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What’s in your wallet, Joseph Ballet?

A Louisiana transplant in Alabama talks about why he carries a pistol permit in his wallet.

Joseph Ballet: My name is Joseph Ballet. I’m originally from Baton Rouge, La. We are here in Hoover, Ala. at Mark One Carwash, my place of business.

Inside my wallet is a few dollars. A Roly-Poly customer card — oooh! I got a free sandwich! Roly Poly is a sandwich shop down there in Mobile. I used to go to the University of South Alabama down there in Mobile a few months ago and I need to use this…

Got a library card, a pistol permit for my other job. I’m sort of like a corrections officer. I guard inmates in hospitals and any other type of contracts we can get. Carwashes, if we can get ’em; clubs. I was in security for not long, but I’m the assistant supervisor.

There was actually one instant where there was someone… They didn’t really attempt to escape, they just, you know, a little upset. It was an old man and no one’s supposed to know that the inmates are in the hospital, what hospital they’re in. Somehow, his wife found out where he was and she came in the hospital wanting to come inside the room, and we couldn’t let her in. And the old man, he had one of the officers in a headlock. So, I tased him. It was kind of a big deal. That’s why now we can’t carry Tasers inside the hospital room.

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