Let's Not Meet Again

Be Careful In Jail

Let me preface this by saying that I'm a correctional officer. I'm female and about 5ft3. I've worked in a large county jail for going on thirteen years now and in my time there, I've had some harrowing experiences and met some extremely creepy and violent individuals. However, of all the strange situations I've been in, there's one that I find especially disturbing in retrospect.

I was 20 at the time and barely off of probation. I was young and stupid and didn't have the experience needed to truly understand how dangerous my job was at that point. I was working the night shift, 10:30pm to 7:00am, locked in a room with dozens of inmates and nothing but a hand-held radio to protect me.

The "pod" I was assigned to housed 72 inmates. State law says you're supposed to have one officer for 48 inmates. In actuality, we have 2 pods side by side with 72 inmates each. There's one officer assigned to each pod and a third officer who's supposed to float back and forth between the two housing units. This third officer is hardly ever present until lunch time. They're inevitably assigned to some other random detail in the facility (escorting inmates, supervising trusties, etc).

Now, you might assume that jails are divided by types of criminal, ie misdemeanors housed separately from felons, but this is only the case after someone goes to court and gets convicted. Most people in county are still awaiting trial so they're all mixed up together. The guy with unpaid parking tickets might be cellmates with a murderer. You never know. So you never really know who you're dealing with until you look them up.

To paint a picture of the environment, the pod itself is a lot like a college dorm. There's a large central dayroom with two tiers of individual rooms circling the perimeter. There's a stairway on either side of the pod leading to the 2nd tier. Right beside one stairway is the bathroom/shower area.

Now, this is what we call a direct inmate supervision set up, so the officer is locked in the pod with the inmates. Theoretically, your sister pod next door should be keeping an eye on you (there's a glass wall between the two pods) but in reality they usually don't have time to remember you exist.

Back in the day, we locked all the inmates into their cells every night at midnight and they stayed in until breakfast time, around 4am. On the day this story occurred, I was assigned to a floor that housed male inmates (we have both males and females in the facility). My relief officer, Officer Smith, was out and about on some other assignment so I was alone at midnight. I told all the inmates to "rack down" and they scattered off in different directions to their cells. When the dayroom appeared to be empty, I stood up to go do a security check, ie check all the doors and make sure they were locked.

I started on the far side of the pod (away from the bathroom area) and walked upstairs. I went around the catwalk making sure each cell door was properly secured. My sister pod was undoubtedly doing the same.

The dayroom appeared deserted as I made my way past the cells. I circled the catwalk, happy for the peace and quiet that I knew I'd be getting for the next four hours. I was walking along, oblivious, not paying an attention to anything other than the doors I was checking. I approached the head of the steps and began to take a step down.

As my foot hit the top step, I heard a loud pounding on the pod door. Boom, boom boom. Startled, I snapped to attention and looked out over the catwalk to the door. Officer Smith was standing there and he was pointing dramatically to the foot of the stairs. I heard him yelling but couldn't make out what he's saying.

About that time, I see someone dart out from behind the stairs, butt-naked and running across the dayroom. Apparently, a large, well-muscled inmate had been hiding behind the shower curtain while I did my rounds, and had crept out to wait beneath the stairs and (I assume) ambush me as I came down them.

The inmate played it off as a prank and nothing was done to him. I was good and scared, and to this day I still keep a close watch on my stairways when I'm doing rounds. Maybe he was just planning to scare me, but I'll never know. If Officer Smith hadn't returned at just the right minute, there's no telling what might have happened to me.

This incident shook me and really made me take my job more seriously. I've had tons of interesting experiences since then. I've spoken with serial killers, hit men, necrophialics, high profile criminals, been in tons of fights, had boiling water thrown on me, dealt with crazy people of every type...but this incident really stands out for me and I share it with every rookie I get a chance to. The heightened awareness I gained from this incident may have saved my life many times over.