by D. Lawdog
The young man looked up and then promptly hauled butt into the surrounding mesquite thickets. More on this later. Heh.
Frank began inventing new swear words and stomped over to the Mustang, whereupon he Made Some Observations: A) The inside of the car reeked of gasoline; and B) there was a brand-new pack of road flares in the passenger seat; only there appeared to be one flare missing.
While we may be a Small Town, that doesn’t mean that we’re dumb.
Other deputy showed up, and together they got the Mustang pushed out of the way just before the fire department roared down the road and did their best with the conflagration.
Anyhoo, Himself came out and inspected the scene, and we found the back seat of the Mustang plumb buried under hand-written pamphlets, mimeographed manifestos, and other such niceties.
Seems like the lad had a case of the hips regarding “Energy conglomerates and the rape of the petrochemical wealth of the planet.” Or somesuch.
The sheriff sighed and had a reserve deputy and myself sit on the hood of the Mustang in case Todd the Eco-Warrior made his way back while the on-duty deputy got to drive up and down the FM roads surrounding the lease with orders to snatch any hitchhikers.
Let me see a show of paws from the people who have experience in North Texas mesquite thickets.
*snicker*
Mesquites have very long thorns, and they grow very low to the ground and very close together. In addition, mesquite thickets are the favored lairs of ticks, no-see-ums, wheel bugs, tarantulas, fire ants, red ants, spiders, and pasty-faced men with chainsaws. Not to mention that cactus, jumping-getcha, devil’s claw, and other antisocial plants also like thickets.
The wind doesn’t ever seem to get into the mesquite thickets, but the humidity does. And the heat. And here’s our critter, in his black no-dye tissue-thin batik cotton drawstring drawers and his politically correct black hemp guayabera shirt and his black cordura sandals.
Anyhoo, Bubba and I sat there juggling a can of Deep Woods Off for about twenty minutes before hearing this blood-curdling yodel, and we saw Todd the Revolutionary, black bandanna pulled up bandit-style over his lower face, burst forth from the mesquite in a buzzing gray cloud and sprint for the open driver’s door of the Mustang, ululating every step of the way.
We watched him cover the hundred or so feet at a dead sprint, and then Bubba casually reached over and pushed the door closed, causing Young Toddy to ricochet off the closed door and into the dust, much to the delight of the mosquitoes.
I waved the car keys at him. I supposed I needed to read the Anarchist Handbook because this was apparently a gross violation of the rules of the game. All five foot, six inches, 130 pounds of halitosis and macrobiotic methane jumped to his feet, struck a bee-yoo-ti-ful tai chi stance, and proclaimed, “It took six LAPD pigs to take me to jail. I’m not afraid of you!”
*snort*
He went to jail.
FILE 15: No Gun
The night-shift deputy in that particular county had been in law enforcement of one kind or another since the 1960s. Listening to him talk about how Things Used To Be Done could be a bit hair raising if you were a fellow officer. If you weren’t a peace officer, he’d tell Norman Rockwell stories about the Good Old Days. If you were a cop, he’d tell you how things actually were.
Folks that wax eloquent about how much better law enforcement was in the early and mid-part of the 20th century never heard that old boy talk about how the best cure for a kid giving an officer sass was a backhand to the mouth.
* * *
Eight o’clock one morning, and the night-shift deputy—a barrel-chested old man with watery blue eyes and a John Wayne drawl—had been officially off the clock for two hours. The pistol belt gets fairly heavy after a while, so he had been more than glad to take it off while he and I drank coffee and shot the bull as my shift started.
We didn’t even get halfway through the first cup when dispatch got a 911 call from the Housing Complex. Seemed that Alphonse Jones was trying to kill his mama.
I was out the door, with Mr. Ned hot on my heels, jumped in the cruiser, and tore off for the scene. In the excitement, neither Mr. Ned nor I noticed that he hadn’t put his gun belt back on.
We sailed into the neighborhood, and sure enough, Alphonse and his mama were rolling around in the street outside her house, slapping, hair-pulling, and screaming fit to make a sailor blush, much to the amusement of the crowd gathered around to watch the festivities.
Mr. Ned and I promptly parted the crowd and snatched up Alphonse and his mama. I had his mama over by the back bumper of the cruiser, trying to get a coherent story out of her, when I noticed that Alphonse was getting stupid with Mr. Ned.
“Alphonse,” said Mr. Ned in that low, slow John Wayne voice of his, “You get over to your Granma’s house. I’ll talk to you in a bit.”
“I’m staying right here,” yelped Alphonse, “You got no right to tell me to go nowhere!”
“Alphonse,” drawled Mr. Ned, “I’m telling you to get along.”
About this time both Alphonse and I noticed that Mr. Ned wasn’t wearing a gun belt. Alphonse had his back up, he had the crowd egging him on, and I was not seeing a Good Future for either Mr. Ned or me. I started eyeing the distance to the shotgun in the front seat.
“You ain’t got no gun, Mr. Ned!” crowed Alphonse, “You ain’t got no authority over here!” He started weaving in on Mr. Ned, hands not quite fisted and not quite up, but getting that way in a hurry.
“Alphonse, I’m not going to tell you again. You get in your Granma’s house, and you do it now.”
“You ain’t got no gun!” Alphonse was crouched now, hands up and open as he shuffled toward Mr. Ned. He jerked his head a bit, feinting. There was a sudden movement, and Mr. Ned had Alphonse by the shirtfront with one hand and the other hand fisted up by Alphonse’s face.
“What’s that look like to you, boy?” Still low, still slow.
Alphonse’s eyes crossed as he tried to focus on the Beretta Jetfire stuffed breech-deep in his left nostril. The silence from the crowd was awe inspiring—so complete that I could hear Alphonse gulp twenty feet away.
“L-l-looks like I’m g-going to Gramma’s house?”
“Git.”
You know, there really isn’t anything you can add to that sort of thing.
FILE 16: Masterminds
“Reno” was my partner at the time. A barrel-chested fireplug, he is one of the few people I’ve met with a more cynical view of the world than myself. And that’s saying something.
A “Lifer” isn’t someone with a Life Sentence, as several of my Gentle Readers surmised. Instead, a “lifer” is someone who has been in and out of the criminal justice system for so long that he is institutionalized and really doesn’t know any life other than the criminal one.
One of the things that tends to make me twitch about Hollywood is the fact that it gets “prison” and “jail” mixed up and figures that the two words are interchangeable. A “prison” and a “jail,” at least in Texas, are two very, very different things.
* * *
With complete, total and abject apologies to Mister Shakespeare.
Today on The LawDog Files your Humble Correspondent brings two extra-special examples of the Criminal Mastermind at Work.
Ladies and gentlethings, I give you Critter #1. For simplicity sake, we’ll call him “Richard.”
Now, although Richard had an extensive amount of documentation as to his status as a juvenile delinquent, Richard was still fairly young. He had, to his dismay, discovered that the ability to beat his mother and various girlfriends senseless did not count for quite as much as he had thought it might here in the criminal corrections system.
Damn the luck.
So, Young Ricky had decided that he had to gain some street cred whilst in the county. He had to prove—beyond a doubt—that he was hard in order to avoid becoming someone’s Bestest Buddy In The Whole Wide World, if you know what I mean and I thin
k you do.
Somehow, Ricky had decided that he required a tattoo to properly display his chops.
The story that is being held to is that Ricky had come to this conclusion all on his ownsome. However, Reno and I were of the mindset that the sum total brainpower possessed by Richard consists of one solitary neuron weeping all alone in the empty darkness behind his eyes. In other words, Ricky had some coaching to come up with this tattoo idea all by himself.
Anyhoo, where was I? Oh, yes. Young Ricky, full of enthusiasm regarding the respect he would gain by way of this tattoo, approached one of the lifers in his tank and requested that the lifer “ink him up.”
The critter meditated upon this and asked Ricky what sort of ink he wanted.
Ricky responded that he wanted a cross right in the center of his back.
Nae problemo, responds the critter, and they got right to it.
Richard thereupon spent some time being inked. There was hissing; there was gnashing of teeth; there was the plain and simple fact that Richard was getting stuck multiple times in the back by a staple that had no doubt been bled upon by every-stinking-body in that tank.
Ah well, the things we do for respect.
At last, it was done! Richard thanked the lifer, showed the tattoo to the tank, and struck a pose: there was applause!
Flushed with the happy knowledge that He Has Cred, Richard went to his cell to examine this princely work of art in the mirror.
Yet there was something… not quite right. As a matter of fact, the cross embedded in the skin of his back didn’t quite look like… that was not a cross-bar… it actually looked a lot like… a cannon? Or maybe two cantaloupes in a sack, draped over a pipe?
And then the Awful Truth dawned. Rather than the cross requested, he had received a depiction of the—how can I say this—defining anatomy of the male of the species? In magnificent, rampant glory. In ink. On his back.
Young Richard immediately exited his cell, impugned the character of the tattoo artiste verbally and at length, and then attempted to extract recompense from the hide of the lifer.
“Attempted” being the operative word because that long-term resident of the Texas Penal System promptly proceeded to stomp a mudhole in his recent client’s butt and walk it dry.
Which led to deputies breaking up the squabble with no little enthusiasm, followed shortly thereafter by the lifer, Richard, and Richard’s new tattoo getting tossed bodily into solitary.
*snicker*
Critter #2 was a member of a criminal street gang which had been tear-arsing around the county seat, pulling drive-by shootings, a knifing or three, and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down. And, by the way, I am reliably informed that if you can pry it loose, it waren’t nailed down.
Anyhoo, the locals got a bellyfull of this bushwa and proceeded to file a Gang Injunction against the most prolific of the gang, which included Critter #2.
As soon as #2 received his copy of the injunction, he decided that Da Law was keeping tabs on him, to include taps on his phone, pager and cell-phone surveillance, and so forth.
In this, he was faced with a truly troublesome dilemma: he was forbidden from associating physically with his homies, yet he wished to link up with his buddies in order to cock a snook at the judge who had issued the injunction.
How to do this without tipping off the eavesdropping fuzz? How?
By using his MySpace account, duh.
So he got onto his MySpace page, and he posted the details and waited for his posse to log on and to link up.
Huzzah!
Plans were made. Op-orders were written. Involved discussions on the best way to avoid getting nicked ensued.
And voila! They showed their defiance to the judge by taking pictures of themselves in a large group. One of them had the bright idea to write scurrilous opinions regarding the judge on a handy piece of paper and to hold it for a group photo while simultaneously giving the camera multiple International Peace Signs.
Wait! This was not good enough! How to properly chastise the judge? How?
Of course! One gang member got a copy of the paper and turned it to the headline about the injunction, and they posed for another picture, holding the paper high and proud while flashing their gang signs.
Take that, minion of the law!
And what better way to immortalize this deed of derring-do than to post the pictures on that very same MySpace page?
Yeah.
Did Critter #2 remember to make his MySpace page, not to mention the flagrant and obvious confessions to violations of the injunction, private?
What do you think?
These are the criminals I have to deal with. Where is my mastermind, dammit? Where is my Lex Luthor?
Dr. Doom wouldn’t have left a confession on his public MySpace page.
*sigh*
Oh, well. If they were smart, I’d be out of a job.
FILE 17: Shift Summation
My friend Kelly Grayson, also known as Ambulance Driver around the Blogosphere, has been involved with the Kilted To Kick Cancer fundraisers from pretty much the very start. For those of you who don’t know, Kilted To Kick Cancer is to raise awareness of male-specific cancers—prostate and testicular cancer for those of you who are less-squeamish than most—and involves those gentlemen wearing kilts when- and where-ever possible during the month of September. There is a fund drive and all of the usual. One year I was attempting to do my part and started posting end-of-shift reports I had sent from when I was assigned as a supervisor in the jail, with the caveat that if my Gentle Readers liked the reports, that they should donate something to KTKC, and I would post another report.
* * *
’Allo, ’allo.
Where to start…
Inmate J from the Swing Shift summation was still trying to get his books that the chief deputy had denied him; I imagine he’ll keep trying.
River shook down West/8 and had all sorts of fun. We found a pair of sneakers in Inmate X’s bunk, with no note in either his Misc Notes screen or his Medical screen; and we found a zip-lock bag of band-aids, triple antibiotic ointment, gauze, and all sorts of medical goodness where Inmate Q was bunking, but again, nothing in the Misc Notes or Medical screens, and no “May Keep In Tank” sticker on the zip-lock baggie. So, of course, we glommed onto them. After Inmate X threw a walleyed hissy-fit, I called the nurse to check. I’ll be a sonovagun, both of them had medical clearance for their goodies, although it wasn’t in their computer records.
Sigh. I had to remind Ms. Cleo to start taking my calls again.
In addition to the stuff above, we also found a water-bag cover hand-sewn from a sheet, a woven plastic handle for the water-bag-cover, half of a Diet Coke can, a complete Gatorade bottle, half of a Dr. Pepper can, a tattoo pick, umpteen squillion loose staples, a large garbage bag, about twenty feet of fishing cord, a fishing pole, a spare uniform, several extra linens, one of which Inmate T was sneaking in a very personal location, anatomically speaking. Yes, a whole sheet. I was impressed. And the usual flotsam and jetsam.
After the shakedown was through, as we were returning the inmates to West/8, Inmate N tried pushing Officer Oldskool’s buttons. Didn’t go so well for the lad, although he’s got enough smarts not to go far enough to earn a Use of Force. We might keep an eye on the mouthy little squab, though.
River did water-checks at 0319.
When we checked the temps, the Special Housing Unit was showing between 85 and 86, so I bumped the thermostats down a wee bit and had the purge run. An hour later, the temperatures were around the 80-degree mark.
Over at Central, the kitchen lost power about 0045-ish and got it back somewhere around 0245. Then, it went out again at 0436, came back, went out again at 0447, and came back about 0500. We were feeding bag meals to the inmates for breakfast.
Central/North did water-checks at 0458 and shook-down Central/North/1, finding a candle and a tattoo pick.
Central/Female checked their water at 0453.
>
In other news, Eduardo was proving to be a slipperier character than I had thought. He does remain unflushed at this time. Thing 1 gently requested that he be evicted from the control room before her next tour, which I believe to be this Sunday.
Personally, I was giving hard thought to handing the little bugger a radio and assigning him to the West Tier.
That should be about it.
Nothing but (appropriate) love,
LawDog, NCOIC
Bugscuffle SO
FILE 18: Kerfuffle in West/8
The shift summations were an immediate hit, although several Gentle Readers thought I must be exaggerating the actual reports. Nope. Other than anonymizing people, these are the word-for-word reports I used to send out.
The reason that these reports were written in such an over the top manner is that I hate being required to do something that everyone is going to ignore. If I was going to be forced to write a shift summation, then, by God, people weren’t going to ignore it.
We shifted report systems some time later, and I stopped having to do the reports. This was apparently met with much dismay from people who had gotten into the habit of reading my 0600 reports over breakfast.
* * *
Good morning, ladles and germs,
To start out our night at River properly, Inmate B decided to play possum after headcounts. He refused to stir for officer shouts and banging on the door, and when we went into SHU/23, he didn’t respond to shaking, tapping, or sweet nothings bellowed into his ear. I was trying to decide if I could creatively articulate getting a response with a drive-stun when, apparently, his telepathy decided to kick in, and he said Bad Things to us. Which was good enough evidence of being alive in my book.