You’d think that would help him make a clean getaway.
Ouch!
Did he have a gub?
Well.
And your point is?
That he’s still grifting? Or else someone is grifting in his name, which would be hilarious?
I understood that reference.
Did the Governor piss his pants, and there was nothing anyone could do about it?
I am not understanding the question. The governor was dead of natural causes – heart attack most likely – and he was the only one who knew of the cop’s true status.
Dances With Wolves; Dunbar’s assignment to his outpost was… ah, punctuated with the statement Saint_Cad used, after which his commanding officer shot himself, so there was never any actual paperwork backing his (Dunbar’s) position.
True story.
Back when I was working, we had somebody show up at the front door of the prison. He said he was a new transfer and wanted to come in to go to the personnel office. He was in a full uniform and had a badge and ID, which he showed to the guard at the door.
But the guard felt the badge didn’t look quite right. The guy wanting to come in explained that the badge was a recent issue, which was why it looked a little different. The door guard got on the phone to call a sergeant and the guy said he was going to get his paperwork out of his car.
Apparently the paperwork wasn’t there because when he got to his car, he drove off.
We never saw the guy again. The best we can figure out is he was an intruder attempting to sneak into the prison and he had bought a uniform with a fake badge and ID for this purpose.
Sounds like the guy in this book I read who basically sneaked into Auschwitz to become a prisoner there (to report on it, and help other prisoners however he could, and eventually try to foment resistance).
The existence of prisons, the populations within, the identities of prisoners, the crimes they were convicted of, their sentences, and the procedures prisons are run by are all matters of public record in New York. A reporter wouldn’t have any need to go undercover inside a prison to report of what’s going on. If he wanted to get the personal views of some prisoners, he could just request interviews, which were granted.
True. I just meant the oddity of sneaking INTO a prison was similar.
I assume your guy had other motives besides “reporting.” Delivering some sort of contraband to one of the real prisoners? Some tool or clothing or something to aid an escape? Or something to help a real prisoner harm another one there? (Or maybe do the harming himself — retribution of some kind, or to shut up a potential witness?).
Or will we never know?
The guy was never identified so we’ll never know for certain. I can offer you the speculations we made at the time.
He had walked through a metal detector (as everyone does) so he wasn’t smuggling in a gun or a cell phone or tools.
He could have been bringing in drugs or money to pass to a prisoner. Maybe some escape paraphernalia like maps and ID cards.
He could have been checking out the layout of the prison, scouting out areas where a prisoner wouldn’t have access to but a person wearing a uniform would.
He could have been planning on meeting up with a prisoner and passing on the uniform, badge, and ID card so the prisoner could use them to walk out of the prison as he had walked in. The obvious problem with this scenario is that leaves the guy inside the prison without the stuff he needed to get out. At the very least, he was going to end up getting arrested for aiding in the escape.
I’d say the possibility that he was planning on harming a prisoner pretty remote. If he wanted a prisoner harmed, it would have been easier to contact another prisoner and hire him to do the job. Although I suppose he might have had a personal motive and could have wanted to inflict the harm himself.
Unless he had street clothes on under the uniform and a plan to leave with visitors. Still, seems like a not-fully-baked plan.
Despite what comic books would have you believe, wearing a full set of clothes on top of another set of clothes is not something you can easily conceal. The guard at the door, who was attentive enough to notice the badge didn’t look right, would have noticed if the guy was wearing two pairs of pants on top of each other.
And we kept a close eye on visitors leaving as well. We would have noticed if there was one more than had entered.
There are certainly folks who get off on impersonating police. Some of them get to the point where they’re repeatedly committing crimes against people, but IMO other folks just get off on the cosplay and power trip. “I’ll let you go with a verbal warning this time, but don’t let me catch you speeding again! Yes Sir, Officer Sir.” Decent bet this latter sort can play their game longer than the former sort before getting caught.
I could imagine something similar going on with somebody hooked on the idea of prison guarding.
Cops normally operate solo and unsupervised out in public, so any discrepancies between real and cosplay “procedures” wouldn’t be obvious to the only audience: lay citizens.
How did this guy expect to impersonate somebody who’d be expected to know all the procedures, lingo, etc., down cold while surrounded by all the other prison workers? And inmates who’d probably smell something weird about this dude pretty quickly too. Seems a lot harder to successfully cosplay in that crowd.