CHICAGO COP: South Side Drunk Tank - Chicago - 3 May 2014 - 60D - 181

            Now closed down, this building at 65th & Blackstone in Woodlawn, once served the Archdiocese of Chicago, but during the 1980's and 90's, this is where we brought the drunks we picked up off the street. Not the guys who'd had a few too many brewskies, no, we're talking "down for the count." 

If you've been reading my stories, you know where I stand with all that "man down" crap, but - in this case - that's how they'd assign us the job: 
"371, handle a man down at 61st & Vernon." 
"10-4 Squad." 

So you go and make sure it's bonafide, and you make sure he is breathing and  hasn't been shot. Most of the time, you'll find him clutching an empty bottle of "Mogen & David" wine to confirm your initial diagnosis. 

If everything checks out, you try to wake him up to see if you can get him to continue his journey now that he's taken a little nap. You can use smelling salts to revive him, or use your night-stick and use the end of the handle to rub his chest-bone. They usually preferred the night-stick method over the smelling salts.  If you can get him going, fine, but if he goes back down, he'lll get a battlefield promotion to "sidewalk inspector" and you'll be taking him for a ride. 

Getting him in the wagon, you might as well let him lie down on the floor, otherwise he'll bounce around and he'll be a bloody mess by the time you get to the drunk tank. At that point, you just have to get him past the intake worker. 

It still doesn't make much sense to me, but if they are "too drunk" they'd make you haul 'em over to the hospital first. It won't take you long to learn that will only lead to a tug-of-war between the triage nurse and the intake worker, and you'll just be hauling bozo back and forth... 

So, we'd take him over to Billings Hospital at the University of Chicago medical center.  We'd put bozo in a wheelchair, make sure the triage nurse is not at her station - which she usually isn't anyway - park our package at her desk, and make our get-away. 

That was our own system to make sure the U of C meets some of its obligations to the community. They're sitting on billions of dollars but refuse to maintain a Level 1 Trauma Center because it might attract a bunch of poor people with no medical insurance.  

So this is our way of saying Fuck You for all the cops and all the kids on the South Side who are going to bleed to death because they have to bounce around in the back of an ambulance for an extra ten miles...

Taken on: May 3, 2014

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Chicago - 3 May 2014 - 6D -

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