SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — It's a new plan from the San Diego Sheriff’s Department to try and keep drugs and weapons out of our jails and no one is immune from this tighter screening - even the deputies who work there will have to go through it.
“Fentanyl on the street sells for about $1.50 a pill. In the jail, it's about $150 - so there's a lot of incentive to traffic drugs, narcotics in our facilities,” Sheriff Kelly Martinez said.
In 2023, the department confiscated more than 1,350 grams of fentanyl, methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and pills along with 48 weapons. Already this year, they're confiscated more than 500 grams of drugs and 16 weapons.
Inmates are searched and go through body scanners.
“We haven't found it in a long time, but we even found a gun at one time that someone inserted into their rectum,” Sheriff Martinez said.
Despite thoroughly screening inmates, others have been able to walk into our jails without being searched, including deputies, contractors, and medical staff. But now check-points will randomly be set up at the county's jails and everyone one will have to go through them.
“So it will be a screening similar to the TSA or sporting event with the addition of a drug detection canine which will sniff every person coming into the facility and those have been really effective at identifying narcotics,” Martinez said.
This change comes just a few months after former Sheriff's deputy, Allen Wereski, pleaded guilty to bringing drugs on jail property. CBS 8 asked the Sheriff why this type of screening is just happening now.
“There's a lot more to it than I think the public generally knows,” she said. “I have 7 jails with a lot of entry points.”
So the bottom line is money, which is why the screening at jails will rotate between facilities and be random instead of at all jails 24 hours a day.
“We've been super short staffed and operationally, I need all the staff I have to do the work of the jails, so adding staff to this is a big thing,” Sheriff Martinez said, adding that she doesn't have budget to permanently staff these extra positions, but is hoping to get more funding from county supervisors to make that happen.
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