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Doing Time

A Brown student's story behind bars
. . . by an anonymous contributor

For President’s Day Weekend last year, I trekked to New York to visit some of my good friends. It didn’t turn out quite as expected. This is my story.

Saturday, February 9
9 pm—Our table at a jazz bar immediately amassed a herd of incriminatingly drunk young men. We had a personal favorite—Jerry, I think, was his name. After he offered to buy both my friends and I drinks (sure, why not!), and periodically flexed for us, explaining for the nth time that he was a New York City cop who was “on the rounds and hoped to pick us up” (good one), we decided to leave the bar.

Sunday, February 10
12 am—We decided to stop in a small alley adjacent to Washington Square Park and smoke a bowl on the way home from the bar. The three of us sat smoking, giggling in the comfort of a stoop that we pretended was ours, when a bright flashlight was suddenly in our faces.

“You are under arrest.”

When the officer put the blinding flashlight down, reality set in. It was our dear friend Jerry, in plain clothes just as he was before, and I was completely flabbergasted. What sort of bad sitcom was I involved in?

“Hand over the paraphernalia,” he ordered. Jerry grabbed our bowl from my friend’s hand and began to examine it. “This is a beautiful piece, haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid. You just gotta remember to smoke this shit at home.” He flashed a toothy smile at the three of us. (You have to be kidding me, I thought. He is still hitting on us.) Jerry looked around at the three of us, and it appeared as though he almost started to feel sorry for us as he looked into our teary faces.

“You.” He pointed to one of my friends, the one whom he had apparently liked the most. “I didn’t see you smoking. You can go. Uhh… and you should take their purses.” He turned to us. “I don’t think you two are going to want those, or anything that’s in them.” He winked at the two of us. “I’m doing you guys a really big favor.”

1 am—We had company in the rusty conversion van, our full-service ride to the station. To my left, there was a young African-American boy, no older than I. We were taken to the main precinct and placed into a small room with a mini cell and a group of chairs. My friend and I were allowed to sit in the cushy chairs with another pair of women, provided we were handcuffed to chairs, while the more “dangerous” 100-pound boy was put into the cell, above which hung a knit sign saying “Home Sweet Home.”

3 am—Time was wearing on at an impossibly slow pace. The officers did not allow us to address the young man, who had by now broken down into heavy sobs and uncontrollable tears while clutching the bars of his “Home Sweet Home.” The tears were met only by an angry, “Shut up, tough guy!” and a few whacks of the officer on duty’s stick at the bars of the cell to keep the boy away from them. “That’s what happens when you try to make some quick cash,” the officer said to the females. The two women were addressed as “Lesbos.” My friend and I were addressed as “Cuties.” My blood began to boil. I smiled at the boy, wishing I could give him a hug.

7 am—Hey! It’s fingerprinting time! What fun! I began to feel as though I was in a really bad sketch comedy. After the officers successfully lost the key to our handcuffs, I good-naturedly tried to save some time by demonstrating to them that my hands were small and flexible enough that I could actually squeeze my hands out of the handcuffs without them unlocking them. The cops found this wildly funny, and joked about it for a few minutes. Afterward, the same officer couldn’t figure out how to send our prints to the central station via email. After offering my own help a couple times (I was thoroughly tired, and aggravated above anything else at this display of incompetence), the officer allowed me to send our prints for him.

10 am—Relocation time. That meant a new cell, a full-body search, and a mug shot. Oh, the joy. We were warned that our case wouldn’t be heard until Monday, so we should “make ourselves comfortable.”

12 to 5 pm—The first person to join us was a young woman. Our cell was entrusted with a working pay phone, and she periodically got up to make phone calls to “Billy.”

“No Billy, it’s not there… you said it was on that corner… I don’t know… .They chased me for hours.” I was terrifically confused—she had one of the sweetest faces I had ever seen, and I wondered what she could have possibly been looking for. Next, three girls, whom we later found out were sisters, entered the cell. They laughed to pass the time, and one produced a joint from her bra. Of course, the guard smelled the marijuana and angrily warned all of us that if she smelled it again we would all spend the whole week in the cell. I was near panicking and upset that the action that got me into jail was being acted out in jail by a group of girls. It figured.

Next, we were joined by three homeless women, one of whom was completely insane and addressed us all as “Mother Mary.” The officers pushing them into the cell kicked one of them for good measure. They all smelled incredibly, but were nice enough. They asked how everyone was doing, and told us they were happy to have a place to stay and couldn’t wait to eat some “real food.”

8 pm—An absolutely inedible dinner of rotten bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches with the crust cut off and month-old milk was served to us. I was suddenly not as hungry as I thought I was before seeing the food, and gave my sandwich to one of the women that had recently joined us. I attempted to take a nap for the first time in custody, but found it impossible due to the temperature in the cell, which was around 30 or 40 degrees.

Monday, February 11
1 am—Five scantily clad women entered the cell. A few were definitely younger than me. They introduced themselves to the group as Candy, Sugar, Veronica, Perfection, and Queenie. The nightly round up of prostitutes had arrived. Candy was the nicest person I met throughout the whole endeavor. She was the only person to ask how anyone was doing, and even gave me her trench coat after she saw me shivering for a while. “I’ve dealt with this bullshit before,” she smiled warmly. “You need it more than I do.”

5 am—Billy’s friend, the first woman to join us, decided that we should all get to know each other better. We went around in a circle and explained why we were in the cell. My friend and I went first, and our story was met with laughter. “Tryin’ to teach you white girls a lesson! It don’t matter, you’ll be able to pay whatever fine is dealt you,” Billy’s friend told us. Everyone laughed, and for the first time there was a sense of unspoken animosity on everyone’s part against us. Next, the sisters told their tale—apparently they thought it would be a good idea to steal a car, and then traffic cocaine in it. “You one dumb bitch, girl,” as one of the homeless women eloquently put it. Next the group of prostitutes recounted the breaking-up of their corner. Both Candy and Sugar, the oldest of the group, had already been to court earlier in the week, and knew they would actually have to spend some significant period in jail this time around. Perfection, the youngest of the group, started to cry uncontrollably and told us all that she planned to tell on the pimp. Candy was astonished, “He’ll kill you, honey.” With that, Perfection stopped crying. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and was nearly moved to tears for this poor girl. When it was Billy’s friend’s turn, she merely laughed—“I ain’t telling any of you anything; I’m undercover.” Ok.

7 am—I began crying uncontrollably and could only concentrate on three things:
a. What if my parents find out?
b. Will I not be able to get a job now?
c. I’m so hungry and tired.
But as the time went on, these thoughts were replaced:
a. I really am just a pathetic white girl from the suburbs.
b. Everyone I’m with now is pretty nice, equally human to me, and about to go to prison—with the exception of the homeless people, whom I feel even worse for.
c. I hate the people who arrested me, who mistreated everyone in my presence except me, presumably because I am white, and appear to be of a higher class.

4 pm—My friend and I were each given a public attorney who explained to us that we were to be charged with a Class 5 Misdemeanor, which essentially meant that we were caught doing an illegal substance, but there was no remaining physical evidence. (Apparently, my bowl disappeared.) The consequences of such a conviction were that we would be put on probation for a year and if nothing happened over the course of that year, the incident would be erased from our records. I breathed a sigh of relief; this whole thing will be our little secret. My lawyer asked me where I went to school, and at the reply of Brown, he scoffed, “You goddamn liberal hippies, doing narcotics in public spaces. You Ivy-Leaguers should know better than to land yourselves in jail.”

6 pm—The judge had set down her gavel, and we were free to go. I guess you could say that looking back on the whole incident, I’m actually rather grateful it occurred: it was eye-opening. It remains one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, and makes me want to cry every time I consider my stupidity that weekend. Although that night was expunged from my record as of a few months ago, those 48 hoursin the NYC jailhouse are forever indelible in my brain. I think I learned more about humanity there than in that entire year at Brown.

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