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Fed up? Lock ’em up!by Julia Rogers Hook, Columbia Star, February 26, 2010Ever get a whiff of something coming from young Johnny’s room that smells suspiciously familiar from your college dorm days? Or does sweet Susie drive you crazy with her too short skirts and the never pleasant eye–rolling accompanied by the dreaded “whatever” when you tell her no, she’s not going out with an 18–year–old man?
In Richland County, Sheriff Leon Lott and a staff of men and women from the Sheriff’s Department headed by Investigator Gerard Walls have developed a program to help perplexed and baffled parents get a new grip on their teens’ behavioral problems. The program is called READY and stands for The Richland County Educating and Deterring Youth Program. The basic idea is to give problem teens a taste of what jail is like before they end up there for real, Walls said.
The READY program is an off–shoot of the county’s Crossroads program, Walls said.
In Crossroads we take the kids down to Alvin S. Glen and let inmates talk to them. They spend a few hours getting educated on what jail is really about. These inmates let them know that it’s not fun,” he said. “But the parents started asking for a more in–depth program that kept the kids overnight. So Sheriff Lott talked to some officers and came up with this program that imitates an actual arrest.”
“A lot of these kids come from single parent homes usually with no father on the scene,” he said. “The mothers just don’t know what to do anymore.”
He said the kids who end up with him aren’t really bad kids. They have just gotten in with a bad crowd or are acting out in a negative way such as stealing, cutting classes, fighting at school, or disrespecting their parents.
“If we can get them before they move on to bigger mistakes or get caught for smoking pot or stealing CDs, then we have a really good chance of making an impression that can really change their lives,” Walls said.
Parents needing some real change in their teenaged boys and girls fill out a form at the sheriff’s department and pay a $10 fee for the program that entails a mock arrest and an overnight stay in a solitary cell.
“The money covers the uniforms and the meals the kids will get while in our custody,” Walls said.
On the day this story takes place, the lobby of the Richland County Sheriff ’s Department on Two Notch Road was quiet as deputies from around the city arrived to accept a group of girls ranging from 13 to 16. Two of those deputies, DuJuan Council and Kelvin Griffin are special investigators who work with gangs in and out of the prison system. Council is a gang counselor at Kirkland Reception and Evaluation Center where all inmates in South Carolina begin their sentences and Griffin, a deputy with Richland County, deals with gangs on the streets. Both said they believe in the READY program and gladly volunteer their time to work with Walls and his team to deter Columbia’s teens from getting on the wrong path.
“We try to make this as real as possible,” Griffin said. “The whole idea is to scare these kids so much that they never want to come to jail for real.”
Council echoed Griffin’s sentiments.
“We are tough on them, as tough as we can be,” Council said. “If they think it’s some kind of a joke, then the whole thing is a waste of time.”
And tough may not be the word to describe the rest of the evening for the girls coming to the program. THIS IS JAIL, THE REAL THING
One by one a parent and a teenaged girl showed up in the lobby. The girls, a mixture of street glam and Barbie dolls, were resigned to their plight but each one had a different reaction. Most looked shocked when their parents actually walked out the door as one of the deputies told them to put their hands behind their backs and cuffed them.
“Hey wait, we staying the night,” another incredulous girl asked as her mother walked out the door.
“Oh yeah,” Council said. “You kept sneaking out at night and didn’t want to stay in your house so now you’re going to stay in mine. This is jail, girl. The real thing.”
“I got to take my belt off?” one sassily bedecked teen asked.
“Oh yeah. Your belt, your shoelaces, and give your mama all that jewelry. Before the night’s over you’ll be taking all your street clothes off and putting on a uniform,” Walls answered. “You’re in jail now.”
All but one of the girls were dropped off by their mothers. That girl was turned in by her father, who was at the point of breaking as he saw his daughter being put in handcuffs. The man, more than six feet tall and an obvious athlete, wiped his face and sighed deeply as he walked out of the lobby with his daughter’s words, “I love you daddy” ringing in his ears.
One mother, a soldier, abruptly turned away as her daughter said “I love you mommy.” Perhaps she recognized the ploy, or maybe she didn’t want the girl to see her cry.
One mother dropped off all three of her daughters, all teens and all misbehaving. The sisterly trio was a jumble of unshed tears, snide smiles, and bitter reconciliation. Several girls tried the tough act, laughing and joking with the officers. It came to an abrupt halt as Council stepped up.
“What are you smiling about?” he gruffly asked one girl.
“Nothing,” she grinned back.
“You’ll stop smiling soon enough,” he groused. “Just wait.”
The smile on her face disappeared as apprehension began to register.
ALUMINUM TOILET IN PLAIN SIGHTThe girls were paraded up a flight of stairs and down several hallways to get to a gruesome looking holding cell. The cell was all of six by eight feet with dingy walls with no seating and an aluminum toilet in plain sight of the door. The lone roll of toilet paper was sitting on the cell’s less than pristine floor.
“We want it to look bad,” Walls said. “These kids need to know the reality of jail.”
The young women are ordered to stand facing the wall and not to talk until they are transported to the county jail where they will spend the night. What they don’t know is they are on a surveillance camera and if they do talk, one of the deputies will be back to explain the rules one more time. Each infraction carries a penalty for all of the girls involved so it turns into group law to behave with the girls monitoring each other.
Once all of the girls arrive and are put in the holding cell, a paddy wagon comes to the back of the jail. It’s a black van with no windows. The “seating area” is just a row of benches in a “cage.” There are two sets of doors in the back and on the side to double lock the already cuffed girls in. They must sit and balance themselves with their hands locked behind them just like any convicted inmate that travels from jail to prison.
At the jail where the group will spend the night, the van is pulled into a fenced parking garage with a K–9 deputy and his dog waiting. The dog, an ominous looking German Shepard, is eager and his barks are shrill as the girls are taken out of the van and lined up against the wall.
“This is where they usually begin to realize that this is not going to be fun,” deputy Griffin said. “This is where we really get tough with them.”
And tough they were.
In addition to Walls, Griffin, and Council, five more deputies, including Senior Deputy Warren Cavanaugh and his dog, Fargo, are waiting on the girls’ arrival. Deputy Doris Taylor drove the girls over and as she opens the van all nine of the officers begin the lesson the parent’s want their kids to learn. The din of the deputies shouting and the barking dog is deafening as it echoes off the concrete walls and floor.
“All right out of the van and up against that wall,” Taylor yells.
“Double time it ladies. That means RUN,” Council screams.
THIS DOG IS A DRUG DOG“Stand straight, put your hands out, spread those legs NOW,” Alvin S. Glenn Detention Officer Ernest Starling bellows.
All the while the German Shepard, Fargo, is straining at his leash and barking non–stop, lunging at the girls with Cavanaugh holding him back
“Any of you ladies got anything on you this dog can find?” Walls yells at the bewildered girls. “This dog is a drug dog. He can smell drugs a mile away and he sounds like he’s smelling something. Who has the drugs?”
When no one answers, Griffin and Council jump in.
“You were asked a question ladies. Do any of you have drugs on you? Answer us NOW.”
After a few mumbled
nos Council goes into his tough cop mode.
“Who do you think I am,” he shouts at the girls. “I am not your cousin. When you answer me, you say sir, are we clear?”
A meek chorus of ‘yes sir’s’ eek out of the girls.
“I can’t hear you ladies,” he booms out. “ARE WE CLEAR?”
And a resounding “Yes, Sir” fills the concrete room as the gate comes down with a clang, and the dog continues his barking.
IT’S WORKOUT TIMEThe deputies begin to uncuff the girls, but before they can think this is a good thing, the ‘exercise’ session begins.
Starling steps up and addresses the group as he would any hardened felons.
“Ok, now we’re going to get you started in your work outs, ladies,” he announces in a pleasant voice. He explains how it’s going to go and how they must work together. Then the pleasantries fall away and the deputies begin to shout out the orders, moving the girls from one place to another in the line, telling them to get their hands on the wall they are facing and to spread those legs.
Deputy Taylor, the lone female deputy, begins to pat the girls down and have them take off their shoes. The dog goes wild and begins to stand on his hind legs and bark while straining toward the girls.
Cavanaugh eggs the dog on, but he has full control and the animal will clearly not get near the girls. The girls, with their backs to the dog spread eagle with their hands on the wall, have no way of being sure of that, the K–9 deputy said.
“This is just a scare tactic,” he said quietly. “The dog knows he’s supposed to frighten the kids, and I really think he enjoys it. But he wouldn’t hurt them even if he got loose unless he was given an order to do it.”
The other deputies embellish on the ferocious dog as Griffin asks again if the girls have any contraband.
“This dog will know. If you have it you’d better tell us before he finds it. He bites and you bleed. Tell us now,” he blusters.
EACH GIRL GOES IN A DARK CELLAfter all the girls are searched and they take their hair out of what ever ribbons, barrettes, and headbands they wore in, they are rushed into the cells where they will ultimately spend the night and are given red jumpsuits. Each girl goes into a small dark cell and they are told they have 30 seconds to change. (They are really given about two minutes but it’s accompanied by all of the deputies screaming at them to hurry up and quit dawdling.)
One of the girls decides to knock on the door. It wasn’t clear why she did it, but Deputy Taylor made it crystal clear that knocking was unacceptable.
“You don’t knock,” Taylor said. “You don’t get to call us; we tell you when to do what. You’re in JAIL girl”
The girls are taken out of the cells and lined up against the wall. Each one has to announce why their parent or parents sent them into the program. It was a laundry list of fighting, shoplifting, sneaking out at night, and a couple of girls were sent in because they were 14 and 15 and wanted to date 18 and 19–year–old men. One unfortunate girl admitted that she disrespected her mother and grandmother.
Deputies Council, Griffin and Walls descended on her at once.
“Do you have a problem calling me ‘sir,’” Walls asked her.
“No sir,” she squeaked out.
“I haven’t done a thing for you. You don’t even know me yet; you’ll call me sir and you won’t say ma’am to your mama and grandma? Why do you disrespect them?”
“I don’t really know, sir.”
Council took over. He placed himself about six inches from the girl’s face.
“You don’t know? What kind of answer is that? Those women have given you everything, but you disrespect them? When you get home, IF you get home, you WILL respect those women now won’t you?”
It may have been guilt or shame or fear, but the girl’s voice cracked, and her eyes filled as she answered him.
“Yes sir.”
TIME FOR MORE EXERCISEOnce dressed out, the girls were taken back to the parking garage for more exercise.
“This is intended to teach them to work together,” Walls said. “If one of them stops the moves, they all have to start over. This is usually where we break them.”
Between jumping jacks, pushups, sit–ups and leg lifts, several of the girls burst into tears as the deputies moved among them yelling instructions.
“This is where we push them beyond their limits,” Council said. “These kids are used to doing what they want when they want so they wear out pretty quickly with a work–out.
We don’t make them do too many reps, but it does tire them out. If they’re sore when they leave here, maybe they’ll remember why they don’t want to come back”
Several of the girls began to cry and some said they couldn’t do the exercises but that only met with the deputies’ disdain.
“Oh you can yell at your mama and sneak out at night and worry her to death, but you can’t handle a few sit–ups? Quit that crying. Or don’t, but you can exercise while you’re crying. Now give me 10 more,” Griffin told one girl.
As the girls begin to wear down, Tessa Ashwell, a counselor for the corrections department, takes them one by one into her office to talk to them. It’s her job to try and find out why the kids are acting out and misbehaving.
“Sometimes we find out something is going on at home, and sometimes it’s not the kids’ fault. This is to protect them as much as it is to deter them,” Ashwell said.
From the deputies’ harshness to Ashwell’s soft spoken demeanor the tired girls are beginning to understand that their behavior may not be the best choice for them if they want to stay out of jail. Just as they start to look a little relaxed, in comes Josie, the self–proclaimed “intimidator.” It doesn’t take an onlooker long to figure out how she got the title.
Sporting red dreds and a drill sergeant’s attitude, when Josie James saunters into the room, it is evident this woman is no push–over. “It’s my job to scare the (blank) out of them,” she said. “I tell ’em like it is and I tell ‘em what’s what. I terrify them.”
James is a former inmate at Alvin S. Glenn and got involved in the “Scared Straight” program there. Now she assists the sheriff’s department in the READY program and another youth deterrent course called Crossroads.
While meeting the girls, one girl, 15, who was arguing with her mother about dating a 19–year–old man told James she might be pregnant. The former inmate immediately slides into street slang while questioning the girl.
THAT BOY’S GOING DOWN FOR STATUTORY RAPE“Who’d the baby– daddy?” James demands. “Is it that 19–year–old? You tell me his name girl ’cause that boy’s going down for statutory rape. What’s his name, I said.”
The girl tells her through tears that have no effect on the former inmate.
“Officer Walls, go get this man and charge him wid rape. He done got this girl pregnant, and she’s only 15.”
James goes up to the girl and shakes her head.
“You done ruined your whole life, girl. You ain’t never gone have nothing if you carrying that man’s baby. He don’t want you. He wants to use you. He ain’t gone stand by you. You think he gone be around you when you all swole up wid a baby? You done ruined your whole life.”
Realizing that pregnancy won’t get her out of her present situation and that it could well get her friend arrested on serious charges, the girl quickly admits that while it’s possible she’s pregnant, she probably isn’t and returns to the group a little older than when she left them a few minutes earlier.
James talks to all of the girls and is armed with the list of the reasons the girls are there. She pulls no punches as she tells them how she ended up in jail for real and how she started out just like them.
“I was disrespectful and thought I knew everything too,” she told them. “Well when that cell door clangs shut, you realize you don’t know squat.”
LONELY NIGHT IN A SOLITARY CELLThe rest of the evening entails a ‘jailhouse’ meal and then a lonely night in a solitary cell. The girls have plenty of time to think about why they were there and whether they want to return, Walls said.
Once put in the cells for the night, the girls are given a thin mattress to put on the one bench that serves as both chair, bed, and a blanket. They are given pencil and paper and told to write a letter of apology to their parents.
“This program is eight months old, and we’ve run 171 kids through it, not counting this group. So far, only two of them have gotten arrested. The rest of them turned a corner.”
Walls said the program doesn’t end with the hellish night in the slammer. He said that each kid who is signed up is assigned a mentor and the mentor checks up on them and is available to counsel them or just take them out for a burger to talk. He said that made a big difference in these kids’ lives.
The mother of one of the girls who went through the program in this story, Damaris Ortiz, said she can’t believe the difference in her 13–year–old daughter, Kiara Smith.
“Investigator Walls has been such a huge help to my family,” Ortiz said. “My daughter wasn’t a bad girl, but she was displaying negative behavior. She was defiant and moody and becoming disruptive in school. When I spoke to Investigator Walls about it, he suggested I put her through this program.”
Walls knew the Ortiz family as he has worked at her other children’s schools. He knew Smith’s brother and sister, Ortiz said.
“I’m deeply grateful to the entire team that works with these kids,” she said. “They don’t realize what it means to parents when their kids straighten up. It was so hard to leave Kiara there at the jail, and she was so mad at me. But when I picked her up she was a different child. No mother wants to see their kid go through that, but better this way than the real thing. I certainly have no regrets for doing it.”
Walls said the goal of the program was to significantly impress the consequences of bad choices on the kids.
“When we take them back to their parents in the morning, I can promise you they will be different people than the people we brought here last night. Some try to laugh it off, and some try to act tough, but I haven’t seen one who didn’t break down by around midnight.
“Something about being alone in that cell with nothing to do changes these kids and the change is for the better.”
