We have the watch from here

I don't often talk about my job. Actually, I never talk about my job here. I'd rather talk about crocheting, baking, and the silly shit in life. Fun stuff with my friends and family. I don't want to talk about work. Work is serious and stressful. Two of the things that I hate the most.

My work is all legal crap, filled with RCW's, WAC's, policies and operational memorandums. There is stress, being overworked and mentally taxed, and meeting an ever rotating door of deadlines.

For those who don't know, I work in a prison. Penitentiary. Big house. This place:

That actually isn't the full facility. Part of the east complex is cut off, as is MSU. My office is just outside those 4 large looking square-ish buildings.

I work in the inmate records department. I live in a cubicle of files filled with lots of legal work that I have to go through. I'm one of 10 people in my department, and one of 1175 people that work at my facility. We house around 2300-2400 inmates at any given time. There are 13 prisons in the state, each housing different numbers and types of offenders.

Thousands of people are my coworkers across the state.

And on Saturday, January 29 one of my coworkers was murdered. At work. By what I can only describe as a waste of human skin. It didn't happen at my prison. It happened at Monroe Corrections Center.

Part of my job has me reading police reports, court information with descriptions, of all the crimes that the 300 or so inmates I cover have committed. It's detailed usually. And upsetting. You have to ignore it or go crazy. Then I have to sit in a room with the same person I have read about so he can see his file. Everyone from a thief to a murderer. So a lot of things don't get to me much anymore. This did.

So, on January 29th they found Officer Jayme Lee Biendl dead in the chapel at MCC. Many different things have come out since then, I have a ton of news links. I can't read half of them. It's just too sad. I'll just tell you what I know from the many briefs that have come out through work.

They did their routine 9pm count before shift change, and discovered that they were short one inmate. When they began searching the facility for the missing inmate, they found him, standing in the chapel lobby. Scratched hands and arms. He said that he was trying to escape. They took him to a holding cell, and shut the chapel doors (which were open) and locked them.

After shift change at 10pm, they were doing their routine check of the radios and keys. They were missing a set, the set that Officer Biendl carried. They went to the chapel and found her lying on the floor. 20 feet from the doors. Mic cord wrapped around her neck. They tried CPR and finally pronounced her dead a little bit later.

She is the first person that we have had die on the job since 1979. And her's didn't need to happen. She had requested more camera coverage and filed formal grievances about her safety as she was the only one working in the chapel. While her post had been a one man post for the last 15 years, her concerns should of been taken seriously.

Maybe if they would have been, this wouldn't of happened. Because this didn't need to happen. But hopefully, things will change to provide more safety to all of my coworkers. There have been many assaults on staff at my prison in the last 4 years. None resulting in death. But some pretty serious assaults have happened and it has done nothing to change how things are run.

There are many more things I want to say. While I didn't know her, her death has affected us all. And hopefully her death won't be in vain.