13. Meghan's Amendment

I need to make an amendment to my last post or, more specifically, just explain it a little better.  I forget that there are people who read this blog who are more expert than I so my explanations can sound incorrect because of my inclination toward brevity.  FYI - I made that sentence deliberately hard.

My cousin, Meghan, is an EMT in Rhode Island and will, hopefully, be a member of the Providence, RI Fire Department one day soon.  She sent me an email through J-Pay explaining that when she goes on calls to prisons that passage from the prison is expedited because there is a guard that rides in to the prison with the ambulance, making the time spent in the outgoing sally port shorter as the need to search the ambulance is negated.  She also states that  they would continue to work on the man after he "coded" (died) all the way to the hospital unless there was a "catastrophic failure to the head."  (That's a term I made up for 'decapitation.'  You can use it, Meghan.)

Now this is a positive representation of the Providence, RI medical teams.  They seem to be caring, well-managed, and thorough.  I'm not hip to the variety of standards from state to state, but Michigan does not give a shit about it's inmates.  I'm sure the paramedics do and are probably driven apeshit every time they have to come here.  Most of these guards have a shit-assed superiority complex and if you need something done fast, the guards will do anything in their power to throw a stick in your spokes, even if a paramedic is rushing to get to a dying man.  The guards' behavior fits with the slave / master analogy --  t states that the most negative effect of slavery wasn't on the slaves but on the slave owners.  These men became accustomed to treated people as something less than human.

They encountered a culture that they didn't understand and out of fear and confusion treated them like animals.

Guards are just as much inmates as the men they are assigned to guard.  They spend a great portion of their lives working here.  They adapt to a convict's surroundings and they learn how to play the game.  Guards aren't like your typical TV or movie guard.  Some come just for the paycheck and they're perfectly agreeable people.  They talk to you like a person and aren't always in your ass.  They are also less likely to be stabbed in the face and receive the most respect from the convicts.

Then there's you "BAD GUY" guard.  The person who was probably a bully in high school or couldn't stop eating TV dinners alone long enough to pass the police physical.  These men and women are just as, or more, dangerous than the convicts.  They make already tense situations boil over.  They are the person who thinks it's their job to punish you, to make your life miserable, because they place themselves higher than all other people.  Prison is the punishment; nobody told them they're just the babysitters.

Anyways, it's these assholes more times than not who will be manning desks and sally ports.  The assholes who think it's their job to make everyone's lives miserable, their wives, their children, and any civilian who is unlucky enough to cross their path.  Guards are a whole subject unto themselves.

While I can't speak for the paramedics who I'm sure were doing all they could, I can tell you what I heard.  I heard the guards radio claim the man was dead and that, in effect, slowed the searching guard down.  They sat in that sally port for 20 minutes.  When the gate opened, the ambulance wasn't in a hurry.  The lights stayed off.  Does this enrage me?  No.  Just like the infallible Pink sang, "Sometimes it be's like that."

Meghan enjoys Saul Williams, tattoos, good beer, and gently carrying obese people down 17 flights of stairs.  How do they get up there to begin with?  Tell G I said 'hi' and I'll send John her story to publish. - My favorite G has asked me to write her a story about a mouse who lives in prison.  Coming soon.  Leave your tib-fib unbroke, girl.

-Ryan Martin