The LawDog Files

by D. Lawdog

  River did water-checks at 0256 and shook-down East/3. We came up empty handed, which, considering that our inmates were not that well-behaved, made me wonder what new hiding place they were hiding their stuff in these days.

  Central/North did their water-checks at 0106 and Central/Female at 0103. Central/Female also shook-down Female/9 and came up with several extra blankets. However, they also reported that while the trusties were in the visitation area during the shakedown, two of them got into each other’s faces. Seems like all was not happy in Trustieland.

  Tonight’s medal-winner in the D’oh! Contest was Inmate G in Intake. By all accounts the wee lass got nicked by PD for DWI, was delivered into our tender custody, and wound up in Detox/2 for Grand Mopery and Contempt of Cop (misdemeanor). Once there, she proceeded to throw one bee-yoo-ti-ful walleyed, ring-tail temper tantrum. As uncle to several sprogs betwixt the ages of two and nine, I can recognize true artistry in fit throwing, and this was One Of A Kind.

  She screamed, hollered, beat on the bench, spun in circles on the floor, kicked the door, all the usual, but what elevated this performance to High Art was when she took off her jeans and used them to beat the unoffending cell camera until the picture fuzzed.

  The intake crew, being the unappreciative Philistines that they were, took a dim view of this display and chained her drunk butt to the bench. One would have thought that this would have been the curtain call, but our Intrepid Damsel proceeded to take off her shirt and strangle her-own-self with it. Which got her stripped nekkid and placed on Suicide Watch as well as being chained to the bench. Goodness, I hope that was all worth it.

  As I wrote this, we had some kind of kerfuffle in West/8.

  Inmate M decided to remove himself from West/8. According to Inmate M, Inmate J sent another inmate to Inmate M to inform Inmate M that Inmate J did not want him in “his” tank. Goodness. ’T’Were I a betting man, I’d lay money that the inmate delivering the message was going to be Inmate T. I may have made a strategic error in moving those two from Central/North/6 a while back. Anyhoo, Inmate M was moved to West/1, and when I got back to River tonight, I planned to separate Inmates J and T; with a Separation Notation in both their records. And depending on my mood, I was liable to see how far I could spread the inhabitants of West/8 around.

  In other news, I discovered that a field mouse had taken up residence in the River control room. The kids named it Eduardo. While intriguing, I scotched the suggestion that Eduardo be sponsored through the Basic County Corrections Course; and as soon as I became able to snag his little butt, Eduardo would probably be taking a “vacation” by way of the Porcelain Express.

  Hmm. That’s about it, I think.

  In closing,

  LawDog, NCOIC

  Bugscuffle SO

  FILE 19: Contraband

  I’m given to understand that the throw-away joke regarding Mrs Lincoln got someone’s nose out of joint, but apparently it tickled the sheriff so much that nothing came my way about it.

  * * *

  Hullo,

  It was one fun evening out here at River. Right off the bat Inmate S in West/3 came up with a jolly huge rash and stated he was starting to have problems breathing. Nurse came out, did some nursing-type stuff, and watched him for a bit. He seemed to get better.

  Right after that, Inmate M and Inmate Y got into a fight in West/4. Review of the video shows that while it may have been mutual combat, Inmate Y instigated it. Both got disciplinary cases and were moved to other tanks. Then, Inmate R in West/4 started yelping about having something in his eye. We told the nurse, and he said to tell Inmate R to flush the eye with water and to try to go to sleep.

  Officer Slowyerroll has the sort of radio voice that would accompany a gentle pat on the shoulder and the words, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” so when he laconically asked if a supervisor could come back to SHU/19, I started grabbing every party favor I could find and hit the control room door at a high lope. Sure enough, Inmate Q had taken both covers off the power outlet in that cell and was into the wiring up to his knuckles. I’m here to tell you that it kind of made pointing the Taser at him a bit… superfluous. We settled for snatching his butt off the table and scooting him down to SHU/5, which had no interior power outlets for him to muck about with.

  Of course, Inmate K was the occupant of SHU/5, and of course, he had to be difficult about giving up his cell. Diplomacy won the day as Inmates K and Q swapped cells with only minor grumbling.

  I was feeling my oats a bit at that time, so I had officers tell East/3—on the down-low—that they were catching a shakedown, but if they threw out their contraband, the officers would try to talk me into leaving their colored boxers in the tank. Last I checked, the hallway in front of East/3 was ankle deep, and folks in East/3 were offering to trade commissary to East/4 in return for more stuff they could throw out.

  While East/3 was unloading their contraband, we hit the kitchen and the laundry. Came up with five chicken quarters, two sandwiches, and two Styrofoam cups of sugar hidden in various places. Then, we started on the SHU cells, beginning with Inmate C in SHU/16 since he had a fresh tattoo. When we woke him up, he was wearing a set of white boxers on over a set of colored ones, and he got kittenish about giving up the colored ones. I said not to mind, put him in the hall, and started searching his cell. Good lord. We got string, a magnet, string, four sparkers, string, and I’m pretty sure we accidentally dropped his tat pick into the light fixture trying to get it out. Then, we brought him back in, explained that the white underwear made his colored underwear contraband, and might we please have it?

  Inmate C was a bit of an oik. He got a case of the arse and told us we weren’t getting the underwear. Then, he offered to give us a proper thumping if we tried. I demurred and said that I wasn’t leaving the cell without the contraband, and Inmate C told me to go get rank. I checked my sleeves to see if I had remembered to put on my stripes, and Inmate C sneered for me to go get “real rank.” Further declared that we would have to go get the sheriff and that if the sheriff came out right then and right there and told him to give up the underoos, then—and only then—would he give them up.

  We got the boxers. Since he had more fishing line, a bit of paper folded into a weight, and two notes to and from Inmate F, who was at that time two doors down from Inmate C’s solitary cell, tucked into the front of his boxers. I guessed that was why he was such a numpty about giving them up. I went ahead and photocopied the page of the Inmate Handbook regarding colored and white underwear and attached it to the grievance he was demanding.

  River did water and intercom checks at 0339; Central/North did theirs at 0005 and Central/Female at 0158. Central/North also did the needful and shook North/7. Officers advised that they found the burned stubs of jailhouse cigarettes, but that was about all.

  Spreading peace and joy, I remain:

  LawDog, NCOIC

  Bugscuffle SO

  FILE 20: A Memory I Will Treasure Always

  When I was writing these Shift Reports, I had been reassigned to the jail and was working the midnight shift. Working deep mids gives you plenty of time to think, and, being of a philosophical nature, and having found a metric butt-ton of shanks in a couple of shakedowns, I started thinking.

  The Bugscuffle County Jail—and other similar facilities around the State of Texas and the United States as a whole—is pretty much just as close to the liberal dream of a total gun-control Utopia as you can get.

  No guns allowed, ever. No guns, no knives, no weapons. Not on the officers, not on the inmates. Full gun control. Period. Full stop. End of story.

  Granted, the Bugscuffle County Jail Special Housing Unit isn’t the gun control Mecca that, say, San Quentin or Pelican Island are, but one of my officers did get stabbed, non-fatally, with a golf pencil by an inmate at SHU some time ago.

  He was stabbed by this inmate, as a point of fact, because he was “the kindest officer” on shift that day. My paw to Freyja, that quote is
the absolute truth.

  Alternatively, an hour or so in a 40-man Max pod could be instructive. Again, while our Max pods have the same stringent gun control as Attica Correctional or Angola, we’re not quite the Gun Control Paradise those places are. Only a handful or so of our inmates have needed medical care after inmate-on-inmate violence. This year.

  So, I have to ask: if gun control is the panacea these folks think it is, why aren’t they clocking in to the safety, peace, and quiet of a boring shift at Sing-Sing or ADX Florence? Complete and total gun control means those should be amongst the safest places in the world, right?

  * * *

  Dear ladles and germs,

  To start off the night on a high note, we had water falling from the skies. I had heard the Old Ones speak of such a thing from days past, but I had never thought to see it with my own eyes.

  There were no leaks reported either at River or Central.

  Officers spotted Inmate C passing something from East/5 to Inmates R and F in East/4. Suspecting tobacco, we hit the tank, but Inmates F and R got to the khazi before we did. We shook East/4 anyway and came up aces when we found a bee-yoo-ti-ful tattoo pick in R’s property and a baggie of ink in the general area. To show my appreciation, we moved Inmate R to West/2 pending a disciplinary case for Possession of Tattoo Paraphernalia, shifted Inmate C one tank further along to East/6, and left Inmate F in East/4.

  Tier scuttlebutt has it that Inmates R, C, and F were getting tobacco from Inmate F2 in East/1.

  While we were shaking down East/4, officers spotted West/1 working out with a water bag, but they had an attack of the dumbs and denied having the contraband. Since I had a surfeit of knuckle-draggers handy, we overrode the doors in West/1 and retrieved the water bag. The startled faces in that tank were a memory that I will treasure always.

  Inmate H in SHU/6 got kittenish about chaining up for cell cleaning. I went down, and he decided to comply, but when it came time to remove the restraints, he decided to grab an officer’s hand and squeezed as hard as possible. That went about as well as might be expected. Then, he took out his frustration on the door to SHU/6, and I am told that the door to SHU/6 oft comes agley when beaten upon. Sigh. So we went back and took him to SHU/10. Surprisingly enough, he went meek as a lamb.

  Of course, a scant breath after getting Inmate H relocated, Inmate R (from the tobacco and My First Tattoo Kit incident in East/4) told officers that if we didn’t move him to a solitary cell, he would hurt himself. Despite multiple inmates advising that this was not the course of action he really wanted, Inmate R decided to insist that he would do himself an injury if we didn’t oblige him with a solitary cell. Okay. From the look on his face, I thought that the suicide smock was a wee touch drafty.

  The low West tanks started getting annoying about the recent trend of seizing their colored knickers and accused us of making rules up. I gave them the page number in the Inmate Handbook so they could read it for themselves, but it turns out that none of the low West tanks had any Inmate Handbooks. I printed up one for each of the low West tanks, and—rather kindly, I think—pointed out the page that stated that destroying the Inmate Handbook would result in the tank TeeVee being turned off for “an indeterminate time.” They got real quiet and stayed that way.

  Officer H managed to reopen a cut on her lip from earlier that bled like God’s own water faucet. We tried to get her to blame an inmate, but she wouldn’t follow through. Sigh. The nurse came out and got the bleeding stopped.

  Once that was done, Officer R sprinted through the River Control Room with his face a most unbecoming shade of green. Seemed the lad had eaten something that didn’t agree with him because he spent about ten minutes praying to the porcelain throne. After happily advising him to check for toenails and suggesting that he swallow hard if he felt something round and furry coming up, I told him he could go home. I am here to report that Officer R was a trooper and stayed.

  Intake reported that “Inmate M came back from the hospital at 0500.”

  River did water and intercom checks at 0311; Central/North did theirs at 0151 and Central/Female at 0112. Center/North also reported shaking down North/8 and North/4 but not finding anything of interest.

  LawDog, NCOIC

  Bugscuffle SO

  FILE 21: The Monster Inside

  Each of us has a monster down deep inside.

  It’s made of fangs, talons, and shadow, and it glories in blood, fire, and pain.

  It’s been a part of us since before we climbed down out of the trees, wrapped around our hind brains; it is there today, and it will be there as long as humans are human.

  It is, after all, one of those things that makes humans human.

  Some will argue that it is our intelligence that makes us human. Well, no doubt. Others will point out opposable thumbs, and they probably have a point.

  However, Gentle Reader, I put it to you that the ability to take a bit of rock, a stick, and some vine and to see what it may become in our minds is no more important than that monster lurking in our bones and blood.

  Yes, to take those items and to turn them into a spear is important, but what use is the spear without being able to walk up and stick it into the cave bear or lion or raiding Neanderthal or any of the thousands upon thousands of other bogeymen waiting to make early H. Sapiens into a brief diorama in some other species’ Museum of Natural History?

  Opposable thumbs enable us—as a species—to write sonnets, turn gears, build wondrous structures, sow, weave, paint, and do everything else that makes us… us.

  Before that, though, the monsters that live inside us used those thumbs to pick up stone axes, to walk into caves, and to Put Out The Cat so that our mates and our progeny could not only live but thrive without becoming Kitty Kibbles.

  It’s there. That monster is in good people, bad people, smart people, stupid people, big people, little people, brave ones, and cowards. If you are human, it’s there.

  Part of walking the warrior path involves reaching inside, grabbing your monster, and hauling it out to take a good, hard look at it because denial doesn’t make your monster go away. Denial only ensures that if your monster ever does try to slip its chain, you’ll not know what to do about it or even what it is.

  That’s the thing: those people who swear they don’t have a monster—when theirs gets loose, they don’t have a clue. Their monster runs them, and that’s a recipe for an unpleasantness.

  Man should always control his monster. It’s when the monster controls man that things get nasty. And you can’t control your monster with denial or ignorance.

  You can’t control your monster unless you know it. Unless you know what it looks like, what it feels like, what it feeds off… and what it can do.

  I once engaged in a debate with a young lass who swore that my assertions regarding the monster that lives in each of us were totally mistaken. Not everyone, said she, had a monster. Surely I didn’t think that she had a monster.

  In response I asked if she had a child or if there was a young child in her immediate family. There, indeed, was. A niece, of whom she was very fond. I then asked her to engage in a creative articulation with me. I asked her to imagine that she and her niece were in a room and that the room was empty of everything except one other person.

  She said that she could, and then I told her that the other person was Jeffrey Dahmer.

  There was a long pause, and then she stated that she’d obviously call the police. I responded that Jeffrey Dahmer was bigger than she was, stronger, faster—and, of course, a serial killer.

  I asked her how much she cared for her niece, and then I mentioned that there was a hammer in the room and asked her to think honestly about her response.

  She looked at me for a long time, and then I said, “Hey, look. Monster.”

  When she told me to go to Hell, I figured that I had gotten my point across.

  * * *

  Today, we had a young man come to jail for burglary. Not only was he a long-ter
m substance abuser, but he had almost mechanically perfect scars up the inside of both forearms from wrist to elbow.

  I spoke to him gently. He was obviously still under the effect of whatever the current recreational pharmaceutical du jour is but was coherent enough to assure me that he had thrown away any blade that he had kept around for the purpose of cutting himself. He told me several times that he wasn’t stupid enough to keep a weapon about his person while committing a burglary and seemed somewhat aggrieved that I would ask him such a thing.

  When the razor blade used by a self-mutilating, substance-abusing critter to carve multiple dozens of lacerations into the flesh of both his forearms slid through my nitrile glove and several millimeters into my right index finger, I knew exactly what that electric burn meant.

  My monster roared up out of my hind brain, fueled by such things as “HIV,” “Hepatitis,” and “LIAR,” and for a brief instant my monster filled my mind with visions of rage and blood, of crushing fury and punishing pain.

  Only for that briefest of instants, though.

  I ordered the critter not to move, informed the other officers that I’d been injured by a blade in his pocket, waited until they had secured the blade, and walked to the nurse’s station, blood dripping off my finger every step of the way.

  Later, the arresting officer sought me out to apologize for missing the razor blade in the critter’s pocket during his frisk and stated, “Man, I don’t know how you did it. If that would have been me stuck by that nasty razor, I would have smashed him!”

  Kid, I’m a man. I control my monster—always. My monster doesn’t control me—ever. Period. Full stop. End of story.