This is an excerpt from my memoir, Officer Banfield — the honest story of my years as a corrections and police officer, hitting bottom in alcoholism, and the long road to recovery.
I've had a really good sense for this so far in my life. I knew that was not the time to fuck with that kid, that whatever mood he woke up in, that he was ready to go all out that morning. Just like the day I had told him I was going to tackle the shit out of him if he ran across the yard, that was not the day for him to fuck with me.
I realized when he turned that light off the second time and he said that, that it was not the day to fuck with him and I said, "Fine, fine. I hope you will come down because we need to go to breakfast," or some shit like that.
And guess what?
He dragged it out there and we got to breakfast on time just fine. I did not turn that kid's light on though. That kid was ready to murder me that day if I had turned his light back on.
My dad would have days like that where you could mess with Dad some days, but there were other days you did not mess with Dad, and maybe I just knew from that or whatever.
Anyway, I've told you a lot of the good stories I've got from the first part of my time in DJJ.
The first part of my time in DJJ was rough. I was living a life of all kinds of horrible contradictions too. The hardest one to admit is that, during this period of my life, I went through a hateful, racist phase that I am deeply ashamed of today. At work I would tell the kids I didn't discriminate against any of them, and then I would go home and privately feed that ugliness in myself. It was one of the sickest, most shameful chapters of who I was back then, and I am grateful I grew out of it and became a completely different person. Even in the middle of all that, I had this really weird sense of integrity too. Several of the partners I worked with were bringing the kids in cigarettes.
Now, I never saw any of them actually whip a pack of smokes out and hand it to a kid and take money, but the kids told me or my one partner, I think on his last day, he told me that he kept things in line by bringing the kids cigarettes.
Then it all made sense because some of the officers had a lot bigger pull within the kids than you should expect them to, and it turned out the partner I was working with and almost every partner I worked with, the worst days you would have in the unit were where you had a partner who didn't have any pull with the kids, where you had a partner who wasn't doing anything on the down low like bringing in cigarettes.
Some of the female officers even were doing sexual favors with the kids
from what I heard.
Again, I never saw anything.
For you to have all these officers who would work out these little things with the kids on the down low to get them in, and then the kids would have something on the officer, but the kids would kind of respect what the officer said to do a little bit more.
I was paranoid about letting the kids have any kind of thing they could snitch on me because from my point of view, if I brought in a pack of cigarettes, as far as I knew that was a felony to bring in cigarettes to kids that were locked up and underage.
As far as I knew it was a felony to be contributing to the delinquency of a minor in a state facility.
Therefore, it was a very bad idea.
My partner said, I think it was on his last day, that he had been bringing in cigarettes for the kids and I had had kids tell me they would give me
$100 for a pack of cigarettes that I could buy for a few bucks.
Thinking back on it, I used to sell alcohol to the freshmen that I lived in the dorm with when I was a resident advisor. I was a senior and I would bring in handles and handles of liquor and I would sell it to the freshmen and mark it up.
So, if I bought a bottle for 10 or 15 bucks, I would sell it for $20 or $25, and I remember getting marked up the same way when I had seniors buy me liquor. That's what they would do. You would either pay them the price plus a tip or they would just tell you, "Hey, this bottle of vodka is $30," and you would say, "Okay, that's fine."
You didn't know what the prices were anyway, and if they said it was $25
and they had paid $20 for it, who knew the difference?
I made thousands of dollars of profits selling alcohol to freshman when I was in college and for some reason, I had this weird integrity that I wasn't going to bring cigarettes in, and with all my money problems and resentment, if kids really would have given me $100 for a pack of cigarettes, I could have made some big profits off of that.
I guess several of the people I worked with had some kind of little deal like that worked out with the kids where they would bring them in cigarettes or bring them in something else they wanted.
You would see the kids discreetly smoking sometimes, I would say, "Where the fuck did you get this cigarette from?" and realize that it was my coworkers bringing shit in.
You would find contraband and you would realize your coworkers had brought that stuff in. The reason this kid had three cigarettes was because your coworkers had brought it in. The reason this kid had whatever contraband they had, was because your coworkers had helped him out with that.
During this period, my mind was so sick that I had dark, violent intrusive thoughts. I'm not going to detail them, but they frightened me, and they showed me just how far down active addiction and misery had taken my mental state. I thought like that more than I would like to admit, and thank God I never acted on any of it. I'm grateful that I'm free from thoughts like that today, and part of staying free from them is understanding that other people have intrusive thoughts too. Talking about this kind of thing, and helping people feel safe to talk about the dark thoughts they have instead of hiding them in shame, is how we become free of them. As long as we put thoughts like that on the "you can't talk about that" list, they fester, and there ends up being more violence, not less.
The contradictions in me back then were everywhere. My head was full of dark stuff and I was privately into hateful material I'm ashamed of, and I was illegally downloading all kinds of music and movies, and yet I wouldn't break the one rule of bringing the kids a pack of cigarettes.
If you added all the music and movies I illegally downloaded, I'm sure there could be a great number of charges possible from all that over the years, and if you think about that compared to bringing the kids in a little bit of smokes, what's the difference, right?
At the time, I judged my coworkers so much, like, "You're such a scumbag for bringing in cigarettes to these kids," and now I look at it like it
really seems kind of reasonable.
You bring the kids in, you make a little bit of money, you work out a deal with them, they respect you and treat you a little bit better because you are hooking them up. You are giving them something they want. They try to help you look good at your job by not messing up while you are on the shift.
I'm grateful that I got through there without bringing the kids any cigarettes in.
I refused to work out or do anything with those kids that I wouldn't have wanted them to talk about.
Now, I did always stand up for myself.
I had told those kids, "You know, you put me in a situation I'm going to lash out at whoever's around me."
I think I told one of the kids one day, they were talking about jumping me in the bathroom, they said something like, "What would you do if we jumped you in the bathroom?"
I said, "If you jumped me in the bathroom, I'd fight back with everything I had, and somebody would get hurt."
So, I let the kids know.
I guess the only way I survived in there was to let the kids know that I was crazy as shit, and that if you messed with me, you were going to get a scar on account of it.
I played tough in there, but I felt really scared. Finally, physically, I went down.
I couldn't take it anymore physically.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.