By Felix Medina Jr.
I’ve never really been in trouble with the law or had an altercation with officers. Usually when I’ve been pulled over, they have been respectful and I’ve been respectful to them in return, there has been one or two with a rude attitude here and there, but I’ve shrugged it off, because we all have bad days after all.
However, for the past year my family has been visiting the Monterey County Jail because I have a brother incarcerated there. And over the past year I’ve been hearing about the rude behavior displayed by some of the deputies and personnel that is left in charge on any given day. I have been home for summer vacation visiting family, and doing research, so on Saturdays I would head to the jail with my family to visit my brother, and up until August 13th of this year, I hadn’t experienced any rude or threatening attitudes from the deputies registering people.
But it’s more than rude attitudes; they have taken privileges with the time at which they release the inmates for visitations. So if the inmates are suppose to be at their visitation stalls by 8pm they might not be allowed out until 8:15pm or later sometimes. What occurs then is that the deputies or sheriff’s take them back at 9pm even if they were suppose to allow them one full hour of visitation. But again, I had personally not experienced any problems until 8/13, upon entering to register, the deputy took a rude tone with me, and I shrugged it off.
After my visitation, an incident arose where my mother wasn’t being allowed to enter for her visitation. We had an exchange with the deputy, and then she went to complain at the office window, where the sheriff in charge (he will be referred to as Sheriff 1) that night and the secretary were sitting while my mother tried to explain the situation. By that time I was angry due to the deputy who had already been rude to me. Sheriff 1 walked up to the window and upon seeing my mother said something along the lines of “Hey don’t I see you here often?” (over the past year my mother has often gone to complain about the deputies due to their attitude, the cutting of visiting hours, or misinformation, among other incidents). In my irate mood I said something along the lines of “Then why the f— haven’t things changed?!” At the moment I thought Sheriff 1 was disrespecting my mother because she complained often of the issues with some of the deputies. Sheriff 1 apparently didn’t like the tone that I took with him, so he told me not to move because he wanted to “talk” with me, at which point he came out from behind the window to confront me, not “talk.”
As I’ve thought back more on the incident over the last few weeks I’ve wondered why he felt the need to walk out from behind the window? Why didn’t he try voicing his distaste to my language or his feelings of anger toward me from behind the window? Why try to confront me? Did he really think I was going to run out the door scared? Or did he think I would cower as he got in my face? But things became clear as he said under his breath “If I weren’t in uniform I would handle this differently.” Once in my face, we exchanged words, nothing unflattering, just loudly explaining to one another what we were thinking, he in regard to my swearing and me in regards to what I thought was a comment of disrespect to my mother.
Regardless, Sheriff 1 was not having it and told me to leave so he could speak to my mother alone. I didn’t understand this, because he originally said he wanted to “talk” to me, so I didn’t understand why he wanted me to leave the waiting room to speak to my mother. I refused to leave since I wasn’t about to leave her with a hostile sheriff, and he then threatened to arrest me. I offered him my wrists, at which point he then placed one hand on his weapon (can’t remember if it was a gun or stun gun) and pointed at the door with his other hand while he shouted at me to get out of the waiting room. By this time one of his fellow sheriffs (Sheriff 2) came out to support him and suggested I step outside the waiting room. I still refused, because I was fed up with the treatment that my mother and other visitors received. Sheriff 2 told me to place my hands behind my back, I didn’t resist, and then I was cuffed and searched. People were trying to come in to the waiting room, but Sheriff 1 would kick them out, leaving me, him and Sheriff 2 alone, until eventually Sheriff 1 stepped out to speak with my mother, trying to get her away from the waiting room. Another sheriff (Sheriff 3) stepped into the waiting room and did a pat down search. Sheriff 2 took my wallet to run my driver’s license for warrants and what not. By the time he came back Sheriff 1 had told Sheriff 3 to take the cuffs off me. I had no warrants, no weapons on my person, no reason to be detained.
As we’re walking out of the waiting room Sheriff 1 says we need to “talk” (again), at which point he and his pack lead me to a room where I’m secluded from the rest of the visitors. The other “talk” hadn’t gone so well, so why were we going to talk now? It’s a large concrete room with a single table and chair. I take a seat and Sheriff 1 “talks” to me about how he would never disrespect somebody’s mother, so he basically tries to explain to me how I’m in the wrong. I hear him out and am able to admit that maybe I jumped the gun in my anger, but I had heard about the treatment being doled out to visitors. He talked about how their job wasn’t easy and they weren’t perfect, and then he went on to take a verbal shot at me by saying “If anything you disrespected your mother by cussing in front her, I don’t even cuss in front of my mom!” In other words this wasn’t a “talk,” this was him being able to vent and take verbal shots at me, either to get a rise out of me, or because he didn’t get a chance to say everything he really wanted to say to me when we were “talking” over one another in the waiting room in front of my mom.
I brought up the fact that he threatened me, by saying he wished he could “take off his badge and handle” me. Which was an incorrect statement on my part, because again, what he really said was that he would handle the situation differently if he weren’t in uniform. Another shot sheriff 1 took at me was when he said “I don’t know how you do things in Michigan but that’s not how we do things here” (my driver’s license is from Michigan and I carry a Michigan State University student ID as well).
After he took his shots at me, he asked if I had any questions, and I asked “Why did you put the handcuffs on me?” I asked because they had been threatening to arrest me, but I wanted to know why. At his point Sheriff 2 chimed in and said “Felix you were threatening. You’re a big guy.” Was being a big guy enough to be handcuffed? But his excuse or lie didn’t surprise me I figured they would try to say something about me being hostile, because I refused to “talk” on their terms. As I kept questioning and challenging what was being said (again I’m in a room with all three of them, no witnesses, and I’m sure they asked many of the people to stay away from the room, my mother included) Sheriff 2 said “You know you’re really starting to piss me off! I don’t think you understand, we’re the sheriffs, we run things here.” Sheriff 2 also said “You know Felix, you think you’re smarter than you really are.” He was right though I’m not smart, I’m pretty damn stupid, because I allowed myself to be taken to a room with the three of them, with no witnesses, and they had taken the cuffs off of me. It would have been my word against theirs.
Regardless, Sheriff 2 kept talking, “Felix, Sheriff 1 is my partner, I’m going to have his back no matter what.” When he made that statement it became clear to me that what he meant was that he would corroborate whatever the sheriff wanted to say or do about the incident. The whole time Sheriff 3 said nothing. But it also made me wonder if Sheriff 3 would corroborate whatever Sheriff 1 said even if it was a lie, even if he came out late and didn’t see how the incident even developed? And when I didn’t let up Sheriff 2 kept threatening that I would be arrested and spend the night in jail and I would have to talk to the judge and not go back to MSU. Sheriff 1 kept saying they were trying to let me go, but I was making it difficult. I pointed out that they’re the ones that said we needed to “talk” so I thought that’s what we were doing, talking, but nope, we weren’t talking in the traditional sense, where we engage in an open dialogue, they wanted to dominate the conversation, and force me to listen, and make me feel guilty about something and intimidated.
Eventually I stayed quiet and I didn’t question them anymore. They said I could go but I was told that they needed my information because I was going to receive a letter banning me from visitations and setting foot on the premises. They had originally told me to go to my car once they let me out of the room, but I walked straight to the bench where my mother had been sitting, and then she went to speak with Sheriff 1 who wanted to fill her in on the situation. Sheriffs 2 and 3 stood behind me while my mother spoke to Sheriff 1. After they were done talking my mother, a cousin and my incarcerated brother’s girlfriend walked back to our cars and left.
I just received the letter, which states that I am banned for six months, and it cites “inappropriate behavior” as the reason for the ban. My mother has informed me that when the Sheriff spoke to her, he cited certain codes I had violated, but when my mother asked him to repeat them so she could write them down, he chose not to repeat them, because according to him I wasn’t being charged with anything. The letter does not cite any codes; it does not even detail my “inappropriate behavior,” which indicates to me it is basically their way of retaliating. The letter also does not reveal the name of the sheriffs who witnessed my incident, but the commander still signed off on it. I called Commander Pascone who signed off on the letter, and I left a message to discuss the contents of the letter and to get the names and badge numbers of the sheriffs involved, but he has not yet returned my message.
During the incident if they really wanted to let me go, they would have allowed me to walk away after removing the cuffs without needing to “talk.” But they chose to take me to the room with no witnesses, save themselves to corroborate one another’s stories. I think it’s important to also note that that this room is where my mother was brought once for complaining about something as well, except she was surrounded by more than three officers, and she still remembers them tapping their fingers on their guns. I was probably profiled as a local delinquent from the start, due to my loose clothes, my goatee, and my backwards baseball cap, so they might not have felt the need to hold back if they really wanted to assault me physically, but more than anything it feels like that’s why the cuffs were off, and that’s why they insisted on shouting, if I shouted back it could have been considered hostile, and if I used my hands a lot when I was speaking it could have been considered an attack, which in turn would give them (in their eyes and minds) the right to take me down as hard as they’d like to before inserting me into a jail cell for the night.
I’ve thought more about the incident, the questions keep coming, why not “talk” to me in the waiting room or outside? Why this room away from everybody? They could have kept me in the waiting room and just kicked people out, they had already done that once. They gave me no explanation when they led me to that room, but now I wonder what would have occurred if I would have said that I did not consent to being taken to that room and would rather talk in the waiting room or maybe outside, what would they have said or done? Would it have been taken as a challenge again to their authority and power? Would they have used it as an excuse to arrest me and say I was in some way resisting arrest? But again resisting arrest in regards to what? What was my crime? If they wanted to argue that I was a threat because I was a “big guy,” why not keep me in cuffs while they transferred me from one room to the next? If I’m such a threat wouldn’t common sense tell them that I should stay in handcuffs?
It’s hard to not get into the “what if’s” of the whole thing. What if this “talk” became a physical and verbal assault on me? What if they roughed me up? What if this rough up left me paralyzed, maybe even dead? Would the courts believe that a college kid without a record, with no previous confrontations with law enforcement, had it coming and was such a big threatening guy that it would have prompted 3 sheriffs “run the place” to use excessive force? Would the visitors corroborate their story too? Would they even speak up out of fear of retaliation during their visiting hour? Would they even care? That’s the thing about “what if’s,” they only remain that way until they become a reality.
Luckily the sheriffs didn’t rough me up, other than the verbal threats. They kept threatening to arrest me, I’m not sure on what charges or for how long. Maybe just over night to scare me.
In no way is this meant to categorize all the people wearing the uniform as abusive, because as mentioned most of my run ins with the law have not been bad. But there is something unsettling occurring at Monterey County Jail where the visitors (mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, etc.) are being treated as if they are inmates, the only difference is that we get to go home after that hour is up, as long as we don’t ask for respect.