‘They were moving me all around and I had a broken neck.’
Imagine falling and breaking your neck, but no one takes you to the hospital right away.
That’s exactly what a local woman says happened to her inside the St. Clair County Jail and now she’s trying to make sure something like this doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Lisa Brown takes full responsibility for why she ended up briefly behind bars. But now she says a 20-day jail sentence has left her with a life sentence of partial paralysis and disability.
Correct. Im friendly with a CO who regularly gets derided for taking inmates to the infirmary when they say they’re sick. The CO cultural MO seems to be everyone’s faking it unless you can see blood or bone. The dudes proactivity has stopped what could have been a major flu outbreak and still they ride his ass when he brings sick inmates to the infirmary. Even the doctors working there dont like that he brings sick patients to them. It’s rotten apples almost all the way down.
My aunt is a doctor in a prison. She hates how long it will take for some people to be seen, sometimes because the guards just don’t think it’s a problem warranting taking them to the infirmary.
Got a close friend in CO training. They love him because he denies the inmates anything they ask for. Told him long before he started, they’re going to change him for the worse. And it’s happening.
Sorry to tell you, your close friend is already a bad person. Good people don’t volunteer to oppress people and deny their needs, especially after being told it’s going to make them worse.
Something something the company you keep…
He’s 21 with no education or skills. Here he gets offered a job that pays decently, has free training and has solid benefits, best thing he’s ever been offered.
He has no idea what he’s getting into. And now that he’s into it, he’s succeeding and being lauded for once in his life, told he’s doing great, for once in his life.
Take your judgement on down the road. I’m doing what I can for him.
Oh, he’s doing a great job and getting rewarded for treating people badly? Fuck that
The CO I know is close to retirement and cant wait for it. Its rough though because hes conveyed to me he knows it’s going to be a worse place when hes gone but the amout of pushback he gets from the other officers to the Brass just isn’t good for him, simply for trying to do the job as it’s writren in the book. He’s got a family himself and as bad as the system has always been, he didn’t sign up for what it’s become. Its no wonder they cant find new recruits like they used to. The money’s right, the hours arent, the work isnt, and the cowerkers can be as dangerous as the inmates. Plus from the stories I’m told, you’re almost necessarily going to see some shit you can not un see.
I imagine some of the problem is compassion fatigue - lots of prisoners are antisocial assholes who refuse to abide by society’s rules (or they’re just fucking criminally stupid).
It’d be tough to keep caring about that sort of group day in and day out.
True, and this is why the system needs to provide mental health services for these caretakers too. Right now, you’ve got the overwhelmed and frustrated overseeing the overwhelmed and frustrated, which is a recipe for disasters like this. Add a profit motive, and now you’ve got yourself a stew going.
I had a friend who was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. She told me she was going to police academy. I didn’t feel like she was the right kind of person for it because her family is full of drug addicts and she’s very bitter about it, which she has the right to be, it’s a rough life. I just worried she’d see addicts through the lens of her own issues, you know?
Well, somewhere along the way during police academy, she decided to become a CO for a bit. I had never told her about my own issues with addiction, but I decided that then was the time to do it. I thought that she would hear about my struggle and it would help to humanize the inmates a bit. Her response made me feel like I got to her. That made me feel better.
After a few months working there she started going on about those people as “animals”. She developed reputation for being a cruel and callous guard who reveled in the misery of the inmates on her watch.
She and I aren’t friends these days. She is a county cop now and I hope I never encounter her. I really do.
And that’s the truth about ACAB. The system makes them bastards, whether they go in that way or not.
That’s mega fucked, wow. ADAB? Nah, I wouldn’t go that far.