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An aneurysm is quite a lot like a stroke but different in a few ways. In an aneurysm, a blood vessel expands much like a balloon, filling with blood. Eventually then, the blood vessel breaks, like a balloon filled with water breaks. It differs in that way from a stroke, which is more like a clot or blockage in a blood vessel. An aneurysm is nearly always (but not everytime) fatal, and death often times is instantaneous. You can have an aneurysm in your bowels, for example, or your neck. In my case, it was in my head, approximatly by my brain. I did not die, obviously, but I was comatose for several weeks, and struggled for another two years with recovery. I am still 'in recovery', and some of my bodily functions simply will never be the same as they were before the incident on November 29, 1999. You'd need physicians for a more detailed medical explanation, but the blood which 'seeped' into my brain and the rest of my head did cause severe brain damage (actually neurological damage) to occur in my case.
In fairness to the Skokie, IL Police Department -- which is more
fairness than they have ever rendered to me -- I cannot place all the
blame for my aneurysm exclusively on SPD, but their ideas about
'serving and protecting' certainly contributed to my disability. I had
two heart attacks prior to the aneurysm -- the police were, or
should have been aware of that -- after all, their paramedics took
me to the hospital in both cases -- yet they ignored my condition, and
mocked me when I was in their custody the second time. It took a long
time to get their attention and be taken to the hospital; I think they
just assumed it all to be a big joke, or a bluff. Maybe I should tell
this entire story from the beginning of this adventure.
============
Chapter 1
============
First of all, I am a gay man; a homosexual if you prefer that word, although I consider it a bit sterile to use that 'medical sounding' term. The proper word for me is 'gay'. I have been gay since I was in high school, back in 1956. In 1961, the State of Illinois became the first state in the USA to drop any/all laws relative to private, consenual sexual activity. The state said that gay men were free to do as they pleased sexually. Prior to 1961 -- in the late 1950's for example -- gay men and women were treated as criminals all over the USA. They were routinely harassed, locked up in prisons and hospitals when sexual acts occurred that Police did not approve of. That is now all ancient history in most areas of the United States, although there are still a few states in the USA where gay men can theoretically at least still pay severe penalties for the 'crime' of being gay. Thank God most of those laws have been dumped in about half or three- quarters of the states; in several foreign countries, other places. Indiana did not get rid of their laws against being gay, which most states a half-century or more ago referred to as 'sodomy' -- until sometime in the middle 1980's. Several other states have since changed their laws as well.
I had a job working in Chicago (although my family lived in Hammond, Indiana, a south suburb of the city), and after leaving that job, I moved to Calumet City, Illinois, a suburb on the state line of Indiana. But in Illinois, recall, gay sex was totally legal as of 1961. I voluntarily participated in a gay sex act there at my apartment in Calumet City. The year was 1963; I would be twenty- one years old in a few months. I was a little bit naive, to say the least. The person I chose to have the sex act with chose to walk with me from my apartment down the street and into Indiana which began about two blocks away. I do not remember the person's name, or much of the details now, forty years later, but in any event he chose to beat me up and rob me. In my youthful and naive nature, I actually believed in those days that it should be reported to the police, who would 'serve and protect me' as a gay person. I do not think the fellow who chose to rob me/beat me up (what now days is referred to in most places as 'gay-bashing') specifically chose Hammond, Indiana for his act; it was simply a dark and deserted street corner and a block into the state of Indiana.
How nonsensical and foolish I was! That was my first experience with the police; thinking they would indeed serve and protect. Their version of 'serve and protect' was to haul me off to jail.
The jail was located in Crown Point, Indiana, and then, like now, the inmates were mostly black men. The problem of black men and other minorities taking the blame for crimes they did not commit did not start recently. It was the case forty years ago, like it is now. The United States has always been a very racist country. Honestly, I feel black men in the days of the Civil War had things better than they do now. I had been there a few days when I was sexually assaulted for the first time, on August 31, 1963. I have never forgotten that night. As to be expected, police would do nothing about it, making me stay there and deal with it as best I could. As far as police are concerned, gay men are fair game for attacks and assaults in those days -- and in the present time. After three months of this, and the coming of my twenty-first birthday, police decided to move me to the place where gay men were kept in those days; a mental hospital.
No matter that this was not against the law in Illinois where I lived or that I had not committed any crime. Police know best, and homosexuality was a very serious mental defect. In those days, they did not allow inmates any form of communication with the outside world except one or two letters each month. They did not call us inmates, we were 'patients' because they were so enlightened. (!) I do not remember for sure how I did it, but I managed to get a letter out to the Mattachine Society which was one of the original organizations devoted to helping gay men realize their rights. That letter wound up getting me a visit one day from a fellow in Chicago who worked for a very famous (at the time) attorney, a lady named Pearl Hart. The gist of his message was that "if you find a way to get to Chicago, get in touch with Ms. Hart's office." I have little or no patience these days with folks who say inmates are given too much in the way of priviledges using the phone, etc.
Meanwhile he was working on my case in Chicago. I knew I would have to behave and be a model 'patient' for my plan to work. A 'field trip' was being planned for patients, a trip to the Art Institute in Chicago. I signed up for the trip, and secretly began saving up my money, a dollar here, a dollar there, to have money for when the day came for the trip. The day arrived, and we were all loaded on a school bus for the trip to Chicago and the Art Institute. When we arrived at the Art Institute, I hung around for about five minutes, then split. A friend of mine, Roy Anderson, met me nearby and suggested I stay at his place in Hyde Park, a southside University of Chicago neighborhood I was quite familiar with. It was there that I called Mattachine to notify them of my status, and to get in touch with Ms. Hart, the lawyer.
Ms. Hart met with me, and took me to a federal judge in Chicago and his ruling was that I had broken no laws in Illinois and the State of Indiana was restrained from attempting to extradite me. Furthermore, I did not have to go to any 'hospital' for 'treatment'. I was free to leave and resume my life. Copies of the judge's order were served on the 'hospital' (prison) in Indiana, the Hammond Police, and other parties. That's just another reason I think Governor Ryan in Illinois was so courageous and responsible in his decision to commute several death penalty cases on January 12, 2003, and give pardons to the several totally innocent people who were rotting away on death row in Illinois. My case in 1963-64 came no where close to anything that serious, but if police are allowed to lock people up who have done nothing at all, they certainly see no problems in doing it to guys with lesser resources than I had.
Now, in the next chapter, we will fast-forward thirty plus years
of life in Chicago. Anyone interested in my activities for those
thirty-some years is more than welcome to (a) do a Google search on
the internet under my name 'Patrick Townson' or make other inquiries
of me, or read the supplemental chapters in this e-book. I cannot
really imagine there is any interest, but if someone is interested,
Google will provide you with several thousand net references over the
1981-2003 time period. I was the assistant chairperson of Gay Pride
Week in Chicago in 1974, and the chairperson in 1975 for starters. I
did some publishing in newspapers, operated a small gay community
newspaper, and a free audiotext phone service called 'Gay News and
Events' in Chicago for several years. Look it all up if you wish; as
I said, I cannot imagine anyone would be that interested.
Chapter 2
=========
In 1995, I had a job working at Radio Shack in Skokie, Illinois, a north suburb of Chicago. I was officially the telephone consultant, explaining and selling telecom gear. I was one of those 'you have questions, we have answers' people in their stores. Customers would ask me such mundane questions as how to install an extension phone on their line, how to do simple repairs on their telephones, etc. With some luck, I could sell them new items as I went along, and in a few cases manage to do a small repair on an existing item. At the time, Radio Shack had a rather firm policy. I understand now that in some territories, the policy has been rescinded. The policy was get the and address on each customer -- even 'cash' customers, to be added to the mailing list. Both the store manager and the district manager were very adamant about this: get a name and address on each sales ticket! Some people were better at doing this than others. Some customers would not tell you names and addresses no matter what. I did not have much trouble with this policy. Maybe I was a bit better at it. I could also remember the names of many customers, and would greet them on a return visit, which tended to get me more sales.
But then came Scott Struthers, a young fellow about nineteen years old. Do you remember back in the introduction to this e-book I suggested reading the biblical story of Joseph, the head slave to Mr. Potiphar, an important man to Pharoah, as told in the final dozen or so chapters of the Book of Genesis? I specifically titled this book 'Genesis 39' because that chapter, beginning at verse 7 tells his story, and mine as well. Like Mrs. Potiphar, Scott Struthers thought he was really hot stuff. It was impossible for him, in his deluded mind, to consider any man not wanting him. Like Joseph, I tried to be polite to Scott (Mrs. Potiphar) but it backfired in a way that I still am trying to deal with to this day, about ten years later. I already at that point had read the Bible on a fairly regular basis and knew about Joseph, but it just did not occur to me the same thing could happen to me. I was very naive; in some ways still am ...
For three or four nights in a row, Scott would show up at the store late at night, when I was working alone. Invariably, the store would be busy, and Scott would waste my time. He would always have some piece of crap radio which was not working right, and needed to be repaired or replaced. Maybe he needed a plug or a small piece of wire or similar. Would I please fix it for him. Instead of making other customers wait while I waited on him, I would ask *him* to wait until I cleared up the line at the cashier's table, *then* try to help him.
One day, Radio Shack passed a new rule: repairs made in the store had to be limited to items which had been purchased from Radio Shack. I explained this to Scott a couple times, but to no avail. Then one night he came in as usual, five minutes or so before closing time, and asked about getting a CB radio fixed. I suggested a cigarette lighter plug he could purchase which would make the radio work on the battery in his car. He did not know if it was the 'right kind' of connection or not, but since he was parked right outside I suggested taking the plug to his car, trying it, then returning either with the dollar fifty cents to pay for it if it did work right, or else bring the plug back. (The store was filling up once again with last minute shoppers). He took the plug and disappeared. That left me more annoyed at him than anything else. I had to pay for the plug -- big deal -- but then the next night he showed up again, claiming the radio was still not fixed 'the way he wanted it'. I told hin once again about Radio Shack's new rule on fixing non-RS products in the store.
I told him there were only two choices at this point for him and his (worthless piece of junk) radio. He could either drop it off at my home (a block away) or he could drop if off for me at a tavern I sometimes went to on Dempster Street. Either way, I would look at it and attempt to fix it one last time for him. I reminded him it was now 9:10 PM, that the store had closed at 9:00 PM; I wanted to go for my dinner at the IHOP (Pancake place next door) before *they* closed at 10 PM, and I still had to close the registers, turn off the lights and lock up. I told him he could wait while I did the lockup procedures then if he wanted to come sit in the IHOP next door, I would buy him a Coke and a sandwhich. I also reminded him he should pay for the part he had taken the night before. He did hang around until I literally pushed him out the door as I was walking out and turning the key to lock up, but he did not pay for the part he had (as far as I was concerned) stolen, nor did he come to IHOP or drop off his radio. Have you read Genesis 39:7 and following in that chapter yet? I saw nothing further of Scott Struthers for three or four days, until the following Sunday afternoon when I happened to be in the store. He came by that afternoon with some older gentleman. Scott was dressed quite nicely that day; he usually was very scruffy. He came in with the older gentleman, found a part he wanted on one of the racks, paid for that part without speaking a word, then he and the gentleman walked out together. I would not see him or hear anything about him for more than two weeks until one night when the police showed up at my door at home.
Chapter 3 -- The Police Raid =============================
Oh, they were so dramatic when they arrived. Something like ten or twelve plain clothes officers all came to the door together while still others were snooping around with flashlights looking into the basement area. Oh, they were so damned and detirmined that they had found another John Wayne Gacy of their very own. Some readers may recall that about 24 years ago (before now, 2003, but only about fifteen years prior, when this happened in the middle 1990's) a very famous serial killer by this name roamed through Chicagoland picking up young boys and killing them, then burying their bodies in various places. Well, they very literally pushed their way into our house (I lived with my brother Dan, his first wife Tina, and their little son, Chord.) They were tormenting my brother and his wife and their little five year old son (my nephew) Chord. The little guy was very smart and still is a pretty smart fellow at his present age of twelve or thirteen. At the time, little Chord was almost in tears because of these police bullies. He kept asking them "why are you bothering my Dad and my uncle Pat?"
Although my bedroom was on the second floor of this rental townhouse in Skokie, my computer room was in the basement. I did not even know they were around at first until they came charging down the stairs to the basement looking for me, and I guess, all the dead bodies they expected to find. When they landed in the basement, they kept asking, 'tell us about Scott Struthers'. In their arrogance, I guess they thought not only would I recognize the name but break down and make some kind of full confession to them on the spot. I honestly had never heard of him, at least that I could remember. I did not remember the names of Radio Shack customers; why should I under normal conditions? One compartment of my life is separate from other compartments. I never took Radio Shack concerns home with me after work, why should I? Of course, thinking back now, I realize I should have kept it in mind. Finally after the officers had told me several times that same name and insisted 'I knew all about it but just wasn't coming clean with them', I put it together and asked the officers, "Isn't that a Radio Shack customer?" Hearing them say it was, my memory was jogged and the compartmental walls came tumbling down. Then I knew who he was, but the extent of his lies were still not apparent to me.
All the time the police officers and I were chatting, my computer was on line and the clock was ticking at the dialup service I used. Realizing this after a few minutes, I reached over and casually flipped the 'off' switch on the modem and computer, to save my money while I was idle. The police officers were just about frantic from that; "DON'T TURN THAT OFF! WE WANT TO SEE ALL YOUR PORNOGRAPHY COLLECTION!" the one officer, who was apparently in charge of the 'investigation' demanded. I told them I was turning it off to save my online charges; that I had no 'pornography', never did have any and did not want any. They had nothing to say about that at time time, but I am sure it dissapointed them greatly that this latest arrestee in their custody had nothing of interest. We had been talking down there in the basement (my computer room area) about fifteen minutes when one of the police officers ventured to ask, "is this where you live?", motioning around the room with his hand. I told him no it was not; my room was on the second floor, across the hall from the bedroom of my brother and his wife, and the bedroom of my nephew Chord.
Of course the officers wanted to go up there and look at it also. We all walked up the stairs to the main floor (the stairway terminated in a small nook behind the kitchen and there I saw my brother Dan, sitting on the kitchen floor, handcuffs on, where the police had left him about fifteen minutes earlier. Chord and his mother Tina were sitting on the sofa in the living room with a very frightened look on their faces, not sure where all this was going to end up.
The officers and I continued up the stairs to the second floor where the master bedroom and bathroom and our individual bedrooms were located. By this point all the police had left, just walked away without any sort of apology or excuses or anything else, except for the two cops who seemed to be in charge of the 'investigation'. They totally looted my bedroom, went through the clothes closet, overturned the mattress and generally made a mess of the whole area. On my bedroom dresser I had two or three letters not opened, and not addressed to myself which the post office had put in my box accidentally earlier that day. I had not seen them at the post office or I would have handed them back there. As it was, I got home with my mail, found those two letters in the pile, and set them aside to be taken back to the post office.
"OPEN THEM UP, LET US READ THEM," demanded one police officer. I told him the letters were not addressed to me, had been put in my box in error, and would be returned unopened to the post office. The cops were not very happy to hear that either, but they knew I was right. They could not open first class mail addressed to some other party. They informed me I was going to be taken to the police station there in Skokie and they were going to confiscate the computer as well. When we got to the police station, it was there I found out exactly what was the nature of their complaint. According to the complaint signed by Scott Struthers, age 19, he had ben kidnapped and sexually molested by me some two or three weeks prior! They were unable to explain how Scott had been kidnapped two or three weeks prior, yet had only lodged the complaint a few days prior, nor how they had decided to wait until that particular night to come to my home to look into the matter. Although my physical description and approximate age are easy enough to discern and fill in on a blank police complaint form, they had no explanation for how they already had my exaxt date of birth and social security number filled in on the form. I sure had not given *that information* to Scott Struthers.
What I found out, sometime later, was that the last night I had seen Scott in the store, he had gone out later, gotten drunk, been very late getting home, and had gotten in much trouble with his mother. At her persistence, his 'kidnapped and sexually molested' story had come to light, At her persistence, Scott (or his mother, I am not sure which) had filed the police report. Remember, a 19 year old guy.
Have you yet read Genesis 39, verse 7 and forward to the end of the chapter? I had made a very fatal (for me) mistake of ever allowing myself to be alone in the Radio Shack store with him. I will tell a bit more about this in the next chapter when we get into the various court appearances on this case. But, it all snowballed into quite a messy situation by the time it was over and done, five or six years later. I'm not sure its over with yet, knowing the tenacity of the police, and their willingness to hang onto old rumors and stories for year after year. His stories were of course a total fabrication, as came out at the limited, Cook County style, trial which was held several months later.
It has all caused much hearbreak, and I am not sure to this day if Scott thought it all up by himself, or if his mother thought it up, or it the Skokie Police, in their infinite wisdom helped cook it up. Let's talk about the first part of this ten year (plus?) saga in the next chapter.
Chapter 4 - The Skokie PD Pedophile Factory
==========================================
One very common technique of police everywhere is to do their best to smear the people they arrest. *If* they (police) can fix things so not only does the person have to stand trial but he can also be slandered in his community, so much the better. *If* they (police) can fix things so that not only does the person have to stand trial and pay for a lawyer he can ill afford, but if personal pressure can be put on his family, like a wedge, to separate him from his family by keeping them angry and his blood pressure very high, so much the better. Never give a sucker an even break; that's the routine. Always keep the pressure on as high as possible. Maybe the person will 'crack' and make a full confession. Think how much easier that would make things for the cops.
In my case, police tried to get me fired from Radio Shack. Oh, they of course could not demand it, all they could do is make sure their version of the 'facts' were presented in as distorted and contrived a way as possible. Make it as much of a horror story as possible, then let the imagination of the listeners do the work. Speaking to the manager of the Radio Shack in the 'we are your friends and are only telling you this for your own good' police suggested to Craig (manager) "is it possible if you don't get rid of this guy the victims will be afraid to come in here to shop? Do you think you might be encouraging a lawsuit against the parent company by not taking decisive action early on?" ... 'Guilty or off on some technicality, do you think it is a good idea to have a controversial person like that employed here?' All that came up after they had first interviewed him as a witness for the state: 'Did he make passes at other customers or try to take other guys home with him from the store?' After the manager of the Radio Shack answered enough questions in a negative way so they saw they would be unable to force-feed him sufficient 'facts' to get a conviction, they gave up on him as a witness. Maybe they would be able to use him as a tool to cut off my income. If he does not have a job he won't have any money, and won't be able to hire any sort of decent private attorney. We don't really want any arrestee to be independent. He is likely to hire a good lawyer and shoot all kinds of holes in our 'case' (i.e. what we have decided to do in this case.)
The other *all important thing* is not just 'innocently' cause him to lose his job, and income, and ability to pay for a lawyer) but cause him to have to stay in jail while you diddle with his family. Keep him worried sick about his family circumstances while he is also trying to raise money for bond. A great way to screw with someone's head like this is by making a false report (actually just an unproved and very ugly allegation) with the Department of Children and Family Services. A police officer does not have to even lie in those cases. Just whisper to a 'social worker' from DCFS: "well, you know we arrested a resident of that house. We are investigating him to see if he might be a pedophile." That's always a good one to use; it gets a lot of mileage for your police officer. And of course, he is not lying; police are free to investigate anyone for anything they want. Back in the late 1970's, when John Wayne Gacy was such an outrageous case, police officers would often times say (after hanging their head and appearing ashamed) "We are investigating any possible links with the Gacy case." Police knew how the average citizen would respond to that; with total revulsion. 'Well, if the police say this dude was connected to Gacy, they must be right. Of course if there were any children in the home (as in my case with my little nephew Chord) spreading a filthy rumor like that among all the neighbors was a sure way to get the DCFS to come in to the home and attempt to take away the child.
Now we have fixed it so the arrested person has lost his job, his source of income, had his family relationship messed up pretty bad, and he is stuck in jail with no bond money and he thinks he will be able to defend himself in court. Ho, ho, ho! The Skokie Police Department just assumed they would be able to keep their record intact; they had done such a number on me. According to statistics I heard in the past from a Skokie official, their police had a 98 percent conviction rate. I dare say I could have such a conviction rate also if I were a prosecutor/police officer with as many dirty, underhanded tricks as Skokie uses. I squeezed through in the 2 percent 'found not guilty' in Skokie through a simple technique of telling the truth totally, repeatedly, and sticking it it. Fortunatly, I got out of jail and was able to work on my case since a very good friend, Jim Quinn posted the bail money at considerable sacrifice to himself. I worked it where I got the Public Pretender -- oops! I mean Defender appointed while I was still lanquishing in jail. *Then* the next day, Jim came by to post the money for me. Of course I had to pay him back, which I planned on anyway.
The police got their way with Radio Shack and planting stupid innuendo in people's heads. When I got out of jail and went back to Radio Shack, the prissy manager wrung his hands and said 'we had better wait until this court case is totally over with before thinking about you returning to work.' But that was okay; I was a little bit nauseous working there for him anyway. Anyway, I had been working a little bit part time for Jim Quinn before that point (Jim was the bus agent for Greyhound; he had the Skokie Greyhound Bus Station) and I helped him there. Anyway, I owed him *so much money* (the police had *asked* for a million dollars in bond money (how outrageous, a mere hundred thousand dollars for bail), but the judge, sensing it appeared to be a very weak case cut it back to fifty thousand dollars, or a 'mere' five thousand for bond.) Illinois is one of those states which demands all sorts of outrageous bonds from arrested people (why do you think Cook County Jail is so loaded all the time) but then let s it be reduced in a 'few cases'. Anyway, within a few days of getting arrested by the police, all sorts of innuendo and nasty rumors spread, I was out on bail, attemting to put things back together. Police even went over to the bus station and tried to spread their venom around Jim Quinn who just wouldn't listen to them. I went back to work full time at the bus station, 14-15 hours per day, at minimum wage in order to get some of that five thousand repaid to Jim. One day, riding the Skokie local bus, who did I 'run into' but one of the two arresting officers who was *really amazed* to see me on the bus. Didn't we leave him to rot in jail? Did some 'liberal judge' cut him loose? I said nothing to the police officer; just kept riding the bus on to my stop. I guess it did not occur to him that a friend had bailed me out. After all, why would anyone do that?
Chapter 5 - Trial and Error, Cook County Style.
===============================================
I said earlier that just telling the truth and sticking to it put me in the two percent of the cases in Skokie who are found innocent. Well, not quite, but that would be getting ahead of myself in this tale. The public defenders are usually not worth the powder it would take to blow them up. They essentially are as rotten as the system they work for. They are, after all, just employees of the prosecutors assigned specifically to represent the defendants. In my case however, the public defender did use Scott's 'discovery statements' to lock him into his lies. We both made notes at the preliminary trial, then I began poking holes into his statements on a regular basis. The public defender was certain very short work would be made of the whole thing.
Then on the second court appearance (Cook County has a peculiar way of doing business), instead of having a case, hearing the evidence and disposing of it one way or another, they first have an 'arraignment' which is a five minute process where the state presents its 'evidence'. Then you and your attorney can get a copy of the trnascript if desired -- at an additional fee, of course -- and a second court appearance is set for about five weeks later. The second court appearance is a 'preliminary hearing' at which your attorney can refute what the state said, and ask for dismissal of the case, although that is rarely ever successful. If the prosecutor and police want a court trial, they get one. Mostly this second appearance is a formality. If you had been locked up waiting trial, you would still be locked up. If out on bond, as I was, then you return for this second appearance of five minutes more or less.
I told you that after getting out on bond, waiting for the arraingment to happen, I had my first heart attack. That's when the prosecutor made a fool of herself by making demands on my brother, the hospital chaplain, and whoever else. "You will have to prove, to my satisfaction that Mr. Townson is in the hospital." She was going to get a warrant for my re-arrest then and there had she been allowed to do so. My brother went back to court at the appointed time with copies of my medical records, a letter from a hospital administrator, and a letter from a pastor aquaintence of mine. The judge called my case, my brother stood up before the judge and handed him these documents. The lady prosecutor just about went crazy: why wasn't she told about this latest 'stalling tactic' by myself, etc ... Coincidentally, while I was locked up waiting for my bond to be posted (ever try calling a friend and asking him to get over to the jail with five thousand dollars in cash then and there?) one of the prosecutors took me to an office where I could be questioned at length. He began by asking me about 'my relationship with Scott'; he claimed he 'wanted to help me'. Yeah, right! I told him I had never had any 'relationship' with the idiot, Scott. I had never even heard of him prior to meeting him in Radio Shack. The prosecutor excused himself and went out of the room to talk to the police officers. He came back in the room a couple minutes later, ringing his hands in a real prissy way and announced, "Mr. Townson, you LIED to me! You told me you had no relationship with him. Now I find out you were his lover!" With that, the prosecutor stormed out of the interrogation room.
Total idiots is what they were ... I could see then that there was not going to be any hope in this case for me. But I digress ... fortunatly for me, Jim Quinn got me bailed out (to the chagrin of the police who were absolutely amazed to see me riding the local bus that day).
After about ten weeks of 'arraignment' and 'preliminary' trial events, I was ready for court ... but then even more amazement awaited me. I got to court on the day of the third appearance, and the public defender had a surprise for me. She (public defender) was going to recuse, or ask the court to dismiss her as my attorney. It seems that Scott Struthers had gotten himself arrested! She had been appointed to represent him. This made for a difficulty for her. On the one hand, she would have to represent Scott, attempting to convince the court that he was a totally honest and misunderstood young man. It appears that he and some buddy of his had gone out, gotten into a drunken brawl, and literally beaten the hell out of some other guy about their age. On the other hand, representing me she would have to convince the court that Scott was a no-good liar. The public defender was stupid, but not that stupid! Part of the police claims in the case against me after all was that I had 'kidnapped' Scott and kept him prisoner in the Radio Shack store. A nineteen year old kid, much taller and stronger than myself, police theorized I had kidnapped him and held him as a prisoner for my personal reasons. Oh, he had the whole story down pat ... how he had looked for an object so he could throw it through a window and break it out in order to escape. He forgot that the front door of the store could be opened with a push-bar and anyone could just walk out, even when the store was 'closed and locked for the night.'
The public defender elected to defend Scott of the allegations he had participated in a brutal beating of the other kid, and she told me a different private attorney would be appointed for me. So the rest of that day's court appearance was devoted to getting a new attorney appointed for me, and the obligatory five week delay while the new attorney reviewed the file. Meanwhile, when the date (a few weeks later) came for Scott's day in court I made it a point to attend it and review it for more ammunition in my own case. Scott chose to plead guilty (so the evidence in his case would not be heard in open court so I would hear it; thats's what the prosecutor convinced him to do, and bless her heart, the public defender said it would be a good idea also, since she had bargained with the prosecutor to get Scott off on probation and a suspended sentence.) But I was able to get quite a few details in his case.
The newly appointed attorney for me bawled me out good for sitting in the courtroom listening to Scott's own trial. He (new attorney) also did not like it one iota when I presented him with a list of questions to ask Scott at *my* trial, and a list of the witnesses I wanted called, even if necessary as hostile witnesses, to get to the bottom of the lies Scott and his mother had made up.
There were three or four more continuances in my case; one or two of them requested by my attorney, and a couple requested by the prosecutor. Finally a full year after the incident, I got my day in court. If the police and the people who run Cook County Jail had gotten their way, I would have been in jail all that time waiting for the trial, and had absolutely no resources to collect the facts I needed or meet with the attorney to present him with my questions, etc. Fortunatly for me, Jim Quinn was a lifesaver. He bailed me out of jail a day or two after I got put in there, and was very supportive of me the entire time, with time off as needed to go to the several court appearances which (five minutes each) were held when the attornies asked for repeated continuances, etc.
Finally, the absolutely final day for court arrived; I did not know at that point if I would be back to work afterward, or be hauled off to jail again or what. I showed up at court, one of the police officers was there, seated royally in the jury box as police officers are allowed to do in Cook County. There was to be no jury, none of those formalities. Just a bench trial. My attorney was in the conference room talking to the prosecutor and others there. I of course was not allowed to go in; I had to wait out in the hall. I guess my attorney and the prosecutor went over my notes and my list of witnessses, etc because shortly thereafter, the attorney came out and announced to me that the state was going to drop all the charges -- almost! -- and replace them with a single charge of 'disorderly conduct', a class D misdemeanor, and settle for 'time served' meaning the two or three days I had been in jail. That was, provided I would plead guilty to the disorderly conduct charge. It was absolutely essential to get a guilty plea for _something_, they must neutralize defendants to insure they do not leave themselves open to false arrest claims, and to discredit you. And he stated, "you should be glad they are willing to give you this break; because as the police have stated, you are a dangerous pedophile. I resisted the urge to tell the attorney (the one who was supposed to be representing me) to commit a sexual act on himself. But he insisted 'this won't go against you; no time to serve, you just walk out of here afterward and go back to work.' I told him no deal, my case was strong enough that I did not have to listen to that sort of BS. He went back in and talked to them again, then came back out and assured me no one -- not police, not prosecutor, not him, not the judge was going to make any kind of statement like that 'for the record', and that on the other hand, the prosecutors were prepared to make the case go on for 'another couple years' if I did not take their offer. I wanted so much to get the whole matter over with, I went with his sleazy offer of disorderly conduct.
And true to his word, ten minutes later the case was disposed of. I realize now they understood what a mistake they had made, and all the prosecutor wanted to do was save face for his office and the police. Immediatly on my getting released, the attorney spoke up asking the court 'what about my fee?' and the judge said I should pay it! It was explained to the judge that it had been originally assigned to the public defender and the private attorney had only gotten involved with it when the defender had recused several months earlier. The judge and the private attorney argued about for a few minutes, but the judge agreed to okay the attorney's fees. I walked out of the courtroom and by the front door was confronted by an angry police officer who assured me that, 'you will not get away with this'. He was right, I did not ... but it would be another two or three weeks before the police would make good on their threat.
Chapter 6 -- Police Endure Defeat, but Not For Long.
====================================================
I left the courthouse with my 'disorderly conduct' charge over and done with and very mixed emotions about the whole thing. I was glad I did not 'convicted' on some bogus charges and sent off to a lifetime sentence in prison 'as one of those pedophile guys' the police were always talking about. To your typical police officer, 'homosexual' = 'pedophile'. I went back to work for Jim at the bus station there in Skokie trying to pay off my debt. You see, justice in Cook County is an expensive proposition, to say the least. Jim had gotten by this time an outside job, as an Ameritech Security Services representative. The bus station was pretty much totally in my care.
One day, a week or two later, a bus driver came in with a complaint about a passenger. He wanted the police to come out and arrest the guy. Respectfully declining to place the call myself, I dialed 911 on the phone and handed *him* the receiver. He told the police his story, and the cops were there in a couple minutes. But the driver did not want to be the one to sign the complaint. He told the police he was 'running quite behind schedule' and did not want to 'wait while police wrote it up', etc. Oh, that's okay, said the cops, "we will get Townson here to sign the complaint."
"Oh no you won't," I protested. I had not witnessed the 'offense', if any, and explained to people in the waiting room and the police officer who was there to get my signature that I had not seen it and furthermore, I knew how Skokie Police usually (over) reacted during an arrest, especially with a minority person being arrested. After all, on one occassion a month or so before, I had seen a white police officer (they are, or were, all white in Skokie) haul two young black ladies into the waiting room and give them a complaint about how they had thrown a piece of paper on the ground. One of the two ladies then asked the police officer 'are you giving us this hassle because we are both black, and there are not too many blacks around in Skokie? The police officer answered, 'You bet I am ... that's the main reason.' I was frankly shocked to hear an officer of the law speak up that honestly about his motives. A month or two before that, a police officer told me that of the sixty thousand residents in Skokie, about 75-100 of them were black. I resisted the temptation of asking him "how do you know, did you count them?" Whether or not a person is black is totally a matter of convenience for the police in Skokie. They have some kind of cockeyed racial profile they use when it appears to them an unresolved crime needs to be solved. On the other hand, late one night when I was working alone at the station and had a black person do a 'hit and run grab' on me and about $700 of Jim's money on ticket sales, I reported *that* to the police and described the person as best I could. Police scoffed at that and said 'whenever a white person gets robbed in Skokie, he always blames it on a black guy; if its a black who gets robbed, he always blames it on a white guy.' Police were absolutely convinced *I* had taken the money so we could put in an insurance claim against it. When I told them that in fact we had no robbery insurance there at the station because we could not afford it; Greyhound's posture was 'it was YOUR money that got stolen, not OURS.' When I told the cop that we would have the money back in the cash box when it was time to remit to Greyhound and that *I* would be the person to make it up, the cop just had a blank look on his face.
Now remember, the bus passenger was a black fellow; they wanted *me* to sign a complaint for something I had not witnessed, etc and knowing how the Skokie Police were likely to respond, I did not intend to get involved in it either. Anyway, that's the kind of rocky relationship I had most of the time with cops there. I didn't have any use for them, and they had no use for me. I was not born that way with a dislike for police; I did not really pay much attention to them for many years, but after a distasteful experience I had with them in 1982 and then the 'big event'(at the time in 1997, with Scott Struthers) I began to develop an intense dislike for police. I certainly did not trust them.
In 1982, I had been victimized by a home invasion robbery thing. A police officer assigned to work for the State's Attorney in Cook County specifically told me to *lie* -- to perjure myself in open court in that case, because as he insisted 'you don't want to see the niggers get away unpunished do you?' (I quote the noble and honest and professional police officer word for word on that quote.) ... well, that little quote, plus the way I later saw Skokie officers react around black people (on the one hand, while prsecuting them vigorously except when the category of human being they hated worse happened to be a gay man) and their general demeanor just convinced me it was not a good idea to trust them very much or very far. Over the years, I have actually seen gay people become police officers, obviously they were deluded into thinking police officers treat gay people fairly; I only wish they were old enough to remember the 1950-60's era before they began thinking of police as their friends.
I began this chapter by telling you that they had every intention of getting even, however they could. What's one or two more lies when it means you can rid the community not only of blacks but also gay guys who sass you and are 'too smart for their own good' as one officer told me about myself. It had come to the point that I had filed complaints with the state about the Skokie Police, and was carrying a small notebook around with me when I went out and writing down all the lurid details about their behavior, including badge numbers, etc. Now they were gunning for me on a regular basis, after by telling the truth about the 'Scott Struthers affair' I had beat them at their own game. But not for long; I had won the one battle, while I eventually lost the bigger war.
Approximatly one month, maybe six weeks, following the total and complete dismissal of the Struthers' case, I was working in the bus station one night about thirty minutes before the last bus north of the evening, a 7:55 PM departure to Milwaukee and Minneapolis. Normally I worked in the station from 8:30 AM to 9:30 PM. I had to put in those thirteen hours daily to finish paying off Jim, and I had just about gotten it paid for. That late bus each evening rarely got many passengers, but it always got a few. At 9:15 each night was a southbound bus to Chicago, making connections in Chicago for Dallas, St. Louis and other busses.
I had not started out staying open that late, but then the agent in Waukegan (next station north of us) started closing down promptly at 5 each afternoon; I made *lots* of sales (we agents worked strictly on a commission basis) from southbound passengers who got on in Waukegan but had to wait until the bus got to Skokie to buy their ticket. Althouh 7:55 PM north was not that spectacular on ticket sales, the 9:15 PM south always did good, night after night. I was pleased to turn in good sales to Jim Quinn most nights. Well, a rainy, cold evening in late summer, a young man came in to buy a ticket for the north bus at about 7 PM. I did not realize it at the time, because I am so naive, but he was a 'plant' or 'spy' or trap by the police. Yes, I kid you not ... just like Scott, not a word was exchanged that would tip me off. My evening 'lunch break' usually came at 6:15 PM, following a south bus to Chicago. Once I got the tickets sold for that bus, and the luggage on board, etc, I would take off to go to a little hotdog/hamburger place a block away. By getting a quick meal, I was able to get back to the station around 7 PM to start selling tickets, etc for the 7:55 north bus. This particular night, the bus had been a few minutes late and it had started to rain a little by the time I got back about 7:10 PM ...I came running through the rain, and there was a young man huddled in the doorway looking inside to see if anyone was there. I got my jacket off and started it drying out, got the fellow his ticket to Milwaukee, and as he was starting toward the door to the outside bus shelter (where people would wait when *our* station was also closed) I suggested he was welcome to wait inside and stay warm and dry to wait for the bus.
Although I did not realize it at the time, police had make some 'adjustments' in their routine this time around. Where Scott had been over age 18 (in fact, he was 19 when it started) this fellow was slightly under 18 (in fact, he was a couple months younger than 18) when police used him. With Scott, where there was no lock on the inside door (so the accusation that I had 'kidnapped' him could be easily disproven) the station door had a 'twist screw' or 'thumb screw' type lock on it which we generally kept locked between busses at night to prevent trouble makers from coming in and hanging around. Where Radio Shack officially closed at 9 each night, the bus station 'officially' closed at 6:15 following the south bus to Chicago. I had started keeping it open until 9:15 to 'catch' the two evening busses and the ticket sales for both of them which, as I said before, were not inconsequential. But police assumed I was still closing up at 6:15 each night. Therefore, when they saw me returning after my supper break that night they knew they had to act fast. They had to catch the molestor before he struck again!
This time around, police had their cards in order. The 'complaintant' was a shade under 18 (he was 17 and nine or ten months old therefore technically a minor); the front door to the station had an inside turning lock (therefore the minor might have been unable to leave the premises); and the 'official closing time' of the station was 6:15 pm instead of 9:15 pm (therefore since the station was 'officially closed' at the time the 'complaining witness', a 'minor' had to have been 'lured' into the premises by the 'molestor'. After all, in a public business -- a bus station -- it is sort of unconvincing to say a person had to be 'lured' to go inside, and police did not want to leave anything to chance this time around. So, hooray for the police, this time they had everything -- or so they thought -- in order. In fact, for this serious offense -- a sex molestor (i.e. 'homosexual' equals 'sex molestor') luring a minor into an area where the minor was kidnapped and could not leave so the molestor could have his way with the minor -- you might think police would have hurried out to the location and immediatly arrested the molestor as a menace to the community. After all, they certainly knew where to find him, but oh no, two or three weeks after the fact they then come around. It sounds just like the ill-fated case of Scott Struthers from a few months earlier. Scott had also been 'kidnapped' and sexually assaulted which turned out to be a total crock as the prosecutor finally admitted, with egg on his face. It is very unfortunate that prosecutors are immune from being sued for their casual and careless work. I would have loved to turn the screws on that guy.
Chapter 8 - Police Start Over - Try to Do it Right
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Now, the police figured they had it made ... right age group for the 'victim', other proper circumtances, etc. They took me back to jail again, I was so upset by this latest development I had another heart attack. This was now number two in my heart situation. I had the heart attack there in my cell, abandoned, alone, in the Skokie Police station during the overnight/early morning hours. Instead of immediatly calling for paramedics, they just screwed around with it, but they did get me off to the hospital eventually, where I was chained down to my bed with little or no examination. In three or four days I was taken to court, where the judge was unimpressed with the police account of the whole matter and set a bond of five thousand dollars. The second court appearance, a month later, the public defender called me on the phone prior to me going in. His story was this: the police are going to demand that you be given a higher bail. They are going to ask for *one million dollars* so when you come to court, be sure to bring another hundred thousand dollars with you. (In Illinois, paying bail bond is like a game; the state asks for some outrageous amount of money, then you, the prisoner, must pay ten percent of that amount, or in my case, a hundred thousand dollars.) This was being requested since I was such a 'dangerous molestor' and just recently released in the Stouthers case. No matter that Scott Strouthers was entirely bogus; police do not figure it that way. It turns out the next day the prosecutor asked for no such thing; she was absent and another continuance was granted. I was to go home and wait until they called me back. They did not call me back for several months, until I was long gone from Chicago. I managed to pay Jim Quinn off entirely for what I still owed him, and had gotten a new free lance job, working as an independent contractor teaching about computer networking things at the Fort Riley Army Base in Kansas. I had also applied for a job as computer system administrator at Kansas State University (in Junction City, KS which is also where Fort Riley is located. I packed up, took the Greyhound Bus to Junction City and attempted to get settled in. Now it turns out the Sysdmin situation did not work out but I did continue free lancing computer networking and web page design at Fort Riley. What I did not know was that the latest heart attack many months before, had left my blood pressure totally out of kilter, with a tiny 'leak' in a blood vessle in my head, around my brain. Nine or ten months after I got to Junction City (I arrived back in Kansas in February, 1999, and the 'leakage' in my blood vessle happened on November 29, 1999), I was rushed to the closest brain surgeon (Topeka, KS) with a brain aneurysm. I remained in a coma for a couple *months* (doctors all said it was amazing that I did not die on the spot) and was in recovery for a month following that. I still, today, January 2007, see the effects of the brain aneurysm in my partial paralysis, and lack of ability to control certain body functions.
It turns out Police in Skokie still were not finished with me. During my recovery period at the hospital, the Police came and dragged me back 700 miles to the Chicago area; naturally, as a dangerous molestor I had to stay in the Cook County Jail for two or three weeks while police decided what to do next with me. Although I left from the hospital with several medications which were prescribed for me to take at various times, and what I had suffered was the essence of a 'stroke', Cook County Jail in their wisdom decided on a different course of action entirely. Cook County admitted that I was quite ill, but should be able to 'recover enough to stand trial' by taking the one little pill they gave me each day. Filthy conditions, poor food and no chance for recovery; one little pill dispensed at about 4:00 AM daily. I was not allowed my cane or any crutches to walk around with, so mostly I just sat there in my cell. To go to court, we had to ride a bus about thirty miles, through city traffic, several of us all chained together in the bus. I went to court on three different ocassions each time on a one hour bus ride there and a one hour bus ride back and a 30-45 minute period 'on hold' waiting, tied up in chains each direction as well.
By the third time of this, chained up in a *tiny* cage with a dozen or so other inmates, no place to sit when in the jail cell in Skokie, I was totally 'out of it', completely unable to talk to the public pretender -- ooops, I mean defender -- not that I really could talk very much anyway with all the noise and screaming, etc in the cell around me -- and Blessed God! the defender wheeled me into the court room, stood there before the Judge and said "Well, your honor, I think given this man's poor state of health, the simplest and best thing to do would be to plead him guilty." Guilty! I managed to get out a single demanding statement, "You are fired", but the pretender/ defender said, "well you can't fire me, who is going to take your case?" I told him I would take it myself, but the judge would hear none of that ... no siree! I was wheeled back to a holding area where I had been standing before and re-locked up. About 45 minutes later the pretender reappeared walking down the hall; he called my name and said "Two years IDOC". I asked him to explain what that meant, he said "I am too busy right now, ask another inmate".
Another prisoner explained to me that meant two years 'on paper' in Illinois Department of Corrections; in actual practice around six months in jail and a year on parole after that, and I would be able to finally get the medical help I needed. The inmate asked me "Did you screw around with the cops?" I said I guessed I had, and his reply was "no surprise then ... for that little of a 'sentence' and in your state of health, it was mainly to teach you a lesson not to smart-mouth the man." I was in the courtroom about five minutes total, or maybe just three minutes. It really works like an assembly line, and if the alleged 'guilty prisoner' is also in poor health while it is going on, that is ideal, so much the better. A sick person is not one to give a lot of talk back or argument or force police to follow rules or regulations. After about an hour, the bus came back and took us all back to the jail. So police *do* have ways of winning the war; their resources are unlimited and their time is unlimited. After about another two weeks in the jail, they elected to move me out, all the while, every chance they got, reminding me of all my rights and how to get a 'real trial' if I still wanted one.
Chapter 9
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To show you how 'fair' the system is, each new convicted molestor or otherwise felon is 'allowed thirty days' from the date of conviction to appeal and possibly get the conviction overturned. Here is how those thirty days worked in my case: First seven or eight days, you are returned to Cook County Jail to await a trip to wherever you are being taken. It is pointless to begin your 'appeal' during that time, because you cannot get a pen or pencil and paper to write it out. If you had any money 'on the books' I suppose you could order writing supplies from the commissary, but since commissary is once per week (you place an order one day and the supplies come about a week later), you are already gone; you are wasting your time. At least you have a phone you can use (outgoing only; collect calls only) for a few hours each day. About day seven or eight (of thirty) you move out. This is like a trip to court, only it is much longer, like all morning. You are all chained together in this uncomfortable bus and taken to the 'Diagnostic and Reception Center' where you will stay for about a week or ten days. While you are there, you are kept locked up in a small cell with at least one other person. You are taken out of the cell to eat two meals per day, thirty minutes each. A third meal is served in the cell handed to you through the bars. And, you are allowed once or twice in that seven/ten day period to go to 'recreation' which is an area where there is a basketball court and ONE or TWO outgoing, collect call only phones. During that 45 minute (rain or shine) outdoor recreation period, maybe a hundred or two hundred guys run and rush ahead of you to use the phones, and then hog them for the entire 45 minutes of recreation.
If you can get to a working phone (many times they are not working) AND if you have or can borrow a pencil or scrap of paper, you can attempt to plan your appeal. Basically, police fix it so that you get that time 'to work on your appeal' in name only, not the real thing. So add those seven to ten days to the approximatly one week you were waiting in jail with no paper or pens, and about two weeks out of the 'thirty days you are generously allowed' for your appeal are gone. You can complain about the non-working phones if you wish, but the police will whimper and tell you, "it's not our fault the phone is not working; you need to report it to telephone repair service." Not us, YOU have to report it.
Now comes the big day and you are moved to wherever they intend to keep you locked up and where you will no longer be a dangerous molestor to society. They load up the bus (all of you in a line all chained together) for a LONG -- all day -- bus ride all the way to southern Illinois. IDOC (Illinois Department of Corrections) has a system for assigning prisoners to prisons. If your home is southern Illinois, they put you in a prison 300 miles away, in northern Illinois. If you are from around Chicago (and about 90-95 percent of all prisoners are) then they take you to the very southern tip of Illinois, 300 miles the other way. Objective, make it as difficult as possible for family members/friends to visit. A visitor or a gift, first thing you know there may be some sort of rehabilitation going on; IDOC depends very heavily on the principles of recidivism, get them, keep them in prison, keep them coming back. The corrections industry depends on your support! The bus travels all day to its destination, stopping ONCE for prisoners to be able to pee in a pot stored in the back of the bus and eat a stale sandwhich they serve to you at one of the prisons along the way. The trip from the Diagnostic/Reception center to Robinson, Illinois took from 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM that night. That's another day of the 30 days 'generously provided' for your appeal. And, prisons are all 'equal employment' places; Robinson, for example, had paraplegics and blind people as prisoners. And, there were lots of prisoners in wheel chairs. Now, before you ask why should a blind paraplegic be confined to prison, just remember, a police officer always knows best. And all the time I was there, they always had that same little pill for me each day, along with a *wooden* crutch to walk with. We *usually* got to go to the commissary once per week, but turn in the order for our cigarettes, pens and paper, etc two days prior. So now, about fifteen or twenty days gone of the thirty allowed, we were finally in a position to go to the 'law library' and pay another inmate with cigarettes or candy to help us prepare an 'acceptable' appeal. It was there, in that law library that I learned the facts of life from another inmate: he said (and I quote) "you'll only be here six months and then be free; it would probably take six or eight months for your appeal to be heard". How did he know I would be out in six months? Well, simple, he said. 'Two years IDOC' means a six month sentence for most prisoners. "They should go for a full year with the second year served on parole but they are so overcrowded they have cut it down to six months for most prisoners." Sure enough, they later caculated it for me as '45 days credit for time in jail' plus two ninety day good conduct releases and after having gotten to Robinson in late June of 2000, they came along on December 15 of that same year and said 'hurry up and get your ass out of here; time is finished'.
I am sure they expected I would be returning, about 80 percent of the inmates do return. All the time I was there, I saw new arrivals come in every few days from jails all over the state. Its like an asembly line process. Now, the second year, on 'parole' was another matter entirely.
Chapter 10
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December 15, 2000 was the day of a _huge_ snowstorm in Chicago, and of course, being on 'parole' I had to remain in Chicago for the entire year to follow. Since I was an out of towner (from here in Kansas) and mostly indigent and disabled, the 'social workers' at Robinson made arrangments for me to stay in a homeless shelter in Chicago where I stayed for three whole days. Normally, the routine is to take a bus load full of prisoners to the nearest bus station in Marion, Illinois, buy a bus ticket for the prisoner, give him ten or twenty dollars and put him on the bus back to his home. In my case, I was quite lucky to have a very good friend agree to come all the way to Robinson, pick me up and drive me back to Chicago. Since I had some money by that point in my 'trust fund' they simply cashed it out for me, and sent me on my way. I was back in Chicago after several hours of riding. I was to report in to my parole officer, etc. She came around to see me at about 3:00 AM, gave me various warnings, and disappeared. During the day I was pretty much free to go where I wanted -- as long as it was in Chicago area -- and I went on the train out to the suburbs of Roselle, IL to see my friend who had rescued me from Robinson. The next day I *intended* to go downtown to the Chicago Library, but the snow was still pretty awful so I tried to take the el train but I slipped and fell in the ice and snow on Lawrence Avenue. Instead, with my cane (I had absconded with a decent metal one from Robinson) I made my way over to Weiss Hospital's Emergency Treatment area. From there, I went to the Salvation Army center nearby, where _their_ social worker got me installed in a nursing home, where I remained for the next several months. The nursing home, while it was warm and cozy, was also a class one hell-hole. So all during 2001 I stayed in a couple of nursing homes on the south side of Chicago and in the south suburbs. My generous friend supplied me with a cell phone and a television set so I was in reasonable condition. By this point I was almost permanently disabled from the stroke/aneurysm. When December 15, 2001 came around, I was officially off of the 'parole system' and after spending a few days visiting my brother at his northwest side home and going to visit my friend in Roselle once again, I decided it was time to return here to Independence, KS where times would be a lot easier for me.