What I Learned in Jail Last Night

Sheila didn't come into work yesterday... as it turns out, she had a
good excuse. As I was led through the subway station in handcuffs
Tuesday night, a young girl called after me, "Oooh, undercover got
you, didn't they? What you did, ma?" Good question! All I did was
drink a beer from a paper bag while waiting for the F train. Trashy
habit, and technically illegal, but who cares, right? In fact, the
NYPD cares very much. What followed was twenty-four hours in two
jails, hours in handcuffs, and eventual dismissal in that three-ring
circus known as Night Court. Everything I need to know about life, I
learned in the female prisoner holding pen in the Tombs.
After taking away my beer, the cute-but-weathered strawberry-blonde
lady cop who arrested me put me in a van with two other
quality-of-life violators: an old homeless Polish man named Bogden,
and a seventeen-year-old black kid named Kevia. Both were arrested for
"outstretch": taking up more than one seat on the subway, or lying
down on the seats.
We sat in the van for two hours while officers tried to round up
another "body," as they're called, for the night's sweep. "Doin' a big
sweep on quality-of-life offenses," I heard the baldheaded, babyfaced
male cop tell someone on his cellphone. He talked with my arresting
officer:
"Billy's officially ruined the unit. It's ovah. It's completely ovah."
He shook his head.
"He's the only what who really believes in what we do, though," the
lady cop sighed.
They transported us to the precinct in the Canal Street subway
station. Still handcuffed, they pulled the bobby pins out of my hair,
the shoelaces out of my shoes, took my backpack and all belongings
into custody, and removed my belt. My nose was running from not being
able to reach my face for two hours, and my makeup was smeared from
lying facedown in the police van. I fit right in! They put me in a
cell and slammed the door.
My cellmate was a teenage-looking, chubby goth girl with holes in her
tights who scratched herself compulsively. We said nothing to each
other; meanwhile, the guys in the two cells next to us were
practically having a party. They'd gotten some guards to buy them
Cokes and were hollering and yelling about "we'll be outta here by 3
a.m., no problem." They were in for the crimes of "outstretch" and
turnstile-jumping.
An hour later, it was mugshot and fingerprinting time! Part of the
reason I was in jail so long is because my fingerprints wouldn't go
through. They use a stupid machine that places your finger on a
Xerox-type platen. Not only does it take regular prints, but you also
take prints from different angles. I spent an hour being
fingerprinted. Mine were too light, and the court kept rejecting them.
Technology!
I slept on the wooden bench in my cell, between rounds of attempted
fingerprinting. They kept bringing in new prisoners, trying to put
them in my cell: "Hey, I thought only girls are allowed in here," I
squeaked when they tried to bring in a scruffy dude.
"Why you gotta be like that, baby?" the new prisoner rasped. "We
coulda had something real nice goin' on, sweetheart. Why you gotta
ruin it like that?" They put him in another cell.
At 7 a.m., my arresting officer tucked a snub-nosed pistol into her
hip holster and took me and Bogden, the homeless Pole, to Manhattan
Criminal Court. She always cuffed me too tightly.
In the basement of the Court, we waited, still cuffed, to be processed
behind a line of older black men who were sitting on the floor,
handcuffed together. That is, each man was handcuffed to the other,
like a chain gang. We had our mug shots taken again, went to a medical
screening to make sure we were mentally sound, and I was taken
upstairs to the female holding pen. This is where my real education
began.
They were asleep when I came in, about a dozen women stretched out on
benches, and in a few cases, thin mats. Oh, the luxury! For the next
twelve hours, I eyed the mats jealously.
The two most common questions you get in jail are, "What you in for?"
and, "This your first time being locked up?" The other gals awaiting
arraignment were in for the following reasons: there was a redhead who
had illegally subletted her apartment, a small Japanese exotic dancer
who hit her boyfriend with a frying pan ("He had it comin'"), a
cluster of Spanish-speaking girls who clustered in the corner and did
not socialize, an older Spanish-speaking women for singing for change
in the subway, a thirtysomething black woman for a suspended license,
a pair of sisters for larceny, check and credit card fraud, a college
girl accused of stealing $4,000 from work (she assured us she had
not), and a sweet girl in a short coral dress and heels who had been
accused of kicking a car while leaving a nightclub. She hadn't kicked
the car, but had put up a struggle upon being arrested: "It's because
I'm black, isn't it!" It probably was.
Christy, a 44-year-old black woman arrested for having two screens for
a pipe in her backpack, was a jail veteran and the unofficial leader
of the group. "It's an election year," she said, standing up to
deliver a speech. "They sweepin' the streets of us degenerates, of the
black folk. We got to band together. Whoever says every man for
himself, that's bullshit. They got all us in here all some bullshit
charges."
The burly female guards told us, with sadistic glee, that we could be
legally held for up to 72 hours. A few girls broke down at this.
Christy watched as a twenty-year-old, arrested for turnstile-jumpting,
wept. "I was like that the first time I got locked up," she said
wistfully. She reminisced about her youth in Times Square: "We would
sit in that movie theater and get lifted! You could not even see the
muthafuckin' screen, the smoke was so thick."
"This your first time locked up?" she asked me. I nodded. "You're
takin' it really well."
Over the next few hours, we talked about Barack Obama (inmates prefer
him 10 to 1), MySpace, and how to properly wash your girl-parts. (I
think the word they used was "irrigate.") Tattoos were shown and
compared. I used the payphone that was outside the cell by reaching my
arms through the bars to dial, and pulling the receiver inside. We
were given sandwiches, but the guards got nasty when we asked for
toilet paper. A small battle ensued.
Nearly 24 hours after being arrested, a guard clanked the keys in the
door and yelled my name. I jumped up, and they took me down to Night
Court.
Arraignment took less than a minute. All charges were dropped. As I
walked out of the courtroom and hailed a cab, I realized that I was
reformed! I'll never drink beer in the subway again.
URL: http://gawker.com/364622/what-i-learned-in-jail-last-night