Blogging To The Oldies Pt 6

Saturday, October 18, 2008

One of the Bad Days

Normally, on evening shift, we have four officers on the floor, a sergeant, and a bubble officer. Two of the floor officers do rec after six pm, and the floor officers take care of whatever happens later, which is usually not all that much. One evening well over a year ago, we had a really bad night...

There was one of our behavioral knuckleheads over in A-wing who had continued to be a major problem for us almost every day. He had some mild mental issues, but most of his problems centered on the fact that he was twenty years old and still thought he was immortal and loved being the center of attention, no matter what kind of attention it was. We get alot of those.

Right about the time we were getting ready to feed dinner, this nitwit decided he was going to go all out and start his crap again, just to piss us off. He started banging his head and tied a sheet around his neck and said he was going to kill himself and if anyone came into the cell he was going to kill them as well. Lovely.

Myself and one other officer decided we should stay out of it and try to contain the rest of the house and get dinner fed while everybody else dealt with the knucklehead. Not the best choice for me, as it turned out. They had six officers, two sergeants (including ours), two lieutenants and another officer running a digital camera while this idiot thrashed and kicked and spit and bit and they held him down and tried to figure out what to do with him. The lieutenants were running back and forth to the office calling the captain and the major and the warden and the duty officer and probably take-out pizza while they tried to find a solution.

Meanwhile, we tried to feed the house.

As we were getting ready to feed C-wing, the bubble officer opened the wing door and this foul stench rolled out. I send the food service workers back out, smeared a little Vicks under my nose and went in to investigate. It turns out that two of the idiots on suicide watch had smeared themselves with bodily excretions and repainted their cells with the same just for our amusement.

So we pulled those two idiots out and locked them in the showers and called for the inmate who does bio-hazard cleanup to take care of the cells.

In the meantime, we tried to feed the house.

They were still playing with the idiot in A-wing and we fed D-wing and B-wing and they finally let us in to feed A-wing by the time the worker got done with the cells. We managed to get the two stinky idiots back into their cells and were going to go back to try to feed C-wing when the nurse looked up at the observation cameras and said "Look at that guy in two cell. Is that blood?" I could have smacked her right then, even if it wasn't her fault.

So back into C-wing I went and opened the chuck hole in the door and saw blood all over the place. I told the inmate to come to the door and cuff up and he just went and sat down on his bunk. I had no choice but to open the door and go in. The cell was smeared and spattered with blood and there were pools of it on the floor here and there. I got cuffs on the guy and took him out to see the nurse. He'd gashed his wrist open and was leaving a blood trail everywhere he went. The nurse bandaged him up and we got him sent up to medical about the time they decided to take A-wing jerk out to put him in a rubber room somewhere.

Called the bio-hazard guy back. He hadn't even made it back to his house before we were calling him again. A few minutes later the major calls down and says the guy slashed his wrist with a piece of metal but he claims he flushed it down the tiolet and would one of us be so kind as to go and look for it? Nice.

My buddy was kind of all-in what with all the new paint fumes and the blood and all so I decided I'd go in and look for the piece of metal. With tyvek suit and double gloves on (which is a grand combination if you are trying to lose weight) I searched every inch of the cell, even feeling through the blood pools to find out what the guy had cut his wrist with. I even felt around down as far as I could reach in the toilet drain. Nothing. Turns out he had done it with his thumbnail. I offered to remove it for evidence but they decided that wasn't a good idea. Then I let the bio-hazard guy clean up the cell.

Finally, we got to give C-wing their dinner about three hours late. A few of them started to complain but stopped when they saw the look on my face. I would have happily pulled a few of them through the chuck holes like pipe cleaners right about then.

Right about shift change time, my buddy and I got to go up and do all the paperwork that ensued from the nights hilarity. This also included writing conduct violations for the two budding painters that we had to go back down to the house to have read. I think I got home about four hours late that night and the repercussions from all the paperwork lasted for weeks.

It was a hell of a night.

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Heck of a way to celebrate the day after my birthday, wasn't it?

And I didn't half describe the chaos. The screaming and the kicking and the smell.

When I got home I took my boots off before I got in the house and dipped them in bleach. I kept a bottle of it by the back door then. I think I was up til about four in the morning after a 30 minute shower and trying to get my uniform washed.

Were I to get paid commensurate to the level of actual work performed and an added hazard bonus, I would have billed the state for about $500.00/hour that night.

I got caught up in nonsense last night and forgot to post anything. Sorry about that.

Today (Yikes! Tuesday, already???) is the National Polka Festival. It's also International Day of the World's Indigenous People, Veep Day and Tisha B'Av.