Random Emotions or Normal Feelings?

On Monday, several different emotions ran through me. With each new activity, the emotions changed. Some of these emotions surprised me, while others just seemed mundane.

Lt. Ron took me on a tour of the whole building. At first, the walk through was exciting. I got to see the evidence room, booking chambers, and meet all of the other Lieutenants on the squad. However, as we rounded the corner into processing my heart skipped a beat.

In the hallway into the processing room everything was hunky-dory and strangely peaceful. However, in a matter of seconds I became very nervous. It didn’t help that Lt. Ron said, “What out for shit-bags. Sometimes they are unpredictable.”

At first, I didn’t understand. Then within the blink of an eye, I understood everything completely. A woman weighing every bit of 220 pounds came bounding down the hallway in a blind, confused rage. Her hair was disheveled. When she came closer, her black and white jumpsuit revealed leg cuffs but no handcuffs. I was so nervous and frightened that I jumped behind Lt. Ron. It wasn’t her size that scared me. It was the way she kept looking at me. Her eyes were wild and full of hatred. I wasn’t expecting that kind of wake-up call at 8 am. Needless to say, I learned police rule number one very quickly-Always expect the worst and be on your toes.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of my surprises. After my incident with the woman prisoner, my tour continued into the kitchen. My second surprise came on very quickly. Lt. Ron said to walk in front of him, but to keep close. I was confused but understood when I rounded the corner. There was another prisoner, only this time it turned out to be a very burly man with tattoos all down his arms. For some reason, my emotion wasn’t fear. Instead, I was just a little bit nervous, but confident. I was more prepared this time and just walked right by the man, ignoring all of his looks and smart remarks.

When my extensive tour was complete, I started filing papers. Police work is 90 percent paper work. Exciting times come far and few. Anyways, these papers were police reports. What shocked me was how unorganized everything was. Nowhere to found were filing cabinets. It was just messy stack after messy stack, cardboard box after cardboard box. How is it that our legal system is so disorganized? People wonder how police files get lost or how reports never get filed. Now I know the answer why. My shock slowly started to turn into anger. The longer I sat there, the more upset I got. Justice wasn’t being served, they were serving injustice on a silver platter.
When it came time to leave, I recapped the day. I thought about what I saw and how it was handled. And then, I was thankful to have learned these things very early on and that I was on the free side of the bars.