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The procedure started out as pleasantly as it could for what it was, but it didn’t stay that way for long. A nice officer, he was an older white man, was responsible for escorting me to the jail house. Before walking out of the sheriff’s office he turned to me and said I’m not going to put you in handcuffs until we get ready to walk through the jail house door. But at that point I have to put the cuffs on you because it’s the law.
We walked from the police station through a short breezeway that lead to the jailhouse. I remember the air blowing up my navy blue skorts as I walked. It weather that day was cool but I was too preoccupied with what lie ahead of me to pay it much attention. We walked toward this giant gray steel door. The closer we got to it, the smaller I felt. It was huge. When we arrived at the door, the officer turned to me and said, I need to cuff you now. I held my arms out in front of me, never taking my eyes off the giant steel door. I heard a couple of clicks and then a slight pull at my wrists. I never looked down at the cuffs but I knew it was official. I was on my way to jail.
We walked through the steel door and approached a tall cement counter. There were two intake personnel, one white man and one black woman, standing behind the counter. The officer walked me to the front of the counter and turned me over to the intake personnel. I stood there for a moment as the officer and the intake personnel exchanged words. The officer then exited out the way we had entered and I stood watching them make what appeared to be an ID bracelet for me. The woman asked for the gold belt I was wearing and the navy blue shoe strings that were in my shoes. I gave them what they asked for without saying a word. I was too nervous to say anything. I knew they were taking the loose objects away from me because they could be used as harmful objects once inside the jail cell.
It took a couple of minutes and then the white intake person walked around the counter snatched my arms up over the counter and then let them fall against the counter concrete top so that the black woman could put the bracelet on me. I said nothing outwardly but I wanted to cry on the inside. The way he pulled my arms up and threw them up over that counter rubbing my wrists against those metal handcuffs and then letting them slam against that cement really hurt me. He showed no remorse for his roughness nor concern for how it made me feel. I swallowed, sucking in the pain, and scooted myself closer to the counter to accommodate for the awkward position I found myself in. Without realizing it I had placed my feet on these yellow foot markers painted on the cement floor. I was in the perfect position for what came next. The woman proceeded to search me, it wasn’t a strip search, but they did frisk me to verify I had no weapons or sharp objects in my possession.
Once the search was complete, the man used a remote to open this glass door that was about 10’ behind the intake counter. Almost immediately you could hear lot of screaming. I couldn’t decipher anything that was being said because the voices were coming from all directions.
It was very chaotic, all that screaming was. The intake woman walked me through the glass door and instructed I walked with her following the yellow feet on the floor. They led me to this big cell, about 15’x15’. Another glass door, the length of the cell, was opened. The hand cuffs were taken off of me and I was escorted in.
As I went into the cell I gazed the area, making myself aware of my surroundings. The floor, the seats, the wall - everything was cement. When I walked in there was a bench on the left and a bench on the right. There were two cement polls behind each bench. Towards the back of the cell there was a small brick wall. Behind this wall was the commode. There was a clock on the left hand side of the back wall.
It was early when I got there, probably around 11:00 AM. There were only three women in the cell. One woman sat on the bench, close to the glass door, on the left hand side. The other two women were sitting on the bench on the right hand side. I walked toward the bench on the left hand side of the cell and took a seat on the back end of it, close to the cement poll. As soon as I sat down, the girl that was sitting on the opposite end got up and went to the right side of the cell. I said nothing to her or gave her no indication that I didn’t want to sit by her. She just got up and moved. I fixed my eyes on the clock on the back wall. That clock was my focal point. It kept me concentrating on when I was getting out and kept me from starring at the other women in the cell.
As the day went on, more and more women came into the cell. I felt like I was in the devil’s inner sanctum. I had never before felt the spirits and the negativity and the evil that I felt in that place. The women in that cell were of various races and they were all in there for different reasons. They came into that cell one after the other, and gravitated to the right hand side. They came in cussing and threatening one another to the point in which I thought they were going to fight. Once about 15 women had piled up on the right side of the cell a woman that was either mentally ill or high off of some substance could no longer stay stretched out on the floor on that side of the cell. She came over to the side where I sat and resumed her position without even looking in my direction. The talking and arguing amongst the women continued but no other person came to my side of the cell and no one else that was in there at that time made an effort to speak to me. I sat in that same position for over six hours moving not one time.
The last two women that came into the cell while I was in there appeared to be a lesbian couple. They followed into the cell just like all the women before them, gravitating to the right hand side. Finally, what I would call the male of the couple came about half way over to the left hand side of the cell and said to me, “Ma’am, are you alright?” “You do not belong in here,” she said. Tears could have welled up in my eyes, but I thought of my parents and managed to contain myself, “I’m fine, thank you,” I said. Those were the only words I muttered the entire six hours I sat in that jail cell.
Talkin' 'bout OVERWHELMED!! Thanks for your comments! Tyna T. Duncan
