Lower Buckeye Jail, aka “LBJ”

I made it through the first 48 hours marginally free from harm. It was a horrible experience; I am not going to mince words. I thought the punishment was a little brutal before, but now I am certain that our legislature, Governor, and Sheriff Joe should all die in a fire. Actually, that might be too good for them. Let them be processed through Tent City and see what it’s like.

Now, not meaning to be too judgmental, there were some rough characters in there that deserve the harsh treatment. The attitude and behavior from some of the real crack-head psycho criminally insane chuds going through processing deserved retaliation from the Detention Officers, as I would treat those inmates the same way if I were in the DO’s huge ugly shoes. All my cell mates agreed. So there’s that, but they also treated us pretty much the same even though we were all polite to them. They could tell the difference between us (stumble bum DUI idiots) and the crack head crazies. I have never had anyone look at me with such hatred and disgust and it really hit me hard. I mean, I didn’t expect to be treated like the High Roller at the Wynn in the penthouse suite, but there is no call to go out of your way to treat me like some monster who steals from aged blind people and kills puppies.

Anyway, I got there at 8 in the morning and there were two other women with me. One was a young nursing mom with a 10 month old at home, and Andie, another young woman who was a hair stylist. Luckily they let the nursing mom (Jen) bring in her breast pump! How nice of them. Anyway the three of us were brought in and the DO that morning was quite decent. He was a young guy and treated us with respect, so I was thinking it wouldn’t be that bad. Then they did our pictures and put us in a little cell with a toilet right out there in front of everyone. You can kiss privacy good bye. We all agreed to respect each other and if someone had to go, the others would stand in front of the little windows on the door and make sure anyone walking by could not see in. They would walk the striped pajama guys past us all the time and they would look in and gawk. That was creepy.

After a while they let in two more ladies. One a lady from Norway we’ll call Anna and a young bartender we’ll call Kate. Anna was fairly hilarious and had us all laughing most of the day. We all shared our stories and talked about all kinds of things. Then they brought in Marilyn, who was in the striped pajamas because she was pregnant and would not be going out to the tents. She thought if she told them she was pregnant she would get better treatment, but it was the other way around. Though she only had a DUI (which was a year ago before the pregnancy) she was still thrown in with the crack heads because she was in stripes!

After a while we could hear some guys in the next cell. One was ranting very loudly that his bail was set at $2 million because they stuck him with yet two more murders as well as the kidnappings. Of course his vernacular was somewhat different and I’ll spare you the four letter words. I thought, nice, this is exactly where people like us belong. I am one wall away from someone literally capable of killing me. Then the door opened and in came Caryn, another DUI, who was from the Navajo rez. She and I were the only two doing 15 days, everyone else was on 24hrs. A little later, they brought in Jane, a pharmacist, who was booked in on a DUI charge because she had used an albuterol inhaler while driving. She was the designated driver and therefore not drinking, but has severe asthma. When she was stopped, because the others in her car had been drinking, she was under suspicion and given a field sobriety test (not knowing she could say no) and came up positive for ETOH. She has to have all the accoutrements for a DUI (ignition interlock etc) just because she has asthma. The cop wrote in his report that she was slurring her words and couldn’t stand up. She quit fighting it because it became too exhausting because the police know exactly what they are doing and how to make things stick. Anna had only had a little wine and was coming home from a wedding. She admitted to being a little tipsy but said the police report looked like she was falling down drunk. I have such little respect for the police now; I just want them to stay away from me for my own safety and well being. Some of the girls had decent enough cops, but most were Nazis. Andie’s cop was really nice, she said. He told her to get someone to come get her car before the tow truck got there and it wouldn’t get impounded! The same thing with Kate. Me and Anna, not so much.

Then they opened the door and these two striped uniform crack heads rolled in. They looked like they had just been picked up off the street. They looked at us and said, “Are you all leaving?” and I thought, I hope so!! Then the guard looked at us, then at them and said, Um, I think you’re going to go to the cell next door. *Whew*. After they closed the door there was a collective sigh of relief. I thought if they left Itchy and Scatchy in there with us that they would kill us all.

They opened the door and said it was time for fingerprints, and I thought, thank God, an activity at last! The fingerprint DO’s were total douchebags. Wait, I’m insulting douchebags by calling those cretins that! Anna remarked that to be a detention officer, you had to have the brain of a pea. In her high-pitched Norwegian accent it was hilarious. She really was a hoot. She would go to the door and crouch down to the closed slit where I think they would pass food through if they gave us food, and said “Hello! Hello! I would like to order a foot-long hot dog please…”. The book she brought was a murder-mystery all in Norwegian and she picked it up and said, “I will be the entertainment and read to you all..” and proceeded to read to us in Norwegian out of the book.

So, it came time to head on out to Tent City! This was all in the Lower Buckeye Jail (LBJ for short). It was now about 11:30pm. Yes, this started at 8 in the morning.

They lined us up against the wall and proceeded to cuff and shackle us. Since we had all self-surrendered that morning we were a huge flight risk. Well, maybe at this point we were as we were all at the end of our collective ropes. Jen started to lose it and I was next to her trying to keep her chin up. The blind leading the blind as I was pretty well freaking out by then. Even the handcuffs are pink, Sheriff Joe is such a Nancy-Boy. I told Jen that it would all be over soon, and I kept thinking of that scene in Titanic when the ship was about to go down and one lady says to Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet, “It’ll all be over soon” just as the ship disappears into the freezing black water.

When they put us in the van, everyone started freaking out. Oddly enough I was the voice of reason, if you can believe that and was trying to get everyone to take deep breaths and concentrate on just breathing. Didn’t work, but I tried.

Then we get to yet more holding cells. The female guard there looked like Olive Oil from Popeye, so that was her nickname. One of the crack head inmates that came with us (there were several in the van with us, but in another cage, fortunately) was a black girl with hair like Kid n Play, but really messy. Anna started calling her Don King. When they were relieving us of our shackles, Don King starts coming on to one of the DO’s. Admittedly he was beefy and handsome, but there is a time and place for everything and trying to get a date with the DO in a situation like that just isn’t appropriate.  Andie was next to them and said Don King was telling the DO that he could be a male stripper with a bod like that etc etc. When were were all laughing about it in the cell I said we should make up some “Tent City Romance” stories. Anna didn’t miss a beat and started in on narrating about how “The DO and I had a moment when he looked in my eyes, then moved his hands to my legs to take off the shackles, and I said, oh, officer, that’s not my ankle…”. Again, we were in a heap laughing. We must have been pissing the guards off because it looked like we were having too much fun.

By 1am we were in the last holding cell and those of us going to the tents were there by 2am.

Next - Tent City Blues