Mineral County jail closed due to staffing issues

By KATHLEEN WOODFORD

Mineral Independent

The Mineral County jail has been closed due to insufficient staffing, with inmates being transferred to other facilities or released.

Only two jailers remain on staff after two quit and one was recently fired by Sheriff Tom Bauer.

“It’s impossible to operate a 24-hour jail with just two jailers,” said Mineral County Attorney Ellen Donohue at a Friday meeting with the county commissioners. She asked commissioners for permission to start transferring inmates to other facilities and releasing those who do not pose a public threat.

The two detention officers who quit were at the Oct. 27 meeting to discuss their recent departure. Mick Casper, who has worked with the department for the last few years quit his job the night before. “Last night I walked out,” he said, “and it wasn’t because of the low pay, but due to poor management.”

The department scrambled to find someone to work the rest of Casper’s shift and brought in a deputy at 4 a.m.

“I understand if you have issues with the policies and you wait until the shift is over, but to walk out on a shift, we can’t have that,” Donohue said during the meeting.

Casper agreed with Donohue and said he knew what he was doing and knew it would be the end of his career at the department. His discontent, he said, stemmed from a recent directive given by Sheriff Sgt. A.J. Allard who has been with the department for about three years.

“Mr. Allard has decided to change policy, which I have no problem with, but he is causing trouble with the handling of dispatch and detention officers,” Casper said. “He has it set up where we have a female inmate and detention is to go and man the dispatch radio and dispatch is to come out and dress the female inmate out. I am not trained to do the radio phones, and she (dispatch) is not trained to handle the inmates. Both are unethical and are border line against the law and I don’t want to do that.”

Allard said he was following orders from Bauer, and Coleman asked if those policies were in writing. Neither Undersheriff Mike Boone nor Allard, who were both at the meeting, had seen written policies. Bauer was out of town and unable to attend the meeting.

Mathew Coleman, the other detention officer who turned in his resignation a few weeks ago had worked there for six months. He also complained about “micro-management” and low pay,

“I had a lot of passion for the job and I enjoyed the job and what it stands for, but there’s a lot of micro-management that’s not needed as well as sudden policy changes and new rules that get put into place with the flick of a wrist and never written down or brought to anyone else’s attention. When I’ve been in other jobs when they changed policy they would have had it written out and they have every employee sign it and that’s a good policy.”

Casper also cited a policy change where they were told that they could no longer wear badges while on duty because it could be used as a weapon by inmates. They were also told that they had to wear street clothes to work and change once they arrived at the jail.

“There’s no locker room area there for us to even change in. We can’t even keep pens in our pockets because inmates might get them and use them for weapons. Yet the pods are full of pencils. What’s the difference between a pencil and a pen?”

Regardless, the department has been left depleted and has now reached a crisis mode. There were 15 inmates in the jail who needed to be dealt with immediately. Donohue said six or seven of them were the responsibility of the State Department of Corrections and would need to be sent back to them.

A couple were at the jail from Montana Highway Patrol arrests and the Patrol would be responsible for those inmates. The rest were either transferred to Sanders County jail, Missoula or wherever they could find space. Those who were non-violent offenders were released with conditions.

County Commissioner Roman Zylawy said the entire situation is unfortunate. Running the jail was the only revenue generating part of the department where other counties housed their overflow of inmates for around $70 a day. The Sheriff’s Office runs on a budget of about $989,000 and is short staffed.

“We might have to consider not hiring a deputy so we can pay the detention officers more. But what do we have the most need for?” Zylawy said.

Commissioners have been working to meet with union leaders to negotiate their salary but those meetings haven’t taken place yet. Everyone at the Friday meeting expressed hope that this was only a temporary closure of the jail. Another meeting has been scheduled for next week with the commissioners and Bauer to discuss future plans.

“Management is something you have to work on,” Zylawy said to Boone and Allard. “Pay is something we have to work on, but you have to help yourself [regarding management issues.] We don’t know what’s going on and you’re going to need to work on it.”