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.
By February 2007, after three months of working 40-hour weeks and occasionally in overtime shifts or consistently staying 30 minutes to an hour late, my body and the mono, the pills I was taking and the drinking I was doing, and the attitudes, everything got to me so much that I was very physically sick.
In fact, I had the sense that I was getting to a dangerous point at work.
There was this one kid who later assaulted another officer, he and I, we were getting close to having it out. One day, we were really close to having it out though. I remember being up in each other's faces and we were getting to the point of violence.
I wasn't going to hit him first, but he was going to hit me and there was going to be a lot of hitting after that.
Thankfully, I realized I did have a way out. It was to tell the truth at work about my physical condition.
I did not tell them that I had mono for several months, but after months of concealing my physical condition at work, I finally told them.
I had a period of where it got better. I initially was sick in training, but I never said anything about it or did anything. I just went into work with mono every day and basically slept. I got through training just by doing it that way.
But then, when it came back and I had a month or so of being at work with mono, with the drinking and really bad health, then finally I realized this was getting to the point where I needed to be honest about it.
So, I told them after more than a month of working with swollen up organs and lymph nodes, like I said, you could have punched me in the chest and probably ruptured my spleen.
I finally told my supervisor about it.
I said, "Look, I'm really sick. I'm not sure exactly what I have and I'm feeling tired."
They said, "Well, you need to go to the doctor and figure out what you've got."
I went to the doctor, he said I had mono and that I was not to work with mono. The doctor wrote me a note that I needed to be out of work. I don't know if it was at least two weeks or a month, but the doctor wrote me a note though, that I needed to stay out of work for a while.
I brought the note in and I hoped that they would give me a light-duty assignment because there were lots of assignments you could do. Not lots compared to all the potential positions, but there were several places you could work that were really easy to work like the infirmary.
They had a little infirmary there, so that they didn't have to take the kids to outside medical facilities. The infirmary had a couple of beds for the kids that were sick or that had gotten injured and there was one officer that worked the infirmary every night, and pretty much all you needed to do was to sit at a desk all night and that was it. The kids were sick already anyway and there was no trouble or problem.
Thankfully, for a few nights, they did put me in the infirmary on a light-duty spot and they also had other light-duty spots, like where you could just watch the cameras at night. You didn't even have to interact with the kids.
All you needed to do is keep an eye on the cameras. But each of those
spots was kind of negotiated out and they had deals, and people got them based on relationships.
So, if you had a good relationship with a sergeant, you had been there for a while, you needed a light-duty assignment or you just needed some time away from the kids or whatever, they would work it out and put you so that you could watch the cameras.
There was one lady there who was kind of like the designated camera lady, and what happened is that they gave me a couple of days at the infirmary, but after that, they decided, "Look, we don't have any light duty spots for you. You need to take sick leave."
I think from what they were saying that they were imagining I would just quit at that point because most of the white guys didn't stay around for even a day or two. Meanwhile, I had been there for several months, I was somehow managing despite the major chewing me out and despite my unit often being off the chain as they said, and not being on time for breakfast or not doing it as nice as the other units did it.
I guess they expected me to quit and they put me on sick leave. The problem was I didn't have enough sick leave to cover being off for a month.
So, what happened, with just being there three months, naturally I had not accumulated much sick leave or much annual leave. What I was able to do is use all my annual leave and all my sick leave that I had, which was just a couple of days.
I ended up taking a few weeks off and thank God for those few weeks because those few weeks probably saved my life. They saved my health and I went home and stayed with my parents for a while. I got a lot healthier and I sobered up for the rest of the time I was at the Department
of Juvenile Justice.
And some kind of miracle happened where I got a completely different attitude about it during this time. I went to stay with my parents and I got to have some love back in my life. I think that was the first time I had seen my parents since Christmas and it was really good to see them again.
My roommate and I had just parted ways, he wanted to buy a house and he found a way to get out of our lease in our house after we had a flood. I don't know if that happened on purpose because he wanted it to work out that way or if that was just a convenient coincidence. But we managed to have the sink flood our whole house and my roommate found a way to get out of the lease by saying something about mold and that he couldn't stay in a house after that had happened.
So, he got us both out of the lease, got our security deposit back, even though I had kicked a hole in this brand-new house's wall, and I moved out from living with my roommate.
I had put myself in kind of an environment I couldn't handle where he would have these parties over and I would drink. I would be trying to stay sober, but he would be having a party at our house.
I would say, "Well, you know, I can't stay sober while all these other people are drinking."
So I moved out, got my own apartment in what you might call the hood.
It was right next to the Department of Juvenile Justice's facility I went to and this started a very peaceful time in my life as a correction officer as I made a lot of positive change.
I was so motivated to do better and it was amazing the recovery that happened during this period of sick leave. It was like I came back to work
with a new perspective. It was an absolute miracle. I was just on the brink of destruction before going on this sick leave. I took a few weeks off, and it was like my head cleared, I stopped drinking. I came back to work and I had this attitude of being restored to sanity.
I said, "Okay, my life makes some kind of sense now. I'm here. I'm deciding to be here. I'm choosing not to quit this job. I'm going to do a good job with this. I'm going to stay here. I'm going to make this work until I get a better job."
And that's what I did for the last couple of months I think I worked at the
Department of Juvenile Justice.
I was there November 2006 and I think I started at the South Carolina Department of Mental Health in the Public Safety Division as an officer sometime around July or August.
I took my sick leave in February and March, and a couple of weeks of that were unpaid. I missed one of my $700 paychecks that I was getting for two weeks of full-time work.
I missed one of those and without drinking, with getting the security deposit back and with moving into a place on my own where things were cheaper, my life got a lot better in the short term. I was just living in a one bedroom apartment in the ghetto where some girl was shot and killed while I lived there.
The problem for me at the time was that I couldn't handle my life getting better.
Ironically, being at DJJ and being in the middle of all that mess brought out some of the best in me. It brought out my desire to do better and I try to encourage everyone today and say that no one controls your imagination.
I remember those kids telling me in that unit one day that I would never be shit.
"Look at you. You are here with us and we're not going to be shit and neither are you."
I remember them saying, "You're never going to get to be a police officer," because I had made the mistake of telling them that I wanted to be a police officer.
They would ask, "Why are you here? What are you going to do?"
They tried to get to know me a little bit.
So I said, "Well, I'm working here and then I'd like to be a police officer someday."
They replied, "Man, you are here with us. You're never going to be shit.
You're not going to be a police officer."
I imagined not only that I would be a police officer one day, but I remember one of the nights after I had gotten better and my imagination came back, I remember writing out a plan that I would actually be president.
Yes, maybe a bit grandiose if you want to say, but I remember writing out a plan on paper where I would be president, that I would work for the state of South Carolina for a while.
I would be a police officer, then I would go into some kind of public service. Then, I would start getting elected and I would work my way up to being president of the United States.
I had a very active imagination. I didn't let the day-to-day life of that prison completely consume me for the entire time I was there, but what
helped me a lot with that was going home and being with my family and staying sober.
Because when I was disconnected from my family and drinking, all I could see was the day-to-day grind. It was hard for me to imagine anything besides what I was doing.
And thank God for my girlfriend at the time. She was there for me consistently and she helped me through a lot of the rough times when I was at a really dark, low point, and just seeing her gave me a lot of hope.
Or I might have moved home with my parents and given up as later happened after being a police officer at South Carolina as we saw earlier. Maybe my girlfriend actually made it comfortable enough where I didn't have enough pain to get motivated to change.
What I can tell you is those last few months at DJJ were completely different from the first few months. I actually started to get comfortable being an officer.
I actually started to build some decent relationships with the kids where I was loving and respecting them, and seeing them as human beings. They started to want to cooperate with me a bit more, and I got more comfortable just being a correction officer.
I was healthier and I didn't feel like I was in danger. My state of mind was a lot cleaner and I picked up a new bad habit during that part. The first few months before I went on sick leave, I had refused to sleep at all while I was at work. I was so scared of just waking up to the kids jumping me. I was so scared of getting in trouble at work that I refused to sleep at night.
This was the night shift from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. and what I did most of the
time is I just had my life organized by waking up and having that be the middle of my day. So what I would do, I would wake up at 6 p.m. instead of 6 a.m.
When I got off work at 8 a.m., it really should have been seven, but lots of times the officers dragged. You would end up getting out at eight, get a little bit over time. When I got out at 8 a.m., it would feel kind of like 8 p.m.
So, I would essentially not get tired at night for most of the time I was there. I just had my whole life scheduled around the night shift and I just slept during the day while I was at home.
It was easier when I was so paranoid and scared and afraid there. When I came back, it was a bit more relaxed and comfortable being at the job.
Ironically, it made it easier to sleep on the job as well.
Naturally, I didn't intend on that happening and the first time it happened was completely unexpected.
I had moved that day.
According to life things, moving is one of the most stressful and tiring things you can do. I had just moved out of the house from living with my roommate into my one bedroom apartment.
Now, the problem with moving is you usually need to do it during the day. I thought at the time that I couldn't be renting a truck and moving into my new apartment in the middle of the night. Looking back, I realized I could have just waited until I had a couple of days off to do this.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.