Poised And Ready

It hadn't been a bad night so far. We started out the shift with thirteen or fourteen beds empty. I've gotten to the point where I worry of we have no beds and I worry when we have too many. The way they have been locking them up lately it just keeps us running all night long.

There were a couple of lockups but KP and Ms. Straw seemed to have it under control. She's not real comfortable working in the Hive, but KP was keeping her too busy to get nervous about it. They were doing okay and I was keeping my ears open for anything out of the ordinary.

BG and I were out on the rec yard when I hear Lt. Strong come over the radio to our bubble to open the big gate and have a C-wing cell open and ready. Strong was shift commander tonight and I knew if he was bringing this guy down himself and wanted him taken straight to C-wing that there was trouble a-brewin'!

I hopped up and put on some gloves and watched Strong and two C.O.'s bringing this dude down. One of the officers was a female and since we needed to strip the guy out, KP stepped in and took over when they got into the cell. The other officer was Fireman.... not a bad guy at all to have at your back when something is going down.

Knucklehead starts acting like he's not going to cooperate until he gets a good look around at who is in the cell with him. KP and Fireman are holding him by the arms. Lt. Strong is right behind him. Sgt. LB and I are right behind the Lt. I can almost see him adding up the sheer weight alone, not even counting the pissed off expressions on our faces and suddenly he gets real compliant. I figure we had him outweighed by about eight hundred pounds. If he would have even flinched or sneezed he would have ended up looking like a toad run over by a semi.

And we were all just standing there, poised. Waiting for him to jump.

Behaving himself was probably the smartest thing that man ever did in his life.

I'm rather glad he did. That late at night.... on my friday... right before I started my last week of vacation... Ooohhh.... I would have really had to hurt somebody.