Ralph

This excursion takes us to the section of the jail where our mentally challenged inmates are housed. You will be hearing a lot about these guys throughout this book. The story here involves one of my favorite memories of this difficult place to work and breathe.
When I say breathe, I mean it. These guys did not like water or soap, if you get my drift. The gagging stench in the hallways and cells was always a primary focal topic of the people who were part of any of the educational tours that came through our jail. Aerosols used to dampen the bouquet of decayed organic matter didn't help that much. Just smelled like someone pooped in the flowers.
At the heart of this depiction of events, enters our inmate, Ralph. He did not set a good example with jail staff from the get-go. He went straight from the booking vestibule for making terrorist threats to the safety cell for being a danger to himself and to others. He was very combative with every officer he came in contact with for most of his stay at our humble abode. Most officers were very careful around him in spite of his diminutive stature. Napoleon comes to mind.
Such is luck for Ralph. For as soon as the 36 hours and one extension of 12 hours in the safety cell had elapsed, he was transferred to one of only two camera cells in the whole jail. Both of these cells were side by side in the ding dong aisle. These cells were reserved for very high profile inmates who also carried the threat of killing themselves. Anything and everything they did could be monitored by a camera that was mounted on the ceiling of the cell. Earning a spot in one of these cells did not come easily, and even more difficult to get out of once they were there.
Every third word out of Ralph's mouth was, "mother fucker". I don't think he ever meant it as a term of endearment towards anyone. How he ever came to like me and the security officer, Chadwick, I'll never know. Perhaps, because we both would take time just to talk with him. Rather than challenge his fabricated "accomplishments", we would embellish upon them and encourage his participation in our fabrications. He could make a great fiction writer under different circumstances.
To the administration, it could have been construed as harassment, and a clear violation of jail policy. In actuality, that was not the case. We developed a different strategy for dealing with a very obstreperous inmate, and it worked very well for us. So much for following the letter of the law through administrative eyes... there is such a thing as acting as the circumstances dictate. Some things work and others don't. Our treatment of Ralph worked.
Ralph was always getting rule violations for confrontations with other officers and destroying county property. He loved ripping phones off the wall. However, when officer Chadwick and I were on duty, there was not one single incident with this inmate for the six months we were assigned to that floor. That included the times when the previous shift would really piss him off and he had already been acting out.
As soon as he found out that Chadwick and I were on the floor, he would calm down and tell us the harrowing stories of mutant officers who wanted to kill him. We would listen, then tell him how to avoid being tortured and maimed for life. He was always thankful for the cloak-and-dagger information. My imagination was really challenged trying to keep pace with the thought processes that originated from somewhere in the bowels of a Neptune alien on too much LSD.
The thing that worked best for us was to recruit Ralph as a candidate for the agency we were secretly working for... the CIA. We told him that we were impressed with his ability to lie and could really use a person like that in our operations to rid the world of duerestonomy... whatever that is. His only requirement for passing the tests was that he could not lie to us. He agreed.
Eventually, Ralph was released from jail. The DA dropped the charges about 10 months down the road. Don't know why. Never heard from Ralph again, so he must be staying out of trouble. I would not be fearful of this inmate if I ran across him on the street. I'd just tell him I had a mission for him to undertake.