May

14

I've been to some strange places on earth but when I landed in the LA county jail for jaywalking I thought this is the end. First, two hundred of us were jammed into a large room with one open toilet where the feces literally overflowed onto the floor. I sat on the floor near there so people wouldn't bother me. A guy went into convulsions nearby and they just let him twitch for 20 minutes before unlocking the door and bringing in a stretcher. Then we were herded in groups into a smaller room where they gassed us through the ventilation with chloroform as they threw our cage assignments onto the floor. For the next three days we were shuttled from cage to cage every three hours not knowing if it was day or night in the underground 2000 person facility. There was a baloney sandwich every 8 hours when they made us sit crotch to crotch but on a long bench to eat. The guards warned us that if any of us acted up the others should jump him. My last cell was the size of a small bedroom where I was the only white but we all stood because there was no room to do anything else as a loudspeaker crackled our court times.

I hadn't jaywalked and stopped traffic on the 2 am streets as the ticket said, so I planned a defense. Next I was daisy chained with a line of other inmates and marched through a dark tunnel and suddenly into a huge bright courtroom. The judge looked like Groucho Marx. "Well, gentlemen, I have good and bad news," he intoned. "the bad news is the jail is overcrowded; the good is that you are all going to be released with 'time served' if everyone pleads guilty." I looked around and knew these guys would shiv (stab, knife) me if I said otherwise, and we all answered guilty. Hours later they examined the Mickey Mouse tattoo on my left shoulder to make sure it was me, and I was released onto the streets of LA on July 4th.

Tim Melvin writes: 

In the misspent days of yore I was a traveling door to door book salesman for several years. One of the drawbacks of this profession was being subject to arrest in various cities and towns that had some sort of ordinance against door to door sales. As a result I got to experience many of our nation's jails and lockups for a brief period of time. LA County is second only to Albuquerque for filthy and horrid conditions. For those keeping score Boulder Colorado was the best. I was there for a weekend and took a macrame class and caught up on my reading. 


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