INNOCENT IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY JAIL
FOR 39 DAYS
 

December 14, 1994,  I am arrested  in Los Angeles, California in front of my wife's house
when going to see my little boy for Christmas.   I have unloaded the car and have some of
his Christmas stuff out when two cop cars pull us and box me in and then they just grab me
and start putting handcuffs on me.   Would not let me get my glasses, and throw me into the
back of a car and just drive off leaving the the other cop there at my car and stuff and
leaving a Santa Clause for my little boy setting on the sidewalk...it was embedded in my
mind as I looked back as we were driving off.

I am not told why I am being arrested, I am not read my rights.  I am just hand cuffed
thrown in a car and here we go.  This other cop is left standing at Tammy's car and going
and looking inside.  I don't remember if Tammy walked out or not...

So this cop goes speeding off with me in the back seat saying that he has to hurry off to a
report of a kid being hit by a car.  So speeding down the road handcuffed in the back of a
Los Angeles police car was about as much trouble that I had ever seen in my life, and all I
wanted to do was give my kids some Christmas presents and hug my little boy...and now I
am going to set here in a LAPD car at a tragic scene while I am under arrest for what I am
not sure.  I have  no idea what was going on, or why I was arrested.  When I mentioned to
the cop that I do not know what I am being arrested for and that I wasn't read my rights he
said that I have been watching too much TV.

I was taken to the Lomita station and slept on a cold cement bunk with a sheet.  The food
over the weekend was like shit.  The jail was hard and cold.  I had never been in jail overnight
in my 50 years of life.  I had really never been in trouble.  Without my glasses I told the guy
that I was not going to sign whatever it was when they were checking me in, booking me or
what ever they call it.  When my buddy Buck called to see what my bail was he was told that
it was at $50,000.  I am put in jail with a child molester.  We are given green bologna
sandwiches.  I just eat a peanut butter san and eat an apple.  Buck was the founding member
of the Riders of the Purple Sage and a good friend of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.

Six days later I am FINALLY taken to court and get to talk to a Public Defender.

Tuesday the 20th I am taken to court and put in a cell.  Get there at 7:30 a.m., and at 5:30  I
talk to a Public Defender.  He says my bail is $100,000.  I am just a number to him.  He does
not know much about my case he says.  After going on in the court room, and setting there
and watching each prisoner go up in front of the judge, they completely pass me by.  Officer
comes in and takes me back to the cell and says he does not know why they did not get me.
Later I find out that there had been a mistake on the date and it showed I was not to have
been in court till next year.  I still have no idea what is all going on.  I have not seen a judge
yet.  I have not been arraigned...I still really don't know why I am in jail except that it is for a
warrant in Missoula, Montana.

Handcuffed and taken back to the L.A. County Jail.  I was handcuffed to a speed freak going
through withdrawal. He had stolen a police car.  I am put in the gang module.  Then transferred
to 9500, I think O.J. Simpson is on 9300.  I think back to the holding tank that I was put in when
checked into the LA County.  God the dredges of the society and out of the gutters of  LA.
Tattoos, gang members, drug addicts on withdrawal, drunks, stinking tennis shoes, body odor,
all races and a few whites.  In fact the darkest bunch of people that I had ever seen in my life.
One gets the feeling that at that exact time you are breathing TB and God knows what diseases
and viruses in the air.

THE GLASS HOUSE...

We all have to stand in lines of it seems forever, but then again my mind is so in shock from the
experience that time is in a certain lost realm of reality...from the holding rooms they move the mass
of men through the system that have set up to bring in the thousands of people off the street that
have been arrested.  First order is to get you searched.  After the experience I am amazed that
so many men sneak drugs and things into the LA County jail in cavities of their bodies.

I would try and escape by thinking of Robby and Desiree, but the thought of them would bring
a tear to my eyes.  After a couple of hours in the holding tank standing shoulder to shoulder with
the gutter people we end up in a room where they search us in total.  Then they line us up in
a room where they tag and take our private clothes.  We stand nude and in underwear for a hour
all lined up then mass showers with a little piece of soap.  As we are coming out of the shower
they throw a roll of prison clothes at us as hard as they can, like some game.  Still shoulder to
shoulder we get dressed.  Go to room where they take our picture.  They give us juice and more
green bologna.

Then go to another line to get a chest X-ray for TB.  We walk down many halls and end up on
the 9th floor.  Give us one sheet and one thin blanket.  Assign me to a room with 300 men.  I
get a lower bunk between two men snoring all night.  It is 3am and the lights stay on.  To keep
the men from hurting each other or butt fucking each other.  It is cold.  I put my shoes under me
for a pillow effect.  I can not sleep all night.  This is an incredible and shocking experience.  I
have to let myself think that, well maybe I could just make this a learning experience, but at the
same time the mind is trying to block it all out.

At 6 am a loud speaker has up for slop.  Shirt tales in boys and hand in your pockets as you
walk down the hall.   A guard yells at me to take the string out of my hair that i am using to
tie back my pony tail.  We get 3 minutes to eat.  The eggs are rubber and the potatoes taste
like starch.  The milk is hot and the coffee like water.  God, I would have rather laid in bed.
I feel beat.  We go back to the big room.  I just walk the floors, enduring the hateful looking
and comments from the Blacks, Asians and Mexicans.

The blacks congregate, the Mexicans congregate.  Standing in phone line a black guy looks at
me and says, "Are you one of them white supremacist?"  God I am scared.  Already seen a
couple of fights and I can see how quick these guys can hurt you.  At lunch we get three minutes
to slop down the slop. Interesting to watch a group of men eat like fucking pigs. All day numbers
are called transferring men to other floors and jails.  Going to eat becomes the great break in
the day from the cells and the jail rooms.  They spend an incredible amount of time and effort
in just moving you every day or so from one cell to another, from one day room to another.
You begin to feel that you are falling deeper and deeper into a system where you could be lost
forever.

Early in the morning Friday the 7th day for me...one week in jail.  Many men say they would
rather go off to prison than stay in the LA Country Jail for a week.  Damn!  I know what they
mean...no i don't...I never been to prison.  Early in the morning the floor is flooded.  They move
me to a cell with 6 beds and a phone in the room.  Guys are okay to deal with.  No room to
pace the floor in the small cell.  Hours go by like days.

I have not been to court because of a mistake I find out.  I do not know what the charges are.
I am starting to feel a tear in my stomach.  My gut is starting to hurt and I am feeling lost and
alone.  The cop that arrested me would not let me have my glasses when he hauled me off.  I
am going crazy with the desire to read to pass time and get my mind off what is happening.
Sometimes I remember that hours would go by and I would be in some dark blank space of
denial that this was even real.

It is only a couple of days before Christmas.  I am getting the sinking feeling that no one is
going to be able to do anything for me.  I feel so helpless and alone in the world.  I can not
make sense of what I am going through.  I think back to all the work that I had done in Texas
trying to get my family estate back from the crooked lawyers and town officials that stole it
from me.  I see myself locked in here because of some other crooks and a system that seems
kangaroo to me.  I feel like I am loosing all the ground that I had gained working to get them,
all because of some evil people on Missoula, Montana.

I have had my sister, Buck Page, founding member of the old Riders of the Purple Sage,
Thomas Steinbeck (son of writer John Steinbeck), good friend and attorney Phillip Rosen,
and other very upstanding people call the County Attorney of Missoula to speak in my
behalf.  Noting...he will not let me out of jail.

The pencil that I am writing with is so small that I had to take a piece of paper and roll it up,
then stick the little piece of pencil in the rolled up paper to just have something to hold it with.
Without my glasses the writing is a chore, but it helps me pass time and I must document what
I am experiencing.  The jail talk all day is about what each has done to get in jail.  From assault
to drug possession, murder, child molesters, mother killers, gangsters, and worse.  Seems
like a big fraternity house.  Many of the guys know each other from the streets or from having
been in jail with each other before.  Every day I am shocked at how few white people are in
the LA Country jail.  Every day I am shocked that I am one of the only white people in jail.

Friday the 23rd of December.  Two days until Christmas.  I am moved into a cell with three
Mexican dudes that let me know right off that they do not like my color.  The sharp edge of
racism is strong and very freighting.  They all talk of their "hoods"...the streets that they are
from is a big deal.  Their turf and their "homeys"  They talk of certain crack houses.  Their
identity is their hood.  They write on the walls and the bottom of bunks with tooth paste.
Hot items to have are dope, cigs, matches, soap, paper, pencils, blankets, shampoo and
razors.  A light cost a buck.  There is dope everywhere.  More than in the streets and more
in the open.  Irony.  However, they are just passing it around.  It is very expensive inside.
Oh yes, and toilet paper.  You have to learn how to had toilet paper somewhere, because
LA County sure does not keep the cells supplied.

Phones off most of the day.  I hurt knowing that my daughter does not understand where her
daddy is.  After her entire life seeing me every Christmas I know she is lonely and hurting.
I feel my gut tearing inside.  I now know I am not going to get out for Christmas.  I am now
in a cell with a black dude that is in for murder.  He killed the daughter of a city councilman,
I think it was of El Sugundo, Cal., or something like that.  Christmas day I hear him brag how
hard it was to get her to die.  I was getting sick.   Said something about that she would not die
and he jumped on her once after stabbing her.  The other dudes were really getting off on
hearing his story of death.  I thought I might just faint right there.  I wanted to cry, but the white
boy had to hang tough with the killers there on that Christmas day.  I later hear that some of
the guys are going to beat him up because word is he also drowned her two children in the
bath tub.

Christmas in L.A. County and I am just a little rock on the running board of a cement
truck going down the LA freeway.  In chains and shackles now for days, locked behind
bars of man's inhumanity to man, all over some money that I was cheated out of and
a kangaroo court type mentality...some drug dealers in a town with a County Attorney that
thinks he is a big man cause he can keep me locked up...and I have not been proven guilty
of anything.  I can not even think about my daughter all day...thinking that after all these years
being with her on Christmas and there she was in Missoula and I locked behind bars in a sick
hell listening to stories of murder.

I watched men go through heroin and other drug withdrawals.  One can imagine what comes
in off of the streets every night of Los Angeles.  It is beyond Mad Max...So there I set in a
laundry room watching this guy in is gut wrenching pain and sweats as I set on the floor for hours...
then they move me to 10 X 10 cell with 4 guys and the industrial commode 2 feet from the head
of my bottom bunk.  I over hear this guy on the phone telling one of his homies where to find a
murder weapon that he hid in a wall.  Said he was going to be out of prison for only 24 hours
and now here his is back in L.A. County.  I think sheeeeeeeee...

California is no anomaly; over the last 20 years, the number of prisoners has surged in every state
  in the country. While the nation's population has grown by only 20 percent, the number of
  Americans held in local, state, and federal lockups has doubled -- and then doubled again. The
  United States now locks up some two million people. That's far more than ever before, and more
  than any other country on earth. And the number is still growing.

  Most Americans never even see, let alone become ensnared in, the nation's vast correctional
  system. But the unprecedented prison boom is incurring unprecedented costs -- economic, social
  and ethical -- that are being paid, one way or another, by everyone in this country. The
  MotherJones.com Incarceration Atlas, and the articles that accompany it, tally up part of the bill.
  Drawing on records from a wide range of federal and state agencies, the Atlas provides a
  state-by-state look at the growing expense of our penal system. It details how many residents of
  each state are currently imprisoned compared with 1980, the soaring number of nonviolent drug
  offenders, and the increasing racial disparity in imprisonment. It also shows how the bill for prisons
  has grown six times faster per capita than spending on higher education, which has actually
  dropped or remained stagnant in many states.

Here I am with the dredges of society...Murders, child molesters, gang members, robbers and
scum of the earth...blacks and Mexicans, Asians and everybody looks at the white boy like, we
are going to cut your _ _ ckin' throat white boy...the race tension is beyond the feeling that any
man could ever imagaine...beyond anything you will ever feel in the streets, for in the caged
environment they can really get right in your face with their anger and pent up rage at the white
man that they feel is the roots to all their problems and the real reason they are even in the jail.

My gut is tearing inside.  I do not have my glasses and can not read.  I am lost and in the dark
and can not understand what I have even done to deserve the hell I have already experienced.
As I think back to who these people really are in Missoula, I think that I am sure that some
reason will come about.  My sister calls the Missoula County Attorney, Buck Page the old
singing cowboy that founded the Riders of the Purple Sage calls the Country attorney and
says that I am a good guy, my attorney friend who was in Missoula and observed all that went
on calls, Thom Steinbeck, my friend and son of John Steinbeck calls, Robby Romero one of
the performers calls, nothing does any good.  I am left in jail.  They all say that I will come
back to Missoula to take care of the situation.  The County Attorney does nothing!

I was really having a hard time without my glasses.  The time went so slow and I could not
read to help it pass.  I thought of how unreasonable the cop was when he arrested me and I
asked him to let me get my glasses.  One day there was an old Mexican dude in my cell and
he would let me use his dollar glasses to read some.  Felt to good to escape in a book.

Hot items in LA Country are dope, cigs, matches, soap, pencils, paper, toilet paper, blankets,
shampoo and razors.   Phones off most of the day today.   The Mexican people seem to be
much more angry than the blacks.  I don't want to sleep any during the day, because then I
would not be able to sleep good at night and it is hell laying there thinking in the well lit night
A mexican boy gets a call to leave the cell, I start to take the lower bunk and big boy yells
at me..."hey whitey, that is for my home boys."

The trustees move the economy, be it cigs or dope, candy or matches.  Some of these guys
talk like criminal lawyers.  They have been in and out of jail so much they set around and give
each other advice on their own cases and what they have been through.  I am amazed how
many of them seem that they have just been in and out of jail most of their lives and take it
as just part of growing up in Los Angeles.

Home boys make calls to their buddies in the streets telling them who to go fuck up.

From the bottom of the Abyss

The streets and sidewalks spit out the down and out
the misfits and the criminals
the gang members and men that have just killed,
or beaten their wives, or ran from a cop, or sold
some crack to a cop who steals his stash and sells
it to some of his buddies...
Scum from the streets and a some innocent
wait and wait and wait...

Locking up so many inmates is not cheap. Design-Build, a construction trade magazine, estimates
  that 3,300 new prisons were built during the 1990s at a cost of nearly $27 billion, with another 268
  in the pipeline valued at an additional $2.4 billion. And construction costs are only the beginning. In
  Los Angeles, the Twin Towers complex sat empty for over a year after it was completed because
  the county had run short of money to operate it.

  Housing each prisoner costs taxpayers around $20,000 per year -- money that often comes at the
  expense of other social programs. Between 1980 and 1996, prison spending shot up in every state,
  while spending on higher education declined in 19 states. In May, Colorado lawmakers diverted $59
  million earmarked for improving colleges and universities into paying for prison expansion.

The gang members seem to have somewhat of a peace with each other.  Most of the
tension is racial.  The homeys talk about their streets and their neighborhoods.  Talk about
the drive bys they have done.  You hear from the Harbor City gang, the West side, Crips
and Bloods, East Side Harbor and the San Pedro and Lomita gang.  I over hear some
young boys talking about how they move into nice neighborhoods to scare the white
people off, so their own kind can move in and take over the different areas.  Some boys
are talking about how they need to move in Torrance and Redondo Beach.  They talk
about this like little generals around a table at the Pentagon.

I have not been given anything to brush my teeth with since I have been in jail.  You have
to hide toilet paper, sometimes you have to get real creative to wipe your butt there on
a john that is in the cell with four or five other guys just feet away from you.  One time it
went three days and there was no butt wipe given to us in the cell.  $4 bucks for a very
skinny cig rolled up, $10 bucks for a skinny joint.  They put cigs and dope up their butt
with the finger of a rubber glove or rubber to sneak it in jail.  Also, seems the guards are
some of the big suppliers of the contraband that is moving around on the inside.

Every few days "store" comes by and the boys go wild buying candy, prime time, cup
of soups, beef jerky.  They take plastic bags and make this weird soup and pass it around
to drink.  Damn it is bad.  The food is bad all day.  When you walk down the hall to eat
you have to have your hands in your pocket.  The hall guards love to give the mean looks
as you walk by.  They started calling me "Willie"... I am often told I look like Willie or
Kris Kristofferson.

Wednesday the, 4 a.m. call to court.  From waiting cells to hand cuffs and chains to
cold waiting cells and steel benches.  Public Defender comes and we talk through fence.
He said that for the past 9 day hold up was because someone had typed 1996, as my next
court date and  for awhile I was just lost in the system. That they would bring my bail down
from $20 K to $10 K and the Judge and others had a little laugh when he notes..."is this the
case you were talking about this morning, obviously referring to the typo and my last 9 days
being LOST IN HELL...

Thursday the 19th, they move me to a trustee floor in bunk 71--my job is the "reefer crew",
which means I am supposed to move boxes of vegetables all day into and out of the big
freezers.   I tell the girl that I am having a problem in my stomach and that I think it is a hernia
at 7 am.  She sends me to a steel bench and leaves me there until 2pm--giving me dirty looks
all day.  I pick up an old newspaper and she says don't be reading anything, just set there.  I
watch the inmates make ballona and cheese sandwiches all day long while they pick their noses
and scratch their body parts.

From the Los Angeles Times:  L.A. JAIL BRAWLS: Los Angeles County jail guards
locked in all male prisoners throughout the sprawling system as the injury count
from two days of racial clashes climbed above 200.  Officials imposed the lock down
Tuesday afternoon after learning fights at the Pitchess Detention Center facilities
in Saugus were planned.  They feared inmates at other jails might start rioting,
deputies said.

Days go by with no toilet paper.  I try to learn the tricks of saving it when ever you might find
a roll somewhere.  Wipe with newspaper, maybe we can take a shower today?

New Years Day 1995...day 16, I think.  Nightmares last night.  I wake up with the feeling that
I am crying and thinking strongly about my little boy.  Feel that he is laying somewhere wondering
where his daddy is.  Dream flashed on the guys in Cleburne that stole my family Estate and that
now I am losing ground in the battle that I was in with them while I was in Texas.  Layed there
and thought that this is going to set me back so far in the battle against them, that I might not now
win the battle.  Now they would have this to go against me if they found out.  I could not go back
to sleep the rest of the night.  That was okay cause then I could be sleepy and get some sleep
during the day.

Day after new years I get to go up on the roof.  I can run and breath some L.A. downtown air.
I get to talk to my daughter.  Hard not to cry just hearing her voice.  I can tell she just does not
understand what is happening to me.  To her it all seemed so innocent.  Daddy was just putting
on a concert like she had seen me do all here life.  She could not believe that I miss Christmas.
It was so hard to talk and not just and cry and cry to my little daughter as if she was my Mother.

"Watch the gate...gate closing...gate closing."  All day and night we hear this when a cell gate is
opening to let someone out.  Time moves so slow that days seem like weeks.  I continued to be
amazed at the numbers of people of color in jail and me and a couple of other white boys.  I
have to walk such a fine line.  One cell I was in this little black boy that was in for a drive by
started telling others that he thought that I was an informant.  God, I was scared.

Playboys...Tagging...showing your colors.  The gang lifestyle is real as a heart attack let me tell
you.  Public defender is on vacation all week.  I do not know what to do...strange feeling when
you are on the edge of hope and as the flame of hope flickers a confusion insues--after hope is
lost--you mind goes blank and you can just resign yourself to the reality that you are in here and
not getting out, then there is a calm and you can rest.  Keep the mind blank of hope.  Give up and
accept your situation.  Set there all day and watch the contraband pass from cell to cell.  See the
sad sad men pay for what they did and what they did not do.

Listen to the guys that are in for murder and crimes telling how they should be out in six years.
Sounds at night...crying, farting, moans and the lound flush of the industrial commodes in the cells
set the stage for a restless night.  Have to put your shoes under your head for a pillow.  Learned
to go to the nurse during the day to get cold medicine.  Take two to make you sleepy so you
can get some rest and hopefully fall to sleep, but you don't want to go to sleep too early, cause
then you wake up at one or two am and have to just lay there and think.  God, I don't want to
think.

I make friends with this guy that I keep ending up in a cell or on the same cell block with  him.
He always had money and dope, candy and stuff.  He was an electrician and knew how to roll
up some toilet paper and go up to the light sockets and light the paper then sell the lights to guys
for a buck.  He would light the paper and the cells would pass it down to whoever needed the
light and they would pass back a buck to him.   He liked me cause I looked like Willie Nelson.
Know what I mean "dog"?  Small mice run through the cells.  Funny I get in trouble on day
cause my shirt tale is out, while guys are selling dope from cell to cell and setting up killings on
the phones.

Can not call the public defender collect.  Does not accept collect phone calls.  No cold water
in the cells.  Never any cleaner for the commodes.  Floors are a sticky filth.

Day 20--I was up at 3:30 am ready for court.  These are exciting days, just to get out.  When it
came for the 4 a.m. call of names.  I do not hear my name.  Now I am awake and can not get
back to sleep.  Don't know why I was not called for court.  We have 8 guys in a six man cell.
Last night two guys at my table at dinner get into a fight.  Here come the cops with pepper
spray.  I cover my food.  Eyes burn.  Back to the cell.  Lock down.

I end up getting moved to the gang module.  God, the tattoos, the looks.  I am so afraid of what
the night will bring.  This is a huge room with several hundred guys.  Bunks are side by side, so
you virtual got a guy on each side of you.  There are several fights over the days.  When a
fight starts out, that is when the guys can get some punches in on the white boys.  I was so
close several times...maybe they saw kindness in my eyes.  I never got hit or beat up like some
of the white guys I saw beat.  See one guy beat up for his shoe strings.  Why dear God, Why?
Have they moved me to the gang muddle

Many of these kids in here are as mean as you can ever imagine.  The little 18 and 19 year
olds, who have only had gangbangers as their role models all their life.  They say that youths
12 to 17 are assaulted, robbed and raped at a rate higher than any other age group--victims
in 23% of such crimes, although they make up only 10% of the population.  A recent report
I was reading in the paper while I am in the gang modules blames, "a 154% increase in teen-
age homicide rate on gangs and the dispersion of firearms among young people.  Some of
the kids tell me they got their guns trading drugs for them.  Many start with a .22 caliber
then move up to .380 caliber.  They talk about their 9-millimeter Glocks and other guns
like they have all been to some kind of gun show clinic.  I am amazed at how much they
know about fire arms.

My number is 4230457.  They call you by "457."

While I am in jail reading a newspaper article states that, "The percentage of Americans behind
bars reached a all time high in 1994, thanks mainly to stiffer sentencing policies and harsher
anti-drug laws.  Says that 519 persons out of every 100,000 were in jail.  The U.S.
incarceration rate is already greater than that of other industrialized countries.  The sad fact
is that the U.S. has become the world leader of a rapidly burgeoning prison industry and
culture.  They are saying that 61% of all federal inmates are behind bars for drug offenses.
Author of the article states, "More and more, the criminalization of the American society
fits the Third World model of vast social division, civic decay, and authoritarian governmental
controls.

California taxpayers are now supporting 140,000 prisoners (including 75,000 nonviolent
inmates), I being one, at an annual cost of $22,000 a head.   That being the case, I figure my
stay in the L.A. County jail cost the tax payers of California some $7,000.00.  Hell California
could have sent that money to Missoula and paid off what they said that I owed.  Saved a
place for someone that had killed someone.  Not some guy from Montana that some crooked
people in Missoula, Montana screwed, and then is a strange set of events...the City of
Missoula puts the nails in my coffin.

I was in the Los Angeles County jail for a period of 39 days.  I do not know if I will ever
recover from the experience.  In fact that I am sure that I will not.  I feel like I have some
sort of "post traumatic stress syndrome" for what it did to me.  The hernia that developed
in my gut continues to tear and now I have to wear a brace to hold my gut from coming out
of my stomach.
 

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