The Oklahoma Department of Corrections just made the largest contraband seizure in its history after raiding a warehouse filled with drugs, cell phones and drones.
The director spoke to News On 6 about the ongoing battle to keep contraband goods out of state prisons.
“Identifying, you know, behaviors that are suspicious. It also involves monitoring our phone systems. Our inmates now use tablet technology, so we actually have the ability to monitor phone systems and electronic communication. Monitor our mail going in and out of the facility. Also, we use k9s who are trained in drug detection and also cell phone detection… We do forensic analysis on our cell phones that we discover,” said Scott Crow, ODOC Director. “Sometimes we can get information or intelligence through those droplets that actually guide us or point us in certain directions so we can identify the people responsible for bringing contraband into our facilities.”
The DOC said its most recent raid resulted in the recovery of hundreds of thousands of dollars in contraband and they expect multiple 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 all of this from a storage unit in northwest Oklahoma City earlier this month.
They also found cell phone chargers, lighters and hooks plus $8,500 in counterfeit cash along with guns and ammunition.
“It’s a lot, a lot of money. If you look at a cell phone, a smuggled cell phone coming into a facility based on supply and demand, a $19 cell phone can range in prison from $700,” Crow said.
It has become popular for people to drop drugs and phones in prison yards with drones, but there are other ways too.
“Smuggling releases that occur through drones. There are contraband drops that occur through deliveries to our facilities. Of course, we have visitors to our facilities and many times we are very vigilant about 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 certain cases, we have staff who have been convicted of bringing contraband into our facilities,” Crow said. “All our facilities have x-ray technology, metal detectors. We have some portable devices that are known as deep tissue metal detectors in case people are trying to hide contraband in certain places. We use devices called cellense towers that are actually really focused on identifying cell phones, which is absolutely one of our biggest sources of contraband because of what it facilitates or allows people to facilitate.”
Crow said keeping contraband out of prisons has been a problem for a long time, but it’s gotten worse in recent years.
“Our best efforts in many days are still behind schedule because prison smuggling not only in Oklahoma but throughout the United States is big business. It is organized crime in many ways. A lot of times 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, with barbed wire and all that stuff. And a lot of our facilities resemble a college campus, where they’re open.”
He told us that partnerships with other agencies are crucial and that advice from the public is helpful.
“It takes a concentrated effort across a variety of platforms,” Crow said.
The DOC also recently seized 2,500 fentanyl pills this month that it said are deadly and often related to overdose.
“It most likely saved a lot of lives because of the number of tablets we receive, typically that tablet would be cut up and maybe used to create or produce other drugs,” Crow said.
Crow said punishment often means nothing to those caught.
“The problem with that is if you’re an individual who’s already turning 50 or 60, that’s not a huge deterrent because you realize you’re going to spend most of your life in prison already,” Crow said.
So far this year, the DOC said it has seized more than 4,000 cell phones in or around prisons.
They said that cell phones in prisons have been used to conduct drug operations abroad and even direct assaults and murders.