Wednesday, April 6

Wow, what a great day yesterday was apparently for the guards and maintenance working during the day. About 11PM, which was about an hour before I come in to work, I received a call from the new HR Manager at Securitas. He was like "hey, I'm Jason, the new HR manager here at securitas. I'm sure you are aware of the situation up at the hospital." I was like "um, no? I have not heard anything, what is going on?"

Basically all he could tell me was that there was an "out of control patient," and that the hospital wanted to have extra guards on duty sitting actually up in the behavioral med unit. I didn't find out the full extent until I came in. When I came in, the 2nd shift guard, Matt, I could tell had been in a little bit of a fight with a patient because he has knots on the side of his head. Apparently, he and Tom (the maintenance guy 2nd shift), were called to behavioral med because there was a security situation. This guy broke a door off the hinges and had a female staff worker pinned in a corner and was about to start beating on her. Security and Maintenance arrived. Tom tried to approach the guy and he attacked him, hitting tom in the head a few times, and then matt approached and he got punched also. It ended with the patient pinned on the floor by both maintenance and security, both of them injured pretty bad, but the patient having bruises on his face from what I am told. When they were holding the guy down, the cops showed up, and told them to get off him. They did, and the guy started to get up too, but the cops held him down with their foot and said "You keep your ass down" or something to that extent.

Then they put him in cuffs, dragged him into the solitary room, got him into a hospital gown and restrained him to the bed while the nurses gave him meds to calm him down and make him go to sleep hopefully. According to matt, when he called securitas and told them about the situation, supposedly Pat (one of our managers) said that they need to work on this. Matt was like "work on what?" and pat said "you guys don't make close to enough money up there for having to deal with these kinds of patients." Whether we end up getting a raise, or some equipment to aid us in protecting ourselves and the other staff, I dont know. But apparently Administration here at the hospital is aware of it as well, and they are the ones I had talked to casually about us being able to get hospital badges so that we could get into most of the doors as well, and they agreed with me that it was a good idea, and by the next day we all had badges. So I'm hoping after this incident, that some additional steps will be taken.

Tom, who is a pretty big guy, got taken down to the ER and then sent home for at least a few days. The maintenance guy I am working with tonight said that Tom went home on crutches. Wow.... They both refused to press charges as well. I was a little surprised about that. Maybe it's because the way they looked at it was that the guy is a patient that needs help apparently. If it were me, and I got attacked and injured by some person that just flips out and tries to beat me up, 1) I would go all out and make sure that I defend myself. I know that they probably tried not to hit the guy even though he was hitting them, but if someone is hitting me, I'm going to hit back. Yes I will try to disable them, but if it is a choice between taking a few more hits to the head, or hitting them and taking them down, I'm going to take them down at whatever possible way I can. The way I look at it also is, if something else happens with this guy when he's here at the hospital, and he tries to attack me, once the first move is made, I'm claiming anything else I do on self defense.

So yeah, I was a little bit nervous when I came in. Still am a little bit. I'm not sure if I'm getting off duty at 8AM like I should be, or if I have to stay over for a bit. The guy that technically comes in at 8AM is the guard that is up in behavior med right now. I heard a rumor that they might be letting the guy go in the morning, but put him in restraints last night because of the fight. If they let him go, then we're done with him, if they don't, then there could very well be at least another night of hoping that he will not just flip out and try to hurt someone. What concerns me is that tom and Mat are both quite a bit bigger than me and two of the other guards. I'm not really a huge fighter, although I do know how to defend myself. I'm not sure what I'd do if attacked, other than maybe charge him and try to take him to the ground that way. I dont know. I prayed as soon as I came into work, hoping that with God's help, we will not have any more incidents like this while the guy is a patient here. Why can't people just cooperate when they are court ordered to get medical treatment? I just don't understand. It's the same thing when you get taken by police, people that fight and resist get treated much worse and extend their stay in jail..where as if you cooperate, do what you're told, and just be cool, you get to go home sooner.

This guy I guess either thought he could bust out, or *based on how he tried to beat up a female staff member*, probably was pissed about something and was thinking he would teach her who was boss.

So on that note, I'm going to close this out for now. Will write more again soon. =)

C