The Weekend's Entertainment (schizophrenia in jail)

The Weekend's Entertainment
The weekend's entertainment has just been shoved inside the door.
His hands and feet are shackled as he stumbles to the floor.
Well now, what we got here?
When he talks it don't make no sense; why, is hard to tell.
We gonna do us some correctin' and some guardin'.
Throw him in a cell.

He yells gibberish at us all day long and won't shut up at night.
We strapped him to a chair and made sure that it was tight.
Defiant fucker pissed hisself, we love to watch him fight.
Got no respect for authority, man, we doin' some correctin' tonight!
He's loosing all his privileges, being such a prick.
The up-side is, he's so crazy, we can beat him all to shit,
we'll say he did it to hisself, the charges will never stick.

His upset Momma and his Daddy say their boy is sick;
Say call a doctor or ambulance, get him some help quick!
We tell them he's misbehaving and he's ours for a couple more days.
Judge don't work on weekends.
We ain't listenin' to you cry and yell.
So piss off now, we're busy correctin', or we'll put you in a cell.


"The Weekend's Entertainment" happened at the onset of my son's schizophrenia.
He was 18 and attending college about 30 miles from us. The week before, he totaled his car in a fender-bender and began sending us odd, difficult to understand emails. He called us with a tangled set of plans for a trip he wanted to take, and instructions for us to attend Thanksgiving dinner at his ex-girlfriend's parent's house, even though they had not invited any of us, not even him. His father and I were worried that he was messed up on drugs, so we planned to get to the bottom of it when I picked him up on Friday.

In the car, the radio was on and this normally inhibited kid was flinging his head, arms and body around to the music the whole way home. When we got to the house, I was relieved because his dad would be with us now. But when I parked next to my husband's truck, my son got out, opened the driver's side door on the truck and began loading everything he had brought with him into the truck. Then he took my gym bag that had some of my clothes in it and my boots and put those into the truck too. Then he got in the truck and drove away! I was stunned, wondering what just happened, why would he do that?

I rushed inside and told his father that he just left in the truck with his things and mine, and he seemed very wasted on something and definitely shouldn't be driving. We tried his cell phone, but he didn't answer. I decided to drive to his ex-girlfriend's apartment to see if that was where he went, but the truck wasn't there. I drove back to the house and my husband was waiting outside. He said the police just called and had him under arrest for trying to steal a truck! They wanted us to come right away. They said he had stopped at an oil change place and the guys inside saw him open the door to one of their trucks and he began loading all of the stuff he had with him into the truck. He was trying to start the truck with his father's key when the guys pulled him out and held him down until the police got there. The police thought, since he had so much stuff with him that he was packed for a trip, they didn't know that half of the stuff was mine.

Mental illness was not on our minds, and I think we both assumed he was high on something. The whole thing made no sense, he was already in a truck, why steal one? He was handcuffed and being put into the police car when we got there. We asked, Why?, but he had no answer. I angrily asked what drugs he was on, but he had no answer. He looked sick and confused. We felt sick and confused. They said that they had to question him at the police station before he would be put into the county jail and since it was about 5:00 PM, we wouldn't be able to see him until the next day. We were frightened; the charges against him were serious.

The next day his father went alone to see him. When he returned he was visibly shaken. He said that the things our son said to him made no sense. He could not explain why he was trying to take someones truck. If he had been high the day before, it would have worn off by now. He remembered him saying something about going to New York City to visit his ex-girl friend and her grandfather, because he was in the hospital. He also said he was taking on the sins of the world. A definite Christ reference. We had usually only attended church for weddings and funerals, so the hyper-religiosity was a surprise and a huge tip off that his mental state was not returning to normal. He also did not think our son had slept and he looked awful. My husband tried to get some answers from someone about how to get him out. He was told that the first chance our son could see a judge would be on Monday. We were both seriously alarmed and wondered how to go about finding a lawyer. Do they see people on weekends? I called his ex-girlfriend and she said her grandparents are all dead. She was at home, not in New York, and told me that he had been calling and sending odd emails to her the week before.

The next visiting time, they refused to let his father see him. He was told that our son was misbehaving and tried to flood his cell, so he wouldn't be allowed to see any visitors. He came home, picked me up and we both went back to the jail to get them to have a doctor see him. I was panicking at the thought that he was perhaps insane and that they wouldn't let anyone see him. The guard that came out to talk to us was a gigantic man with an attitude. He did not have any intention of calling a doctor or the Mobile Crisis team. We had never heard of the Mobile Crisis team, so I wrongly assumed it was part of the law enforcement system, like a SWAT team is. But I thought if they could help my son, then call them! He wouldn't and didn't. I was pleading with him that our son was exhibiting signs that he might be insane and he needed to be seen by a doctor. The guard kept loudly repeating, Mam, to me, becoming more angry each time he said it. It finally sunk in that Mam meant SHUT UP, when he said if I didn't shut up and leave, he was going to throw me in a cell! I was already crying and begged again, most obsequiously, asking if there was at least a nurse on their staff who could see him. The guard went through the mighty glass doors and came back a few minutes later and said that our son was with the nurse. That was all he could do and we needed to leave. I found out later from the staff nurse that she never saw him; no medical professional saw him.

We went home and my husband called lawyers until he found one who would meet with us immediately even though it was Sunday. He agreed to go with us to court the next day to try to get the judge to release our son to our custody, to take him to the hospital. The next day in the court room, we were horrified when the prisoners were brought into the room. Our son was shackled hands and feet, hair wild, dead eyes, head down, not walking, but being pushed each stumbling step by a guard. How? What? What had happened to our son? He didn't see us. He didn't look up. Once they were seated, a guard would periodical poke him to make him quit leaning toward the floor. When his turn came, the lawyer made the request to take him to the hospital and the judge agreed, though the charges would still be pending.

It took us three days to get him out of there and into the hospital. It was a total nightmare. His brain was on another planet and his body was bleeding, dehydrated, starved and bruised all over. What he was put through during his time in our county jail was torture. When he could speak a bit more clearly, many weeks later, he told of being tied or strapped to a chair that was then turned to face a wall. He was just left there; his pleas were ignored, they left him there to wet himself and rave in his madness.

I didn't know people were treated so badly in this country, until I saw what their combination of punishment and neglect had done to my son. There could not have been any doubt that there was something seriously wrong with him. They could have called for the mobile crisis team to medically evaluate him, but they never did.

Ironical, it has recently come to light, that our sheriff has been filling huge numbers of fake prescriptions for narcotics for himself, over at least the past few years, but he's still on the job because that's how our system works. He's the man I spoke to on the phone to report the deplorable treatment our son had received in his jail. He didn't know anything about it, but I had the feeling he also didn't care and nothing would be done about it.

I talked to one of the arresting officers while my son was in the hospital, to see if he knew what had happened to his glasses, because they were not returned to us at the jail. He didn't know, but he did solve one mystery for us, he said our son told them that he was trying to take the other truck because a child on the side of the road sent him a telepathic message, to change trucks, as he drove by.