Spending Part of the Night in Jail

For one of my last activities working with Central 911, we decided why not pull an all nighter and take a few more calls, which should be pretty good, now that the festival kicked off. During the first hour or so, the EMS lead mentioned that I should have rode with the police during my stay here to get to experience it.

Well within 10 minutes, I was able to ask myself, have you ever had the opportunity to tour a local a jail in a developing region?

Jails in your country may not be like those in other areas of the world. We had the opportunity to take an ambulance call at a local police station jail. There were only a few cells, which were approximately 6 foot by 3 foot, with 8 people in a cell. Everyone was standing and cramped together.

The story only begins there.

A prisoner needed to be taken to the hospital. Here is how we understood him being in the jail.

Earlier in the day, a friend of his stole a chicken from his boss. He went over to confront the friend. The father was upset that he accused his son of stealing the chicken. The argument escalated and the person who was taken to jail killed the father. He claimed it was in self defense.

During the ambulance ride and in the hospital, he was escorted by a police officer. However, he was not handcuffed. As such, I rode in the front of the ambulance, just to be safe.

That was the night I rode during the overnight shift, went to the local jail, and looked at a murderer directly in his eyes. A night I will never forget.