One LONG week

Since my wife has become a stay at home wife I've had to start working at least 6 days a week to make enough money for us to continue living the same life style. Let me interpret my last sentence for all you non-triathletes out there. We cut back on everything except bike equipment, running shoes, gels, Bars, sports drinks, & race entry fees. Why did I fall in love with one of the most expensive sports in history?

Most of the time I like my job. Most of the time I find it challenging, exciting, and look forward to getting on duty to see what interesting thing will happen during that shift. But this week was one of those weeks that tested my patience, made me question what I'm doing with my life. Why the heck am I working in a place where people would jump at the opportunity to kill me. I've had multiple attempt on my life there and I keep going back. Apparently Mama did raise a fool. Here at the State Penitentiary we recently got a new Warden. I really like this new Warden & expect that he will reverse allot of the problems that has developed over the last 3 years. I've worked at the Penitentiary of New Mexico for 12.5 years & this is by far the worse I've ever seen this place. Its not the new Wardens fault that the place has a ridiculous amount of problems even compared to other prisons that have bad reputations. He inherited the issues from the last Warden who was given the choice of quitting or being fired. The last Warden ran this place into the ground.

In the last month we've had 3 education personnel, & 1 officer fired for bringing in banned substances or contraband to inmates. 1 inmate committed suicide, one officer had his throat cut wide open (somehow the jugular was the only thing on the right side of his neck that didn't get sliced wide open), one inmate was stabbed 83 times in the chest, neck, face & eyes, 10 officers has had urine or fecal matter thrown in their face, in the last 5 days we've had 2 inmate overdoses, & 4 correctional officers terminated for excessive force. That would be allot for even a large prison. The facility I work at has less than a thousand inmates and 240 security staff (also known as guards, but don't ever call a corrections officer a guard, WE HATE THAT). That's a very small population of inmates to have so many problems. While working inside the prison we have to do unit checks every half hour. While doing our unit checks we have to insure all the inmates are in their cells & alive. If an inmate ever dies, kills himself, kills someone else, escapes, or is found with any contraband in his possession or cell the officer on duty is held responsible. The last 4 days I was able to work at St. Vincent's hospital watching one of 2 inmates who are there for overdosing. I usually love hospital duty because my only job at the hospital is to make sure the inmate doesn't escape or kill someone. The inmates health is solely the hospitals duty. That's less responsibility for me. I'm all for avoiding responsibility. Speaking of avoiding responsibility, here's a story on how I avoid responsibility. I run & bike along highway 14 when I train. The prison has trusties (inmates who are getting out of prison soon so its assumed they won't do anything to affect their upcoming release) who keep the roads and areas surrounding the prison clear of trash. The inmates often times have their family or friends drop off drugs, knives, & other things onto the side of the road where the inmates will be working the following day so that the trustees can pick up the contraband that was dropped off. The inmate then keesters the contraband (keester means to hide the object in his rectal cavity) to smuggle it into the prison. During my run today I found a steak knife on the side of the road that was completely wrapped up in Saran Wrap. The reason it was dropped off pre-wrapped was so that the inmate could insert the knife into his butt as soon as he found the knife without worrying about cutting up his insides. The officers assigned are supposed to the conduct periodic strip searches & pat downs throughout the day to try & prevent the smuggling of items into the institution. By Federal law only medical personnel can conduct body cavity searches, not that I have any desire to do that, I just mentioned that so you'd understand the limits of our duties. So, back to my story of avoiding responsibility; as soon as I found this knife I ran back to the traffic control building & handed the knife to the officer on duty(he's a rookie, or he would not have fallen for this). Its human nature to grab something from someone when its offered to you. As soon as I handed the officer on duty the shank I had found I said "What's that in your hand?" He said,"uh, I looks like a knife. Why you'd give it to me?" I said, "Wow, you found a shank while on duty? You realize you'll probably get a letter of accommodation for that right?" "Really?"
"Ya, call the supervisor from your facility & show him where you found it, but leave my name out of it because I'm off duty."
"Ok. Gee, thanks. I owe you one. Why don't you want credit for this?" the Fish asked me. We call new guys fish rather than Fu@&ing new guy. New officers seem to prefer the name Rookie, but that would be too nice. So handing off the knife & all responsibility, I continued on my run & I knew he felt this was a win win situation. We kept a dangerous weapon out of the prison, he gets to get a pat on the back, & I don't have to worry about going into work & completing 4 hrs of paper work. The bad news is that he'll be in work late tonight filling out paper paper work, keeping track of the evidence, etc. Its a win win for me, not him. I guarantee you he'll be upset with me for awhile, but I justify my actions by telling myself I taught him a very valuable lesson. Hehehe. 2 weeks ago I did the same thing to my Captain who was on duty. I saw a silver pipe on the side of the road with a green, leafy substance in it. I went up to the Captain on duty, held out my hand with the pipe in it hoping he would take it. When he didn't take it I said "hey Captain, can you smell this & tell me what you think it is?" He took it & started to raise it to his nose, I turned around & headed back onto my run. He knew he'd been had. I heard my Capt yelling obscenities at me for at least a quarter mile. Guys been there for 23 years. He should know better. I'm full of lessons this week. I guess I'm a teacher at heart. Haha!

I appear to be bouncing around allot on my post today. I'll attempt to refocus on my hospital duty; because of the danger level of the inmate at the hospital he had two officers with him at all times. This inmate has priors for everything from murder, throwing urine & feces in officers faces, & rape. He had grabbed a needle from a nurse once who had just given him a shot & stabbed her with it. She now has Hepatitis C because of him. He's a bad man. Scum of the earth. Not only was the inmate very dangerous, but to make it even worse he's a cry baby to boot. Working with him would of been bad enough, but the officer I was working with was equally annoying. I was ready to chew my own arm off to escape by the end of the night. The inmate kept crying all night long, saying things like "I don't feel good. I hurt. I want go home. I don't know why trouble always follows me. I rarely do anything wrong, but I seem to be the only one getting caught. If I'd of had the same opportunities in life you did I'd of been successful too." I can only hear so much of that before I lose all patience. At 4;30am the Drs. decided to remove the Foley from the inmate. He yelled like he was being murdered. He screamed for over half an hour. I'm ready to strangle this guy by 5 am. The Dr.'s told this inmate he had to urinate 80 milligrams by 7am or they would put the catheter back in. They told the inmate to pee in a container so they could measure how much urine he'd released. At 5 am I told him I wanted him to be quiet the last hour of my shift. I told him after I left he could talk, cry, whine, & blame everyone else in the world for his current situation. But until I was gone I didn't want to hear a peep from him again. I told him if I heard him open his mouth again I was going to empty his urinal into the toilet & flush it so the nurses would assume he hadn't peed at which time they would shove that catheter back in.

The officer I was working with that night was equally annoying. We saw an infomercial for a machine that makes your shaving blades never go dull. I told the officer that our shaving blades are not really dull when we throw them away. What happens is that the water evaporates & the mineral deposits left on the blade is what makes the blade feel dull. If you dip your blade in baby oil after your done shaving your blade won't have that issue. He replied "I'll tell you one thing that I heard worked. Pyramids." I was waiting for a punch line or something. None came. I was thinking to myself what the heck does that mean? I was afraid to ask because most of the things he was saying all night long were OUT THERE! But curiosity killed me. I asked "what does pyramids have to do with blades?" He said "that's the reason the Egyptians built the pyramids." Still not understanding his reasoning I asked "Why?"
"oh, you didn't know? The Egyptians built pyramids to keep their knives sharp." "Must of been a big dang knife", I replied. He just looked at me with a blank look that screamed "wait, wait, I think I missed something." Usually, he had. He then told me that he had bought a snow globe that had a pyramid in it and he'd been keeping his razor on it, but so far he couldn't tell a difference. How is it I always have to work with the crazy ones?