Junk food casualty: Jail locks down for 8 days
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During the recent 8-day lock down, inmates at the local jail were not allowed to move around as they are in this picture with the head of the jail, Colonel Ron Matthews.PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO
A trusty looking for a snack from a vending machine in the lobby of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail led to the facility being locked down for a week.
Metal rods were discovered missing from the vending machine in the lobby January 6 in an area only available to jail employees and trusties, says the jail’s superintendent, Colonel Ron Matthews.
“To be on the safe side, we closed down the jail and did a 100 percent search,” he says. The missing 16- to 18-inch rods did not turn up, and the individual suspected of having access to the machine denied having a snack attack.
“We stopped all inmate movement,” Matthews explains. “We were looking for something that could potentially injure someone.” That meant for approximately 530 inmates, recreation and visitation came to a halt.
When a search did not turn up the vending rods and a week had passed, Matthews tried a new strategy. “We offered him immunity,” he says. The trusty ‘fessed up that when he tilted the vending machine to get candy, the rods came out. He said he threw them in the trash and they were taken out with the regular trash.
On January 13, the lock down ended.
As for the inmate responsible for his fellow prisoners being locked down for a week— how safe is he?
“He won’t go back to the general population,” says Matthews. And he has the option of going to another facility.
The jail superintendent says this is the second lock down he’s had since coming here in 2004, and observes, “That’s part of corrections life.”
Updated January 17 with the more common spelling of “trusty.”
Only 2 lock downs in 7 years?
That’s a scary thought in itself.
lemme guess, he was trying to get pork rinds
Still on Atkins
So, the inmate said that he threw the rods away. Right. And the inmate has absolutely NO reason to lie….
Getting a snack from a vending machine… the inmate shook the vending machine & metal rods came out instead of candy….what type/brand vending machine was it?
What are they doing having vending machines available to inmates in a prison?
Vending machies do not usually having metal rods to dispense.
“Trustee”? Is that what they’re calling prisoners nowadays?
I believe that the term is actually “trusty” - you know, a prisoner that the administrators trust:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusty_system
Perhaps the prisoner population should actually take care of its own……let’s see how the rehab has been working.
Just another thought- What kind of snacks are available? Are they in line with Michele Obama’s weight loss directives?
If I am not mistaken, the correct spelling and use of the word trustee in this article should be Trusty
Noun 1. trusty - a convict who is considered trustworthy and granted special privileges