i'm giving this a nice title because i intend to post fun things about my life in here at some point. like a "meme loves" or a "wolf's den" type of thread. however, this first post will not be one of them.
as you guys know by now, i'm a pretty even 33.3% split between coward, hypocrite and procrastinator. as a result of this, when i had my little driving incident in 2013 i just ignored it. at the time they took me to jail for the night and then let me out ROR. i didn't have any bail to worry about so i just put the whole thing off. for 3 years! now of course when you do something like that and miss a court date you get a warrant put out on you. turns out, if you're white and live in boca raton it is rather easy to avoid getting pulled over for 3 years. thing is, at some point i needed to renew my ID. can't really do that when there is a warrant out. so around august of last year i finally got a lawyer and decided it was time to take care of all this. just getting to the point to where all this can finally see a day in court takes months. there was a ton of back and forth between my lawyer and the assistant state attorney. at first she wanted me to do 30 days in jail. after months of negotiating, we worked it down to 10 days -1 for the original day spent in jail at the time of arrest. so i was off to jail for 9 days!
and that's where i was from 2.2 until 2.10. luckily it wound up being only 8 days because they let you out in the early morning hours, i was on my way home yesterday at around 7am.
turns out, jail is WAY less scary than i had anticipated. i knew i was going in for the 9 days about 2 weeks in advance and oh boy did i work myself into insanity worrying about what it would be like.
here is the rundown of my jail experience:
day one (2.2) i go to court. i go before the judge and get my sentence. it is 9 days plus a year probation and 150 hours community service and a drunk driving class. after the judge rules i go over to the bailiff and empty my pockets. he then calls in a second bailiff who cuffs me and takes me out a side door of the court room. from there they take me down a couple stories and into the courthouse holding cell area. there they strip me out my shirt and shoes but let me keep wearing everything else. they put me in a cell with 1 other guy and i wait there for around 4 hours. in those 5 house the cell fills up a bit. once there are around 6 people in the cell it is time to transfer me to the main palm beach county jail. they take us out, cuffed again, and walk us over to a big, secure garage where they is a police van waiting. it's kinda neat how its a normal van but the whole back is just a metal box with 2 benches. from there it takes about 10 mins to get over to the main jail.
at the main jail, known as gun club because that is the road it's on, they search me again and them put me in another holding cell.
just a little aside, at this point they took my legal papers that up until this point i was allowed to keep. that seemed weird to me because these papers included the receipt they gave me as proof of all the stuff of mine they were putting in storage. i was worried about this because all the rest of my property was already put aside and i was scared they might lose them. it wound up being no big deal because i go all my papers back yesterday with no trouble.
anyways, back in the main PBSO (palm beach sheriff's office) main jail, i was in their holding cell now. this was probably the worst part of the whole ordeal. it was a around 6 hours of sitting in a freezing cold cell with nothing but 2 benches and a toilet. there was no way i could piss in front of the 20 or so other people in this cell so that wasn't the most fun. after the 6 hours and a visit to the nurse they took us all to a changing room where i now how to lose all the rest of my clothes besides my boxers and socks. they put us in blue pants and shirt that would become my uniform for the rest of my time. from here were were split into groups and my group was moved into a huge housing bloc.
this housing bloc was gigantic. a large semicircular room that was two stories and separated into 2 areas by wall. in this bloc there were 2 guards at a little door/desk area that connected the 2 sides of the room. the guards were there 24 hours a day. in my side of the room there was probably around 60 or 70 people. we had bunks and the good news was in this area there was a separate locker room type bathroom so i could finally go without being directly in front of like 20 dudes. turns out this big bloc was also a holding area for people doing more than just a day. i was in this room for the next 3 days. i met one guy who was just starting a 3 year stint for drunk driving so that was sobering. on the 3rd day of being in this huge bloc they took me into an office for what they call "classification". this is where they once again group us into categories to determine where we will go for the rest of our stay. after the classification, around 5 hours later, they take around 20 of us from the giant cell bloc to be moved. of those 20 only 1 other guy i was originally with went with me to the new, long term housing unit.
as you guys know by now, i'm a pretty even 33.3% split between coward, hypocrite and procrastinator. as a result of this, when i had my little driving incident in 2013 i just ignored it. at the time they took me to jail for the night and then let me out ROR. i didn't have any bail to worry about so i just put the whole thing off. for 3 years! now of course when you do something like that and miss a court date you get a warrant put out on you. turns out, if you're white and live in boca raton it is rather easy to avoid getting pulled over for 3 years. thing is, at some point i needed to renew my ID. can't really do that when there is a warrant out. so around august of last year i finally got a lawyer and decided it was time to take care of all this. just getting to the point to where all this can finally see a day in court takes months. there was a ton of back and forth between my lawyer and the assistant state attorney. at first she wanted me to do 30 days in jail. after months of negotiating, we worked it down to 10 days -1 for the original day spent in jail at the time of arrest. so i was off to jail for 9 days!
and that's where i was from 2.2 until 2.10. luckily it wound up being only 8 days because they let you out in the early morning hours, i was on my way home yesterday at around 7am.
turns out, jail is WAY less scary than i had anticipated. i knew i was going in for the 9 days about 2 weeks in advance and oh boy did i work myself into insanity worrying about what it would be like.
here is the rundown of my jail experience:
day one (2.2) i go to court. i go before the judge and get my sentence. it is 9 days plus a year probation and 150 hours community service and a drunk driving class. after the judge rules i go over to the bailiff and empty my pockets. he then calls in a second bailiff who cuffs me and takes me out a side door of the court room. from there they take me down a couple stories and into the courthouse holding cell area. there they strip me out my shirt and shoes but let me keep wearing everything else. they put me in a cell with 1 other guy and i wait there for around 4 hours. in those 5 house the cell fills up a bit. once there are around 6 people in the cell it is time to transfer me to the main palm beach county jail. they take us out, cuffed again, and walk us over to a big, secure garage where they is a police van waiting. it's kinda neat how its a normal van but the whole back is just a metal box with 2 benches. from there it takes about 10 mins to get over to the main jail.
at the main jail, known as gun club because that is the road it's on, they search me again and them put me in another holding cell.
just a little aside, at this point they took my legal papers that up until this point i was allowed to keep. that seemed weird to me because these papers included the receipt they gave me as proof of all the stuff of mine they were putting in storage. i was worried about this because all the rest of my property was already put aside and i was scared they might lose them. it wound up being no big deal because i go all my papers back yesterday with no trouble.
anyways, back in the main PBSO (palm beach sheriff's office) main jail, i was in their holding cell now. this was probably the worst part of the whole ordeal. it was a around 6 hours of sitting in a freezing cold cell with nothing but 2 benches and a toilet. there was no way i could piss in front of the 20 or so other people in this cell so that wasn't the most fun. after the 6 hours and a visit to the nurse they took us all to a changing room where i now how to lose all the rest of my clothes besides my boxers and socks. they put us in blue pants and shirt that would become my uniform for the rest of my time. from here were were split into groups and my group was moved into a huge housing bloc.
this housing bloc was gigantic. a large semicircular room that was two stories and separated into 2 areas by wall. in this bloc there were 2 guards at a little door/desk area that connected the 2 sides of the room. the guards were there 24 hours a day. in my side of the room there was probably around 60 or 70 people. we had bunks and the good news was in this area there was a separate locker room type bathroom so i could finally go without being directly in front of like 20 dudes. turns out this big bloc was also a holding area for people doing more than just a day. i was in this room for the next 3 days. i met one guy who was just starting a 3 year stint for drunk driving so that was sobering. on the 3rd day of being in this huge bloc they took me into an office for what they call "classification". this is where they once again group us into categories to determine where we will go for the rest of our stay. after the classification, around 5 hours later, they take around 20 of us from the giant cell bloc to be moved. of those 20 only 1 other guy i was originally with went with me to the new, long term housing unit.
SimpsonsQOTD @SimpsonsQOTD 
