We’re standing in the sally port, 11 cadets, and even though just four weeks ago we were strangers, we’ve bonded. Team-building exercises did it: assembling Legos together while blindfolded, sweaty PT drills, communal showers, Friday night dollar drafts at Murphy’s.
Our class is a mixed bag of excited newbies and recession driven start-overs. Mainly white men in their early twenties, like me. But there’s also Tammy, a former hairdresser. And Morales, a retired gang member who’s missing the better half of his middle and ring finger on his right hand. Frank, a former actor, has bragged about a stint on NYPD Blue. Michelle, who got a medical exemption from PT after the first week of prisoner squats and was allowed to sit in the bleachers while we did lunges across the echoey gym. Rhabdomyolysis. I googled it.
This is our last Friday in the Hillsborough County academy, and we’re dressed uniformly in navy blue BDU tactical pants, academy T-shirts that read, on the front, Almost A, and on the back, HCDOC Corrections Officer. We’re antsy at the day’s task, which we’ve all known was coming, because the schedule issued on day one was designed to lead the eye to it. Bold lettering, extra-large: April 13, 2007 — Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) Certification.
“What’s oleoresin capsicum?” asked Michelle.
“It’s military grade pepper spray,” the training director said. “The equivalent of rubbing ghost pepper in your eyes.”
“How do we get certified in that?”
“We spray a shitload of it on your face.”
We’re not talking. We’re looking from behind the glass onto the housing unit: an open dayroom with metal tables, two tiers of cells. It’s been emptied for our training, the inmates given a rare hour of full-court basketball in the gym. Field training officers (FTOs) with crew cuts and muscled arms in tight-fitting uniforms carry five-gallon orange buckets filled with water from the chemical closet to the recreation yard. I’m trying to slow my breathing, stay in control.
We’ve read literature about the spray, how some people believe they are dying. Some have deadly allergic reactions, but that’s rare. A veteran sergeant who showed us the different delivery systems for the spray said to rub a bar of soap directly on your eyeballs. When we laughed, he said, “I’m not kidding.”
I picture myself covered in the orange spray, crying, trying to wash it out of my eyes in a crowd of people I’ll have to work with. They’ll remember the Irish kid from Massachusetts with the shaved head, weeping, asking if he was going to die. I lean on the motivational quotes we’ve learned. Tough times don’t last; strong people do! Reality is something you rise above. Your attitude determines your reaction. Landmarks versus land mines.
Six months from now, I’ll stand in a sally port like this one — a small enclosure surrounded by windows, front- and rear-facing magnetized locked doors — gloved hand on the inner door handle, and watch the inmates scurry to their cells. “Lock down!” the unit officer yells, as wet bodies run nude out of the showers, trying to wrap too-small towels around their waists. More officers enter the sally port behind me, and the fat ones are out of breath. Morales puts his stumpy fingers on my shoulder. “Yo,” is all he says.
We wait for the lieutenant to command a sally port override from Central. I am itching to get on the unit. It’s my first emergency call, and it happens during breakfast. Sugary Fruit Loops are stuck in my teeth. The override is called. I don’t feel the weight of the door as I pull it open and follow where the unit officer directs me.
Hanging, cell 2019. I’m up the stairs, skipping two steps at a time. I’ll remember the suicide response drills. CPR mannequins hung from window grates in darkened cells. We’d cut them down with our J hooks and blow into their mouths. We did it for hours. The mannequin’s lips tasted like rubber bands. But this is a full-bodied man, and as I hoist him up by his thighs, take weight off his neck, I feel his sweaty stomach on my cheek. He’s too hot to be dead. I don’t see who cuts him, but I feel him drop into my arms. We lay him down, and he coughs something otherworldly.
Later, I am posted outside his cell, and after he’s good and settled behind the Lexan door, I ask him why he did it. He tells me his girlfriend sold his TV. He’s upset and he weeps, but I’m angry at him. I don’t report on his suicide watch sheet that he’s upset. It won’t be until I am alone in my truck on I-93 that I will cry too.