Postcards from Long Island (7)

Long Island - Promising young cellmate I taught to trade the financial markets. Released on the 11th of December '05 and rearrested February ’08. Alleged to have committed forgery and hit an officer with a car. He’s writing from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Lower Buckeye jail.

Shaun,

As for your questions about what it’s like at Arpaio’s Lower Buckeye jail. The pod has a blue and gray color scheme. The control tower is surrounded by windows with a little trap for mail. The cell doors slide open with an access button on the inside. There are 36 cells in each pod with 2 staircases to the upper tier. There’s a door in the pod that leads to a 10x10 ft concrete rec area. Two other doors lead to Medical and a classroom. It’s designed to keep the area completely contained. We don’t have to go anywhere for anything.

It’s alright in the pod, but Visitation sucks. Our visits are via a TV screen. They have little phone booths in the pod with cameras and TV screens in them. Our visitors stay downstairs and we never leave the pod.

I can think of only one noise and smell that stand out far above the rest. The noise is the unbelievably jarring sound of metal crashing against metal every time one of those doors opens and shuts.
The smell above all smells has got to be my celly. The Mariachi has a prostate the size of a cucumber, but refuses to go to Medical because he’s afraid he has cancer. So when he pees it sprays all over the place like a cat. He does his best to clean it up, but he never gets it all. It smells like a public restroom in my cell. He can pee when he sits down, but he doesn’t like to because I tell him he pees like a woman when he sits down! He gets so mad, it’s hilarious!

I’ll probably be signing a plea shortly. If the number is right that is. I think it will be. I’ll write again soon.

Your friend,

Long Island

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Shaun P. Attwood