County Jail

When the paddy wagon doors opened and the ten of us climbed out, deputies were waiting. Each of us was grabbed around the upper arm by one of them and led into a warehouse at the back of the Las Vegas Clark County Jail. The deputy with a grip on me was a tall white guy well on his way to being shaped like a big bowling pin. He unlocked my chains and told me to leave on my t-shirt and jeans but take off everything else and give it to him. He said he wanted my sneakers and socks too and threw a pair of orange rubber slip-on shoes at me and told me to put them on. Then he chained me back up, wrapping the links around my waist and fastening them with a clamp. The thinner you were the more excess chain you carried. Mine hung off me like a clanking tail. He cuffed my wrists together at my waist. All I had to do to scratch my nose was bend my head down to my belt buckle. He wore purple latex gloves, and he sported one of those haircuts that’s shaved on the side and buzzed on the top. It’s called a high and tight but seems to say, “I obey all orders.”

“So what’re you up to?” he asked as he jammed my clothes into a large brown paper bag.

“We blocked the traffic going into Creech Air Force Base.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Lots of reasons, but last week one of our drones killed 30 pine nut gatherers in Afghanistan. Laborers working in a field. The actual target was an Islamic State hideout. That kind of stuff happens all the time. The only way for it to stop is to stop the drones. They’re controlled from Creech.”

“Yeah?” He said, seemed to give it thought, then asked, “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?”

“I’m a member of the Green Party.”

“The Green Party?” he said, mockingly perplexed. “What’re they for?”

“We believe the environment is the most important issue.”

“The environment?” he said. “Naw, the Republican Party is the party of the environment.”

“I don’t think it’s that political,” I said

“It’s all political,” he said. “It’s all about the Republicans and the Democrats, and the Republicans are the party of the environment. More Republicans recycle than Democrats. It’s a statistic.”

That was that. He pointed to a long bench and told me to sit there until I heard my name. My friends from the paddy wagon were already seated, interspersed with other people in chains who didn’t look like they meant to be there. Five of my friends were women. They were from CODEPINK.

When a name was called the prisoner stood and a deputy grabbed his arm and led him to a wide steel wall. The wall slid aside and the deputy and prisoner went through, and the wall slid back.

George said, “Passage to River Styx.”

“Quiet!” a deputy shouted.

When I heard my friends’ names called, love flooded me. Then I heard my own. I stood up in proud protest to all aerial bombardment done since the first bomb was dropped in 1911.

The bowling pin deputy led me by the elbow to the sliding steel wall. It opened to a square steel room where we stood until the wall behind us slid shut. Then the wall in front of us slid open.

Harsh fluorescent lights glared down on a room that needed a scrubbing with a strong disinfectant. The walls were the yellow of dried mustard. The floor a faded and marred brown. Rows of white bucket chairs had all manner of humans, maybe a hundred, crouched or slouched in them, but the chairs that were empty were simply dirty. The seats of the chairs were grates, probably so spilled liquids and urine could drain through. The room had an indecipherable stench. Anywhere I went in the room the stench was there, never stronger, never weaker.

When the steel wall closed behind us the bowling pin steered me to a desk. The deputy sitting there asked my name, date of birth, state of residency, and who to contact in an emergency. She wrote it on a form, put the form face down in a tray and pointing with her pencil told me to take a seat. Bowling pin said “See ya!” to her, didn’t even glance at me, and was gone.

Women prisoners were in the back rows, men were in the front. I stood for a moment looking it over. I spotted my nine friends scattered through the room. They all gave me a smile. A deputy walking by barked, “Get a seat, face forward, and be quiet!” I went to one in the second row.

Quiet, the prisoners were not. A woman way in the back was reigning loud person when I sat down. She screamed unintelligibly and nonstop. Suddenly she was louder and yelling, “Take your hands off me! Take your hands off me!” She yelled it over and over. A door shut. We didn’t hear her any more.

A dozen deputies in tan uniforms were in the room. Four were women. Other deputies came in through the sliding wall with prisoners to be deposited. Deputies entered from the rear too. Half of the deputies were people of color. They all looked out of shape. Their duty belts had empty gun holsters. The only guns I saw were worn by deputies who brought in prisoners. It was still early morning but a steady stream of cuffed people were brought in.

I couldn’t see a deputy who was in charge of the room. A mockingly gruff deputy was being loud when I was brought in so I assumed he was the boss, but while I was in the room I didn’t see him do any bossing although he continued to be loud. Someone yelled “Fuck!” and he yelled back, “Hey watch your language! This is a family jail!”

The women deputies all wore gobs of makeup, possibly trying to be the gorgeous yet tough cop. All the deputies referred to my friends and me as the fuckin’ protesters. They said it as though our arrests caused a burdensome workload, but no one in uniform rushed to do anything, and none of them called us fuckin’ protesters to our face. They never looked at us unless it was necessary. But silently we stood out as a different breed of prisoners. First of all we were older. Second, our clothes were neat. Third we didn’t protest that our arrests were an injustice, as most of the others did. We were clear-eyed and we watched the room. The other prisoners were as rude to the deputies as the deputies were to them. Being a deputy was obviously a lousy job. Their days were spent in a grimy and smelly windowless room with whoever was dragged in.

The only fit-looking deputies I saw were some who brought prisoners in. A few wore a lapel pin of three initials. The third time I saw it I asked the deputy what it was. He was a healthy looking young man with a well-cut uniform. When I spoke he didn’t understand my question and looked at me as though I was going to be a problem so I smiled and repeated myself. His eyes changed, his brows went up, and he told me the pin stood for Deputy Sheriff Trainer. Then he asked me, “Why are you guys in here?” He was also saying he noticed the room was salted with 10 healthy white senior citizens who didn’t have to belong.

“We blocked the gate at Creech Air Force Base. That’s where airman sit at computers and control killer drones on the other side of the world.”

He nodded and his eyes relaxed so I went on.

“The drones sometimes hover over a village for two days, armed and waiting for suspected militants to arrive. Can you imagine? Some uninvited foreign country parks an armed aircraft over your village for only one reason. Which is to take out someone some time. How can anyone sleep at night? How can you let your kids out to play? Then when the person controlling the drone believes the person to be eliminated is in the village, he pushes the button. A second and a half later the drone under Creech’s control although on the other side of the world fires a laser-guided missile that annihilates everything and everyone in the drone’s crosshairs. Because of this we have spent the last three nights sleeping on the desert floor, with our days spent picketing the base’s gate. You hear about precision laser-guided missiles but a week ago 30 pine nut gatherers were killed by one of our drones.” His eyes opened wide so I went on. “During our war in Vietnam I worked on targets. We often missed the target or struck something we didn’t mean to. At Hiroshima the atom bomb missed its target by two miles. Aerial bombardment is terrorism.”

When I began to speak he’d bent down toward me. When I finished, he straightened up. He nodded his head as though considering what I’d said, then left.

A deputy built like a former football lineman who’d gone way out of shape came in from the back of the room, so I didn’t see him until he in my periphery.  He must have seen us from the back or heard we were there, because without looking toward us he said loudly, “Fuckin’ protesters!” and went out the sliding wall. I wonder if he thought his opinion of us would lead to a self-reflection and a change of heart. Or did he think his insult would shame us into submission. It seemed the deputies thought being an activist was a crime worse than whatever else was going on.

One plainclothes cop with his badge dangling around his neck dumped off his prisoner then went around the room chatting with everyone in uniform. I could hear laughter as he made his round. When he was back at the sliding wall, he called across the room to a friend, “Peace bro!” waved the two-finger peace sign and left.

We were there for hours before any of us were called to a station, then hours more before we were called to another. It went on that way.

The first station I was called to was a health check. When I stood up I was yanked back down. My chain was stuck in the chair’s grate. When I got loose and walked, my chains rattled like a Dickens nightmare.

A young woman at the health check took my temperature, asked my weight and told me I was six two and a half, which I am. I asked how she knew that. She smiled and said she knew because she did it all day. I told her she was too smart for the job. She laughed.

The second station was an ID check. The woman seemed surprised I had no ID and that she’d have to take my word for who I was. Did she go through that all day? Or was I the only prisoner whose ID had been taken away?

The third station was a body scan. The deputy told me the five women in our group had refused to be scanned. “We’re not going to have any trouble with you about this, are we?” I couldn’t figure why the women did that. In fact, I couldn’t figure a number of little incidents between my friends and the cops. To give these forsaken deputies a hard time because they work here, or to bring up any issue other than why we were arrested, wouldn’t affect our country’s drone warfare one bit. One of the guys I was arrested with, as soon as he was shoved into the paddy wagon began pounding on the wall behind the driver’s seat and yelling, “The World Trade Center is a hoax!” Man. If the deputies heard that it only reinforced their unconsidered opinion of us as screwballs. Our arrest could be an opportunity to share with working stiffs the logic behind what we believe, even if it’s only a few words. A few words the deputy I talked to may remember, so at a picnic when he talks about his job and mentions the older white people who were brought in for blocking entry to an Air Force base, and some other picnicker dismisses his mention of us derisively, the deputy shares a few words of our perspective. Such as the pine nut gatherers’ slaughter. Who knows? Why wouldn’t the other picnicker be derisive, since he knows nothing about our message because the peace movement is blackballed by mainstream media? And I’d been scanned a dozen times so what the hell. The deputy operating the scanner told me, “This thing gives off about as much radiation as a banana.” I was no trouble to him. After being scanned I was sent back to the bench for another two hours.

I spent them watching people. Some prisoners had to be dragged in. I guessed at what happened. This was early morning on a Wednesday. A young woman who looked like a gypsy right down to her broken fingernails cried and cried as she was brought in between two deputies, dragging her feet to no avail. Maybe she’d offered to read the palms of a well-heeled couple at the door of a casino and they complained to the doorman and now her morning was like this. Maybe she had children expecting her home.

A wild-eyed young Black man with his white shirt torn was forcibly brought in by two plain clothes cops, their badges swinging from their necks. The young man had fire in his eyes and blood on his lips and was raging angry. He may have been in the vicinity of an early morning crime and was stopped for questioning and it led to this. Even if he was innocent of the original crime, he now was probably guilty of assaulting an office, a one-way law. Tolstoy said governments make all the laws but reserve the right to break them, including taking a life. The young man with the torn white shirt might be missing his third day on a new job. Even in Las Vegas, where some common behavior would be illegal in other cities, those who are arrested appear to be from the poor and disenfranchised citizenry, the way it’s been in America since Europeans arrived here. Wealthy white male landowners didn’t foment the War of Independence to equalize everyone. In fact, life changed little for everyone but the wealthy white male landowners who took over running the colonies with no taxes or tariffs to be owed Britain.

A young white guy on the bench in front of me was dressed like Las Vegas, shiny black shirt, tight black slacks, pointed black shoes, blotchy skin, and he was nodding. No one paid any attention to him, not even the guys in chains on either side of him. At one point he wobbled up to almost standing erect and walked straight forward until he slammed face first into the wall. With no expression of surprise he wobbled back to his seat and flopped down and went back to nodding.

The guy next to him in that row had a shaved head with tattoos on it. He was toothless and his skin was sweaty and red. A deputy came up to him with a clipboard.

“Here’s your deal,” she told him. “You plead guilty to a misdemeanor and you’re out of here right now.” She extended the clipboard and a pen to him. “Or you’ll be with us a long time. Sign here.”

He looked away and shook his head no.

“You don’t want to sign?”

He made no indication he heard her words.

“This is your chance. Five, four three, okay.” She walked away.

A disheveled guy on the other side of him said, “I hate the cops.” The guy with the shaved head ignored him but the disheveled guy kept talking. “If you’re homeless and they pick you up they leave all your stuff right there. Now I got nuthin’. I wouldn’t be here except some rich bitch called nine one one and said I was trying to steal her car. Steal her car? What happened was she was sitting in her car and there was a Burger King box between her front tire and the curb and I picked it up. I hate litter. I picked it up and she blasted her horn at me so I opened the box and squeezed a ketchup pack on her windshield. Does that sound like I’m trying to steal her car? With her in it? There was half a hamburger in the box.”

A kid seated behind me, maybe 20, tapped my shoulder and sneered, “Hey! Are you a two-percenter?” I turned to take him in. He had that dead look, like he knows everyone has an angle or is a sucker. “What the fuck are you talking about,” I said and turned back around. There was a chance he’d smack me in the back of the head, but he didn’t.

Everyone in the room was aware of our presence, old white people who didn’t have to be there. The deputies and the prisoners were like the townies in a college and we were like the privileged college kids who come to town for self-fulfilling reasons and left to return to lives of glamor.

I was called to the fourth station and told to sign a citation. I was being charged with blocking a public right of way. I laughed and signed. A deputy unchained me. My personal property was handed to me in the big brown bag and I was told to walk to the next door. A deputy stepped from that doorway and told me to give him the bag. He slapped a sticker on my back printed WALK THRU and told me to go over there. A man of few words. Over there was a dark corner where a young woman in civilian attire, really a girl, was taking mug shots and a full set of fingerprints. When she was done with me she said go sit over there. I saw a well-lit dingy area where five of my friends – Norrie, Mike, George, Donny and Don – were sitting on benches awaiting release. Some other hard cases were with us. One of the other hard cases was the nodding junky still nodding, eyes open just enough to make me think he wasn’t seeing anything.  Another was an old wino … All of us sat there forever. Ahead of us was a hall with cells off either side. Two deputies walked up and down the hall. There was also a men’s room. I stood up and walked toward it. Two deputies at a counter started yelling at me like I was making a break. My infraction was I hadn’t raised my hand to ask permission. I sat back down, raised my hand, and they gave me permission. When I came back to the benches a chained guy in the rear got into a tussle with a woman deputy, an actual fight. Reinforcements arrived immediately and things didn’t go well for the guy. Here’s some advice: If you’re wearing chains while in a detention facility amid a swarm of deputies, behave.

The deputy who took my brown bag came out another door and called out names but none from our group. The deputy barked like a drill sergeant. Everyone called had to stand in a line with eyes on the back of the head of the person in front of them. The nodding junky was in that line. They were putting him back on the street. Maybe he was picked up while nodding the night away on a park bench, and maybe he had no dope on him, and right then I didn’t care, but putting him back on the street seemed like the absolute least they could do for the guy. Another man in the line was a bum of the tramp variety, probably ate every meal in a soup kitchen, probably slept in an alley, but a pleasant guy who earlier asked me what we were in for and when I told him, he said good for us. Now here he was in line going back to the street and he stood there flashing my gang the peace sign. I hope he does okay. He needed a belt, one that goes around the waist. They were led around a corner and down a hall.

Norrie, Donny, Don and I were in the next line leaving. As we formed a line a message came through the squawk box that there would be a lockdown in nine minutes. The deputy told us if we wanted to get out, we had to hustle. He led us around the corner and down the hall. He barked, “When your name is called come forward and receive your bag then go out that door where you’ll find yourself in an alley. At the end of the alley is a tall door that leads out to the street. Go out that door fast.” After he handed each of us our bag, he yelled “Get outta here!”  Our orange rubber shoes had been taken so we were out in a narrow alley of cinders and broken glass digging in our bags for our footwear then hopping around as we put them on, then hustling down the alley to the door to the street, and poof, we were out of jail.

The sidewalk was jammed with cheerful tourists in shorts and sunglasses who’d come to Las Vegas for the glitter and decadence, and we came tumbling and laughing out the backdoor of the county jail with our stuff in big brown bags.