May 11th

Back to the same old grind this week.
Wednesday night, nothing out of the ordinary.
There was a change made while I was gone to training last week though.
They moved 24 inmates from DSU into section 3 of my unit. Eventually the unit I currently work in, and the one below mine that now houses death row, will all be used for DSU inmates. DSU is the Disciplinary Segregation Unit. The other 2 units in the building will remain IMU.
The old DSU building will become SHU (Special Housing Unit) and will be used for death row and administrative segregation, also known as protective custody.

When I got on shift last night I was informed an inmate in the DSU section had spit on the unit corporal when he was picking up the dinner meal trays. This inmate was in one of the bottom tier cells that is a 2 man cell. An inmate was moved out of a top tier cell, which are single cells, so this inmate could be placed up top. Shortly after 0700 pm the inmates in that section started yelling man down. This is what inmates call out if someone is having a medical problem or something. The inmate that had spit on the Corporal was attempting to hang himself.
Now this is where you tell the difference between a veteran staff and someone fairly new. I grabbed my radio, but just held it for a minute as the floor officer came to the front of that section to see what was going on. He saw what was happening and immediately grabbed his radio and called for all staff to respond to a suicide attempt. He was the one who called it, so guess who does the paperwork! THAT is a learned skill folks. Just to clarify, the inmate was really only making a half-assed attempt of hanging himself to get attention and get moved to the psych unit, so there was no real immediate threat that he was going to actually hurt himself.
All staff in the building were in the unit in about 60 seconds, and within two more minutes the inmate backed up for restraints and was taken down to the medical room. The nurse came to the building to talk to him, and he WAS moved to the psych unit for further evaluation this morning.

Then just as everyone is winding down from this bit of excitement, at about 0735 the B unit corporal calls man down in his unit. An inmate with a bad ticker (he has a pacemakerunit in him) dropped while in the shower. So all staff once again come running up and they get this guy out of the unit to the corridor between B and D unit. I stood up and was watching from down the hall. I saw the inmates legs jerk, and staff leaned over him. I thought, Oh shit, they are doing CPR. This is not good. Well, it turns out they were not doing CPR, but the guys pacemaker was zapping him trying to keep his heart working. His legs jerked every time it hit him. Those things must really pack a wallop. They ended up calling an ambulance and running him to the hospital. I heard before I left this morning that he was doing ok.

Then at about 0930 an inmate in the old DSU building threw salad dressing and other food stuff on an officer. So they brought that inmate down to us and put him in the cell that the guy had been in that went to the psych unit. I must have had to change our count on the little tabs we keep track of how many inmates we have 6 times last night. I decided from now on I am going to just wait until 10:00 when we turn the lights out to update it. Things finally quieted down after that, and the rest of the night was uneventful.

Thats life in the big house for you.