* * * 19990917 Friday

THIS is scarey! ... If jailers get "spooked" by Y2K, how many THOUSANDS of VIOLENT FELONS will be "competing" for survival resources?

' ... one of the Jacksonville jails got spooked by Floyd and decided to allow a mass exodus of the work-release inmates. The jail gave them each a $100 bill. After that they were on their own.

"They put us out in the storm!" the man says. "They don't want to be responsible for us!" '

The very real prospects of this occurring as the infrastructure goes through the Y2K meltdown stages are chilling--human nature, being what it is!

... Bar the doors and keep your powder dry!

Regards, Bob Mangus

* * *

[BEGIN FULL ARTICLE TEXT]

In Land Altered by Storm, Gas Is Key

Traffic is backed up for miles along U.S. Route 158 as people try to evacuate North Carolina's Outer Banks. (AP) By Joel Achenbach Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, September 16, 1999; Page A10

ALONG I-95, Sept. 15A woman paces in the rain, her hair a wild, soaked mess. She's frantic, talking fast, gesticulating. She says she and her buddy ran out of gas, they got trapped in the storm, she's been trying to call a cab. But, of course, there are no cabs running in Hurricane Floyd country--you'd more likely catch a ride on a flying carpet. The woman's buddy is a lanky, hard-looking man who just bought a beer at the only gas station open for miles. They accept a ride from a reporter driving north through Jacksonville, Fla., on I-95, and in a spasm of gratitude the woman admits the truth: "We just got out of jail."

She says one of the Jacksonville jails got spooked by Floyd and decided to allow a mass exodus of the work-release inmates. The jail gave them each a $100 bill. After that they were on their own.

"They put us out in the storm!" the man says. "They don't want to be responsible for us!"

Floyd has changed everything along the coast, altered the rules. The storm acted like a filter, sending the most practical folks into exile, leaving behind a lot of what might be called characters. It has turned people a little bit crazy and desperate, and in some cases made them generous and kind.

It felt like a different society altogether, not better or worse, just entirely foreign. In this alternate America the most precious commodity is gasoline. You would trade your last cold sandwich for a couple of gallons. There are abandoned cars everywhere, nice sedans, yuppie cars, but with too many cylinders in their engines and not enough fuel in the tank to make it across the vast stretches of pine woods and swamps.

Police block roads into major cities. Dump trucks are parked nose-to-nose to form a barricade on the exit ramps into Savannah, Ga. The government wants everyone to leave--as most have done--and an officer says: "There's not a vacant room between here and the other side of Alabama."

Almost true. A few rooms are here and there. A clerk says up front: "We have no clean rooms." And knows that this is perfectly acceptable.

The only food for sale is at gas stations, and it is not even the best of the gas station food, only the detritus, the "gourmet hot pepper beef jerky," the fried pork rinds, the Reese's Pieces and the sticky buns.

On a road near here, Soon Larsen kept her convenience store open, but the only real food was frozen. "They cleaned me out," she says, the "they" being the fleeing masses. Two men who stayed in town survey the depleted racks with the care that might go into buying a new suit. They finally go for the Hershey's.

"It's just so strange, like a ghost town," says one of the men, Dobson Washington, who works for the board of education. "It's like in the Western days, when they're about to have a gunfight at noon, everybody out of the street."

Floyd came barreling directly at Florida at the beginning of the week, then turned northward Tuesday afternoon. It came close enough to land to dismantle the fishing pier at Daytona Beach.

At Jacksonville Beach this morning, Eric Freeman, a waiter, had braced himself on an old wooden pier as the wind toppled signs, sent palm fronds skittering across the roadways and stripped the siding from a beachfront condo. Freeman had come with the vague thought of attempting to surf. He turned to a friend and said, "If we go out now, we'll wind up in Miami."

That pier lost 40 feet by noon--great footage for the camera crews--the timbers washing through gaps in the dunes, onto the low streets of the barrier island. Old wooden piers seemed to be the official sacrificial objects for this storm.

But it appears that, at least in coastal Florida and Georgia, the hurricane will be remembered not for its destruction, but for the unprecedented and problematic evacuation.

So many people left their homes that Interstate 10 was backed up nearly from one side of the state to the other. Motorists stranded in their cars, barely moving, continuously called radio stations with nightmare stories of overheating engines and increasingly insane children. The typical two-hour drive on any east-west interstate became a 10-hour ordeal. Many motorists gave up their dream of finding a distant motel room and slept in their cars on the sides of the roads.

But throughout this, Interstate 95 remained wide open, largely deserted. The storm moved parallel to the highway from south Florida to the South Carolina line.

The water rose alarmingly close to the low bridges crossing the remote, grassy marshes, the tidal flats, places with names like Cathead River and Elbow Swamp. But if you could find gas, you could keep driving, two hands on the wheel.

On Highway 17 near Savannah, there's a sign of life, a man walking outside his home, the dominant--indeed the overwhelming--feature of which is a 15-foot high fiberglass cow on his front yard.

The man is Robert Simons. He won't budge. He's 59 years old, retired from construction and has 50 acres, with a pecan orchard in the back. It's the cow that everyone notices, smack dab along the roadside. Breed: Holstein.

"Five and a half feet through the belly of the cow, and it weighs fifteen hundred pounds," he says. Proudly, he adds, "I started collecting cows in the 1960s--back before cows were popular."

He has cow coffee mugs, cow napkin holders, cow canisters, cow towels, cow everything. Why cows? "Why not cows?" he answers.

Floyd is coming hard, the wind and rain getting fierce. The cow collector takes the porcelain cows off the shelves and stores them in hampers. The big guy outside will have to ride it out.

) 1999 The Washington Post Company

[END TEXT]

* * *

-- Robert Mangus (rmangus1@yahoo.com), September 17, 1999

Answers

OK, so Ii have an inmate, with a car, who just bought a beer at the ONLY open GAS STATION, but managed to run out of gas? I'm supposed to believe this?

-- Yeah, Right (Laughing@you.com), September 17, 1999.

OK, so I have an inmate, with a car, who just bought a beer at the ONLY open GAS STATION, but managed to run out of gas? I'm supposed to believe this?

-- Yeah, Right (Laughing@you.com), September 17, 1999.

No indication they actually had a car -- just that they said they did. Then, they accept a ride from the reporter. Sounds like they didn't have a car.

-- Anita Evangelista (ale@townsqr.com), September 17, 1999.

instead of foolishly picking apart the prose posed here by the reporter, look deeper grasshopper! The basis is that the known felons, given a choice of keeping them in lock up or being cut loose, they were cut loose! Jeezzzus. And I got people telling me that I'm wrong for having firepower at my disposal! "An Armed Society is a Polite Society" Robert Heinlien ca 1949

-- Billy-Boy (Rakkasn@Yahoo.com), September 17, 1999.

Heck, probably 30% of those locked up are mere victims of the war on drugs. First time offense, drug possession charges. Mandatory sentences, bad joke.

Isn't it Sweden who intends to release a large portion of their prison population prior to rollover? Someone posted a thread about it, but I can't recall who.

We have plenty of hardened criminals running free NOW. Clinton released some without any storm threat, for that matter our country is being run by a criminal, sheeeeese.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), September 17, 1999.

This is serious. ONE violent felon can create a significant swath of destruction. If releasing them in an emergency is a matter of policy, we are SCREWED. Keep your eyes open and your powder dry. Will, I agree with you that many are non-violent drug offenders; I've heard the number is 2/3. But that other third - rapists, robbers, murderers - should be shot in their cells before released on the public.

We should treat them as if they were violent animals set on us; we should not wait until their teeth are sunk in our flesh to respond as a community; and we should hold the theiving bureaucracy that dropped the leash accountable for every violent act these felons commit.

Liberty

-- Liberty (liberty@theready.now), September 17, 1999.

damn straight Liberty!

-- I (couldnt@agree.more), September 17, 1999.

As a lifelong resident of Jacksonville I have a hard time believing this. I don't think Sheriff Glover would let anyone out early because of a storm. Hell, the concrete/stone/block walls of a jail are probably one of the safest places to be during a hurricane.

And they gave each a 100 dollar bill???? Of my tax money???? I don't think so..........

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), September 17, 1999.

Deano,

I didn't believe Waco could happen; I didn't believe the Fed would lie through their teeth to minimize the danger of Y2k. I didn't believe that the President could take bribes from the communist chinese in return for our nuclear secrets. But facts have won out over my beliefs. Now I only believe in God, myself, the Constitution, and the American People.

Liberty

-- Liberty (liberty@theready.now), September 17, 1999.

Woulda been cheaper to shoot 'em for trying to 'escape'. figure $25.00 for a box of 50 rounds of police Black Talons .357...Hmmmm..carry the 4.....

-- Billy-Boy (Rakkasn@Yahoo.com), September 17, 1999.

http://www.peyote.net/press111.html

-- Tim Castleman (aztc@earthlink.net), September 17, 1999.

* * * 19990917 Friday

Perhaps the female hitchhiker that accepted '"... a ride from a {Washington Post Company?} reporter driving north through Jacksonville, Fla., on I-95, and in a spasm of gratitude the woman admits the truth: "We just got out of jail." ' was "mistakenly" QUOTED by said reporter, AS WELL AS her "buddy," the "lanky, hard- looking man?" ... NOT?!?

In this instance, these "releasees" were "work-release prisoners"-- NOT VIOLENT FELONS! However, in our Liberal infested society, releasing hardened criminal may be deemed to be the "humane" thing to do.

Personally, if T-Y2K-SHTF, I favor sparing society the additional grief, summarily dispatching ANY AND ALL VIOLENT, FELONEOUS THUGS with a 12-guage. This would be an act of compassion and mercy for ALL LAW ABIDING CITIZENS!

Regards, Bob Mangus

* * *

-- Robert Mangus (rmangus1@yahoo.com), September 17, 1999.

Rob I say save the ammo, you might need it for those lucky SOBs who never got caught, arrested, tried, convicted and put into the jails.

Just go in and weld the cell doors, cellblock doors and the entry gates shut. Time would take care of the problem naturally from there.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), September 17, 1999.

I'll reload the rifles, Bob. Nobody

-- (nobody@nowhere.com), September 17, 1999.

Work release inmates are not dangerous felons by definition. Usually drug related. It is rare that a robber or burgler would even make it onto such a list. True "dangerous" felons would never be released under any circumstance. They would actually be left there in the jail to rot, locked in their cells, folks, that's the ACTUAL plan. It is also planned in the one location I know of that they will be in lockdown from Dec.31 to Jan.2.

Robert, please don't refer to Corrections Officers as "jailers" or "prison guards"...they really really hate that. They have to go through the same training at a police academy as any officer you see on the road. They're also authorized to carry firearms at all times, and can intervene if they happen to see a crime in progress.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), September 17, 1999.

Does that mean we can count on them to do something about, "Emperor Bill"? Or do they primarily focus on kids at parties?

I overheard a jailer at a county facility say to an inmate headed for a court appearence, "If I had it MY way, I'd release most of you guys and only keep about 3 of you."

Said it all for me. Our Justice system is every bit as broken as our political system is. "Don't like it? Voooooooote."

Kiss off. :(

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), September 18, 1999.

Hey!

Jailers DO NOT go through the same training as police officers. This is most often said by some jailer who either wants to be a cop or couldn't get into police training. The ability to carry weapons full time is made by each state, it is not nation wide.If you think some cops are bad, spend a night partying with a bunch of wantabes.

-- jalilers,security,rent-a-cops all suck (lifer@chino.com), September 19, 1999.