My Life in Law Enforcement: A True Life Story #16 Behind Bars

Hey guys! In my last installment, I talked a little bit about what it was like to go to work in a jail every day. If you missed reading about this unforgettable experience, you can read it here...https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-15-jail-house-blues

Now I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of the job functions that was required from a detention officer. We worked 12 hour shifts and rotated days and nights every month. Each shift had it's own set of pro's and con's. Day shift officer's would have to feed the inmates twice whereas night shift only fed once. Visitation occurred on day shift only and that was always a headache. Also during the day shift you would have a lot of extra stuff to pop up from everywhere like citizens needing fingerprints for a CCW application or job application. The grass around the jail/sheriff's office and courthouse may need mowing and that would eat up a few hours just right there tying up an officer and trustee. These are just a few examples of how day shift is much more busy than the night shift, ALTHOUGH, night shift was the ones that usually had to deal with the violent inmates.

WHAT IS A TRUSTEE, BANDIT?

A trustee is an inmate that is serving a sentence for a non-violent misdemeanor offence. An inmate will apply to be a trustee and a supervisor in the jail will look over his/her record to determine if they will be a risk or not. A trustee basically gets to get out of his cell to work or do specific chores. This is actually a very sought after position for inmates because "time" passes by much more quickly and they also get to be out of their cell much part of the day and possibly get to go outside. Trustees are used to serve food to the inmates also. Heated mobile cabinets would be rolled through the cell block corridors with an exact number of food trays in them. The trustee would hand out the trays to the inmates while the officer would keep count of the trays going in. The officer would have to pay close attention to this because every day an inmate would try to get an extra tray in the block. This would throw off the count and cause a mess, resulting in a cell search to find the extra tray. Trustees could also get their sentence reduced by being a trustee and not messing up while doing it. Trustee's are pressured constantly by other inmates to do things that are against the rules or law. Passing notes between cell blocks was a common favor an inmate would ask of a trustee. This was against the rules and if caught, the trustee would be locked back up in his cell without the possibility of being a trustee again. Passing notes may not seem like a big deal, but it's an effective way to coordinate an attack on other inmates or officer's, sneaking in contraband or organizing a possible breakout attempt.

DISPENSING MEDICATIONS WITHOUT A LICENSE!

I hated this part of my job the most! The first thing that an officer would have to do (if he was the one passing out meds) would be to get all the inmates medications ready and then go around handing them out. I often wondered how this was actually legal and to be honest, I don't think it was because the process was later changed. The officer would go in to the nurses office, sit down and look at a list of inmates that received certain medications. The officer would look at what they were suppose to get and at what time. The officer would then package the meds in to a plastic bag with the inmates name on it. This was a very time consuming process as you could imagine and it wasn't something that you wanted to rush through for obvious reasons. Once all the meds are prepared, the officer would go to each cell block, call for the inmate to approach the bars, get him to verify his name and then watch him swallow the meds. Some of the inmates would attempt to fake swallowing their pills by tucking them in between their teeth and cheek or by using sleight of hand techniques. The purpose for this was for selling the pills later or stockpiling them to take all at once. As I mentioned before, I hated to do this because I felt like I wasn't qualified to do that type of job. I didn't have a pharmacist license nor was I a doctor so I felt that I shouldn't be handling other peoples medications. As you could imagine, several problems occurred and the policy later changed to where a jail nurse handled all the meds and dispensed them while the officer just stood by for the nurses protection and to watch the inmate.

MAIL CALL!

As you could imagine, receiving mail was something inmates really looked forward to. But in order for the inmates to receive mail, a lot of work had to be done by the officer's first. First of all, an officer has to actually go retrieve the mail from a different location. Once the officer's have the mail, each piece of mail has to be inspected for either contraband or suspicious content. EVERY single piece was opened no matter who it was from. The only law pertaining to this is that an officer is not allowed to READ legal mail like from an attorney. Even though it's against the law to read legal mail, it wasn't against the law to open it. Many inmates didn't understand this and would become upset. The reason we had to open the legal mail was to be sure that it was legitimately legal mail and not a fraud. We caught several pieces of mail that was in a nice envelope with a law firms return address and the content was actually contraband. Criminals are extremely creative. We even caught mail that looked like something a child painted for his father or something and come to find out, it was narcotics that had been watered down and dried on to the paper, pretty clever huh? Once all the mail had been inspected, we had to pass it out which took a long time as well. You just couldn't walk in a block and give out the mail without being asked multiple questions from the block.

This completes another installment of My Life in Law Enforcement: A True Life Story, a series of chapters talking about my real life experiences going through rookie school and pursuing my career in law enforcement. I will post links to the previous chapters at the bottom of this page if you would like to catch up to speed from day one. Many thanks for your time!

@bluelightbandit