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 thought, "If no one takes me immediately to the emergency room and realizes how messed up my organs are inside, I might die from a physical altercation with these kids."
That got to be really stressful going into work realizing that if I did get into a physical altercation with the kids, it might cost me my life, and that kind of thinking was encouraging even more drinking, going out, getting drunk with my friends and just going all out. I was getting crazy feeling like I had nothing to lose and meanwhile I was doing all this stuff to myself.
I was taking these pills that had gotten my mono relapsed, I was drinking, I was going into work at this environment every day. My money problems, meanwhile, had gotten pretty bad because for months I just had borrowed money on a zero percent interest credit card, which had a year of zero percent interest. That credit card was maxed out and I was not paying
it down. I had barely gotten my bills paid and I was going along spending the money that should have been used to pay down the credit cards on beer and going out, and getting drunk with my friends.
One night as a correction officer, I was in a bar and we were getting drunk, and I think I wandered off on my own because my friends weren't in the bar with me. I don't know if they went home or what happened, but I got off on my own. I ended up trying to play pool with this guy for money.
I think it was an Asian guy and I was telling him I would play a game of pool with him for $3,000, he could tell I was drunk and bullshitting, and he wasn't up for getting into any mess like that because, of course, I didn't have $3,000.
I told him that I would show him I wasn't just bullshitting. I had a plastic drink cup, I just chucked it across the bar. It hit some girl in the head and then she turned around and spotted me. I tried to act like it just didn't happen, but the bouncer was pretty aware of the fact that it did happen.
One of the bouncers actually was pretty nice about it. He just grabbed me by the chest and started pushing me towards the exit at which point I bear hugged him and tackled him to the ground. Then, several more bouncers all grabbed a hold of me and dragged me out of the bar leaving a scar or a mark on my back that stayed there for months.
They dragged me out. I was probably about 230 pounds at the time, 5'11. They dragged me out of the bar and threw me out on the sidewalk, and I remember standing up and screaming a bunch of drunken threats and profanity at all of them.
I don't know if this is Grace or whatever. This is attention to detail. I noticed one of the bouncers did this little hand motion like, come over here. I caught this even while I was screaming and ranting profanity. I noticed the bouncer did this little hand movement and I looked over immediately.
I thought, "Who the hell did he wave at to come over here?" and I saw a
Columbia Police Department officer.
I will tell you what I did.
I shut the fuck up. I stopped my ranting and raving, and I realized this was go time.
"You either get your shit together and talk nicely to the police officer or you are going to jail right now for drunk and disorderly conduct if you're lucky, and perhaps assault and battery if you're not lucky."
I shut up immediately and as soon as the officer came over and talked to me, "Yes, sir. No, sir. I'm sorry, sir. I'm stupid. I'm drunk. I'm going to get a cab home immediately right now."
I don't know where I came up with it, but the perfect thing to say just came right into my head and the officer said, "Good. I'm going to make sure you get in this cab right now."
The officer was kind enough to let me go because he had only seen the tiniest bit of my ranting and raving for a minute, and I was immediately polite to him when he walked over.
I whipped my wallet out, and thank God I had just enough cash left to get a cab home. I immediately got the wallet, gave the cash. We flagged down the first cab that came along and I got in it. I was quiet because the officer told the driver something like, "If he gives you any trouble, just come right back here and he's going to jail," or something like that.
I shut my ass up, rode quietly home to my house that I was renting with
my roommate. I came home and started ranting and raving at home. I kicked a hole in the wall and also punched the wall. It was a brand-new house, I kicked a big ass hole in the wall at home and punched another hole in the wall.
I think my girlfriend was there too, I didn't care. I took out my rage on the wall and there was another one of many nights where I said, "I'm not going to drink again after that. It'd be crazy to drink again after a night like that."
Looking back, that was not even a bad night compared to lots of the other nights I had. On just another night as a correction officer, me drunk out on the town.
As we continue through the Department of Juvenile Justice, we had more interesting days as a correction officer. One of the more memorable ones was when we took the kids on a bus trip.
We had this school bus that we had to drive and I mercifully got to skip work for a week or two to take driving classes for a school bus, to get my commercial driver's license, which I never actually finished getting.
I continued to drive the school bus because I was working on it at least. I had more of a CDL than anyone else did. They sent me to get my driver's license for this bus, but I never actually finished it.
So, I drove a school bus without the proper license on the premise. In fact, I was ordered to do that. I drove the kids on the school bus each morning. Either my partner or I would drive the bus and it was a full-length school bus too. We would drive it across campus and bring the kids into breakfast.
One morning, the kids got into this crazy ass fight.
The fights there were not like just one person who would be throwing
one punch. The first person who threw one punch, it was like a bomb went off.
All of a sudden, you would have kids jumping over seats and the whole bus, except like one kid, you know, the little white boy lots of times, who would be sitting his ass in the back being quiet while the ten black kids were all just beating the shit out of each other and throwing shit just getting crazy.
My partner had just sprained his ankle at the time and he probably should have not been working with this, but this fight went off so we stopped the bus. I was sitting there, I had one of those huge flashlights you have got and I made it clear to the kids that if they got out of line I was going to just swing this flashlight indiscriminately, even though you even left a bruise on the kids you could end up going to prison.
Lots of times, just like with the kids, having to prove which kid assaulted an officer was often the same with an officer. You just had one word of mouth against another. The officer could easily say he got in a fight with another kid and did that. It was scary when you got out of the unit because there were no cameras.
So, we got on the bus and all hell broke loose. Kids were jumping over seats, punching each other in the face and my partner was trying to break up the biggest fight where these two kids were just pounding each other. One of the biggest kids was pounding one of the other kids. He grabbed this kid to try to pull him off and I guess the kid stepped on his sore ankle or something like that.
Now, I didn't see this, but I heard about it. I was in the middle of the action with some different kids, and the next thing I know this kid was going down, and according to what the kid said, he got clocked with a haymaker
from my partner.
Although, I again don't know exactly what happened, that's what I think happened. The kid had a chance to give a report about it and he didn't say shit about it. We took this kid to the station because he had a big black eye after that.
I don't think I even found out until days later that my partner was the one who had done that because after this kind of thing, you just kept your mouth shut.
Most of the kids would usually just keep their mouth shut about stuff and the officers. You would have kids who had black eyes. Sometimes the officer would have gotten hit. You just kept your mouth shut about it. You wouldn't say shit because anyone saying anything could get someone potentially in prison.
I could say that the kid assaulted me and that kid could end up getting more prison time. The kid could say I had assaulted him, and that could end up getting me to prison.
Most of the time there was a code of silence where you just didn't say shit. You acted like you didn't see anything. You didn't ask any questions.
In this case, I don't think I was even aware until days after that happened when my partner said, "Oh yeah, that was probably me."
That day, we took the kid up to the main unit to get him checked out and make sure he was okay because he had a big ass black eye. He got hit in the face really hard and it was amazing to see the sergeant who was up there at the main unit with him.
It was kind of the headquarters and you had all the cameras there.
Someone would sit in the office and watch the cameras all night here and
they had like first aid and stuff up there.
The sergeant who was up there ripped that kid up and down for 15 or 20
minutes. I listened and I laughed the whole time at almost everything.
The sergeant would say, "Boy, you didn't see that train coming? You need to get out of the way. Jump off the track before that train hits you. Boy, you just let him punch you right in the face. Boy, you need to learn to fight. Put your hands up next time. Try and back up at least, shit."
The sergeant just ripped him for 15 or 20 minutes on having gotten punched in the face, and looking back on that I feel like, "Wow, that's how you turn someone who might have just been having a fight into someone that murders someone right there," because that boy didn't have any way to get back right at the moment.
But then, you might not realize that a few months later, when that boy stabs someone to death or shoots someone, that maybe that sergeant ripping on him for 20 minutes about getting hit and me sitting there laughing at him, that contributed to it.
Maybe it didn't. I don't know.
But I will tell you what, I laughed my ass off at that boy getting punched in the face for like 20 or 30 minutes because I was also glad it wasn't me.
That shit was scary.
You get on the bus, there are bodies flying everywhere. It is dark. You don't know what the hell is going on. There are no cameras. Your life is on the line. All you have got is the damn flashlight and one other guy that might be on your side. It is scary.
This is my way of making amends for my part in that to the boy today, to
let everyone know that you want to love and encourage people, and making fun of someone for being a part of violence, I think that might contribute to more violence. Even though you might not get in trouble for doing it, a lot of the little things we end up doing contribute to the things we really don't like happening like people getting shot.
You know, maybe if we are a little nicer with each other, we don't have to go through things like having people shoot schools up and stuff, and I'm grateful today that I've got this experience to share with you.
My time at DJJ was rough and by February I was burnt out. I was on the edge with several of the kids to getting into physical altercations. The one kid and I very nearly had it out one day.
Now, I was never going to hit a kid first to be sure. I was never going to hit a kid who wasn't hitting me or engaged in some kind of physical violence first. But if I got hit, I was going to go all out and with my sick condition, my life and my physical health were heading downhill at a fast rate.
Another memorable thing that happened during this time, it was very frequent, some of the kids would get jumped and the kids would often jump each other.
When we say, "get jumped," picture this.
Five kids get in a room. One kid walks in there and all of a sudden the five kids grab a hold of him, pin him down on the ground, start punching, kicking, slapping and whatever other kind of stuff they do.
My view on that stuff was to be pretty laid back.
I said, "You know what? I can't control what these kids are doing all day all the time. I don't leave any permanent marks. If you're going to jump a
kid don't leave any permanent marks on him. Don't hurt him too much. Don't make me come in there and leave some permanent marks on you."
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.