PHOENIX – The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has a new power in its fight to keep drugs and other contraband out of metro Phoenix jails: X-ray vison.
MCSO purchased 10 LineV X-ray body scanners to deploy at six detention facilities.
“These allow you to actually see inside areas of the body where we find individuals are smuggling drugs. We find this quite often,” Deputy Chief Mike Dawson said in a video posted online Tuesday.
The first scanners produced results shortly after going live Monday at MCSO’s main Intake, Transfer and Release center in Phoenix.
“Within 90 minutes, we were able to discover an inmate with suspected drugs inside their body cavity that we otherwise may not have found,” Dawson said.
Sheriff says X-ray body scanners boost jail safety
Sheriff Jerry Sheridan, who took office in January, said his administration is focused on keeping drugs out of jails and keeping inmates and staff safe.
“Some inmates have overdosed on some of those drugs, and so my focus was to stop the contraband from coming into the jail system in the first place,” Sheridan said in the video.
In February, 12 inmates overdosed at the Estrella Jail in Phoenix. One of the overdose patients died.
Sheridan added that anybody caught smuggling contraband by the scanners will be charged with a class 2 felony.
“We’re going to be there; we’re going to be watching,” he said.
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