And Sometimes....

Sometimes we end up giving them exactly what they want. Take todays knucklehead for example. Another of one of those that I like to call "Killer P.C.'s". He's a real "killer" from the streets who wants Protective Custody from the yard. I looked this fool up and the whole time he's been in prison he's spent maybe a grand total or two months out on the hill and about four years in AdSeg. His file reads PC / Suicide Watch / PC / PC / Suicide Watch / PC/ PC / PC... It seems whenever they get ready to let this fool out on the hill he either catches another violation or says he's going to kill himself to keep from getting out because he's big and bad behind the steel door, what with being a high ranking member of the Ganster Disciples and all, but he's afraid to spend any time out on the hill. Anyway, he said he was in fear for his life from his cellie and when I told him we didn't have a single cell to put him in, he decided he would stay there and not ten minutes later we get a note from his cellie stating he was in fear for his life...... you get the idea. This jackass wanted to be in the cell by himself so he could pick and choose who would come in there (or so he thought).

We moved him here and there and he refused to stay in any of the cells we tried to put him in and I was getting pissed off. I finally figured out a plan to where we only had to move two people to get him in the worst cell in the house. See, one of his things is he likes to stand at the door when female staff are in the wing and wag Mr. Tiny around in front of them. I hope I don't have to spell that one out for you. So we put him upstairs in C-wing way back in the corner where it's hard to see and it's hard to hear and you have to intentionally walk in front of the door for him to see anything at all. Plus I wrote him up for refusing to go into those other cells. He wasn't too happy, even though he got exactly what he wanted. He's going to file paperwork on me and have his "people" call up and get me fired. I was shaking in my boots. And I believe I actually yawned in despair while he threatened me.

The next time he gets stupid I think we'll have a very loud discussion on the fact that he's been in P.C. his whole bit. Loud enough that the whole wing can hear it. That will take away any credibility he's got and if I make enough of them laugh at him, nobody will listen to his B.S. for awhile and he'll shut up. You either walk the talk or you keep your piehole shut.

Sometimes I'm too nice

Today was payday. Or, as some say "The eagle s**t today." My twice monthly pittance from the state. Arrgh. It still burns me at times. I have been told we are the highest trained and the lowest paid corrections officers in the country. I don't know if the highest trained part is true or not. I've never been to any other states and don't know how their departments are run. But I'd sure like to find out. I'm pretty sure about the lowest paid part. I've looked on the internet at other states and see what they pay. I could go to Idaho or Arkansas or flippin' Wisconsin and make more money than I am here! Every two weeks when I get my pay stub I tell the wife "Let's sell this dump and blow this popstand!" To which she sagely replies "Come up with the eighty grand we still owe on the house and enough cash to move with and I'll start packing."

Always the pragmatist, my wife is. I'd have been eaten by moles years ago if it wasn't for her.

Anyway, I stopped in to get my check stub and there sat my boss, right next to the lady with the checks, and she asks me "Are you going to the Christmas party?" To which I reply "No, I don't like C.O's" And she just smiles and says "Okay, you can hang out with me then. It's five dollars for you and the wife."

What could I do? It's the boss. And she's kept me out of trouble a few times already. So...

I fish in my wallet and give her my last five bucks for a ticket to a party neither the wife and I really want to go to. Sometimes I'm too nice.

What the heck. I might enjoy it. They say the food is going to be good and a few of the people I really like are going to be there. And I'll blow out the door before people start getting hammered. I don't drink anymore and it annoys me being around people who do. To excess, anyway. Anything more than a mild buzz and you are really going to get on my nerves, mister.

Sometimes it's more than just eight hours in the day. We donate food to the foods drives. I buy raffle tickets to support this or that. I donate blood when the red cross comes around. They like me, I'm a universal donor. They ask for stuff for needy families at christmas and we usually donate some stuff. I gave two leaf bags full of old clothes to their thrift store thing. I sign get well cards and retirement cards and birthday cards for people I don't even know. I've eaten more store-bought birthday cake in the last five years than I ever have before in my life. And I still lost twenty pounds in the last three years!

So the next time you see a corrections officer on teevee and he's one of them no-neck beetle-browed cro-magnon lookin bruisers they always seem to cast in our role, imagine him going to Wal-Mart to buy a teddy bear for a kid he doesn't even know. Or even better, stopping at the store in uniform on the way home to buy feminine hygiene products (Tampons! There, I said it! Tampons!) for his daughter. If nothing else, you'll get a giggle out of it.

P.S. Got two hits from Canada on the blog today! One from Moncton, New Brunswick and one from Whitchurch-stouffville, Ontario. And the Great Pacific Northwet is still leading the pack with hits from Seattle to Salem! This is so cool.

Business As Usual

I haven't posted in three days. Part of it is that I'm still in a funk from getting sick from the flu shot and then having to work the sixteen hour shift on saturday. That just throws me all out of whack now. I'd been having sleep problems for the last few years and finally went to the doctor about it maybe six months ago. I had tried all of the OTC things I could get my hands on, from warm milk to melatonin (or seratonin, whichever makes you sleepy and not darker) and nothing had worked very well. The doc finally found something to help me sleep and I went from three to four hours of sleep a night to at least six or seven. That was good. I was getting twice as much sleep. Then they threw me a curve and I had a night where I only got five hours of sleep at best and it just threw me all off. Not as young as I used to be. Why, I can remember..... well, never mind. Best to say I just haven't been on my "A" game the last few days.
Things have been the usual hectic craziness. Nothing extraordinary, just the usual. There's been a few close calls and a few tense moments, but nothing ever came of them and for that I'm glad. We've got another handful of newbies fresh out of the academy in the last week and I can see a couple of them that have that fire in their eyes like they can't wait to mix it up with these knuckleheads and show 'em who's top dog. They worry me a little bit. I know that look. I've seen it in the eyes of quite a few new officers. And in the eyes of a few that have been here a long time and should know better. I'll admit that look has been in my eyes before. When I've reached my limit and some knucklehead just needs a good thumping and you know that it's going to happen no matter what you do, then it's time to do it. But only as a last resort. That's what they don't get yet. And some of them never will. When you go looking for it, somebody always gets hurt. And it's not always the bad guys.

Caught!

Well, they finally caught me. After four years, someone finally noticed that I never had stayed over to work a double shift. They caught me tonight. They had never gotten me on evenings cecause I worked the 2pm to 10 pm shift and they would have had to get me out of there early. The state says we have to have eight hours after two shifts before we can return... It doesn't make alot of sense to me, either. The people that were there when I came in this morning were there when I left tonight. But I got put out on the yard and the yard sargent likes me some so it was a good night. But Lawd! I am tired. I am going to bed. It was nice to get out of the hole for at least a day. Saw some new faces and saw some startled ones, too. Some of my frequent fliers saw me on the yard and did some great double-takes. It was fun. But I'm gonna be one grumpy mo-fo in the morning when my alarm goes off at five, trust me. 'Night, all.

Pure laziness

I spent the day yesterday avoiding work when I could. I did what needed to be done, but I avoided putting in any extra effort. That's not really like me, most days. But when Sarge asked me if I had C-wing, I reminded him it was someone else's day for that. I took B-wing and stayed out of the drama and spent a good portion of my day out front smoking. Oddly, it takes more work to avoid work some days. I had to do both counts and both med passes just to avoid doing the things I had tagged as "work".

I pride myself in being a hard worker. I didn't always have that ethic. My brain is wired funny and some of the most obvious things only come to me after taking the long way 'round.

I think I'll try to take the bubble again this weekend. Sometimes that's more work and worry than being on the floor, but it doesn't "feel" like work. It's not the same old thing. And it gives me time to be alone in my head. All I do is tune out the noise and listen for the danger sounds. I've gotten good at that. I think I'd be a good bubble officer but I get physically bored up there and tend to eat too much.

Hmmm..... not a very interesting post. I'll try to do better.

I screwed up

Ok, I admit it, I screwed up. Not in a big way, but still...... Just another reminder I'm getting old.

Every year we have to take a TB test. It's annoying, but I can see all the reasons and they're good ones. In a closed environment like we have in the prison, diseases like Tb can run rampant. The test is always due during your birth month and october is mine. I had meant to do it the first of the month but one thing lead to another and the month was almost over before I could catch the nurse in her office.

Finally caught up with her yesterday morning and there was a crowd of people in there all in line. I joined the line and signed the papers she gave me and the next thing I knew she was giving me a shot in the upper arm. Then she said "Oh, you're here for your TB test. Well, you just got a flu shot." Snap! Got the Tb test right after that.

Sure enough, about an hour later I started feeling a bit run down. Then I got a headache and my throat started getting raspy. Then I began to itch. Not like hives or anything, just itchy. About lunch time people started looking at me and asking "Are you okay?" Apparently I was pretty grey.

And of course, it was tuesday, which is the busiest day of the week in our house. People running in and out wanting to have these offenders and those offenders pulled out of their cells so they can see them about this and that. And we were short-staffed so they pulled a guy from one of the other houses who was NOT happy to be working our house at all and they sent us one utility officer who took every opportunity to sit his butt down in a chair and do as little as possible. Not a good day to be under the weather. But we managed to pull it off. Got the guy from the other house replaced with another utility officer who liked working our house and liked working and staying busy. Managed to pawn the other lazy-duff onto the nurse and had him follow her around handing out non-scrip meds to the offenders.

I should have remembered from last year when I did the same thing. With the same results. Do me a favor. If I'm still blogging this time next year, send me a comment or an email and say "Hey Rev! Don't take a flu shot, stupid!"

Now I'm going to take some tylenol and go back to bed.

A paper tiger

That was me, today. The paper tiger. Mondays are my days for "the desk". And sometimes it's a more daunting job than down on the floor mixing it up. We have a total maximum of one hundred and seventy five offenders in our house. A, B and D wings are all two-man cells. C-wing is all one man cells. And whoever mans the desk has to keep track of all of them.

I won't go into all the intricacies and the designations of which inmates are which and how we break down the numbers. It would bore you and I would be typing for days. Trust me, it bores me and I know how it works already.

The delicate dance we have to do when getting an inmate into the house or moving one from one cell to another is somewhat interesting. There are four criteria that we look at closely when celling two inmates together. One is personality type, or AICS score ( I must admit I don't know what AICS stands for). The three types are Alphas, Sigmas and Kappas. You can put alphas and kappas together or kappas and sigmas together but you can never, under any circumstances, put alphas and sigmas together. Don't ask me why, I don't understand it. Some well-meaning fool will probably read this and decide I need a week-long block of training so I do understand it and quit embarassing the department.

The next criteria is Custody Level. One through five. One being the least dangerous and five being the most. You should try to get at least one but no more than two away in either direction, ie: fives with fours and maybe threes, ones with twos maybe threes, threes with twos or fours, etc.

Then we look at Mental Health Scores. One through five, just like custody scores. Ones and twos being "normal" and fours and fives you have to scrape off the ceiling with a spatula. Me, I think I'm probably a three. After four years in this house I have some issues. We try to stick pretty close in numbers with the mental health scores. Things can go bad quick otherwise.

Finally we look at what I call in my own head the KOI score. For what Kind Of Inmate do we have here? That designation is purely personal and everyone deals with that one in their own way. It's kind of like the sliding block puzzle post a while back. You can't put the flaming homosexual in with the nazi homophobe. You can't put the old head white biker dude in with the young black urban street gang banger. Technically, legally, we aren't allowed to look at things this way but for our own safety and for the inmates safety, we must. You just can't put the bible-thumping christain fundementalist in with the satanist. You can't put the white power survivalist in with the black muslim. It just won't work and somebody will end up getting hurt.

Then we have the boards. Four each, about three foot square with lines running across for each cell with the inmates names and their vital stats Name, Inmate number, AICS, Custody, Sentence, Violent or Non, Age, Weight, Medical Score, Mental Health Score, What House they are from, Why they are locked up in my house, When they got here and When they are supposed to get out. One board for each with with totals at the bottom. All this stuff written in grease pencil and sometimes changed several times a day. Even the colors of the grease pencils mean different things. Black is for regular GP or "General Population". Red is for Suicide Watch and Close Observation. Blue is for the fellows coming over from the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center. And green is used for special cases like "sleepers" who are just visiting from other prisoms but are back in our county for court or one reason or another.

Then we have the Breakdown Sheet. Just a piece of paper with more lines and columns representing the wing boards without all that information, just the numbers. And the numbers have to match precisely with who we have in the house at the time. The numbers have to add up not only across, but down as well and they have to match precisely with the same numbers the main control center has up front or somebody is in trouble. If you drop a number somewhere and can't find your error really fast, they will lock the camp down and count every single person by name and number until we find out where the problem lies. Because if you are off by one, then that one may have slipped over the fence somewhere and we don't want that happening. The numbers are important.

And finally, we have The Files. We have a file in drawers in our office on every single offender in our house. And it contains all the information on the boards and spaces to put down whether or not he ate, showered, went to rec, had a phone call, turned in laundry or had a haircut, among other things. And spaces to write down that he saw the pshrink and got crazy or was observed peeing under his door or threatening to eat the nurse. And spaces to put down what property he brought with him, such as sheets, blankets, magazines, etc. And all of these files have to be maintained in the correct order and be noted in several times a day. I would say that one eighth of our day in each shift in our house is taken up with maintaining The Files. When we get a new offender in the house, i start with a blank file and fill in all the necessary info on the offender. Then whoever puts him into the cell fills out the rest. One place has to be signed by the offender and two officers. Two other places by the offender and one officer. And it all has to be filled out correctly and then put into the correct place in the cabinet.

All in all, it wasn't a bad monday. Glad it's over, tho. Tomorrow it's someone else's turn on the desk.