log 7

May 22,2002

Today I had to get up extra early to shadow Marty, the court officer. I’ve known her for over a week now, but I’d really only seen what she did within court until today. Her days start off bright and early, at 7am. It’s her responsibility to open the court offices. She comes in the Judge’s Chambers, turns on the lights, and checks the windows to make sure no damage has been done. She unlocks any office doors and turns on all of those lights as well. The court has to be checked, the “cage” (basement files), everything. She has to make sure no one stayed in the court or snuck in somehow overnight. Everything must be secure. She then checks a set of alarms in the courtroom, bailiff’s office, clerk’s office, etc. In her office, which is just inside the jail, next to the door the goes from the jail to the courtroom, she prints off a list, which says which keys (and therefore which person) entered what door at what time the day before. This will be kept on record for a while.

We ran between the police station and the court quite a bit in the morning. She has to pick up any arraignments from the police and drop them in the clerks office. We also went down to where dispatch works in order to look at warrants and sign them. Some of these tasks we did several times in the morning. Finally, at a little past 8am, Marty starts to let people into the court. They have to walk through a metal detector, but she may have to either wand them or search their bags. The people in jail have to be shackled and led into the courtroom. During court itself, she tells the judge about any past records, including a CCH (computer criminal history). She may also recommend a bail amount, depending on the type of offense and any past offenses. If the judge needs the leads run on a license, she goes to the police station and runs them quickly. If anyone needs to be brought in from the County jail, she takes her unmarked police car and picks them up. Basically, the woman is everywhere at all times. And trust me, she moves fast.

Once again I went out to lunch with Marty and the Bailiffs. She had to head out to the county jail, though, and I’m not allowed to ride in her squad car without a special permit or something. The bailiffs took me back to the court, where I was recruited to do some more filing for the clerks. Pete also found another request for information for me to send out. That didn’t take much time at all, and by the time Marty came back, I was almost ready for her.

In the afternoon things slowed down, thank goodness. It was getting hard to keep up with her, especially when you have to constantly stand in the courtroom. She showed me this really cool key/button she has. It locks the courtroom door from the inside as well as the outside in case someone gets any funny ideas. There are all sorts of cool contraptions like that. We went into the jail and hung out in the jail office for awhile. No firearms can be taken into the jail, so she had to put her gun in one of several small lock boxes just inside the jail. She jokes that in an emergency, she’d be hard pressed to get it out quickly.

There were a few more arraignments before I had to leave.

7:00am – 12:00pm 1:30pm – 5:00pm 8.5 hours