I lost it

A few minutes after roll call, an evening shift training unit got on the radio and asked for a night shift unit to check by with them at Central Intox. Central Intox is where most of the driving while intoxicated offenses are processed for my department. The evening shift unit said that they were swamped with work and needed a unit to transport their prisoner to Southeast jail since it was the end of their shift. Southeast jail is where all of the females are housed and is about 13 miles from Central.

AS and I were done with evaluation, but he was still riding with me until he transferred to evening shift for his second week of evaluation. I got on the radio and volunteered to check by with the evening shift unit. We arrived at Central Intox and they were not ready for us. They said that they would be ready in 30 minutes. I wondered why they asked for a unit to check by with them when they were not yet ready for that unit? Maybe they thought it would take us awhile to get there. Who knows? We used the time to get a drink from a nearby Stop-in-Rob.

Once we returned, they were ready for us. The female prisoner that we were transporting had been charged with DWI. She had been involved in an accident. She drove her vehicle into a pole. She refused to give a breathalyzer sample. She did do a station video (the officer instructs the person to do all of the standardized field sobriety tests in a room while it is recorded). She failed all of the tests on the station video.

AS handcuffed her (policy states that everyone that gets into the backseat gets handcuffed behind their back) and put her into the backseat of our patrol vehicle. Immediately, she started complaining. This was going to be a long ride to Southeast jail. Her first complaint was that her handcuffs were too tight. I responded that the handcuffs were not designed to be comfortable. She did not appreciate my comment and stated they were chaffing her wrists and that she could feel a bruise developing. I asked AS if he had put her cuffs on tight, and he said no which is the answer that I expected. AS asked if he should check them, and I left that up to him. He did check the cuffs and loosened them a little bit. With small females this is something that you have to be careful with. She had very small wrists. The cuffs have to be tight enough so that she can not get out of them, but not so tight as to cut off circulation. I hoped that by loosening the cuffs, we would earn some peace and quiet. Nope.

Her next complaint was that she was cold. She was wearing jeans and a fancy tank-top. She was dressed to go out drinking at the nice bars in the area of town in which she had the accident. Drinking she did, she just did not anticipate that pole jumping out in front of her vehicle. She asked for a jacket or a blanket. We are not Continental or Southwest Airlines. We do not have blankets or pillows for our guests. As you can imagine, I was becoming less and less popular with her. AS was actually entertaining the idea of putting his personal jacket on her to keep her warm. Rookie. Next she asked us if we had her driver's license. She said that she had seen it on the desk at Intox. I told her that we did not have her license. When she refused to give the breathalyzer sample, she forfeited her license. She was told this at the time, but she was probably too intoxicated to remember.

She then asked where we were taking her. I told her to Southeast jail, where all females are housed. She asked where that was and we told her. She asked again where we were going. When told she asked what part of town was that? Again, we told her. After more complaining about the cold and the inhumane conditions in the backseat of our patrol vehicle, she asked where we were going again. I was starting to lose my patience. After quite a few more questions about where we were going and what part of town and what road was it on and how do you spell it and I can't hear you, I lost it. I yelled at her. I said, "WE ARE TAKING YOU TO SOUTHEAST JAIL. IT IS ON MYKAWA RD. M Y K A W A." She called me an ass, but she did not speak again the rest of the way to jail. Victory was mine.

Once at the jail, she started complaining again. The jailer dumped out her purse and started inventorying all of the contents. This included 5 prescription pill bottles. We had looked at them earlier, and all of the pills looked to be the same in each bottle. As the jailer dumped them out and started handling the medications, she said, "Do you have to touch them. You are contaminating them." At the very bottom of a bottle of over the counter ibuprofen, the jailer found two pills that did not belong with the others. The jailer found two bars of Xanax. Our female prisoner did not have a prescription for Xanax. That is possession of a controlled substance. Xanax is in penalty group 3 and possession of less than 28 grams is a Class A Misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and up to a $4000 fine. This was going to create quite a bit more work for us than just transporting her to jail. We had to modify the hold card, weigh and tag the Xanax at the Narcotics division, add another charge, and complete a supplement report. But after the joy she put us through on the drive, we rather enjoyed the extra work.

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