Westside Story – The Great Escape

My story today is about a prison break at the Gwinnett County jail in the state of Georgia. The photo below is of the six prisoners who escaped.

To avoid judging the six prisoners too quickly and too harshly, allow me to provide some additional facts.

Before providing the promised facts, this is an excellent spot for me to slip in a concept for you to consider sharing with everyone you know. The public, including our politicians and various protest groups would do well to adopt this concept.

When a serious incident occurs, such as an officer-involved shooting or prison break, all the protestors have to do is stop, wait, listen, and learn. It is eminently intelligent to hold off on taking any action until all the facts produced from a complete, unbiassed, and thorough investigation are presented.

The protestors, politicians, and citizens of today often leap to false conclusions and follow their misconceptions with criticism, condemnation, complaining, vandalizing, looting, arson, window breaking, defunding, assaulting, and killing.

It happens almost every day. Following a news report screaming white cop shoots, black man. The next thing, the city hall is on fire. Innocent people are lying dead in the street killed by the protestors.

People who base their decisions and actions on half-truths, lies, wishful hate filled thinking and inadequate information, display a high level of unnecessary, destructive ignorance.

Let’s return to my escaped prisoners. You may be amazed to learn the prisoners are not in any trouble for escaping, nor will they have to do extra time on escape charges. In fact, the jail’s chief is rather complementary of these six prisoners for the way they escaped.

You see, I am not talking about escape like in the movie Shawshank Redemption.

What am I talking about? Let us look at all of the facts.

Fact #1: The prisoners did not escape from jail. They still all reside in the prison cells they call home.

Fact #2: The prisoners escape involved escaping from the public’s preconceived assumption and rigid image that people in jail are always bad people who are only capable of being bad. Many citizens think people in prison do not deserve any space on planet earth, nor should they breathe our air.

Fact #3: These six prisoners rushed to their young and healthy-looking jail guard suffering a stroke in front of them. He could have been left severely disabled or dead had it not been for the rapid actions of all six prisoners including commandeering the guard’s police radio to call for help.

The jail deputy, Officer Patrick Edmund, has made a full recovery following his emergency operation.

Fact #4: This is the second time within a month that Gwinnett County Jail inmates saved a life. The first life saved was that of Deputy Warren Hobbs, who suffered a cardiac emergency on duty.

These men’s life-saving accomplishments should remind us to always try to look for the good in people. During all of my law enforcement days, there was only one individual with whom I could not find any redeeming value. He might have had some good in him, but I could not find it. I have found the rule is most individuals have some element of good.

While I do not know any of the six escapees, nor do I know the jail guard they saved, I wish to thank the escaped prisoners, one and all. They did the right thing in that precise moment.

May their sentences be short and their release date be soon.

The prisoners may well have tasted what it is like to be a great human being.

I wish to thank Ms. Suzie Ziegler for first publishing this remarkable story in Police 1. Her story is where I gathered my facts for my descriptive account of The Great Escape.