Back in 1999, I was working for the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office, assigned to work at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center (known colloquially to the workers as RCCC, or simply, “the branch). I had been working at the RCCC since moving to Sacramento about a year earlier.
On one particular day, I was assigned to be one of the shift escorts. Jail escorts are very different from the kind of escorts you call on the phone and pay money so they come visit you late at night. That is a whole different kind of escort. Being the jail escort means that I was the person that had to walk all over the jail moving inmates from their cells to doctor appointments, dental appointments, study rooms, then when it was over, escort them back to their original cell.
That last part is really important. They need to go back to the same cell they came out of. A lot of the deputies would get real upset at me if I put the wrong guy in the wrong cell. I figured as long as the numbers were right, what was the big deal? But not everyone saw it the same way. So, I did my best to put them back where I found them.
Anyway, I digress.
I was the assigned escort for the day. I got a radio call that an inmate needed to be brought out of one of our high security pods and taken to the nurse’s station so that staff could do a blood draw on him. I showed up at the secure facility and told the deputy working the control panel why I was there. The door in front of me buzzed, and I entered the building.
I gave the control deputy the name of the guy I was supposed to escort to the nurse. The deputy pointed toward a wall and said, “That’s him. He’s all yours.”
Let me just clarify that when I say wall, I don’t mean the inmate was standing next to a wall when the deputy pointed him out. The guy was the wall. He was probably a foot and a half taller than me and big enough that he looked like he could pick me up and carry me around in one hand. I briefly debated requesting seven more deputies to assist with the escort, but then figured even that probably wouldn’t be enough if the guy decided to pick a fight. I decided the best course was to be nice to him and as non-threatening as possible.
“Come with me, please,” I said, with a big emphasis on the word “please.”
He nodded and followed me out of the building.
As we walked, he looked around nervously, as if he was afraid someone nearby might overhear him, then he leaned toward me and said, “Hey, deputy.”
“Yeah?” I asked, hoping his next words weren’t going to be “Today is a good day to die.”
They weren’t. Instead, he said, “I really don’t like needles. Do we have to do this?”
I told him that we did. A judge had ordered the blood draw and I didn’t have the authority to ignore the order. His face got tense and I saw him flex his chest and shoulders.
“I really don’t like needles,” he said again.
“Sorry about that,” I told him, rethinking my decision not to ask for more help getting him to the nurse.
At the nurse’s station, I had him sit down on a bench in front of a table. Across the table, sitting on another bench was the jail nurse. She held a needle and had several empty vials lined up in front of her. The inmate looked at me again as he sat down.
“I don’t want to do this, man. I really don’t.”
“Sorry,” I said again, trying to sound more sympathetic and a little less terrified of what might happen next. I placed my hands on his shoulders so if he tried to jump up from the table, I could react to his movements a little faster.
To give everyone a picture, the guy was sitting on a low bench in front of me, but he was still so big that my hands were level with my face when I put them on his shoulders. This was a big guy.
The nurse popped the cap off the needle and asked him to extend his arm. The guy went tense and placed his hands on the table. I leaned on him, preparing to try to keep him seated. If he succeeded in standing up, the fight was already over.
The next second, I was lying on the ground with three hundred and fifty pounds of orange-suited inmate on top of me.
He wasn’t moving, however.
The inmate had passed out at the sight of the needle, fallen backward and crashed to the ground with me underneath him. He had been too heavy to catch, so I ended up being little more than a mattress to cushion his fall.
The nurse rushed around the table to help. I shook my head and gasped, “Just get the blood sample before he wakes up. I really don’t want to do this when he’s awake.”
The nurse got her sample. The inmate woke a few seconds later and, when the nurse gave him the green light, I returned him to his cell.
He seemed much more relaxed and calm on the way back. Which made sense. He had survived the needle stick and had even gotten a nice little nap. Before we got back to the secure building where he was housed, he asked if I would be so kind as to not tell anyone that he had passed out in front of the nurse.
Because I am such a nice guy, and because he was three times my size, I agreed to never say a word.
And I kept that promise.
Until today.
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