None of my fears of execution were realized (obviously). Eventually we reached the Fayette County Detention Center and the cops started leading me in. While I was passing through the entryway, some stoner looking dude started talking about how out in Colorado, the cops “wouldn’t do this to us” and they would even “drive us home when we needed it.”
I shook my head and said, “Us? I don’t want to be part of any ‘us.'”
The stoner guy started cussing me out.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” one of the cops said sympathetically.
I started to go through the booking. They had me put my hands on a counter so I could be searched, so I did so.
“Well, Mr. caco,” they said, “that’s one thing accurate about this that you have learned from television.”
They got my information and started asking me about my mental state.
“Do you have a mental illness?”
I said I didn’t know. I kept demanding a lawyer and a phone call.
“Are you currently suicidal?”
At this point I looked straight at the questioning officer and snapped, “You don’t look like a mental health professional to me.”
He got quite angry and said, “Well, that’s it, Mr. caco. You’ve just shat the bed. You’re going to be here for three days.”
He marked “mental illness” on his little form and added a yellow sticker to it.
At this point they gave me a retinal scan to check my identity against a database of known criminals.
Because of the cops’ grilling about my “outsider” status due to the books in my laptop bag, I started to think that they weren’t searching the database for a match for me, they were adding an entry to the list of potential terrorists, to be sent on to the Federal government. I was certain that after this night I would be on a terrorism “watch list.”
They took away my shoes and my glasses (I guess because I could potentially kill myself with them) and threw me in a cold, bare cell with Plexiglass doors and a bench too narrow to sleep on. They also kept moving me from cell to cell throughout the night. There was a pile of vomit in the first cell I was in, and one of the inmates was forced by a cop to clean it up shortly after I was moved out of there. I was convinced the cop was trying to make it look like I had been the one who vomited, so the inmate (who indeed looked very disgruntled) would blame me for his misfortune.
The night in the cell was the most awful night I can remember having. The worst part about it was that everybody, cops and visitors, would go out of their way to avoid acknowledging my existence. I felt like a piece of dirt, lower than a human being. Eventually I started addressing people coming in to get
somebody to notice that I was imprisoned, but of course nobody said anything or would even look at me.
Eventually I was reduced to begging them to let me out in exchange for some free work on their computer systems. When that didn’t work, I realized it was my fate to be isolated and I started singing “The Yellow Submarine.”
A drunk redneck woman in the next cell yelled, “Shut the fuck up, motherfucker!” in an extremely thick, comical Kentucky accent, but I kept singing.
I heard the cops discussing the contents of my laptop bag while I was locked up. Of course the books were mentioned, but they were also laughing about the contents of my notebook, which featured rambling letters to the President, extensive to-do lists, conspiratorial ponderings, and things of that nature.
The cops hadn’t let me have a phone call (citing the same reason they didn’t let me have a lawyer: because it was the middle of the night) and they were talking about me so I was certain they had it in for me.
I wondered if I would ever get out. At one point I ginally got a guard to notice me and asked him, “Don’t you know Offcer Bill P. [REDACTED]? He’s a friend of mine,” and the guard snapped angrily, “No I don’t, but that’s because I don’t talk to the voices in my head.”
Aside from these small details, I don’t really remember how I passed the long hours until morning. I do know that I didn’t sleep, because it was impossible to get comfortable in that cell. I probably just zoned out and stared at the wall, or talked softly to myself, or sang. I’m sure I seemed quite crazy and I don’t blame people for having that interpretation because of the drug I was strung out on.
Eventually at about 8 AM a cop let me out of the cell saying, “It’s time for your phone call.” I asked him why he was letting me out, since the batch who locked me up said I would be in here for three days. By this point I was more rational, although obviously afraid.
“Well, there’s a yellow sticker on your file, but we’ll see about getting that taken off,” the guard said. I told him they had taken my shoes and my glasses, and he seemed almost apologetic.
“We’ll get those back for you,” he said. He was so friendly and accommodating (a stark contrast to all the other jaded, angry people at the prison) that I asked him how long he had worked there and he responded, “Oh, I just started the other day.” I have since become convinced that it’s almost impossible to be a police officer, jailer, firefighter or EMT without also becoming a gigantic asshole.
They sat me down at a public phone in the waiting area and let me call whoever I wanted. I tried multiple people — Erin’s cell phone, the office (since most of my friends were working there) — but I couldn’t get an answer on any of them. I once again began to doubt my identity and wondered if I had made all these friends and family members up in my head.
Finally a message got through to Al DeLarge’s cell phone, and he said he would come and pick me up. He bailed me out and I remember as I was leaving I was very frightened of taking my laptop bag (which they had returned to me with all its contents intact) and I insisted on stashing it in Al’s trunk.
For weeks after the initial arrest, I researched misdemeanor marijuana charges and the potential penalties for each. According to what I read, the Paraphernalia charge was the worst of all the charges I held and a second offense was considered a Class D Felony. I also found that the sentence for simple possession could vary between a simple fine to 30 days in jail, depending on the Judge, so I was very frightened of getting a ball-breaking Judge who would put me away for a month.
In addition to all this, there was some kind of confusion regarding the police reports for my charges. There were actually three charges in total: the first group of cops filed Marijuana Possession and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, and the second group of cops filed Public Intoxication — Not Alcohol Related.
The second group’s report came straight through and I was able to get a copy almost immediately, but for some reason the first group’s report wasn’t in the system for several weeks. I went to the Police Station multiple times to check on it but they told me I would have to go to different stations and blah-blah, giving me the runaround.
What really freaked me out though is that each time I visited the station, the clerk who assisted me would press a small button under her desk, and get really nervous if I moved away from the window or didn’t keep my hands in full view at all times. I suppose my file had some type of marker on it indicating potentially dangerous behavior due to mental illness, but I was convinced at the time it was because I was now considered a terrorist.
Finally I got all the documents I needed to take to a lawyer. From all the Internet reading I had done, I believed that the cops had done me wrong and were trying to break up one criminal incident into two so that I would be unable to get rid of them with a first offense exception. I thought these cops were
dirty and crooked and out to get me because they hated me and viewed me as a threat to society. I was convinced I needed to get a top-notch lawyer to fight this grave injustice, but Al DeLarge kept insisting it wasn’t any big deal, that I should simply plead guilty and pay a fine. He was quite insistent about it, and so I took his advice for the first court appearance I had, related to the Public Intoxication charge. I plead guilty and paid a fine.
Before the next court appearance, though, my Paranoia had increased significantly and I was deathly afraid of going to jail for 30 days. So I talked to a couple of lawyers informally and they confirmed my suspicions. They told me that I should have gotten a lawyer for the Public Intoxication charge. They
reasoned that since the first group arrested me right after I had taken the drugs, I was definitely publically intoxicated at that time, and thus a second incident report was not necessary and the charges should all be bundled into one big group, so that they could all be plea bargained down to one charge.
I angrily confronted Al about this and he got quite pissed off at me, claiming that I was unrightfully blaming him and of course none of these charges were any big deal at all.
So, when I appeared in court the second time, I plead “not guilty” to the first group of charges. I made a grievous error in doing so, because the Judge was extremely lenient and offered to roll the two charges up into simple Possession, which was a negligible offense. I believed, however, that if I plead guilty the Judge would assign me the maximum sentence and I needed a lawyer to negotiate with the county attorney on my behalf. So I responded not guilty. The Judge tried to give me a second chance, saying that I wouldn’t get as good a deal the second time around. I plead not guilty anyway. The judge sighed and set a court date.
It was during the course of my wait for my third appearance that my mental state seriously deteriorated into delusions. I thought that I was being made an example of, that I was being set up to take the fall, that the Bush Administration wanted to create a false class of “homegrown terrorists” so they could justify further PATRIOT Acts to further reduce Americans’ civil liberties, in preparation for the creation of a gigantic police state apparatus.
None of this was helped by the rumors going around at work, that a makeshift bomb had been found on the night of my arrest. I started sending secret notes to the lawyer I found, telling him my case was “more serious than it ‘first appears’ and describing the contents of my laptop bag, which I was sure had drawn the Federal government’s attention and possibly even surveillance. He ignored my fears as the Paranoid ramblings that they were. I even contacted a NORML lawyer and he told me I should have plead guilty to Possession. Finally when I went back to court, the lawyer I had told me the County Attorney had offered a plea to Drug Paraphernalia in exchange for dropping the Possession charge, which was the best he could do. The Judge and all of my friends had been exactly right about everything. The ultimate penance I had to pay was a pair of $100 fines, and paying Al DeLarge back for the bail money he put in.
For two years after my arrest and prosecution, I remained convinced that the government was after me. I did various extremely Paranoid (and hilarious) things, like ridding my house of any and all potentially controversial books, and wanting to put an American flag on my door to convince the government that I had become a true patriot. All of that is just the beginning of the extremely illogical and self-destructive road I wound up on.
So that’s the tale of my arrest, the event which finally tipped me into insanity. I still don’t know what the drug was that those hooligans spiked me with. Perhaps it was just weed and I had an intense salvia flashback. I thought from the Paranoia that it was crack, since that’s what the hooligans had gathered to do in their apartment. My country cousin told me that crack only lasts about 15 minutes and that, due to the duration of the effects and the manic energy I had, that it was probably crystal meth. I guess I’ll never know for certain.