I am the first one to say that I don’t work for a living.
Or that I am nothing more then a glorified babysitter.
Mind you, I, unlike the children who do the same job, have insurance, retirement benefits and also do not need a ride home from the creepy father figure who always volunteers to take me home when he and his wife get home and he has to much to drink … sorry … hehe I am cracking up right now at that one but only because it is sick’ish and I am sleep deprived!

Back to I don’t do anything at work …
I sit around and, well, I baby-sit a bunch of grown men doing things like, watching TV, sleeping and when the weather is nice they might do yard work.
I know all of my little babysitters out there are so happy because there is hope for them to get a chance to stay in the field they love!!!
Some times though, just every once and awhile mind you, I actually do something.
Not often though mind you, otherwise I would have to find some other work!
We as corrections officers play it off like our job isn’t to bad.
And honestly most of the time where I work it isn’t.
Then again there are other camps that are crazy.
Fighting every day, and also just the people who are crazy!
We have both physically and mentally impaired inmates.
Elderly, youth and my favorite group of people the ones who are on drugs or going through detox.

So, back to the point I guess.
But first …
We have special teams in the prison system that have a special job.
They are called the CERT teams.
They are basically SWAT but without guns … ok some of them have shotguns but they shoot rubber bullets and wooden dowels.
When ever something goes wrong, we send in the CERT team … we then sit back and giggle as we watch them march in saying how silly they look … then we watch them do there thing and our jaws might drop a little … then they march back out and we all stand back and try to look away because we don’t want to make eye contact with these evil sadist's!

Well, Friday night the CERT teams got activated to go to an institution for a problem.
Then there back ups got called out to go to another camp for another problem.
Then we had another problem at another camp … and most of the help was already on the road.
So who did they call?
ME!
They knew that I could single handedly go and take care of the problem!!!
Yea right … I was a warm body who doesn’t have children and/or a life.

So I get a call 15 minutes before I was supposed to go home from my LT. and he said they needed my help … so me being the man I am decided to go … not because of loyalty, but the overtime pay of course!
No it also did not have anything to do with La Wife having plans to go out with her friends and I was going to be home all alone with the dog crying into some sparkling water wishing I had friends and a life!
I met up with 11 other people who where also picked to go on this mission and we got all of our gear, jumped in a van and drove away on a short little 2+ hour drive.
Once we arrived we where informed of what the mission was.
Another prison got a phone call that 2 inmates where planning on escaping … no big deal right Osceola County Florida has it happen all of the time … I know low blow but some of you smirked and you know it!
No, this camp has some bad guys in it and they don’t need to be getting out.
The other part to the phone call warning was that they had guns.
We all know that guns are bad.
In a prison it’s really bad though.
If a gun is on a compound it can very quickly turn into, well the old saying ‘like shooting fish in a barrel.’

It was so strange to be a part of this.
It either had to be bad or they must have been really desperate!
We all knew it had to be bad, I mean they pulled me and I am the worst babysitter around!
We all joked around laughing and playing, then we got hit with what was going on.
To say somber and silence is an understatement.
People who do nothing but joke around and cut people off in conversations left and right started raising there hands to ask questions.
Groups started forming automatically with senior officers moving around and grabbing up new officers pulling them into the folds.
Younger officers being forced to talk and say what was on there minds for the reasons of helping them to realize the realizations of what was going on, and also to get input from a new mind into this type of situation.
It was kind of strange because I got pulled into one group because of my experience and time with the department, then I was pulled by a few other officers who knew me because they knew I had the time but not so much the experience.
It helped the situation knowing that my coworkers knew me, knew I was reliable, but also respected that this wasn’t my field of experience per say.
We got all of the information, figured out what all we had to do, how we where going to do it, when and what to expect.
After everyone had the plan down they made us all sit down for about ½ an hour and the joking started right back up.
Some would say it was like a split personality switch.
Now that I have been in it though it was more of a tension breaker and a way to let the stress out and get to know the new faces with us.
We had people from all over Central Florida after all and most of us had never meet, let alone been threw anything like this with each other before.
That being said, in a situation like this any joke is fair game, disrespect didn’t exist, sexual harassment … well things got said that in any other situation would have gotten people fired … but not right then.
The feeling of comradery was so intense.
We became a family at that moment if only for the few hours it was going to take to take care of this problem.
Personal differences got thrown out the window, grudges didn’t exists, and you knew the person next to you that you just meet a ½ hour earlier would have your back.

So my group got the confinement cells.
That group is the group of prisoners who have been bad and need to be separated form the rest of the population.
These are the guys who could have done anything from back talking an officer, to trying to beat up an officer.
So, we had no clue who or what we where going to deal with in each cell … I know FUN!
We did what we had to do, found what we could and luckily had no situations.
We found some stuff, nothing to special.
We did not find any weapons though.
So, after all of the inmate living areas where searched we got to go home.
We got home at 2am.
The next group left out to go back at 6am to finish the searches of the other buildings out there.

So to my fellow corrections officers …
We are the group who only get the bad press.
We tend to be the lowest form of law informant … mind you most of the others not only can’t do it, but also will not even try our jobs … afraid to play law man without your guns???
The group who is looked down on because we are abusing peoples children.
We are looked at as the scum of the world on a lot of different fronts.
We are also the group that watches the people no one else wants to.
We are the group who walk into a cell with 100+ inmates of all sorts of crimes with only our minds and bodies as a defense.
We are the people who although trained to use weapons, don’t get to use them when we need them most.
We are the ones who are so understaffed that if and/or when things go south it is almost 30+ to 1 … in the inmates favor.
We all know that I am supper ninja and can take 30 inmates at one time, but some of my brothers and sisters in this uniform might not be to par … so those odds are kind of scary …
We don’t get the respect we should, or have earned, but we know that what we do is important.

So, I just want to say, to my fellow officers out there who might have happened across this silly little Blog …

Thanks you all!