Lax security was a problem at Douglas County Jail for more than a year before an escape this month, a former jailer says, but complaints prompted no action.

“It was miserable,” the jailer told the Journal-World. “People were cutting corners, getting lazy and doing less.”

	Sheriff: Staff breakdown to blame for jailbreakSheriff reports first escapee from new jail

Sheriff Rick Trapp has said Vernon Folks escaped April 13 because jail staffers failed to follow procedures. But Trapp said Wednesday the breakdown was “an isolated set of circumstances” that won’t be repeated.

“There’s nothing to indicate any kind of widespread problems at the jail,” Trapp said. “I think it works well.”

Folks, 29, Eudora, is still at large. He was serving a six-month sentence on charges of battery and fleeing a police officer. Authorities say they have followed leads in and out of Douglas County to recapture him.

He left the jail April 13 through a remote-controlled door used to release inmates in a work-release program.

Folks was in work-release but wasn’t supposed to be in the area of the door at the time, Trapp said Folks lingered in the area longer than the normal time following his arrival in the jail on the day of the escape. Shortly before 8 a.m., as another inmate was getting ready to leave, Folks went out ahead of him.

The 196-bed jail opened in 1999 at a cost of $22 million

The former jailer, who now works at another northeast Kansas jail, spoke on condition of anonymity. He said he feared being the target of a lawsuit for discussing “sensitive or semi-sensitive” information.

‘Pep talks’ on problems

The jailer said he complained more than a year ago about security in the work-release section of the jail. That led to a series of monthly staff meetings between November 2000 and February 2001 to address the issue. Those meetings turned out to be pep talks, the jailer said; no action was taken to correct problems.

Those problems included:

A hit-or-miss approach to patting down inmates returning from work assignments. The jailer said that on one occasion, he found a pocketknife in the laundry of an inmate who had just returned from his work-release assignment. That knife should have been discovered during a pat down, the jailer said.

A similar approach to making inmates shower upon their return from work. Inmates are made to undress, give their clothes to their jailers and shower making it hard for them to sneak contraband into the jail. But the showers often were skipped, the jailer said.

Inmate lockers in the work-release area often were left unsecured, the jailer said, leaving open the possibility that inmates in the area could find keys, belts or other potential weapons they could take back into the jail.

“Inmates on the whole are fairly decent people,” the jailer said, “but they do try to get away with a lot of stuff.”

The jailer gave the Journal-World names of several former colleagues to corroborate his assertions. Only one of the former colleagues could be reached, and he declined to talk about his experiences at the jail.

No major difficulty

Trapp said he wasn’t familiar with any meetings about security in the work-release area, but noted he was just starting his term as sheriff about the time the meetings ended. He said he didn’t know of any concerns about the area before Folks’ escape.

“The jail’s a big operation,” Trapp said. “I’ve been pleased with the quality of the personnel, both the ones I’ve inherited (from former Sheriff Loren Anderson) and the ones we’ve hired.”

Anderson, who retired last year, said he wasn’t aware of any meetings or problems at the jail during his term.

“You know, if I was (aware) I’ve forgotten about it,” he said. “I don’t remember us having any major difficulty there at all.”

Trapp said an internal investigation into the escape was nearly complete, but that county policy didn’t allow him to discuss the investigation.

“I’m confident the problems are corrected and this won’t happen again,” he said.

Work release ins and outs

The former jailer said he didn’t know how the escape happened. He explained how the area works, however:

A work-release prisoner leaves the southeast side of the building through a set of two remote-controlled doors. The inner door is controlled by an officer in the work-release area; after that door is closed and locked, the officer then signals a colleague at the jail’s central command to remotely open the outer door.

“I do know that where the officer sits, his desk is in the middle of the module, in plain view of the doorway,” the jailer said. “It would be very difficult to obstruct that view.

“If he had any question of what was going on, he can go over and look out a window. There’s a window that looks into that room, so you can see about 95 percent of the interior of the room.”

Folks was being detained on a six-month misdemeanor sentence for fleeing and eluding police. Trapp said more dangerous prisoners would find it difficult to get out the same way Folks escaped. Maximum security inmates aren’t allowed into the work release area, and they are restricted by a series of monitored, electronically controlled doors from entering the area.

“It’s not a situation where someone can go from the maximum pod down to work release,” Trapp said.

The jailer said he and colleagues eventually gave up pressing their complaints about security.

“That’s not a good way to deal with the situation,” he said, “but we didn’t have any options left.”

But Trapp, while admitting the breakdown that allowed the escape, said overall security is good.

“The jail is a well-run operation and it was before I took over,” he said. “I’m disappointed this happened on my watch.”