For the right price, inmates at the Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County Jail could have their drug of choice, says the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Court documents assert that heroin, Ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana, tobacco, and OxyContin have regularly found their way into the 16-story structure housing 2,400 inmates. Eight people have been arrested, including a former guard who turned himself in yesterday. The case shed light on an extensive smuggling network, involving dozens of people, including jail employees, pounds of drugs, and tens of thousands of dollars from 2001 to last year.
Friends of inmates sometimes would pay jail employees more than $1,000 to take packages of varying sizes into the jail. The guards would leave the packages in bathrooms, garbage bags or other locations for inmates, who would distribute drugs in the pods, or living areas. One inmate, identified in court documents only as “KK,” said a guard would use duct tape to secure packages to the toilet bowl in the bathroom of the jail’s law library. The guard once told “KK” that the money from smuggling drugs, as much as $500 per package, was enough to help buy a new truck. He described it as “the best job he ever had.”