Mindf*cked

When Josephine Hunter received an email requesting an interview at the Estrella County Jail in Phoenix, Arizona, she was hit with a series of thoughts and feelings. The first thing she felt was surprise. Then her mind circled round and round as far as how to respond, or if she even should respond at all. They wanted to do a televised interview on her case from nearly 18 years ago, along with others who had been in similar situations. That similar situation would range from those who had been in on trumped-up charges or totally innocent, as she had been. If you did the time but not the crime, then they were definitely interested in interviewing you. Based on the email she read, there were about half a dozen other cases like hers, all women, and they hoped to present their cases to for one of those ever-popular upcoming reality TV documentaries. She wasn't sure what it would accomplish other than to possibly bring enlightenment to the problem that existed where corrupt cops used the system to abuse and spite people for all kinds of different reasons. It was definitely a problem that wasn't addressed enough and that needed to be dealt with properly. Rogue cops were getting to be all too common. At first, she was tempted to ignore the email, not wanting to get involved and not wanting to rehash the past since it couldn't be undone anyway. But then she thought about it awhile and realized that no, it couldn't be undone, but maybe the future could be changed instead. For the better, of course. She wondered if any of the detention officers she'd encountered in the jail, most of whom were surprisingly friendly, would be present during the filming. She had a feeling they might be ,since they were involved, after all, in their own way. They may not have had anything to do with the cases themselves or the laws and sentences, but they dealt with the actual inmates and victims of legal abuse. Seeing some of the old officers might be worth it alone. She had been curious about some of them over the years, wondering how they were and what their lives were like nowadays. There was only one officer she had mixed emotions about and that would be Officer R. D. Johnson. Oh yes, Josephine definitely had conflicting feelings about that one. First, she would verify the authenticity of the email and then she would make contact via the contact info she'd been provided. Josephine was 34 years old when she was convicted of sending a threatening letter to her neighbors at the time. In reality, she had done no such thing. What she had done was share some journal excerpts she'd kept, documenting her experiences with these troublesome neighbors and her feelings about them. She felt that she couldn't keep everything bottled up inside without saying something to her problem neighbors about the shit they had dished out to her over a 4-year period without a care in the world as to how it may affect her. Yet she couldn't go over there and beat the crap out of a dozen people either. So in her mind, it was her way of speaking out in a manner that couldn't harm her. Or so she thought. To be blunt and to the point, they had been welfare bums, plain and simple. Lazy, drug-dealing welfare bums at the expense of her and her husband's hard-earned tax dollars. They sat around and raised hell three feet away from them, and she and her husband paid for it. Literally. Not just monetarily but ultimately it would be with Josephine's entire being. There had been two sets of neighbors. The first section 8 family was black and the second was Hispanic. Oh, it wasn't that she gave a shit about race or color. It was their behavior that mattered. They may have played the race card to their convenience and tried to make it about that, but in all honesty, it was about the constant screaming kids, the barking dogs, the strewn trash, the blasting music, vehicles coming and going at all hours, and the shouting and sometimes fighting adults. Life was one big party to them and it didn't matter two shits to them whether or not she got any sleep or could even hear herself think when she was awake. They were in their own little world and they were determined to stay there no matter what. She and her husband had sent a few letters of complaint to the city, which seemed to help to a degree, but not for long. Finally, after the second group of welfare bums had moved in, she and Burton had had enough and moved. They purchased and headed out to the country, nearly an hour away on a 10-acre parcel of land. That was when she sent her two cents to both groups of welfare bums via postal mail. When that was done, she was prepared to get on with her life. But as she would learn the hard way, they weren't about to let her. Oh, no. They were pissed off that she dared to speak her mind and were determined to "get her" any way they could, even if that meant having evidence falsified by their connections. To her utter shock, disgust, and horror, she was picked up by half a dozen law enforcement officials one morning while her husband was at work. All those people just to haul in one little person so they could ask questions that could have been asked by one person at her house. Then they left her stranded after the so-called interrogation was over. That was the police for you... They were happy to give you a ride when they wanted you, but when they were done with you, you were on your own. Josephine had to contact her sister-in-law to come fetch her. She was interviewed by a black detective from the Biased Crimes division. Unbeknownst to her at the time, he happened to be a friend of the black woman who had been her neighbor, and he had typed up a threatening letter, thrust it into her hands, and gotten her prints on it. She would never have thought in a million years that such a thing would happen. She just couldn't have known. It was the kind of thing that only happened in the movies or to other people. But then it was happening to her. For real. After the cop bullshitted her into believing that everything was peachy and done and over with from there on out and she was free to leave, she once again got on with her life. But six months later, a police officer came to her door wanting to question her about a family matter when a routine check was run on her and she was surprised to learn that a Failure to Appear warrant had been issued for her arrest. So the cop had lied to her. She should have known. Really, she should have totally figured that much. She felt like such a stupid, naïve idiot, not to mention angry as hell at the cop. She was tired of the dual standards. Citizens were expected to uphold the law, but cops could lie, speed, and pretty much break any law they wanted. She shouldn't have been surprised. After all, the police got away with murder all the time. So why should she think she would get away with pissing off her neighbors and their little pig pal? The reason she hadn't known she'd been summoned to court was that the courts had been unable to serve the subpoena due to her remote location. A warrant was still valid even if they couldn't physically serve it to the person. So since she hadn't gone to court a few months ago, she was then placed under arrest and brought to a jail in Florence, Arizona since she no longer lived in the county where the "crime" had been committed. This was in the evening. The following morning, her husband bailed her out. The cost of the bail was yet another stunner. Despite the hundreds of dollars and several hours that the frustrating ordeal had already cost her, Josephine was still confident that all this silly bullshit would blow over in no time at all and that nothing would come of it. After all, it was only words on paper that she hadn't even written. She wasn't a child molester. She wasn't a rapist. She wasn't a murderer. So then why make something out of nothing? Certainly, the world’s hard-core criminals took precedence over this petty bullshit, and the cops had better things to do than make mountains out of molehills and help her former pissed-off neighbors seek legal revenge against her, right?