Ball and Chain: Short-timer walks through booking process at detention center

My belly was full, and palpable silence wrapped around me like a blanket.

I tried not to think about the seatless, stainless steel toilet protruding from the wall or the single-ply roll of toilet paper sitting next to me on the concrete bench.

Instead, I watched the heavy metal door to my holding cell in the Albany County Detention Center slowly close, cutting off my only exit with a resounding thud.

10:48 a.m.

Sitting at my desk, I scrolled through documents I would have to re-read later. I was too anxious to focus.

My coworkers giggled with excitement as the call crackled over the scanner.

Deputies from the Albany County Sheriff’s Office were on their way.

They were coming to arrest me.

They were coming to take me to jail.

They were coming at my request.

“You deserve this, Ike,” Laramie Boomerang Assistant Editor Joel Funk joked.

I feigned guilt and jestingly agreed.

While the Sheriff’s Office agreed to let me experience the arresting, booking and detention process firsthand, I would not be a prisoner.

I would be a tourist.

Sgt. Christian Handley, Cpl. Jeremy Houston and Deputy Guy Morrow arrived in three separate vehicles.

Knowing the officers were expecting an easy arrest, I contemplated running to add a little more excitement to the moment. After some light reflection on the possibilities of slipping on ice, breaking my recorder, getting tazed and turning a fake arrest into a real one, I decided not to run.

The officers smiled and introduced themselves before asking if I was ready to go.

“I thought you might handcuff me?” I asked, feeling a little disappointed.

Morrow, clad in a black sheriff’s uniform, black knit cap and sporting a neatly trimmed beard, replied, “Oh, we planned on it.”

A round of laughter circled the room, before he added with a more serious tone, “At your request though, right?”

Morrow spread my feet, patted me down and slapped handcuffs on my wrists.

As we walked out my office door, the usual elation I feel leaving my desk behind was replaced with a blast of cold air and the sudden realization I was willingly headed to jail.

11:05 a.m.

With my hands cuffed behind me, sitting in Morrow’s pickup was less than comfortable but not as painful as I had imagined.

The truck’s extended cab was fitted with a tiny steel cage where I waited as detention center booking officers prepared to receive me.

After removing my seatbelt and providing enough assistance to keep me from falling on my face, Cpl. Josh Crites escorted me to a shoulder-height booking counter. A young deputy with blond hair combed neatly to the side and a full beard that looked like it would be more at home on a Scandinavian lumber jack asked me intake questions as Crites removed my handcuffs.

“Name?” Deputy Dane Purmalis asked.

“Sam Sample,” Crites answered for me before leaving to retrieve some footwear.

Purmalis smirked and responded, “Sample? That sounds very European.”

I assured him my family only recently emigrated from a remote country near Luxembourg.

The line of questioning that followed was extensive — ethnicity, religious preference, right- or left- hand dominant, medical history, behavioral observations and a detailed record of tattoos.

As lunchtime rolled around, Crites returned with a pair of shoes.

Seeing them, let alone wearing them, had an instant demoralizing effect.

“Crocs? Really?” I asked.

Crites just shrugged and took over the intake questioning for Pulmaris, who left to attend the lunch detail.

Crites’ clean-shaven face was a sharp contrast to my two bearded handlers previously. His expressions were hard to read, and his demeanor, while cordial, hinted at being in a state of constant suspicion.

When he smiled, I sometimes felt like a fly trapped in a web, and other times, I felt like I had a friend inside those walls of stone and steel.

11:47 a.m.

For the purpose of paperwork, figuring out my charges momentarily stumped the officers.

While I suggested charging me with something archaic and interesting like wearing a red dress in the town square on a Sunday, Morrow and Crites had a different idea.

“We’ll give him the full Monty,” Crites said.

I briefly worried this might have something to do with public indecency while impersonating a police officer, but Morrow explained the charges were driving under the influence of alcohol and possession of a controlled substance.

“Those two are the most common charges we do,” Crites said.

Our next stop was the breathalyzer room.

“I need you to blow consistently into the mouth piece,” Crites instructed. “Sometimes, (inmates) try to mess with the test by blowing too light or too hard. If they mess with it too much, it rejects everything, and we just go get a search warrant and do a blood draw.”

Blowing in the mouth piece felt vaguely like filling a balloon, but instead of re-inflating my lungs when my breath drew short, Crites told me to keep blowing.

“You’re sober as a jay bird,” Crites said reading my blood-alcohol content.

We did this once more before he escorted me to a claustrophobic shower room and explained the strip search process.

Thankfully, he did not low through with the process after the explanation and allowed me to dress in my gray- and black-striped jump suit in private.

Despite being a size larger than I would normally wear, the jumpsuit fit well except for an uncomfortable tightness around the paunch I had been cultivating since the holidays.

“Did you keep your underwear on?” Crites asked.

I informed him that indeed, I did.

“Normally, if (your underwear) is not white, you go commando until you can get some in the commissary,” he said.

Not for the first time, I was relieved by my tourist status.

12:23 p.m.

Because I was being charged with a felony, Crites said I would need to be fingerprinted.

I found the term to be outdated as the process included recording not only my finger tips, but the full-length of my fingers, palms and “writer’s edge,” the outside edge of the palm that rests on the table as a person writes.

Placing my hands on a small glass plate lit from underneath like a document scanner when it is operating, I watched my digital prints appear on a computer screen as Crites rolled each finger across the glass.

Picking up a spray bottle, he said, “We have to dampen the hands sometimes, because the climate is so dry, the computer doesn’t always read the print.”

As a fair-skinned coffee drinker, I am habitually dehydrated, and Crites had to spray my hands between every scan.

With the fingerprinting process finished, Crites informed me the booking process was complete and escorted me to the holding cell where a brown, plastic box that smelled vaguely like lunch waited for me on a cold, concrete bench.

Despite what I heard about jail food, the meal inside the box was surprisingly tasty. Lunch consisted of two corn dogs with their sticks removed, warm green beans, red Jell-O with fruit chunks and lettuce topped with vinaigrette.

My only criticism of the meal is a small, personal one.

Lettuce by itself does not constitute a salad. That said, the lettuce was fresher than most I’d paid for at restaurants, and altogether, the meal was better quality than most of the food I was served throughout elementary school.

1:18 p.m.

With a full stomach, I leaned back against the beige-painted brick wall.

Alone in the small room, I realized I only felt safe because I could leave.

The silence became deafening.

I signaled to Crites I was ready to end my tour.

In the detention center lobby, I opened the heavy metal door and stepped into the sunshine.

The cold air bit into my skin but tasted sweet and free.

Three hots and a cot for $98 a day

The Albany County Detention Center was built in 1994 and can house up to 68 prisoners, Jail Administrator Lt. Ben Fritzen said.

With three holding cells and a room designed for inmates displaying violent behavior, he said the maximum occupancy has wiggle room if the Albany County Sherriff’s Office is in need of more prisoner space.

The average stay for a prisoner at the detention center is about 5.5 days, and housing costs about $98 a day for each inmate.

“The majority of the detention center’s operations are paid for by the tax payers,” Fritzen said.

However, he said the jail does receive some compensation from the Wyoming Department of Corrections and Federal Government when the detention center houses inmates for those agencies.