Some Things We Take Seriously

I know that it's difficult to believe, working in a prison and all, that we do take some things seriously.

One of those things is if there is the slightest chance that somebody may have escaped, we check to see if we have all of our allotted amount of knuckleheads. At the slightest provocation, we will lock them all down and count them just to make sure.

It's frequently annoying and inconvenient, but it's a good thing in the long run.

This evening, just before I was going to switch out with the P-car, one of the other drivers (not brother D, but Gramps) found a pair of black nitrile search gloves laying in the road by the fence. And like he was supposed to, he reported it to Sgt Puddle who called Capt Walrus who said send everybody back to the house and count them, just to make sure.

It's all pretty much in policy and standard operating procedure and even a little in common sense. Anything in the way of gloves, clothing or blankets that is found anywhere near the fence raises an immediate suspicion that someone may have been trying to escape.

So they all did the right thing, even though it was inconvenient.

Granted, nitrile gloves are tougher than latex or plastic ones. But they still won't get you through the razor wire, no matter how many pairs you got on.

It was the captain's call and he decided to err on the side of caution. Not a bad thing, in most cases.

A thing like this starts a chain reaction, though. When we lock them down to count because there might be somebody missing, there's a whole raft of people that have to be notified. The major, the Warden (when we get a new one so whoever is standing in), the state and local police departments, duty officers, etc. It's a big deal.

But nobody was missing, so about an hour later we got back to normal operations. And all of the notifications got a followup message saying "Never mind!" Eh, it all works out.

Later on in the evening we had some inmate up in medical having grand mal seizures and they couldn't get him to stop. So we had to have an emergency outcount to the local hospital again. I've been to a few of his episodes and they aren't pretty. And sometimes he comes out of them fighting.

Tonight he had at least twenty seizure episodes that we knew of. The other night he went out with over thirty seven. That's extremely bad. When you start having that many you can blow blood vessels in your brain and break bones.

What I hadn't heard before was that he was selling his seizure medicine to some other inmate for cigarettes. That was why he kept having so many. I don't know this to be a fact, but it wouldn't really surprise me. Why anybody would want it is beyond me. Maybe it gives you a buzz or something.

If he's that stupid then we need to quit wasting our time and money on him. Maybe if he wakes up enough times in his own filth with torn ligaments and blind in one eye from an aneurysm he'll wise up and quit selling his medication.

But I doubt it.

We've probably spent more money on this fool and his stupidity in the last six months than I make in a year. If he'd just go ahead and....

Never mind. Saying things like that get me looked at funny.

I'll shut up now.

And for those of you who are interested, tomorrow is Waiting For The Barbarians Day. If anybody has an explanation for that one, I'd love to hear it.

Remember, dammit! It's rape, then pillage, then burn! Not the other way around!