Oklahoma
County Sheriff John Whetsel has a
Solution to
the Jail Problem:
Let it Blow
up and Get Lots of Prisoners and Officers Killed
to Force a
Federal Takeover
Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel was in the news again a few weeks back
after Oklahoma City Police publically complained about security risks caused by
allowing up to 100 prisoners to roam around the jail.
Fox 25 ran a story after Oklahoma City Police complained about the security risks and the massive increase in booking time for new prisoners. Long waits are now the norm for incoming arrests with some spending days sitting in the holding cells that are designed
for several hour stays. The prisoners
were not handcuffed and were roaming around freely according to police
officers. Sheriff Department spokesmen
claimed it was an antiquated air conditioning system that was so old that parts
had to be custom made. Which of course
is an outrageous lie; all air conditioning systems use the same sort of parts
that are freely available from a variety of sources. Claims were made that two of the three
elevator systems were broken, again something that is easily fixed by the
company that installed the elevators and it is mandatory that elevators be
regularly inspected and maintained according to the building codes. The reality is that Whetsel has long ago
siphoned off maintenance funds into building his empire and having deputies
troll the interstates for property seizures.
The security risk is immense when armed officers bring in new arrests and
have to complete the paperwork, focusing on that and not their personal
security or if an inmate might be sidling up to attack, to take one of them
hostage with a smuggled in knife or improvised weapon.
Whetsel has had his staff blame the influx on new police officers being
untrained in booking and in making too many arrests, something that Oklahoma
City Police is quick to deny. In fact
there has been numerous meetings between the Sheriff Department and the Police
Department but Whetsel refuses to address the issues, preferring to blame the
jail itself for being in disarray. It is
a poor craftsman that blames his tools goes one old saying.
But the real story behind the current crisis is simply that Oklahoma County
Sheriff John Whetsel is building a pressure cooker bomb that is little
different than the Boston Bombers used.
Whetsel wants a new third billion dollar jail and he knows that the
public won’t support the tax to fund it so his solution is to explode the jail
and force the feds to take over and order a new jail built.
Whetsel is orchestrating all of this by packing the jail full of inmates
like cattle cars headed to Auschwitz.
It wasn’t that long ago that County Commissioner Brian Maughan first
spoke out against funding a new jail and then flip flopped to supporting the
new jail, allegedly because Whetsel promised to support Maughan’s Shine
Program. Then, as the story goes,
Whetsel spoke out against the Shine program which would have diverted people
from being in jail and Whetsel needs more bodies to stoke the boiler so it will
explode.
That set up a power struggle between the county commissioners and
Whetsel. Maughan then starts helping to
get the word out to embarrass Whetsel over the jail overcrowding and why the
jail is suddenly packed past capacity.
There are other players involved, you have Ravitz who is the Oklahoma
County Public Defender, pushing the pre trial release program along with
Maughan. They recently asked for a 2.2
million dollar budget, and increase from the current 1.6 million budget but it
was denied. Ravitz and Maughan wanted to
implement a program called the Ohio Risk Assessment System, a liberal soft on
crime program that supposedly can predict which arrests will re offend by
asking seven questions by a shrink. The
program supposedly has only a 23% success rate yet the program is being sold as
the cure all for jail and prison overcrowding.
And there are other issues leading to the overcrowding at the County
Jail. Whetsel gets a budget of around 50
to 60 million dollars for running the jail but he doesn’t spend that money
running the jail; he uses the money for his patrol programs such as K-9
program, Reserve Deputy program, Tactical Unit program, school resource programs,
or drug interdiction programs out on the Interstate Highways.
To meet the financial needs of running the jail Whetsel brings in state
prisoners. Around 191 state inmates are
currently being held on a long term program that pays Whetsel around $35.00 per
day including medical care, which is not being paid so Whetsel is being sued. Some of these prisoners are in protective
custody meaning more money is spent keeping them away from the general
population. Then there is the DOC pre
reception center that is booking a bus load of prisoners every day and that
center is being hosted by Whetsel according to one of our sources and those
prisoners provide a daily fee of $35.00 each.
In all it is alleged that up to 400 state prisoners are held at any one
time, providing Whetsel with an off budget slush fund of nearly a half million
dollars per month.
Now these state prisoners have to be kept according to state standards. So cells that can hold four men are emptied
out and two state prisoners are put in their place. Recreational hours are mandated, certain
amounts of medical care, all of which skyrockets Whetsel’s budget. But the
Oklahoma County taxpayer pays for all of this, not the DOC. And who are these convicts? Robbers, rapists, child molesters, desperate
men some with histories of escape attempts.
And when one of those buses roll in everything else stops while the
paying customers are taken care of.
Last year Whetsel was in the news begging for more money saying he had 50
vacant staff positions he couldn’t fill and moaning about the state taking
prisoners from his jail. Part of his
problem is that the jail staff is top heavy with supervisors, cronies that are
making around $8,000 per month as opposed to the Detention Officers making one
fourth that amount. Can’t fire the loyalcronies
that are sitting on their butts doing paperwork or cruising Ashley Madison.com
all day can we?
Overseeing all of this is a lowly Detention Officer that has two weeks of “training”
consisting of meetings in the hallways or side rooms of the jails, with
accreditation supervisors hand feeding them the test question answer so that
more of them pass the accreditation. No
classroom setting, no real honestly graded tests, and after which these high
school aged recruits are put in charge of murderers and rapists. Some are gang members wanting to funnel drugs
into the jail.
At any given time there will be around 100 arrests either in holding
cells, roaming around loose or
handcuffed to the wall. Around 200
people per day are being booked including the DOC paying customers. And
there is no nice way to put this; prisoners
handcuffed to the rails piss and shit in their pants as there are not enough
staff present to escort them to a rest room.
Other prisoners that have been there for days are not released on bond because
they have to be booked before a bondsman can release them. Other city arrests are not booked because
the jail staff knows that the city will release most of them without bond to
ease overcrowding. Why do the paperwork
if the city cops are going to just let them out anyway is the thought.
At any given time in the receiving area there are 100 criminals and about a
fifth of that many good guys if you
include medical staff, jail staff, and cops bringing in arrests. Outnumbered five to one is not a safe
situation. One day a city cop working
the city desk was chased by a jail lieutenant for filming a fellow officer
being cat called and grouped by inmates as she was trying to book another arrest. The jail supervisor threatened
to beat up the cop and arrest the cop for taking the cell phone video of the
female cop being sexually harassed and the story states that a stream of
Oklahoma City cops and Oklahoma County Deputies were headed toward the jail for
a confrontation over the situation.
Oklahoma County D.A. David Prater and his 2nd in command Scot
Rowland were brought in to mediate a resolution of the crisis. Nothing worked of course so the Oklahoma
City Police rightfully complained to the media.
Right now the population is around 2900 inmates. Sending the DOC clients back to the state and
promptly processing incoming arrests would send around 1200 inmates out of
the jail, leaving plenty of room in the jail and plenty of staff if Whetsel
would go back to fulfilling his primary responsibility of running the county
jail. Besides the jail, under Oklahoma
statutes the sheriff is responsible for courthouse security, training deputies and detention officers
working the jail, transporting prisoners to court, medical facilities, to the
DOC once they have been convicted, and to handle extraditions. The sheriff also handles civil processes like
warrants, subpoenas, evictions, and seizures of property but these are all self
funded through fees. He is required to inspect
all county buildings once per year and make a report to the county
commissioners and to dispose of abandoned livestock. In Oklahoma County any need to patrol the
unincorporated areas of the county is quite small as municipal police
departments and the state police cover 95% of the county.
Whetsel is a man on a mission and if it takes a few detention officer
deaths, a few police officer deaths, or many inmate deaths to get his new jail
he is not going to be deterred. Whetsel
will continue to choke the jail until it
blows and as usually refuse to accept any responsibilities and throw a few
subordinates under the bus if needed.
