Jayme Biendl

I'm still not sure that I'm ready to write about this.

Jayme Biendl was a friend of mine.  Not the go-out-and-have-fun-with kind of friend.   Not even the tell-all-about-your-day sort of friend.  She and I passed each other three or four times each week at work in the Reformatory and exchanged pleasantries (frequently about Granite Falls--our mutual home). Professionally, I was an annoyance to her, I think.  I was involved with various events at the Reformatory Chapel and always felt like I was imposing on her, arranging to have big groups of inmates intrude on her territory.  She was always kind, though, and worked through the stress of it all with her customary precision and thoroughness.

We did our little dance last week during the MLK-day event in the Chapel.  The event planners were more prepared than usual, this time, and all seemed to go well.  Jayme even cracked a smile a couple of times.  I missed the part where she checked-in all of the inmates (as far as I can tell, the worst part for her, as there are always a few who want in but are not on the list), but judging from her attitude, it must've been okay.

And then she was killed.

In a horrible instant on Sunday morning right after I learned of her death via Facebook, Jayme Biendl went from being the officer that I stressed out and would be seeing again on Tuesday to the officer that was murdered and would no longer be holding the list of inmates and unlocking the bathroom door.

And then the reporting and opining came and I paid attention.  I read.   A LOT.  Hundreds of comments from anonymous posters, most expressing their grief and many offering up their version of the root problems that led to Jayme's murder.  It was budget cuts.  It was a poor staffing model.  It was inattentive management.  It was the lack of security cameras.  It was callousness from Olympia.  It was liberal "hug-a-thugs" and their misguided notions of reform.  It was conservatives and their inability to tax themselves for the services they demand.  It was Jayme's diminutive physique.  It was the other CO's who didn't find Jayme until after 10pm.

But every once in awhile, someone got it right:  It was Byron Scherf.  Jayme was murdered by Byron Scherf.  Jayme was not murdered by Eldon Vail or Christine Gregoire or Scott Frakes or Bryan Hardina or the liberals or the taxpayers of Washington state.  It was Byron Scherf.

Byron Scherf is a really bad guy.  That's why he's in prison and will never leave.  He, alone, made the decision to take another human life.  His decision wasn't influenced by DOC policy, but, instead, by opportunity.  He found the opportunity to satisfy some base and unfathomable need and took advantage of it.  The presence of cameras or a 6'4" guard in the chapel may not have curbed that need--we won't ever know.  Guys like Scherf either believe they're going to get away with it or they don't really care about the consequences.  That's why they're different from the rest of us and why every person living and working in a prison filled with this type of man is in a place of danger.

It was Byron Scherf.

The Department of Corrections is never going to be able to prevent its inmates from acting out violently.  Even in maximum security facilities, inmates lash out at their custodians and, I suspect, even kill them sometimes.  Much as we might like to, we can't store criminals in an underground cement box or execute all of them.  The US Constitution and the laws of the land mandate a minimum level of humane treatment for all prisoners--and thank heavens for that, by the way.

There will always be vulnerabilities.  Good prison management, then, does what it can to limit those vulnerabilities as much as possible, using the tools available.  No amount of management, though, will ever eliminate the risk, especially when the toolbox is being so rapidly downsized.  The DOC tries to plan for every circumstance--there are checklists for nearly everything--and trains its employees to respond accordingly.  There was a plan for the Saturday service in the Chapel.  There was a plan for the safe exit of all Watch 3 officers.  There was even a plan for a surprise attack on an officer.  The plans didn't work.  Failure does not, though, equal incompetence.

On Saturday night Jayme Biendl was murdered by Byron Scherf.  We did what we thought was best to prevent it, but we failed.  I believe my coworkers at MCC and those in Tumwater have acted in good faith and in our common best interest.  But, in this case, the good work of 8,000 of us wasn't good enough to save our friend and peer.  I think that most of us will regret that for as long as we live.

We're going to spend a good amount of time in the next few months, I think, trying to figure out where we went wrong.  I suspect we'll find a few examples, at least.  But I believe that when the immediate horror has faded a little, we'll finally come back to the real answer in our search for the reason why:

It was Byron Scherf.



(Edit -  After this post was linked by The Herald, someone much smarter than me pointed out that Mr. Scherf is only a suspect, at this point.  In my rush to find someone/something to blame, I carelessly abandoned my belief that the accused are innocent until proven guilty.  As far as I know, Mr. Scherf hasn't been formally charged with Jayme's murder.  I must rely on the reader of this post to imagine the words "allegedly," "suspect," and "possibly" wherever they are appropriate.    --joel)

Represent!

So I've spent a fair number of hours participating in the beta for Rift: Planes of Telara, a new MMO set for release on March 1.  First off, let me say that the game is fantastic.  Trion, the developer, has built a new type of class system that really ups the current standard and the game is remarkably well-crafted (in the early levels at least).  I'll be wasting a lot of time in Telara before too long.

I was pleased to learn this morning, that my current home city is nicely represented in the new game.  This description of Granite Falls is from the Trion website:

Granite Falls

Granite Falls is just as dry and barren as its name suggests. Once, this was a prosperous mining town, its skilled miners tapping some of the richest sourcestone veins on Telara. The miners respected the earth, and never dug too deep for fear of waking the ancient prisoners. This sensible approach did nothing to protect the townspeople from calamity after calamity since the coming of the rifts.

Displaced from the Deepstrike Mine by the Endless Court, the people of Granite Falls have lost their livelihood. Now the unemployed sit, surly and despondent, in the overcrowded tavern. Adding injury to insult, a mysterious illness has swept through the hill folk, poisoning even the miners’ leathery lungs.

Those who succumb to disease, hunger, or despair find no rest, for the dead rise in the cemetery outside Granite Falls, eager to swell their numbers with the fresh-killed corpses of mourners and passersby. Death Rifts are now nearly as common in the hills as Earth Rifts, and nothing in Stonefield stays buried long.

Well go figure.  

Oddly accurate too--well, in places.  Yes, GF Washington was a mining town.  Maybe not so prosperous and the miners CERTAINLY didn't much respect the Earth.  And the bit about the unemployed at the tavern can't be right since the Spar Tree shut down, again.  

Hill folk/leathery lungs.  LOL.

I live a couple of blocks from the cemetery.  I'll be watching my step a little more closely in the coming days.

Coming Out

I don’t like reading.  I find it unbearably slow.  I wouldn’t ever characterize it as torturous, but, for me at least, it’s not that far off.  Still, most days, you’ll find me spending my free time reading.  I’m not a fiction sort of guy.  I’ve been through my science-y phase and have sufficiently stuck my toes into all of the different sciences that I’ve been interested in.  Consequently, nine words of the ten that I choose to read are news-related.  I’m even picky about that.  Local news doesn’t particularly interest me unless I have some connection to the story or it’s unusually lurid.  National news—politics in particular—is ultra-predictable and often poorly reported (not to mention incredibly frustrating). 

Ultimately, I come back to the same sorts of stories; typically involving something tech-related.  I’ve been troubled, lately, by what I’ve been reading, and by “lately” I mean over the course of the last five years or so.   My Facebook friends, in particular, have been subjected to an endless barrage of posts and links regarding my perception that the nature of our relationship with technology and information is at a fundamental crossroads and we’re steering, at our own peril, in the wrong direction.

What exactly am I talking about?  Mostly, I’m referring to the Internet. 

I was around for the beginning of the consumerization of the Internet. I was a teenager when I got my first computer, a shiny Atari 1200XL, from the Lynnwood Jafco back in 1981 (or was it ’82).  Shortly thereafter I acquired my first modem and immediately connected my new virtual self to every bulletin board I could locate and, eventually, a variety of national online services including CompuServe, Genie, and Delphi.  I ignored the hourly charges and, much to the disappointment of my parents, racked up a hefty $300 bill playing a Match Game-like “You Guessed It” and spending hours using the “CB.”  That’s what we called chat back in the day, btw. 

The burgeoning Internet became a great hobby of mine when I could afford it.  By then, the tools were better, the experience was broader, and the world-changing potential of Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web was beginning to come into focus.  I’ll never forget my first night playing with Yahoo on Lynx, searching for everything that I could think of at the time, and reading and reading and reading.  It was truly invigorating.  It was perfectly clear to me that this new technology was going to change a lot of lives.  Mine was already starting to change.

Today, in my household, my family’s online presence is completely integrated with our offline lives.  We’d be lost without a network cable, or, at the very least, bored. 

Since those early days, I’ve watched, with great interest, all of the events that have created the Internet we know today.  I understand, I think, its history well enough to know why things are the way they are and to make an educated guess about where they’re going. 

So here’s what I see:

• ·         The US government, China-like, shutting down and censoring websites and news outlets at the behest of media conglomerates, in service of “national security.”
• ·         A troubling decrease in ownership rights. 
• ·         A despicable suite of copyright laws, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that is being used to prosecute and bankrupt American families.
• ·         The legal threat of permanent suspension of Internet access without due process.
• ·         Sacrifice of privacy in exchange for access to necessary information
• ·         Patent laws that are responsible for countless deaths and suffering
• ·         An utter lack of institutional transparency, both in government and the corporate world

I can’t help but think that we’ve not managed to successfully adapt our ways of life to our new connected reality. 

What frustrates the hell out of me, though, is that there don’t seem to be a whole lot of people concerned about these sorts of issues.   And, really, how can I expect anything different?  Until my neighbor discovers that he can’t legally sell his foreign car (as a result of the recent Costco v. Omega ruling) what difference does any of this make to him?  I suppose that when he’s hit with a $2 million dollar fine for downloading that old Badfinger CD—the one that he can no longer buy (as it’s out of print)—he might become a little more troubled.

I, though, already understand what’s going on and what it will mean to all of us. I don’t have an excuse for my fiddling.  I see these issues as fundamental to our quality of life, continued technological advancement, and the survival of an orderly civilization.  I believe that the solution to every other human dilemma is predicated on the solutions to those enumerated above.  So, I feel compelled to act, however impotently.

I’ve been aware of the Pirate Party for a number of years, now.  The Piratpartiet was originally created in Sweden in 2006.  Since then, it has grown to be Sweden’s third largest political party.  There are two representatives of the party in the European Union Parliament.  The Swedish success led to similar movements throughout Europe and, eventually, the US.  From Wikipedia:

The party strives to reform laws regarding copyright and patents. The agenda also includes support for a strengthening of the right to privacy, both on the Internet and in everyday life, and the transparency of state administration.^[2] The Party has intentionally chosen to be block independent on the traditional left-right scale^[3] to pursue their political agenda with all mainstream parties.

For the last twenty years, I’ve identified myself as a Democrat—a liberal one at that.  However, over the course of the last two months, it’s become clear to me that I need to spend my civic energy on a series of causes that is more in line with what’s truly important to me.  The Democratic Party doesn’t care about these issues and is, frequently, in opposition to the wiser position.  The Republicans are, as usual, completely misinformed and in the back-pocket of their corporate masters.  Most don’t have the slightest clue about these issues and those that do are completely at odds with the poor unfortunate saps they represent.

Today, I am no longer a Democrat.  I am a Pirate.  I’ve come out.  Within the constraints placed upon me by the circumstances of my wonderful life, I will do all I can to bolster the Washington Pirate Party.  

As such, I attended my first meeting today.  The Washington Pirate Party is in its infancy, so all eleven of us fit nicely into a cozy corner of the Olive Way Starbucks.  We discussed a bunch of things but I think the underlying theme was growing the Party into local relevance.  We have our work cut out for us.  It’s seldom easy to coordinate any group of people—let alone a group of independent thinkers with views more radical than those of their respective peers.  The underlying principles of The Party are so strong, however, that I think our success, measured in one way or another, is assured.

So here it is, my official call to anyone reading this:  join us.  The Washington Pirate Party needs you.  We need smart people with an activist nature and the expectation of an informed future.  And, even if you’re not ready for that, you can read up on the issues.  Learn what Net Neutrality is.  Find out the real reason why your laptop is being searched at the airport.  Understand why you can rip your CD but not your DVD.  There’s a lot of stink right under our noses and we can no longer afford to turn our heads away.