Correlation and other jailhouse myths.

correlation  (ˌkɒrɪˈleɪʃən)
— n
1.	a mutual or reciprocal relationship between two or more things
2.	the act or process of correlating or the state of being correlated
3.	statistics  the extent of correspondence between the ordering of two variables.  Correlation is positive or direct when two variables move in the same direction and negative or inverse when they move in opposite directions

There is generally an inverse relationship between the amount of shit you, as a prisoner, may talk and the amount of pants you are wearing while waiting in the nurse's line. This is a correlation. The two phenomena (shit talking and pantlessness) are related, though this doesn't necessarily imply causation. I will bet however that shit talking does have a causal effect upon the state of your pants. So stop talking smack and threatening nurses and you'll be allowed your clothes. 

Miranda Rights:

Everyone who's seen any cop procedural drama knows the miranda warning, or the hollywood version of it. You have the right to remain silent, etc etc. I'll tell you now that odds are you will not be read your Miranda warning if you are arrested. This is because in 90% of cases I don't give a damn what you have to say. If anyone bothered to actually understand what the warning said they'd see that it's related to interrogation, rather than just being arrested. Actually, these guys did a pretty sweet job of explaining this: http://www.cracked.com/article_18385_7-bullshit-police-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies_p2.html

Arrested for No Reason/Bullshit

This might come as a surprise to you, but depriving a man of his innate freedom isn't easy. There is a tedious amount of paperwork, and a chain through which all arrests have to go through before I'm allowed to leave jail. If you get arrested, you may notice that your arresting officer is annoyed. He might be annoyed with you, if you're a dick, but likely he's annoyed at the 1-3 hours of paperwork (unavoidable paperwork) you just forced him into. Once you're actually in jail, he has to justify his arrest to a detached review staff operating in some other building somewhere, to a jailhouse administrator, usually a sergeant who specializes in arrest policy and elements of offenses under the state penal code, and then a magistrate, all before you can even think of leaving the building. There's a joke that criminals tend to be released before the officer has even finished the paperwork. While this is exaggerated, the truth is criminals are usually processed through and are just waiting for the officer to finish the paperwork so they can leave. So it's a stretch to claim that an officer is willing to put up with this tedium for shits and giggles, or because they don't like you. 

The limits of Four Wheel Drive

Okay, we're going to get this out of the way really quick. I don't care if you have 4WD, 6WD, or freaking tank treads on your car; if your car isn't physically in contact with the ground then you're not going to be in control of the vehicle. To those of you driving Civics, Camaros, Mustangs, Corvettes, (insert other two wheel drive cars) if there's ice on the ground you don't need to be driving 50 mph. I don't care what the sign says, there's ice on the ground and visibility is absolute shit.

Maybe pattern recognition is a trait that isn't common in adults, but don't worry. I'm here to help you out. You ever notice that even though it's 30 degrees outside, the snow and ice that occupy the ground tends to melt anyway, but overpasses and bridges tend to be icy? That's called a pattern. It has to do with the ground retaining some heat and melting the ice immediately above it, and there is no ground under an overpass/bridge so that water freezes and stays that way. So maybe, I dunno, don't go roaring onto an overpass at 65 mph while changing lanes and texting. You'll deserve what happens to you at that point.

Suicide: The Ultimate Pigeon Drop

This is a phrase I heard while in CORE training, which is basically a refresher course we have to take every few years to cover over RBT and Defensive Driving and other administrative junk so the city looks like they're taking an interest in the continuing education of their officers. So don't say I'm not learning anything, because I hadn't thought of suicide in quite that way before.

A quick explanation: A pigeon drop is a common type of scam. Before the internet, though it still happens today, somebody will try to convince the target to part with their money as a confidence to look after a larger amount of money. Then the scammer will give the target an opportunity to flee or escape with what they think is a much larger sum of cash when they're really just running away from their own money, left with the scammer. At work a pigeon drop is when an officer who's either first at the scene or otherwise responsible for the scene instead turns to another (usually lower ranked) officer and tells them to process and do the report instead. It's a bad thing.

Thus, in the realm of death, suicide is taking all of that hurt and crap that you're suffering and giving it to someone else. Your spouse. Siblings. Parents. Children. All the people that depend on you now and in the future get crapped on because of your decision.

EDIT: Just to add, here are some things that you shouldn't kill yourself over.

1.) Your parents took away your cell phone. I really wish that one wasn't based in truth.
2.) Your girlfriend/boyfriend/plantfriend/mineralfriend broke up with you. It sucks, but you're just gonna make it worse. For everyone else. And you're not that much of a dick right?
3.) There is nothing to live for. If that were true you'd have already died. Your body knows this. If you don't believe me try to stop yourself from taking that next breath. That'll last about 15 seconds before your brain chokes you out.
4.) Someone took away your (last) beer. Seriously?
5.) Mayan Apocalypse 2012.
6.) Anything related to the fact that you're under 30. You haven't even made it through half of your expected life span yet. Odds are, the best stuff is ahead of you and you're trying to miss out.

If you're dead set on going through with it though, just do me a favor and stay home. No jumping off an overpass onto some poor schmuck's car while he's stuck in rush hour. That's bullshit. He never did anything to you and now he's gonna be in therapy for a long long time. No jumping three stories into an ice skating rink. Especially if it's full of children at the time. I shouldn't even need to explain this.

Things to call 911 for

There needs to be standardized list of reasons to call for emergency response, though since nobody is willing to pursue charges related to abuse of 911 (crank callers and their sort) I suppose no such list will ever be formalized.

Thankfully we have this blog, which is wholly informal and absolutely steadfast in its refusal to name names or departments.

Reason to call 911:

I have been stabbed/shot/beheaded/disembodied/otherwise mangled - That's cool, it'd be fun to see that and then compare various brands of spaghetti sauce to different body parts and their oozes.

I am in the process of being beaten - This does not apply if you are a child in severe need of discipline.

I have just been robbed - Please make sure you call immediately after being robbed. If you call during the robbery, I'm going to be skeptical that an armed robber is allowing you to make this phone call. If you wait a half hour before calling then I'm going to assume that this isn't particularly important to you and take it just as seriously. Note, I am willing to be flexible if your phone was stolen and it took a minute to find a payphone to call from. I just want to catch the guy leaving the scene, and for that I need no more than a few minutes between robbery and phone call.

There is someone in my house/business/shed/water heater - These are fun calls. It's hide and seek with AR-15s and shotguns. And I sometimes get to call out the dog. Fuzzy monsters are amazing at hide and seek.

Not a reason to call 911:

There is (insert local wildlife here) nearby - Unless it is actually chewing on you (see "otherwise mangled" above) I don't care. The local fauna is probably very exciting to the local Boy Scout Troop, but I have a job and things to do before I can go home at the end of the day.

Road Rage - I don't know that it's ever possible to actually find these calls as, by their nature, the call itself is constantly moving and cardinal directions are a mythical construct to most modern people. "We're going left on such and such street now!" means nothing because most streets (all of them where I work) are TWO WAY STREETS!! There are two lefts! Also, if someone is giving you the finger on the road, chalk it up to their freedom to express themselves and just move along with your day. I'm sure you have things to do too.

I just saw a man carrying what may or may not have been a gun - I can tell he didn't point it at you, because your brain would have gone into "Oh Shit" mode and very quickly figured out if that's a gun or a broom handle. And if he didn't shoot it, or otherwise commit any crime with it, I don't care. There are probably more guns than people in this state, and you have to get those things from your car to your house somehow. Telling me that this person may have gotten in trouble for firing pellet guns previously doesn't help me, especially since I've had to take over for pest control at my own apartment and use a pellet gun to down the pigeons around here.

I'm sure there are far more calls, but I have things to do, even now at 1:22 AM. Leave a comment with your own stupid reason for calling 911. "I found a dead body" doesn't count, unless you're narrated by Morgan Freeman and are a Stephen King novel.

The Busiest Paddy Wagon

The Paddy Wagon is a large van used for transporting a large number (in our case ten) of prisoners, usually for misdemeanor arrests such as public intoxication or outstanding warrants, due to the fact that felony suspects must be brought before a magistrate as soon as possible (and thus shouldn't wait around in a van for four hours) and that the paddy wagon operators can't actually testify to anything involving the arrest and so cannot file offense reports for other misdemeanor arrests. That run-on sentence out of the way, we can move on to the story.

I was assigned to the paddy wagon tonight, and usually that's fine as it's a simple shift with an almost guaranteed chance of going home on time. I was partnered with an officer who had only recently been transferred to my area, and since I'm still not allowed to drive, I was the navigator giving directions. I anticipated running out the the armory to replace my gun sights, going to Comms to return their stuff, and visiting the Quartermaster to return his stuff; all things I'd missed doing since I was gone for the last several months. Instead we were immediately dispatched to collect a prisoner from the Adult Probation Office down south. That's fine. Just because I anticipated a quiet start doesn't mean I don't have a job to do, and it's rare that they have anyone for us anyway so I chalked it up to bad luck. Immediately after that we were sent to collect a shoplifter from the far north corner of the channel. But before we could even get there, a woman turned herself in at the substation, so we stopped to collect her. As we're leaving the substation, a detective calls and says he has three burglars that need to go downtown. I'd like to digress here.

These three burglars were born between 1986 and 1993. They broke into a home on the same street as one of my problem halfway houses and were caught almost immediately because one of them is so incredibly stupid he doesn't know how to shut his mouth, even while hiding from the police. They're not just burglars, but they're terrible burglars as they're caught almost every time they go out, to go by their records. I only wish they broke into the crazy-man halfway house and were clubbed to death by various bits of furniture and footwear. Never underestimate an insane Korean man with a flip flop.

So having collected six people now, we decided to go to jail to turn them over, and we're notified that holdover has three more prisoners for transfer and that we can't go to jail without them. So we drive down to hold over and I go inside to collect the prisoners while my partner moves one of our male prisoners to a patrol officer's vehicle to make room for a rather heavy transfer prisoner. I go upstairs and meet a rather drunk, smelly, and horribly tempered tiny woman. The first thing she decides to do upon finding out that I'm there to take her to county jail is to try and fight.

Personally, I'm not fighting. My right leg is still smaller than my left, and it hurts every day so I'm not risking it in a knock-down, drag-out brawl. Luckily this lady is about five feet tall and about 120 pounds so I simply pick her up by the arms and pin her against the wall while the corrections officer helps me restrain her with cuffs. She made the poor decision to try and fight again at county jail, though I wasn't present (I was collecting various warrants) and she was soundly brought to the floor.

All this took about 5 and a half hours to sort out, though luckily the rest of the day was spent prepping the van for turn over to 1st watch. Not a terrible day.

First Day Back

Today was my first day back on the streets, and it's a Saturday night to boot. The doctor told me to be careful, to take it easy, to keep the compression sleeve in such a way, and to alternate so my knee doesn't overheat and start swelling and etc, etc, etc. I should have picked up on that as it's impossible to adjust the sleeve without taking off my pants. And I can't just quickly undo them in the car when nobody's looking as I have to take off my gigantic batman-belt of goodies first. So the sleeve stayed on and curled and furled and I just had to deal with it.

So I get to work and the first call of the day is a citizen concerned about the thermonuclear explosion nearby, and could we please investigate. Assuming that the dispatcher and the 911 operator were having a communication error/prank war I went out thinking this was either a head case, or a transformer did explode nearby. After jumping over a fence, after the doc told me to be careful and tender and all with my knee (it hurt), what I found was a schizo-affective woman who believed that Germany was going to invade the United States and had deployed atomic strikes across the US. Having pointed to the sky and noted the lack of mushroom clouds we left her to her imaginary war and her demands for K Rations (does the Army still even use those?).

It was the usual array of family squabbling and car thefts for a saturday and we ended the evening pushing a large SUV up a hill. Apparently the driver didn't want us scuffing up her car with our push bumpers so we had to manually push (my knee was so happy) this vehicle back up a hill into a parking lot. Why we couldn't just let the stupid thing roll down the hill and coast until she found another lot is beyond me.

Some lessons: Children are greedy evil monsters. A grown woman will refuse to allow her cancer stricken mother access to her medical caretaker for vital breathing treatments in order to collect on an inheritance. Luckily we got rid of the daughter and the mother got her treatments. She was a very nice lady. Children will physically assault the mentally ill, and frankly I don't fault them when the mentally ill is making a pass at a 15 year old. Mandated to adult supervision there. Grown men will move in with bipolar people and then get upset that they're bipolar. That one ended without our intervention as the local management was fed up and simply evicted everybody.

Fun day. I'm glad it's the weekend now.