Let me start by saying this: "Tent City" is not the poisonous prison camp some crybabies make it out to be. Is it hot? Yes. But I lived in worse when I was a soldier. And it gets cold. But I lived in worse when I was a soldier.
Most inmates actually prefer the tents, as then you can at least walk around, breathe real air, take showers when you'd like to, and converse with any other inmate. It's not pleasant, and it damn sure ain't paradise by any stretch of the imagination; but as far as jail goes, it's a damn sight better than being locked away in a cell like a rabid animal.
You have no idea what the sun on your skin feels like until you've served 2 months without ever even seeing the sun, much less feeling it. Going to the tents kept many I came to know in that place sane - myself included. Men are not designed to be held in concrete boxes.
If you want to know WHY jail riots occur, there's your answer: It is our animal instinct to seek freedom and distinction. Put us in a concrete cell, eventually our animal nature will surface. And hell hath no fury then that of an animal trapped and fighting for sanity.
So the tents are a good thing. The food sucks, the officers are high school rejects that any of us could kick the crap out of, and they are incompetent to a T. The last one I spoke with wasa Marine Sniper serving on a SEaL Team when he earned his Purple Heart and Silver Star from a mission that was classified.
Of course, I was busy shooting down the Red Baron at the time he was in...
Now, while the tents are good, county lockup is DEPLORABLE!!!!oneone111exlamationmarkone!11
The cells are nothing more than cattle pens, designed for 5 people, but holding 40.
Literally no place to sit, much less sleep. They are ice cold or steamy hot. Even if there was a place to sleep, sleep is impossible.
The guards completely ignore any pleas for the injured. I have personally witnessed guards standing outside a cell, watching a man suffer a severe asthma attack that threw him into convulsions so strong that he actually broke his hand tightening his fist so hard. He was denied any help, any medication, any compassion. He was arrested for peeing on a dumpster because he didn't want to drive home drunk.
I've met literally dozens that lived in these conditions for DAYS, awaiting transfer. Some owed no penalty to society other than losing their job and being behind on child support.
There are no clocks there in lockup, so time creeps by at an amazingly slow, agonizing pace. There is NOTHING -- NONE, no Bible or even a food wrapper -- to read. We are afforded nothing but 2 sack lunches a day, which are hardly edible (Joe figured that 3 meals a day was too much money, so we only eat twice, 1 sandwich and a piece of fruit, maybe a roll and some peanut butter). These sack lunches -- yes, they really are green bolgna -- make a man's bowels wretch, so the cell of 40 people stinks like death (and I've smelled death) as all 40 either throw up or crap out what they've ingested.
Deplorable. Inhumane. Many, many people get turned to being a career criminal in the county system - if you're to be treated as an animal, might as well act like one. The chance for revenge far outweighs the fear of coming back. That is Joe's doing. And Joe will rot in hell's fires for what he's done that's turned otherwise good men into savage revenge seekers. A DUI isn't worth the insanity, a life lost, a father and son and brother destroyed forever through one experience.
Even the toughest break there.
The more he breaks, the more media he recieves. He knows this. So he humiliates us in the spotlight with his pink handcuffs (that cost twice as much for the powder coating process), the pink underclothes (that you won't get for a week, staying in filthy clothes the entire time, but that also cost more because they have to be dyed), the caging and humiliation that MAKES repeat offenders.
I myself suffered that mindset.
I went 4 full days in the same set of clothes - no toothbrush, no clean clothes, no shower, no nothing. They wouldn't even tell me what I was charged with, just to "shut [my] mouth and don't complain or we'll "lose" [my] paperwork and [you] can spend another 4 days here."
That was when I, personally, lost my mind and I broke.
Gone were any cares of getting out. I wanted to stay in. If they let me out, I'd just commit a crime to get back in. I would buck the system, I would see these guards again, and I'd kill them. I will hurt them just as bad as they hurt me, toiling with me, tempting me. All I wanted was to brush my teeth. I wanted to not give up hope, to stop crying. I just wanted to know what I was doing there, these 18-year old punks with badges laughing at a once proud soldier that drank too much because it's the only way to control the memories the VA wants me medicated for to the point of DUH.
I would either kill them while I was there, or I'd get out and come back and kill them then. As Kipling said, it's not the timing of revenge that matters to a seeker of such, but the act itself; violent men are patient men (paraphrased).
I did eventually get over that feeling, of course. But many do not. I later found out that in my drunken haze I'd taken a pot shot at a police officer trying to cool a situation. My fist totally missed him, but that was my charge. Charges were dropped, and I was released "without condition." I almost felt remorse that I was leaving and others were going on their 5th day "on the inside." But, truth be told, I was a broken man and just wanted to go home.
I hated them for breaking me, for mocking me. And still, deep down inside, I knew I wanted to come back, to get my one chance to rob a guard of what they'd stolen from me. Didn't matter which one, as they all took part in the reverie. Male. female. Young. Old. Like in combat, I'd lost any care but for the act of wanting to kill, and that was the greatest insult of all they could have dealt me. And these guards were fine dealers.
That was 10 years ago, yet the memories are as vivid as the last cigarette I smoked only 5 minutes ago.
Those of you who think that Sheriff Joe is the good guy are off your rockers in ignorance. The man is a malicious, hateful, spiteful politician that ruins lives for the sake of his own hubris. He breaks the very laws he enacts and turns it around so others will applaud the inhumane and contemptable treatment of those inmates he was once duty-bound to reform, rather than re-commit. He does it on purpose. It's good for business.
There is a special place in hell for him, and unless he repents, he'll be duty-bound to that office. God knows he's put too many through hell himself. His hypocrisy knows no bounds, his evil no end.
I know too many that lost it in those cells. Men that did nothing more than get drunk or lose their jobs and fall behind on child support, men who made one bad decision they'll never recover from.
That's Joe Arpaio. The career criminals cannot be reformed, they will never change. Those that aren't career criminals have yet to sit a week in the 4th Avenue Jail in Phoenix, Arizona.