I was thinking that now that I am a father my life should be a little more predictable. This is what I thought. But recently I spent several days in jail. What follows here is an account of my stay in Brooklyn Central Booking. I've broken up the fairly long narrative with random pictures of Elsie and her family, just to remind us that this is supposed to be some kind of baby blog. I guess when she gets older I'll have a good story to tell our daughter...
On Saturday afternoon I took a our dog Vidamae for a walk by the Williamsburg, Brooklyn waterfront with my friend Tom. There are some nice spots down there by the east river which are now being turned into public parks. Right now though, these spots are closed to the public so as we wandered around we were approached by the police, who told us to leave. Before we could go though, they checked our licenses to see if we had any outstanding warrants. I was surprised at that point to learn that I did in fact have a warrant out for my arrest. I assumed it was a mistake, but the police said they had to take me down to the precinct anyway, to straighten it out.
At the precinct I learned that the warrant was issued from the Parks and Recreation Department back in 2002. It was for an unpaid “dog off leash” violation. I thought at this point that I would be asked to pay the fine and turned loose, but this was not the case. I was fingerprinted and placed in a cell where I waited for a ride down to “Central Booking” to see a judge.
While at the precinct I met several drunken Polish men and a Hispanic fellow named Jesus who told the police his full-time occupation was “learning to live forever in this physical form.” He claimed to eat only rice and water. Anyway, after about six hours there we were all gathered up into a crowded police car and transported to Central Booking in downtown Brooklyn. This is not the place you want to find yourself late on a Saturday night, I soon discovered. We were handcuffed together and shuffled about from one holding cell to the next while various pieces of information were obtained. There were bits of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches scattered all over the floors. I later learned why this food was so ubiquitous.
During some of this shuffling about I managed to find a working pay phone and they un-cuffed me so I could call home and tell Maggie where I was. She had driven down to Washington DC. on Friday and was expecting me home when she arrived that night. Instead she found a cryptic note from my friend Tom about the arrest. She wanted to help but I told her there really wasn’t much she could do. I was feeling pretty guilty for not being there to help with the baby after their long drive. At about 12:30 AM I was taken, still cuffed to Jesus and the drunken Polish guys, to the basement holding cells. These were a set of five cells about 12 x 12 feet crammed full of grumpy men.
We were un-cuffed and told to pick a cell. None of the prisoners wanted us to join them because things were already crowded. I pushed my way into the nearest cell and found a place to sit on the concrete floor. There was a steel toilet in the corner which was clogged with half eaten PB&J sandwiches.
About a half hour later we were all informed that the court was now closed for the night so it was time to make ourselves comfortable. Several of us got moved into another cell and I lay down under a bench and we all traded stories and complained about things until six am when they woke us up to give us cereal and milk. I ate the cereal dry.
The court didn’t open until nine a.m. and by then I’d heard everyone’s story at least twice and was generally sick of being there. Most of the guys were in for small time drug dealing, either crack, marijuana, or cocaine. A few others had been reported by their wives or girlfriends for some kind of abuse. Everyone, without exception, thought their arrest had been “bullshit”. I told them I was in for “trespassing” which seemed more mysterious and dangerous than “dog off leash”.
I figured I would get to see the judge sometime that morning, or maybe early in the afternoon. Things moved extremely slowly. At one point a fight broke out in the adjacent cell and they “locked the place down” which basically meant no one got to move for two hours. They offered us copious amounts of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches wrapped in clear plastic bags. I was told that these were made by prisoners on Riker's Island and decided not to eat them. They had a strange consistency. Most guys took a few bites and threw them in the corner. Some guys used stacks of two or three sandwiches wrapped in plastic as pillows. We had no blankets or padding of any sort.
About half of the cells had working phones and word got around that I had a calling card number. This was a valuable commodity because coins were not accepted and it was difficult to connect a collect call. I was careful who I bestowed the favor of a free call upon though. I sensed a stampede if I didn’t hold my ground. One guy offered me half a bag of marijuana for a phone call. He’d snuck it in under his loose fitting pants. I declined.
Guys were rolling joints out of toilet paper and smoking them while the guards watched TV in another room.
When I spoke to Maggie she was very frustrated and upset. No one could explain to her why my case was taking so long and it seemed like my file was perpetually getting lost in transit from one place to another. It didn’t matter to them that the warrant was only for having a dog off a leash. I could be “wanted for murder in Nevada” someone told her. She began to suspect that maybe I was actually wanted for some other crime I hadn’t told her about. In fact, many of my close friends, upon hearing about my plight, suspected the same thing. Maggie asked if I was okay and I unconvincingly told her I was. I wish I’d made it clear that I was just uncomfortable and frustrated. I was never in any physical danger, except maybe from germs or projectile vomit. There were quite a few sick junkies in there too. Most of the people with whom I shared the cramped cell were harmless teenagers who wore their pants well below their asses and talked endlessly about smoking weed and their “shorties” (girlfriends) waiting for them on the outside.
As Sunday passed by with painful slowness I began to contemplate the real possibility that I was going to spend a second night in Central Booking. Jesus and the Polish guys had been taken upstairs to see the judge long ago, but not me. There was a sign posted on the wall of each cell which said to inquire with a guard if more than 24 hours had passed since your arrest. When it reached that point I asked one of the guards what was going on.
“Nothing,” he replied, which was about right.
I was finally led upstairs at about 11pm that night and had high hopes that I might see the judge and be able to sleep at home. Maggie and Elsie had trudged down to the courthouse see what they could do. She brought the baby in hopes that she might illicit sympathy from someone there. Maggie had called many of our friends and spoken with lawyers and anyone else she could think of who might be able to speed things up. The lawyers she spoke to assured her I would get out that day. But I didn’t. The court closed at midnight and as soon as I heard that I staked out a spot on the cell floor where I could sleep. I had learned from experience the night before that one should spread out early so as not to get cramped up in a corner. I actually slept fairly well, in 1-2 hour increments. I used a small pile of empty cereal boxes as a pillow and I guess at that point I was getting used to the dirty concrete.
In the morning I ate another cup of dry cereal. I’d only had about two cups of water since my arrival, but I felt okay. I wanted to interact as little as possible with those scummy toilets. The upstairs cells were mildly nicer than the basement cells. There were fewer scattered remains of peanut butter sandwiches and off in the corner were a set of foggy windows through which one could see a little daylight.
Maggie and Elsie had returned to the courthouse first thing that morning, this time with my mother so that she could watch the baby while Maggie haggled with the desk clerks. I felt badly that they were all waiting around for me, especially little Elsie. Several of my fellow inmates had children themselves, except these guys were about half my age, the fathers I mean. We talked a little bit about parenthood though I was unable to take the discussion seriously for a number of reasons.
Every so often someone in Central Booking would lose it and start smashing things around the cell. This behavior was pretty understandable because the whole situation was quite frustrating. It was impossible to get any information from the guards who all appeared equally bored with the scene down there and regarded us with distain. We all discussed our cases ad nauseam. I imagine that being stuck in this situation in some other locale, a place like Iraq or Guantanemo for instance, would invoke entirely new level of helplessness. At least I knew that at some point I’d be getting out, though the thought occurred to me that some kind of error in my file could easily prolong this debacle.
What if there was actually another warrant on me? I’d had no knowledge of the dog off leash warrant and it had never showed up when I was stopped for traffic violations since then. My recollection of the infraction was that I’d sent back the ticket contesting the $100 fine and didn't hear from them again. Apparently a court date had been set and I’d missed it, hence the warrant. It seemed possible that something like this could have happened twice in my life. Although I’m getting more responsible in my old age, especially now that I’m a father, I’ll confess to lapses in organization and judgment throughout my youth.
At about 11 am that Monday, a group of us were led into a set of cages where we could wait to meet with the public defender. This place smelled very strongly of urine. No one wanted to risk leaving the queue once they’d made it that far. Guys just went and peed over in the corner. My nose was fairly used to the general stench by then though and I tried to nap in this more spacious room. As we waited another fight broke out and they threatened to send us all back down to the basement. Luckily that didn’t happen.
There were about twenty of us in there waiting to talk to one lawyer. Each meeting seemed to take 5-10 minutes. There was a two hour lunch break coming up at noon so I figured I’d be spending quite a while in the urine cell. But then another lawyer showed up and called my name. He was a friend of a friend of my fathers named Harvey Fishbein. He’d spoken with Maggie and my father on Sunday and told them there was no point in his getting involved because I’d surely be out that day. He’d been surprised to hear I was still there on Monday and come right down. We spoke through the mesh caging and he remarked that the whole place smelled terrible so let’s make this quick. I told him what I knew and he said, “We’ll get you out of here.”
I was taken to see the judge about ten minutes later. Mr. Fishbein told me not to admit to anything and let him do the talking. I only had one warrant after all and when the DA read the charge of “dog off leash” the police guards in the courtroom began to snicker. My case was dismissed pending good behavior and I was now able to see my family. I didn’t want to hug them because I was sure I smelled terrible and probably had some kind of germs on my clothing which were dangerous to babies. It had been 42 hours since my arrest.
Out in the hallways some of the guys with whom I’d been incarcerated were milling about and I introduced Elsie to them. They said she was pretty and told me they were going to outside to immediately get high. We were all giddy now that we’d been let out. We discussed who among us didn’t make it and now had to go up to Riker’s Island. I almost wanted to say to them “let’s keep in touch”, but it didn’t seem appropriate. One of the skinny heroin junkies asked my mother for a quarter and she gave him one.
I thanked Mr. Fishbein and asked him to send me a bill. He said he’d just like two signed copies of my book, “Dogwalker”, the newfound irony of the title not being lost on him. Maggie, Elsie and I rode the G train home and I took a long hot shower, ate some pizza, and then fell asleep.
