to kill himself tonight.

_______________________

At around 10:45 I passed out the last of the phone cards to some inmates. I had them in my pocket from earlier in the night, but had forgotten about them since I wasn’t working an area.

I was looking at a nice night. When I got to work at 4, I was stopped by one of my Captains and asked if I could update some of the information in the jail website. We are changing visitation times, so she wanted to update the site to reflect that.

I started the website stuff around 6 and finished around 10:30. When I came out to booking, I realized that I still had the phone cards in my pocket, so I went around to the areas and passed them out.

I finished passing out the phone cards by about 11:05, and just as I was coming out of the C-unit there was a call on the radio for officers to respond to the F-unit.

The F-unit is the lockdown tank. The non-social types, the problem children, and the “just in from prison” inmates all get put into F-unit.

As I got inside the unit, I saw an officer standing by a door. He was calling an inmates name. (We’ll call the imate “Bob”)

“Bob, can you hear me?”, he yells, “Bob, are you alright?”.

Something in the sound of his voice and the absence of noise coming from the cell made my brain dump all of it’s adrenaline. Time slowed down.

Usually, in a fight, or when inmates need to be seperated, there is A LOT of yelling. Lot’s of, “F*^& you, motherf*&^er”, and maybe some “You had better get me out of here, or I’m gonna beat his A$$”, etc, etc. There was nothing coming from this cell. Nothing.

I ran to the door, and officer (let’s call him Cal) opened it. On the floor was a pool of thick dark blood. It was on the walls. It was on the floor. It was on the bed. It was in the sink. It was in the toilet. It was on Bob. It was everywhere.

Bob was laying on the bunk. I could see his chest raise and fall, so I knew he wasn’t dead yet, but I didn’t want to rush in, in case he was also planning on similar violence coming our way too.

I looked for something in his hands, and when I didn’t see anything, I came up to the bunk and looked him over. I immediately saw the gash in his neck. It wasn’t squirting, which could be a good or a bad sign. If he had severed the artery, it meant there wasn’t any blood left to pump out, and if he hadn’t severed the artery, it meant he was most likely going to live. I applied pressure.

You might be wondering about HOW he cut himself. Easy. We pass out disposable razors twice a week to shave with. A 12 year old could remove the blade if he really wanted to, and Bob was no 12 year old.

Other officers started arriving, and I yelled for someone to have control call an ambulance. Blood was everywhere. I was so glad I had kept my gloves on after passing out the phone cards.

Bob seemed to go in and out of consciousness. When he would come to, he would smile and tell us we couldn’t same him; that he was too far gone to do anything; that it was fate, and to just leave him alone.

At some point, my Sergeant grabbed a towel and put it on Bob’s neck. Since he was applying pressure, I started looking for a second wound. It was possible that the neck was only the first we saw, but after checking, I found nothing. The blood fully soaked into his pants had only come from his neck.

With all of the blood on the floor, the Sergeant got the other officers to lay blankets down. We were probably going to have to take him to the floor at some point, and sloshing around in all that blood wasn’t exactly something any of us wanted to do.

After finding a pulse, Bob started to groan and gasp. He was looking like he was having trouble breathing, so we pulled him onto the floor. I had Cal lift his legs to try and supply his brain with more blood. Bob came to again, and started praying in spanish.

The EMT’s and Fire-Fighters arrived. They tried getting an IV started, but veins were scarce. Bob came to again, and told us to stop sticking him. He started thrashing a bit and we had to restrain him to allow them to find a vein. It took a couple of tries.

With Bob stable enough to go to the hospital, we rolled him onto his side in order to get the “tarp” under him so we could carry him downstairs onto the gurney. I buckled him into the gurney and away they all went, with two other officers in tow.

By the time I left  work at 12:30, the officers with Bob at the hospital were saying he would be alright.

____________________________

I don’t really know what to say. It’s one of the worst parts of my job.

Here’s what I find interesting. At the door to Bob’s cell, I wasn’t freaking out. I wasn’t thinking about what a waste of potential. I wasn’t thinking how horrible it all was. I wasn’t thinking about the blood. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that this grown man was hopeless enough to, minutes ago, try and take his own life. I wasn’t thinking anything, except “What do I need to do right now to respond to this situation?”.

I suppose I should have been freaked out, and certainly there was a voice inside me screaming to me about all of the things I mentioned above, but it was like the screaming voice was coming another room. The screaming voice wasn’t the important thing at that moment. It could wait.

I suppose that’s one of the reasons I write; to let that screaming voice know that I know it was/is there, and that it’s all going to be OK.