From City of Corona, California
Excerpt From Book Titled: 5150
My Contact with the Corona Police
Department and
My Contact with Corona Regional Medical Center
Rough Draft
Written by Kathi Stringer
February 11, 2003
I was taken Corona Regional Medical Center in
the back of a Corona P.D. squad car.
After we arrived the cop insisted that I sit in a wheel
chair. My hands were still in cuffs behind my back.
As the cop was wheeling me across the street I heard Cristina
call out to me. I
looked around. She was
stopped in the street with the passenger window down.
I instinctively tried to go to her but the cop pushed
down on my shoulders and wouldn’t allow it.
I was taken inside and cuffed to the rail of a bed.
On my right was a physician assistant and he wanted to stitch
the gash. He stuck the
needle deep into the wound. I flinched and recoiled.
The cop cinched down on the handcuff in what appeared to be a
punitive measure due to his annoyance with me.
His solution to my reaction from pain set me off.
“I don’t want any help.
I don’t want any stitches.
Let me be. Go
away!” I screamed. I
was visibly upset. My
wrist felt numb from the handcuff.
“Here we go again,” I thought.
This was not help. This was under the guise of help. They were going though mandated procedures that overtly
looked like help but carried out the act punitively since they were
obviously disgusted with me.
I was a failure that took up their emergency room time. I felt like asking the cop if his daughter were lying on the
bed, would he hammer down on the handcuff because she flinched.
Some how I doubt it. Staff
was collaborating and siding with the cop since I was screaming for
the Watch Commander. Finally one of the nurses confronted me and said, “You are
drunk.” She was
right, I intoxicated myself to block out the pain, but still, being
drunk didn’t mean I didn’t understand the significance of a cop
cinching down on the handcuff.
Being drunk didn’t mean I couldn’t understand why staff
ignored me when I asked them to advocate for me to get the handcuff
loosened. They were
mumbling in the background while I was waiting for the Watch
Commander. I heard
comments like, “Don’t worry, we will state how she was thrashing
about and we had to use leg restraints on her.”
Of course I was thrashing about.
I was mad at the cop for clamping down the handcuff and I was
mad at staff because they evidently could care less.
The madder I got at them the madder I got at myself for
failing. All I could
think about was getting out of there and getting on with it.
While I was lying there I was thinking about
my friend Tim Payne. Every
time I saw a cop when I was in this condition I thought about him.
He was a Sgt. for the Corona P.D.
He wasted himself one night with a shot to the head.
Just like that, one day my friend Tim was gone. We were
pretty close friends. He
and a couple of other guys from the Force would meet at Dancetime
every Saturday night and drink Jack Daniels.
He told me once that if he ever had to waste himself, he
would use a gun, and that would be it, no messing around.
He said that getting help as a cop meant stigma, it meant to
be branded by the police force as weak.
If it ever came down to it, a shot to the head would be the
only solution. That was
exactly what he did. It
was a great loss, not only to his infant son, but also to his
friends and to the Department. Tim was a by-the-book kind of guy that trained rookie cops.
He loved the night shift but his wife wanted him to work days
so he made the switch to save his marriage.
He was taken off the streets and sat behind a desk.
He hated it. He
grumbled that his life on the force had come down to maintenance changing
light bulbs and door looks. Often
he had to attend training secessions to keep his Department on the
cutting edge of tactical maneuvers.
After all his sacrifices his marriage still continued to
fail. He missed the
streets. He
clearly felt robbed of his livelihood. The guy was getting it a both
ends, at home and at work. His weight dropped drastically.
Apparently he had no relief.
No outlet without getting
branded as weak. And
then one day, bang, he parked his car on the other side of the City
limits and blew his brains out.
Now I could see why. Tim
was right about getting branded and I felt it.
I was a coward because I didn’t get the job done.
A cop told me to stop talking about Tim and deal with my own
issues. He couldn’t
see the parallel. I
thought about it. Tim
was right, better to sweep it under the rug.
Just
before the Watch Commander arrived the cop loosened the cuff three
notches.
I heard some more mumbles.
Shortly thereafter, the Watch Commander introduced himself at
took a picture of my wrist.
The problem was, the gnarly looking bruise was not there till
hours later.
The cop and staff claimed that my pain was caused from
thrashing about. They were covering themselves.
With them, it was evident it was some sort of ‘family’
system.
All for one, and one for all.
They would put the entire blame on me in their report. I
would have been better off dead then to be shamed by their process
of ‘care.’
