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Jessmaine County jailer cracking down on contraband

March 15, 2011|By Mike Moore | mmoore@jessaminejournal.com

Photo by Mike Moore

Just over three months into his term as Jessamine County jailer, Jon Sallee has started to implement plans in an effort to wipe out drugs at the detention center.

“We all knew during the election that contraband was an issue — drugs in the jail and things of that nature,” Sallee said. “The first thing I did was take all the work-release inmates and weekend inmates and moved them to the RCC (restricted-custody center) building, which is located next door.”

Sallee said typically, contraband items are brought into the jail through those types of inmates.

“They are prone to bring more contraband into the facility because they’re in and out more on a daily basis,” he said.

Now, when an inmate returns to jail, he or she is subject to a search.

“We’ve done a couple searches over there, and we’re just finding tobacco; that’s the biggest problem over there,” Sallee said.

In addition to cracking down on work-release and weekend inmates, Sallee has enlisted the assistance of the Nicholasville Police Department’s drug dogs to perform searches.

“They’ll bring their dog and they’ll do their search, and after that, the (jail) deputies still do a physical search of the cell,” he said. “In doing cell searches, what we’ve found and what we’ve charged inmates with so far has been prescription drugs. We’ve had two incidents where we’ve found narcotics, and we’ve charged those inmates with felonies.”

Sending a message

The message is simple for Sallee: Contraband of any kind will not be tolerated at the detention center.

“It’s not going to be tolerated anymore,” he said. “I’m wanting to send the message that this isn’t the old jail; there’s a new administration, and it’s not going to be tolerated.”

Besides illegal drugs, contraband also includes tobacco product and lighters.

In just over three months, Sallee said there has been a noticeable difference.

“I can tell a big difference here,” he said. “From the time I got here until now, with the cell searches, you’re just not finding anything.”

Sallee said the searches are random and he doesn’t have a weekly search quota.

“It depends on how busy we are,” he said. “And with the dogs, it depends on the NPD schedule.”

Sallee said he informed the NPD that any time they want to run their dogs for training purposes, the detention center is available.

“They can run them around the fence next to the RCC building or anywhere there is a lot of traffic in and out of the jail,” he said.

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