The Oklahoma Department of Corrections just made the largest contraband seizure in its history after raiding a warehouse full of drugs, cell phones and drones.
The warden spoke to News On 6 about the ongoing battle to keep contraband goods out of state prisons.
“Identifying, you know, suspicious behavior. Also involves the monitoring of our telephone systems. Our inmates now use tablet technology, so we have the ability to monitor phone systems and monitor electronic communications. Monitor our incoming and outgoing mail from the establishment. Additionally, we use k9s who are trained in drug detection and also cell phone detection… Conducting forensic analysis on our cell phones that we find,” said Scott Crow, Director of ODOC. “Sometimes we are able to get information or intelligence from these drops that lead or point us in certain directions to be able to identify the people responsible for bringing contraband into our facilities.”
The DOC said its latest raid recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in contraband and it expects several people to be charged in the case.
It includes 30 pounds of marijuana, 2.2 pounds of methamphetamine, 2,400 cannabis pills, cannabis edibles, 35 pounds of tobacco, 31 cell phones and two drones.
The Office of Inspector General’s Criminal Interdiction Division recovered it all from a storage unit in northwest Oklahoma City earlier this month.
They also found cellphone chargers, lighters and grabs, as well as $8,500 in counterfeit cash, as well as firearms and ammunition.
“It’s a lot, a lot of money. If you look at a cell phone, a contraband cell phone that is brought into an establishment based on supply and demand, a $19 cell phone can cost in jail from $700,” Crow said.
It has become popular for people to drop drugs and phones into prison yards by drone, but there are other ways as well.
“Contraband drops that happen through drones. There are contraband drops that occur during deliveries to our facilities. Of course, we have visitors at our facilities and we are often very sensitive to visitors who enter our facilities because they place contraband on their bodies or in devices or things that they bring into our facilities. And in some cases we have personnel who have been convicted of bringing contraband into our facilities,” Crow said. “All of our facilities are equipped with X-ray technology, metal detectors. We have portable devices called deep tissue metal detectors in case individuals try to hide contraband in certain locations. We use devices called Cellsense towers which are actually really focused on cell phone identification, which is absolutely one of our biggest sources of smuggling because of what it facilitates or allows people to facilitate.
Crow said keeping contraband out of prisons has long been a problem, but has gotten worse in recent years.
“Our best efforts for many days are always behind because smuggling into prisons not just in Oklahoma but across the United States is big business. It is organized crime in many ways. Often it’s related to gang activity,” Crow said. “A lot of times people think of a prison, and they think of a closed facility, fenced in with razor wire and all those things. And a lot of our facilities look like something similar to a college campus, where they’re open .
He told us that partnerships with other agencies are crucial and that advice from the public is a big help.
“It requires a focused effort across a variety of platforms,” Crow said.
The DOC also recently confiscated 2,500 fentanyl pills this month that it says are deadly and often linked to overdoses.
“It most likely saved a lot of lives because the number of pills we received, usually that pill would actually be cut and maybe used to create or produce other drugs,” Crow said.
Crow said punishment often means nothing to those who get caught.
“The problem with that is that if you’re a person who’s already serving 50 or 60 years, it’s not really a deterrent because you realize you’re already going to spend most of your life in prison,” Crow said.
So far this year, the DOC said it has confiscated more than 4,000 cell phones in or around prisons.
They said cellphones in prisons have been used to carry out drug trafficking operations outside and even to direct assaults and murders.
Click here for more information.