In The Dark 2

There I was, just minding my own business.... reading "Crock" on the Seattle PI's website, drinking coffee and trying to wake up. My morning routine.

Suddenly there was a large explosion outside and all of our power went out.

Snap! It very nearly scared the pee out of me. That was about 8:30 this morning. The power just came back on a few minutes ago.

I spent most of the morning out on the front porch reading a book and wishing I had a coffee pot that I could throw on the barbecue grill. May have to invest in one of those. Like the one in Sportsman's Guide.

I went in early to take a shower before the hot water cooled off too much. Fortunately, one of the purchases the wife made at that auction we went to a few months ago (aside from hundreds of books) was two boxes of little battery operated lanterns. One of them was almost enough light to shower by. I should have taken two. It's a good thing I shave by touch and not with a mirror or it would have turned into the shower scene from Psycho.

So now my routine is all thrown off. Pfui.

I'm going to go finish reading the comics.

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

Last weekend, while we had company, I decided to back myself into my little corner and read a book. They didn't need me for anything and it was too hot to go outside so I took the time out to read.

I don't get that opportunity very often. Not to sit and read an entire book, anyway. And it was a good one. "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein. My favorite author. And the book is ten times better than the movie was.

The book takes place sometime in the distant future when we have discovered space travel between stars and are using it regularly. This leads us to discover that there is at least one race out there who disputes our "right" to colonize the whole universe and this leads to interstellar war.

And what does this have to do with working in a prison, you ask? I'm getting to that.

At one point out hero Johnny Rico remembers a class he took in high school with a particularly tough teacher. An irascible bastard who forced his students to think instead of just absorbing data like little sponges. Mr. Dubois, the teacher, was discussing the end of our present way of government and one of the symptoms leading up to its downfall. He discussed the way we treated our criminals. I'll edit it just a little:

"Back to these young criminals- They were probably not spanked as babies; they certainly weren't flogged for their crimes. The usual sequence was: for the first offense, a warning- a scolding, often without trial. After several offenses a sentence of confinement but with sentence suspended and the youngster placed on probation. A boy might be arrested many times and convicted several times before he was punished- and then it would be merely confinement, with others like him from whom he learned still more criminal habits. If he kept out of major trouble while confined, he could usually evade most of even that mild punishment, be given probation- 'paroled' in the jargon of the times.
This incredible sequence could go on for years, while his crimes increased in frequency and viciousness, with no punishment whatsoever save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements. Then suddenly, usually by law on his eighteenth birthday, this so-called 'juvenile delinquent' becomes an adult criminal- and sometimes wound up in only weeks or months in a death cell awaiting execution for murder."

You know, when you look at it in that perspective, it makes our whole criminal justice system look completely insane. We certainly aren't "correcting" any behavior. All we are doing is keeping them off the streets so the citizens aren't bothered by them until they get out again. Every day there are more and more people going to prison and the recidivism rate is on the order of 70%.

In any other line of work, if you were wrong 70% of the time, you would be fired. They would say "Sorry Jim, but this is obviously not the right job for you. Maybe you should try McDonalds or something. Maybe you can become a meteorologist."

Shouldn't this be telling us something?

Robert Heinlein should have run for president. He wouldn't have wanted the job but I think he would have changed this country for the better.

Going to prison should be a punishment.... something to be feared and avoided. Not just a dull vacation.

I'll climb down off the soapbox now....

Crybabies

I know I've said this before, but I have to just let it out one more time:

WHAT A BUNCH OF FRACKING CRYBABIES! HOLY SNAP! GROW UP, GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF AND STOP ALL THE FRACKING CRYING! QUIT ACTING THE FOOL, GET OUT OF PRISON AND QUIT BEING SUCH A DAMN PU**Y!!!

There, I feel better. I didn't really want to shout that out in the wings so I thought I would say it here. If I said it at work some numbnuts inmate would file paperwork on me because I shouted at him and called him a pu**y.

I hope I didn't offend anyone's sensitive nature.

It just kills me. These guys are supposed to be criminals. The Billy Bad A**es that were so horrible that they can no longer be allowed to walk the streets. Yet one of them today threw a temper tantrum because someone else got 1/8 of an inch more juice in their glass than he did at dinner.

Yesterday it was because they didn't put enough dressing on his salad.

Give me a break.

And he said "Don't make me get a punk a** write up over some salad dressing."

What? Are you threatening to make me do paperwork? Hmm... let's see... I can spend the next two hours running up and down the stairs doing my job and feeding the house or I can go sit down for fifteen minutes and give you that punk a** write up because you wanted to act like a spoiled child over some salad dressing.

No fracking contest, dude! I can do that! In the meantime GROW THE FRACK UP!

That jagoff kind of irritated me, can you tell?

Stormwatch

I was going to post about an offender who has been giving us some problems. But he's not really all that interesting.

The man has bad hemorrhoids and he's been making a real ass of himself.

Ooops... did I just say that?

Guess I did. Nothing to do but go on from there.

We have tried to get to the bottom of his complaint, but he just ends up the butt of our jokes. He's being a real pain in the......

Well, you get it. I'll stop now.

Instead of the above drivel, let me tell you about my drive home last night.

It started out as a hot and humid day. As muggy as an oven full of wet bears. I was sweating even before I got down to the house and it didn't get much better from there. There were two lockups sitting on the bench and more on the walk and Peggy Sue was releasing some of hers at the same time. Chuck and I had to hit the ground running just to keep up.

In a nutshell, it sucked. I hate hot humid weather. It doesn't agree with me. If I had my druthers, I'd spend my summers in Alaska. Even if they do have mosquitoes the size of small children.

So after all the craziness had passed, Chuck and I did some rec. We sat out on the rec yard and wondered how long we would be able to keep them out. We could see the lightning coming closer and closer. We got sprinkled on a little bit, but not so bad we had to get raincoats or go inside. It was the lightning we were concerned with.

But we made it. It was a near thing.... the storm got a little close but seemed to be passing us by on one side.

Until it was time to go home, anyway.

As I was walking out of the parking lot it started raining harder and harder. Got pretty wet by the time I got to the truck but no big deal. The wind started picking up and as I was driving out I could see the stop signs shaking around on their poles. Going down the road the wind kept pushing the truck over to the side of the road.

Got onto the highway and the gusts were blowing me back and forth in and out of my lane. And the lightning kept flashing and dazzling me so I drove most of the way home with only one eye open. Had spots in the other one.

Every now and then I would hear a hailstone go "tink!" off of my windshield and every time the lightning flashed I expected to see a tornado. I thought about pulling off the side and waiting a couple of times, but I figured "What the heck?" I'd just try to get home.

I made it home (obviously) in one piece. And I never spotted a tornado. Nasty violent little storm, tho. Had my dogs all upset when I got home. Had to get them out and make them feel safe and give them a treat before they would go back on their beds.

My dogs think I'm a good dad.

And as to the picture at the top, "Stormwatch" is an awesome album. I was listening to it on the way home tonight as a matter of fact. Fitting. If you are a Jethro Tull fan or even if you aren't, this is good music.

Stay dry!

Not In My Chain Of Command

You know.... there's alot of people at work who can tell me what to do. Other officers. sergeants, lieutenants, captains, the major, FUMs, caseworkers, the warden, assistant wardens.... even the nurses tell me what to do and I generally do what they tell me to.

I'm pretty much at the bottom of the food chain as far as being ordered to do things. Anybody who isn't an inmate can tell me what to do.

It's my job. I'm cool with it.

But the fracking inmates are not in my chain of command. And they haven't figured that out yet.

"Go get me the sergeant."

"Get me some toilet paper."

"Go tell that nurse to come talk to me."

To which I generally reply "Go frack yourself."

But not in those exact words.

Any conversation that begins with a demand or an order pretty much ends up the same way. And they act all offended when I tell them to go get stuffed. It mystifies them. Many of them seem to be under the impression that because I am supposed to be nominally looking out for their well being, that I should be catering to their needs all the time.

Well, I got some sad news for ya, Binky! As long as you don't die on my shift, I could really care less about your welfare. And as for the rest of your demands:

Write a kite to the sergeant and he will see you or not as is his will when and if he gets around to it.

Toilet paper gets handed out on fridays. Hold it til then.

Fill out a medical request and the nurse will see you when you get on her schedule.

And until the day comes when you start signing my paychecks......

Go frack yourself.

But not in those exact words.

Thanks. I just needed to get that off my chest.

Lightning Strikes

And it struck again on day shift. Another use of force on the same guy as yesterday. Gunny. They took him up to medical to get x-rays since he seemed to have calmed down a bit. But on the way back into the house he started bucking again.

So he got sprayed again.

And put on the floor again.

At least it was inside on the smooth concrete and not out in the gravel like yesterday.

Knucklehead.

And now he's limping like he's horribly crippled up and in severe pain. He can hardly move and it takes him several minutes just to get up off his bunk for his dinner.

The problem with that is that I have seen him do this same thing before. And before it was just an act. He would act like he was in terrible pain for whatever... sympathy and extra pain meds, I guess.... But when he thought that you weren't looking, he'd be just fine. One minute he couldn't walk and the next he'd be doing jumping jacks.

So I don't know if it's an act or not. He's pretty banged up. But he did cause it himself so I don't really have much sympathy for him. As a matter of fact, there are two business cards I keep in my wallet and I tuck my sympathy for the inmates between those two cards. Keeps it fresh and wrinkle free.

There were some pretty active storms rolling through the area. I heard the warning tones on the radio and someone said possibility of tornadoes down south of us. We never got hit other than a little rain, but BG and I sat out on the rec yard and watched the lightning. Some of it was pretty spectacular. We went "Ooh!" and "Aah!" and "Wow!" like it was the 4th of July. But it was all pretty far away so we didn't have to quit doing rec.

A fair to middlin' good night, all in all.

And thanks to that blogging genius Guy, I am setting my posts to publish at 2:00 am. This way I don't have to try to be witty and brilliant first thing in the morning while I'm pouring coffee down my neck. I learned the trick from him. One of these days I'm going to discover exactly what time of the day I am witty and brilliant. I keep looking. Don't lose hope!

Someone Took The Wrong Meds

Hoo boy, day shift had them a time. One of our old knuckleheads from the wobblehead house whom we hadn't seen in awhile came completely unhinged. They found him sitting in his cell with his pants and boxers around his knees yelling "Hey, look at this!!!" over and over again. He refused to respond to orders and refused to be restrained and it just turned into a donnybrook from there.

Apparently they sprayed him at least twice and put him on the ground at least twice after they got him out of the house because he started kicking and fighting the CO's that were escorting him. Someone up front told me they rinsed the gravel out of his face with pepper spray.

Ouch.

He fought them for a good distance and then at one point refused to walk at all. So they called for the medical cart and they put him on the back of that rather than drag him all the way across the camp.

He refused to be treated by medical, even though the nurses said he needed stitches. He was still bleeding and still fighting when they got to the Hive and he refused to cooperate at all so they had to cut his clothes off. Then he refused to give up his handcuffs.

This was around 7:30 in the morning. When I got there at 2:00 pm, he was still naked in the cell wearing the cuffs. Refused to give them up.

Now, before anybody gets the idea that they beat this guy up for fun, let me give you a little background and description. We'll call him "Gunny", since he claims he was a marine and a Vietnam vet.

I know for a fact that that part is bullsh*t because he is younger than I am and I was twelve when that one ended. So unless he was drafted at eight, his "three tours of vietnam" were all in his head. He may or may not have seen some military service somewhere, but I don't know for sure.

Anyway, Gunny is about five foot ten and maybe two hundred twenty pounds of pretty much solid muscle. And what isn't solid muscle leaks crazy like a sieve full of catterpillars. When he is in his right mind, he works out and keeps himself pretty fit. And he is strong like only those who are elementally crazy can be. A very dangerous and unstable individual. Very volatile and prone to sudden bouts of manic screaming lunacy. And he apparently has a real bad case of OCD and if you throw him off his routine or displace the things in his cell as he has them arranged or knock him off his square just a little bit, you have a fight on your hands.

He snapped smooth the frack out.

I suspect, since he was just fine the other day and had been fine for some months, that he took someone else's meds and they just didn't agree with him. That happens now and then. We try our best to make sure they take them, but short of dissolving and injecting them twice or three times a day, there's not much more we can do.

So when I got there at 2:00 I naturally went in to look. He was back in the corner of the cell pacing in little circles and looked lie someone in a tiki mask had just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Not that he was the most attractive person to begin with, mind you. Normally he looked like a shaven bulldog with a curly toupee. Still covered in blood and pepper spray and still wouldn't give up the cuffs. I used to have a fairly good repoire with him and I tried to get him to come over and take the cuffs off but he wouldn't even acknowledge me.

A little while later ol' CC (Class Clown, remember him?) came down and got him to talk, but no dice on the cuffs. When that didn't work he bounced an idea off Sergeant Strings and came out to me and said "Come on Rev. Let's just go in and take them off. If he fights, we'll back out quick. But if he don't that's one problem solved."

So we went into the cell and he was still pacing in circles. I held him still (no mean feat) and CC tooks the cuffs off and we backed out and shut the door. We got the cuffs and nobody got hurt. Any worse, anyway. Gunny still looked like ten square blocks of abandoned Projects but at least his hands were free and he could get a drink of water or lie down if he wanted to.

One problem solved.

And this all happened before my crew even came down for the evening. When they did show up, I got a pleasant surprise. We were short people so they pulled our old slightly damaged pal Vinnie out of the control center and sent him to us. Chuck looked so happy and smug that he got his old running partner back I thought his smile was going to wrap around the back of his head. Even if it was just for one evening. Those two together for any length of time could wreck civilization as we know it. And the Gawds know they have tried.

After a rocky start, we had a fairly calm evening. If you discount Gunny screaming at the top of his lungs and The Preacher in the cell next door beseeching Gawd to alternately save and damn our souls.

Just another normal night in the Hive..