Corruption Officer (16 page)

I thought, ‘Realistically she can move and get into places
that Flocko can’t and if shit hits the fan, I can’t get caught unless they
actually catch me dirty with pouches on me - everything else is just hearsay.’
 
Then I thought, ‘Can I really trust her?’
 
Then I rationalized, ‘
Hello
YOU are fucking with a team of inmates, so an Officer selling
ass might be your safest bet.’
 

I looked at her for a long minute and she looked back at me
as if she was scared and was wondering had she made a mistake about me.
 
I then said, “It’s on.”
 
And seeing that her antics had me harder than
a roll of quarters I asked her when I could sample the merchandise.
 

“As soon as you can lock these mother fuckers in….” she
said.

“That’s a man!
 
That
bitch is a man!” the inmates shouted at the television.
 

I had gotten stuck on overtime again and was now working the
Mental Observation Housing area aka The Nut House.
 
I was sitting in the dayroom watching a bunch
of inmates watch a talk show that wants the audience to guess whether the person
standing on stage is a man or woman.
 
The
inmates screamed out their guess again, “That bitch is a man!”
 
Another inmate screams out, “If it is, I’d
still fuck her shiiieet!”
 
Then they all
slap each other a high-five while laughing out loud.
 
The M.O. house is where people either are
crazy or pretending to be crazy to try and beat their case.
 
Right now these fools are jumping off the wall
until they hear their favorite call which is MEDICATION!
 
My thoughts were, ‘Ah right on time.’
 
They all line up at the front entrance of the
housing area to receive their prescribed meds for the day and then Bam!
 
It’s just like that the house has done a 360
degree turn.
 
No more yelling at the
television or nothing just the walking dead.
 

Then an inmate sitting near-by starts to talk to me about
his case as if I am interested.
 
I
entertain him because hell what else do I have to do.
 
He tells me that he shot eight people in the
Fort Green Projects because they raped his daughter.
 
I take a look at him and all I see is an old
man with salt and pepper hair and glasses that are held together by tape.
 
My assessment, ‘No killer here,’ but then
again what does a killer look like?
 
He
sees my look of disbelief and decides to show me proof.
 
So off he goes to his cell to retrieve what
inmates call “your paperwork.”
 
These are
the court papers that officially tell why an inmate is incarcerated.
 
They are so official that if they ain’t right,
meaning if an inmate has paperwork that names you as a snitch, in his case it
could mean the death of him in jail.
 
My
thoughts as he runs off are, ‘Great, besides being a baby-sitter, a judge, and
a counselor now I am a fucking psychiatrist.’
 
We wear many hats doing this job.
 

While he has gone to his cell, I take this time to go to the
back of the housing area so that I can get a signal on my cell phone and check
my messages.
 

BEEP, the first one is from Bryant.
 
The murder from what I hear is still being
investigated and she sounds hysterical, “Yo, these fools are really trying some
bull shit!
 
Now King is covering Fran by
saying that he was on the A side of the housing area when the inmate got killed
on the B side.
 
This takes Fran out of
the equation as to
who’s
fault this was and still
leaves me out there!
 
They both know that
when I rolled up into the area both of them was in the Officer’s station and
what’s bugging me out is why neither one of them is stepping up and saying that
I had nothing to do with this shit.
 
And
guess what, they suspended me indefinitely! Yo’ hit me when you get off.”
 

BEEP, second message is from mom Dukes, “I smelled you when
you used the bathroom before you left this morning. You need to drink some
water boy!”
 

BEEP, there are no more messages.
 
I shake my head and think, ‘Where would I be
without messages like that?’
 

As I go back to the dayroom where the inmates are, I am
feeling sorry for Bryant because it’s bullshit like this that makes a person
hate this job.
 
I mean, the job itself
for me is mad easy.
 
Shoot, coming from where
I come from, it’s just like hanging on the block.
 
But now, I am looking at what they’re trying
to do to Bryant and the job just doesn’t seem so prestigious - I’m hustling,
Rains is selling ass, and Bryant is getting framed.
 
There is a lot going on in c73 today.

While I am in my own thoughts, I observe a young inmate as
he stands up, goes over to the corner of the room with his cup and then it
seems like he is taking a piss into his drinking cup!
 
I jump up and yell, “What the fuck are you
doing?”
 
My shouting brings the female “A”
Officer running onto the floor in the dayroom.
 
Then the inmate does the unthinkable, right
while we are all watching…..He drinks his piss!
 
My face cringes at the act itself and then
imagining what that must taste like.
 
The
“A” Officer just sucks her teeth and says, “Again Davis!?”
 
Then she storms off to the Officer’s station
and gets on the phone.
 
I am still
stunned and I am still standing there like a chick looking at a horror flick
late at night alone, looking at this inmate who looks at me and finishes his
drink like it’s the last call for alcohol at the bar.
 
The “A” Officer comes back inside and tells
the inmate to lock in and he obeys and goes to his cell.
 

The A Officer turns to look at me and sees the look on my
face and laughs.
 
She then explains to me
that these inmates pull these stunts all the time.
 
She says that a lot of them, like inmate
Davis, who’s facing a lot of time, do these things to try to convince a judge
that they’re crazy and can’t be tried like sane people.
 

“Hey, sometimes it works and sometimes it don’t,” she
explains.

Then she goes down to the inmate’s cell and yell, “They’re
not coming!”
 
Then she says to me as she
walks by on her way back to the Officer’s station that he did that in front of me
so that I would have to right a report that I witnessed him doing that to
himself.
 
She said that he could use that
report to help his insanity case, but that the doctors were not coming to get
him to evaluate him because they have already deemed him fit to stand trial for
two murders he committed on the lower east side.
 

“Now this fool is banging his head against the cell door to
get attention,” she said.

I shake my head and go sit down.
 
Some of the not so drugged up inmates are
still trying to figure out which one of the well dressed men are really
women.
 
They are also still trying to
determine which one they would fuck, when the
killer
that looks like “pop from the corner store” comes back with
his paperwork.
 
I sigh and take a look at
it because I know that he won’t leave me alone if I don’t.
 
The papers are stapled together neatly and in
order and as I go through them I see drawings of the bodies he shot as they lay
out all through the apartment.

He’s sitting next to me narrating each and every picture
telling me who died and how he caught this one or that one off guard.
 
A chill is running through me thinking about
how calm he is when he talks about it.
 
The
stench rises in my nose like one of these derelicts just farted but I don’t
look up because one of them is always letting loose, hey that’s jail.
 
I try to continue to read but the smell is
just too strong so I finally look up to see if I can identify where the smell
is coming from and bam!
 
The site right
there next to me turns my stomach and my lunch begins to come up out of my
mouth and nose!
 
The inmate that was
telling me about his paperwork was sitting there with shit smeared all over his
face and clothes!
 
I jump up and continue
to let my guts spill out all over the floor!
 
He gets up and grabs his papers so that I won’t
mess them up and sits back down and continues to narrate his story without a
care in the world and I could see that he had chunks of shit still in his
mouth.
 

The Officer again comes inside and sees this, then runs back
to the station and gets on the phone.
 
I
run into the Officer’s bathroom.
 
While I
wash up, I am thinking that I ain’t
neeever
going to work this area again.
 
Fuck
the overtime!
 
This is blood money!
 
I come out of the bathroom just in time to see
him being escorted out in a straight jacket.
 
The Officer asked me if I was alright and I
nodded yes, but I really wasn’t.
 

I go back to sit down and pray that this tour ends soon.
 
After awhile when all of the excitement dies
down I decide to make a tour of the area and check inside each cell to make
sure that the inmates that were locked in were okay.
 
I routinely flash my light in each cell to see
inside and right now most of the inmates that are in their cell are curled up
sleeping off the medication that they were given.
 

As I come to one particular cell, I notice the light is out
and the inmate is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall right
under his window.
 
At first I did not pay
it any mind because I was in a flow of just walking by and peeking in the
cells.
 
Then I remembered that this was
the inmate that earlier was banging his head against the door of his cell to
get attention.
 
I thought to myself let
me go double-check.
 
So I doubled back to
his cell and flashed my light inside.
 
He
was still on the floor sitting there with his head hanging down.
 
Then I noticed the thin string that came up
behind his head and connected to the window knob!
 
I yelled for the Officer to crack his cell
open and hit the lights!
 
When she did, I
rushed in and saw that his face was turning purple.
 
He was trying to hang himself by sitting down
and leaning his head forward so that the string would draw tight around his
neck.
 
I yelled to her to let her know
what was happening while I cut the string from around his neck.
 

At this time he had lost color in his face and when I picked
him up and laid him on his bed he appeared not to be breathing.
 
I was panicking because if he was dead, we
were going to be in a world of shit because we were supposed to be giving these
fools an option to go into their cells every hour and this allowed us to check
on them to prevent shit like this.
 
Then
I hear her walking, not running, down the walkway towards the cell.
 
I hear her yelling to me before she gets there
saying, “Heyward, you’re stressing these fools too much.
 
This is probably another one of their stunts
to get attention because they can’t get their way!”
 
When she got to the cell I looked at her like,
‘Bitch, does this look like a stunt to you?’
 
Her eyes lit up and she ran off to go call the
clinic.
 
I stood over him panicking
saying to myself, ‘Let me think.
 
Let me
think!’

Then I thought to myself that I have to try that rescue
breathing shit that I was taught not only in the Academy but as a marine.
 
So I proceeded to follow the steps.
 
I knelt down and put my finger to his nose to
see if he was breathing.
 
He wasn’t.
 
Then I thought, ‘No, that’s wrong.
 
You’re supposed to look and see if his chest
rises and falls.’
 
So, I step back so I
can look at his chest.
 
Shit I really
couldn’t tell.
 
So, I just assumed that
he wasn’t and start CPR.
 

‘Damn,’ I thought to myself, ‘I don’t really remember any of
this shit!’
 
I wondered, ‘Was it five
breaths and fifteen pumps on the chest or is the count one, one thousand, two
one thousand?
 
Shit, how am I supposed to
hold my hands?
 
Where am I supposed to
put them and, am I doing this shit right?’
 
I start to pump right below his chest but not
on top of his stomach.
 
I get no
response.
 

This shit seems like an eternity but all of this is
happening in seconds.
 
I brace myself
because I know that I have to do some nasty shit right now that I know that I
don’t want to do and that instrument in the Officer’s station that I could use
has not been changed in years and it looks dirtier than this inmate’s mouth.
 
I have to give him some air.
 
I get up and with my hands on my hips, look
off into space and try to psyche myself up to do this.
 
I look at his chest again praying that I see
it rise and fall.
 
I say out loud as I am
looking, “God, please give me something.”
 
Then I peek outside the cell wondering where
the clinic staff is?
 

Then I
gueese
myself up by saying, ‘Come on stupid ass you can do this!’
 
Then I kneel down to him, clamp his nose, tilt
his head back and give him a breath, look away then give him another.
 
I think to myself, ‘I know that I am not doing
this shit right.’
 
Then I step back to
see if he’s breathing now, no
buenos
.