ratsonjulia

sunday night at the prison:

there's not much to do on graveyard shift except count five times & go around with the nurse for Pill Call.

neither is a really big deal. count is pretty self-explanitory--you walk the unit & shine yer flashlight into each cell, count the number of bodies in there. technically, yer supposed to make sure that each shape on each bunk is a "living, breathing body"

with staff being cut down as it has, & the inevitable call-offs & what-not, I'll quite often have to count two units instead of one.

last night I was in Unit 6, which has 140 inmates--imagine that you have a dorm with about 70 students on each floor--half the rooms are double-occupancy & the other half are singles. you have to make sure that every one of the students are in their beds 5 times a night, & you have about 10 minutes to do it.

as far as "a living, breathing, body" goes--it's usually not hard. somretimes their up & moving around, reading, playing cards, watching t.v., sharpening bits of metal against the floor--whatever. sometimes they'll help you by wiggling their toes, arms, or (more often than not, especially in Lockdown) their cocks.

(I lived with a good friend in NYC for a few months who--long story I'd just as soon not get into right now--in a misguided attempt to wipe out a mountain of debt she'd found herself under, became a call-girl for the better part of a year. after a month or so of making goofy amounts of money that took some pretty good swipes at the Debt, she discovered cocaine & it pretty quickly became a matter of needing coke to do the job & needing the job to do cocaine. how did I fit into all this?--that's a story for another day....anyway, she described the job one time as being a bewildering, & very sad, parade of penises. being a correctional officer is similar.)

back to the dorm scenario: do you peek in, make sure that there's a form on each bed & move on? what if there's someone on the bed but they're all wrapped up in their blankets? do you bang on the window until they wake up & move?

you could do this, you're, technically, SUPPOSED to do this, but generally, you just take it as read that they're there, they're asleep--move on.

(part of it's a "Do Unto Others"-type deal. part of it's the common-sense type knowledge that an officer who spends all night banging on windows to make sure everyone wiggles their cocks or socks is just BEGGING to be propelled on, or worse.)

(propelling: the time-honored prison practice of expressing disapproval of another by hurling something at & on them: generally, but not limited to: water, food, urine, blood, saliva, semen, feces, &/or scalding baby-oil.)

anyway, you generally just look in & look for the shapes, & after a bit you get a pretty clear idea at a glance that All is Well or Something is Screwy Here without a lot of banging on windows & shit, & 999 times out of a thousand, all is well.

but, like gambling & condom-failure rates, sooner or later that thousandth time is going to come up.

monday morning I had to count both 5 & 6 for the 4:30 am count, the last count of the shift. I usually leave at 5 but i'd come in at midnight because I was told I'd have to qualify at the range (& was later told that I'd already qualified twice & wouldn't have to--which I wish they would've figured out earlier grumble grumble because it was a pain in the ass coming in later & leaving later grumble grumble) so I stuck around until 8 & helped feed the Unit ( heavy plastic trays, not fun), came home, dicked around on the internet for a whil, practiced the guitar for a while, watched Ghost World again--laid down about 1p.m. to sleep.

the phone rang about 1:10.

Lt. M: you, uh, counted Unit 5 at the last count, didn't you?

me (groggy):blrrgg. mmm. whuh?

he went thru the whole bit about a "living, breathing body" in each cell.

he asked me about cell 25B.

(for THAT count, we're talking about 96 cells, & almost 300 inmates)

me: mmmmmm...sure. why?
Lt.: Dude's dead. we're trying to fix a time of death. what do you remember about his cell, how he appeared when you counted him. [etc etc.]

(I couldn't remember a god-damned thing & kind of babbled a bit.)

Lt. Well, we're conducting an investigation & we'll probably be calling you back in a bit.

they did, & I had to go back into work to fill out a report. on the drive I formulated a much better response than the babble I'd given him to the effect that: "of COURSE he looked alive to me, otherwise I would've stopped count & alerted my Shift Commander, right?", which has the virtue of Covering my Ass & Being True.

when I got there, there were maybe 20 other officers filling out reports. mine was pretty terse & said, couched in reportese, that I was there, I counted him, & at the time it appeared to me that the dude wasn't dead. (even though he probably was)

after a little bit I realized that, out of all the cells I'd counted, his was one of the 3 or 4 that I took special notice of, that I knew EXACTLY who he was, & I remember I was going to ask about him when the next shift came into the unit, although I didn't get around to it.

why?

one thing: cell 25 is on the end of the upper tier. there are 24 on the bottom (doubles) & 24 on the top (singles): I usually count 1-24, go up the stairs, & then count 48-25 on the top. 25 is the one I finish with, the last one I look in on each wing.

second thing: he's had a note in his window for the past several months saying, most recently, "NO EAT" (before that it was "NO FOOD NO MEDS NO SHOWER NO YARD" , before that "NO MEAL" written in English, German, French, Spanish & [I think] Chinese.)

I'd assumed (one of those things that you assume to keep from thinking too much & hurting inside over things you have no control over) that he just had it up for breakfast, just had it up at night & took it down in the afternoon when he got hungry.

I'd meant to ask about that every day I counted or worked that unit. I'd meant to ask that yesterday morning.

but I didn't.


last night my partner in 6 said that he'd worked 5 for a while on day shift & he'd refused his food for all the time that he was there. on that shift they assumed that he was getting Canteen, or was eating in the morning.

(he was in for murder, life without, although I don't know any details. although a couple of minutes poking around on the internet could provide them.)

filed my report. walked back down to the gatehouse & got my keys. out the door & the passVan was there with him in the bodybag & squad trying to buckle him in for the trip to the hospital for an autopsy.

one reason, I guess, that I assumed he was eating in the afternoon was that he looked fairly big in his cell or, at least, didn't look like anyone who was starving. (I never had to shine my flashlight in because his t.v. was always on, sometimes just the blue off-channel screen--& he'd usually be sitting bolt-upright with his headphones on, nodding at the screen.)

but it didn't look like there was much there in the bag.

anyway. that's what happened yesterday.

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question:
Long journal entries are a drag, aren't they?