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Sep 15, 2006 - 06:07 PM |
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In jail... But not quite like Cody from SF Alpha |
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Yeah, I never did get the pinstriped shirt/hat combo.
November 12, 2002 - July 9, 2003
So, the cop takes me down the steps and to his car. Eventually, he makes his way behind a casino (Mandalay Bay) where apparently all the patrol cars that had been out picking up people with warrants deliver us. Here I see a few paddy wagons or however you spell that. Basically you sit in the back of a reinforced van while handcuffed to some handy rails. Before being thrown in, all my money and valuebles were catalogued.
I get in, finally, and across from me is Lenore. I`m immediately surprised and alarmed. I thought only I had been BUSTED and she would later that day get the kids back. She says the same CPS woman that had arrived with the cop at my friend`s place to get me came to get her the hour before.
We`re taken to the County Jail. We both get thrown in two different holding tanks. Basically, you`re held in these tanks until you are fingerprinted and interviewed for classification, and then until they find an available cell for you. So I sit in this room with about thirty other guys for about 13 hours. Fucking disgusting. For a while I kept imagining that at any moment a lawyer of some sort would come get me and say "they realize they can`t hold you on this, I`m getting you released!" Apparently I`d been watching too much Law & Order.
Some time around three in the morning I`m taken to a cell. At this time it dawns on me that I won`t be getting out of this mess so easily. My cell mate`s some goofy white dude who had choked someone out with a crowbar of some sort. Charming fella. Vance Benson I remember he was called. Being in that jail, on the ninth floor, was an experience. You think of the BAD GUYS in society and you see them sprinkled around town when you go out. But there, in jail, it was a fucking CONCENTRATION of the most vile scum in Las Vegas. It was like a society of people I`d never seen before. Murders, attempted murder, Grand Larceny, grand theft, etc. God save you if you had a sex crime, especially against a child, and you wound up there.
In my eight months there I didn`t get into a single fight. Basically being respectful but firm and confident will always keep you out of trouble in jail or prison. I don`t really want to get into the personalities there and incidents because there`s too much to cover.
I go to court three days later. I see Lenore there in her County Blues. We read what we`re charged with for the first time. Child Abuse and Neglect. Four charges, one for each of the kids. Apparently Lenore is charged for not reporting my abuse to authorities. Here`s the fucked up part... The charges for the older kids can be summed up as me slapping the first one (I did slap him once. He was throwing a tantrum and trying to kick Lenore in the stomach while she was pregnant), locking the second one on the balcony (I put him on timeout and he decided to stay there an hour after his ten minutes were up because he was mad), and picking up the youngest, by the ear, off the ground. Now, I`m no expert, but I imagine such an act would leave horrible damage to the damned kid`s ear tissue. And, obviously, I don`t think my grip is strong enough to pick an 80 pound kid off the ground while only holding his ear with one hand. I later found out that when he was interviewed he was sitting down on a chair, and when the CPS Agent asked him where his feet were when I held him by the ear he said "like this." He`s a kid, so his feet didn`t touch the ground... CPS took some liberties there.
The kids, from what they say, felt pressured to say what CPS wanted them to say. I don`t know what to think, to this day, about all the shit that went on in these CPS interviews and the actions taken in my case. I admit, and always have, I fucked up. I should have watched my son closer or had Dala quit sooner. But this shit being pinned on me was out of hand.
I asked for a bail reduction (my bail was 100 grand) and the District Attorney (DA) fought it. Later I found out I had an immigration hold and was ineligible for bail. This was crushing. There seemed to be no end in sight. Lenore did manage to get her bail reduced and she was released one week after being thrown in. Thank God. The next week she got the kids back. Apparently CPS gets ten thousand dollars for every child they collect after the first 30 days. Lenore got our kids back after 31. Maybe a coincidence, I don`t know.
So much to say but I want to sum this up.
Over the next eight months it`s endless court. The DA keeps getting the trial delayed. The DA wasn`t offering me any sort of plea bargain (which is a deal you make to plead guilty in order to get a reduced sentence, maybe even probation) and I wasn`t going to take one anyway. I wanted to fight. But it was stressful, I knew guys who had been fighting their cases for three, four, sometimes five years. The bad food, the horrible conditions, the delays in movement in your case, etc I felt were tools the system used to pressure a person into doing what the DA wanted. Why fight your case if you could just plead guilty and go to prison, where conditions were much better? I`ll explain that later.
There was a time, just about all of April 2003, that I was crushed. I didn`t eat, I just lied on my top bunk, ignored my cell mate, and watched the movement of the sun and the shadows it created on the walls. I made many sundials, and was continually frustrated by the daily reallignments I had to make. I would watch the sun set behind Mt. Charleston and it would depress me. There was no end in sight. No trial date planned, my son was growing up without me, Lenore was having problems, and I was sitting in a cell fucking off. Fuck. I wanted to find and kill that blond cunt of a DA. Every single time I tried to get a bail reduction or an OR (an O.R. is when the judge releases you on your own recognizance, he releases you without you having to post bail, basically under trust that you will show up on your court dates) she would describe how I must have viciously twisted my son`s arm, that I would do it again, that I was an illegal and might run back to my country. Fuck the fact that I had been in Vegas with all the little family I had for seven years at that point. Fuck it if I knew nothing about Guatemala. I was a FLIGHT RISK. So no O.R., no bail reduction, nothing. Just sitting in my cell like a jackass waiting for a trial that felt like a distant dream. Then worrying about being deported. I fucking cried a few times, after the sun set. It felt like my life was ruined, extinguished like the sun and all that remained was darkness. Serious angst in April.
Then, one day in May 2003, I woke up and after getting shredded in court by the DA`s comments I came to the mindset that I didn`t care. That my new life was life as a prisoner. That Lenore, my kids, my life was gone and I needed to get over it and adjust to the new me. So I became social again. I did my thing and found comfort in my dials and keeping statistics on the things I`d buy on the jail commisary. I had Lenore send me books, I`d talk to her on the phone, had her look up interesting stuff to send me from the internet, etc.
Thank God for Lenore, she was in many ways the only comfort I ever had those eight months. The DA had offered to drop all her charges if she would sign to take my parental rights away and say I, indeed, did abuse the kids. But she stood by me. Most criminals in jail have, logically, criminally minded girlfriends on the street that, put in that situation, would sell out their boyfriend in a heart beat. But thank God Lenore didn`t do it, or at this moment I`d still have around six years left to do.
In June, 2003 Lenore`s mother got me a street lawyer. A paid attorney that could focus on my case instead of the Public Defender I had who had to worry about her 200 some odd cases. In late June we went to court and he had the charge of me pulling on the youngest kids ear dropped. He asked for an OR for me and the judge told him to file a motion for it and he`d hear it the next week. I`m basically standing up but not paying attention to all this. I`d heard it all before, and I felt the judge would never give me an OR. I felt it was useless. I felt my new lawyer`s only purpose was that he would be much better prepared to fight for me at trial than my public defender.
July 1st comes along. I go to court and my lawyer shows up. But I don`t see that fucking whore of a DA. I forgot to mention, but she was pregnant since the moment I had first seen her. Come to find out she was at the hospital that day. She had just given birth. For a moment I hoped that what happened to me would happen to her and her child, but it faded. I didn`t hate her that much. Some Assistant DA shows up and explains to the judge that she`s not available, and that she has my file and he can`t get ahold of it to fight my motion for an OR. The judge is, for some reason, in a bad mood that day. I see this shit going on and I`m thinking "Damn it, now I gotta come to court AGAIN for an OR I will never get." But the judge didn`t feel that way. He felt this damned district attorney should have been prepared. "OR granted" he yells. I, before I can catch myself, let out a yelp of delight and surprise. He calls for the next motion on someone else to be dealt with, and like a stupefied jackass I remain standing. The inmate next to me reminds me to sit down.
My lawyer leaves, having had gotten me an OR out of the blue. I tell you, there was no way in hell I would have ever gotten that OR if that DA had been there that day instead of giving labor. No way. Sometimes I wonder what my fate today would have been had that not happened the way it did. But it did happen, and I will always remember that day. That moment.
Because I had an immigration hold, INS picked me up the next day. Because I was not a felon I was given a 19,500 dollar bail. It seems high but it`s that way because people dealing with INS are huge flight risks.
I was then put in the North Las Vegas City Jail. Thank God Lenore`s mother was there for me. After a stressful week she found a bail bonds agency that got me the hell out of there.
I stepped out of INS Headquarters on July 9th, 2004. I had done 240 straight days... Before that I had never done any time at all. But, as I walked through a lawn, it was a beautiful experience. To be free. To be able to go where I wanted without being watched or needing permission. I went to a payphone and called Lenore, then my friend to come pick me up. The breeze felt beautiful against my face as we drove to Arby`s (man was that shit delicious after county jail food for eight months) and then to his place. To be able to get dressed, use the bathroom, sleep on a bed, take a shower in private, etc was wonderful. To be FREE!
Gamingforce, for the most part, was in the dark about all this. Because I had retired and left the board before I had gone to jail, very few people knew about what had happened to me. I had Lenore let Vertigo (an oldbie from here) know, and he would very randomly write me. I gave him the full story, wrote it all out, and he scanned and sent it to the rest of the staff here. I didn`t want the board in general to know. There was too much going on and I wanted to keep it private. It wasn`t kept private long. Rockman/Decker, then on staff, apparently let Zephyrin see these logs at his house and Zephyrin posted them on the board, feeling everyone should know. They were almost immediately removed by staff. I forgot what happened to Decker, but Zephyrin was banned until I got the ban lifted last year. More on that later. Dsal, julia and Chuck were also kind enough to write me during those months in jail.
Sorry about the general disorder in this entry. Bear with me! More maybe tomorrow.
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