So, I was doing my last Checks before the end of my shift, while I left my OJT in the Officer’s “bubble” to finish up the paperwork cause I wanted him to get familiar with it all cause we all have our own ways of doing paperwork. I told him “hey I’ll be back in 12 mins” typically my beginning and ending walks are 8-12 mins cause we wanna make sure everyone’s still living somewhat.

I’m probably halfway through the last run of the building (each building has 4 runs which houses 320 inmates and 80 each run) and I hear the sweet loud crash of the run door shutting completely. Now I won’t lie I’ve only been on the job for 10 months and the pucker factor still kicks in when I hear that run door shut completely and it’s funny cause I get locked in this same run time to time. I continue my walk down the run and one of newer inmates pokes his head out of his bunk and says “hey CO yk the door shut all the way and locked right?” I said “yeah i know. What can you do? This place is old, I’ve been locked in here a few times now” and one of the older more respected inmates yells from his bunk at the front of run “none of y’all better not do some stupid shit, I’m too old to get spray and gassed” by now it’s maybe 6 mins passed my 12 minute mark and my OJT comes out and into the day room kinda freaked out to see me in a locked run with 4 inmates behind me watching and talking to me while I jimmied the lock and door open. I was aware of the situation I was in and my head was on swivel but I didn’t need to really fear much cause honestly some of those guys really don’t want to get sprayed at 10pm and spend 5 hours in decon when majority of them have work at 3 am.

Now would I have continued my walk if I had my OJT with me? Probably not, I would’ve looked at it as perfect training opportunity for him to work under a stressful situation and probably would’ve had him attempt to open the door on his own. I did teach him the importance of making sure the run door doesn’t shut all the way while he’s in the run.