I met the county jail whistleblower in one of the seedier homeless camps. Rice Street jail is famously bad, to the point that several judges have ordered inmates to be moved due to eighth amendment violations, but of course you can't bring in cameras or phones to prove otherwise. Meeting a primary source with no fear of retaliation from the police was like finding a penguin in a Denny's parking lot.
She was pretty, blonde, and had only worked the street clinic for two weeks, but clearly loved the work and didn't run from the smell of dead rats (I stopped smelling it years ago). Stitching up laborers and vaccinating newborns under a bridge (the third one this month) carried the whiff of Civil War nursing that propelled most of the women standing beside me, back when joining a convent was a girl's only entryway to medicine.
I had long lobbied the city to bring services to this camp, citing the number of murders, overdoses, and children born there without ever having seen a case worker, and was eventually rewarded with resources provided I wore the logistics hat and didn't get anybody shot. Two months later I stood with street medicine doctors, housing managers with a blank check for rent, social work students looking to fill their field requirements, and rich white women with vague histories of childhood abuse incapable of ignoring another's suffering.
Still, I approached her lightly. Every medical provider has a switch in their head, the one that let's you cut into people's brains, the one that finds humor in the darkest moments to keep from screaming (same deal with medical examiners, I called earlier to request an autopsy report for a murder victim with a jokey sounding name and the ladies found that HILARIOUS), and when the switch goes off, they stop registering your facial expressions.
"So how was the jail?" I asked, bracing myself.
"The news doesn't know a fraction of what happens inside."
"You mean with tuberculosis?"
"Well, yeah, and covid, and there was bed bug guy (TW: don't image google it). But what do you expect when the place is only built for 2,500 people, you let in 3,300 and only hire five guards?"
"I heard they were moving some guys out of state."
"Oh no, they have no incentive to do that. It's a scam. They get paid per person per day that they keep inside." She pointed to the students next to me. "Let's say you get arrested for DUI, you for a suspended license, and you for carrying a little weed baggie. They can't really keep you more than five days, but they absolutely will keep you for twenty-four hours. Because that's how they get paid. It doesn't matter if you have a lawyer, if you manage to pay your bail up front, they are going to keep you for twenty-four hours in a holding cell."
"So, like a drunk tank?"
"Yes, but these drunk tanks are all terrible. Thirty men to a room, one toilet, they're all sleeping sitting up. I mean, if you're rich you only have to endure one bad night, but five days, watching other men poop, and then the drugs they do in there?"
"You'll always have drugs in jail."
"No, see, the wardens have gotten so good at searching people that the inmates had to get creative. They were like..." she made a gesture with her hands over her face and we all took turns guessing what the figure in her imagination was huffing in a moment of comedy improv. Spraypaint? Industrial glue?
"They smoke roach killer. You spray it on paper and roll it up like a cigarette. It does the weirdest things to their faces." Her face split into a Greek mask grin. "Can you imagine walking into a holding cell with thirty guys smiling at you like that? Not moving? And then they cut the lights and you have to try and sleep?"
"Is that how a lot of these guys died, from overdoses?"
"No, people make their own weapons. They stab each other every day. The guards can't stop them all, we'd be trying to keep one guy from bleeding out while someone else is getting murdered down the hall, but they're too far away to get to. Like this," she said, arms encompassing a creek filled with syringes and dirty diapers, "This is great. There are three homeless people for every provider who showed up today. That's what you want. You can't keep people alive without those numbers."
"So why haven't you told people?"
"I tried! But what if they use my name? Who would I tell? A newspaper?"
I leaned in. "That's exactly who you tell."
I called my friend, a retired mainstream journalist who started his own show and was recently featured in the New York Times for his role as star witness in the Trump election racketeering case. He'd spent months trying to get a foot in the jail door, but was always rebuffed by law enforcement. I called one of his phones. "Hey man, I got a nurse who quit the county jail and wants to talk, but she wants anonymity."
"Put her on."
He was beyond thrilled. Normally he spends his days in courtrooms, waiting weeks for that one defendant who has a psychotic break and starts screaming conspiracies so loud it can be heard across the building (this scream later formed the opening for his crime podcast).
After they'd chatted and made plans for a longer conversation in the evening, she handed me my phone and asked, "So is he, like, for real?"
"This guy can get into any room. He's ex-military, highly educated, ran for office back in the day, and is a light-skinned black man who can dress up or down for the occasion. His idea of a good time is getting stitches after his interviewee pulls a firearm, and then going back the next day in case he needed a follow-up. If anyone is going to break this story in Georgia, it will be him."