Stupid Stupid Stupid!!!

Ooooooo..... I got myself pretty worked up over this one. Somebody made a really really stupid decision and then didn't back it up themselves and one of my partners ended up getting hurt. It made me so mad I used language I don't use here.

And quite a bit of it.

There's this inmate.... he's almost infamous on our camp. I'll refer to him as "Wilt" because he looks kind of like a young Wilt Chamberlain. Crazy as a pocket full of crawdads. A real lint for brains. He's well known for causing uses of force in the past. Although Wilt is "Psychologically challenged", he is still young and quite strong. He's been a regular inhabitant of the Hive for as long as I have been there.

Well, sometime earlier in the day, young Wilt decided that today was the day he gets out of prison and nothing would change his mind. This is the day, this is the time, he's leaving and there's no discussion necessary.

They convinced him he needed to go up and talk to the captain first. So he went. Not in restraints or anything, he was just walking. On the way up to see the captain this bright eyed little chipmunk of a lieutenant makes a command decision and whispers and gestures to the officers to take him on down to the Hive. "No handcuffs necessary" he says. "It will be fine."

Right there he is directing the officers to violate at least three kinds of policy.

While they are on their way down the decision is made to put him on suicide watch so lieutenant chipmunk calls down to the Hive and tells them that. "And" he adds "you can put cuffs on him when he gets down there."

Another policy or two scoffed at and tossed aside.

Naturally, since Wilt has decided that he is actually getting out of prison, he resents the fact that they are trying to put him on suicide watch and lashes out. He ends up clocking my pal B.A. in the head. A fight ensues and he gets sprayed and slammed and wrestled and stripped out and finally left in the cell with a smock.

A bad, bad decision. B.A. didn't seem to be seriously hurt, but the fact that one of ours got hurt by one of ours making a bad call just makes it worse. We are supposed to be looking out for each other here, not just for ourselves. And because the lieutenant was too chickensh*t to tell Wilt to his face he was going on suicide watch and put him in cuffs then and there it made the situation worse.

The use of force was going to happen. What with the mindset that Wilt was in and the decision to put him on suicide watch it was inevitable. But the decision not to put him in cuffs as soon as he left the wobblehead house was intolerable. They knew what was going to happen and they just let it happen.

As long as that stuff happens down in the Hive, nobody cares. They expect that from us. They expect them from us. So if they see one about to happen, they want it to happen in the Hive. Not out on the yard or (gawds forbid) up in Central Suck where one of the big cheeses might get hurt.

I refuse to be expendable.

And my crew isn't expendable, either. We aren't roughnecks for hire. We aren't hired guns. We are professional, seasoned Adseg officers and expected to be treated us such.

If you have a problem, you deal with it yourself. If you stand up, we will stand behind you 100%. But if you want to yell "Charge!" and then duck down in a hole....

You might just find yourself in that hole by your self.