Sheriff, Moore PD question jail site location

A proposal to locate a new county jail in Lexington is drawing questions from two area law enforcement officials: Cleveland County Sheriff DeWayne Beggs and Moore Police Department spokesman Todd Strickland.

Both Beggs and Strickland said they had “serious concerns” about a new jail facility being located in Lexington.

“I would like to have it (the jail) as close to the courthouse as I can get it,” Beggs said Tuesday.

The issue, he said, is safety.

“When inmates are removed from the security of a jail facility, you’re raising the risk of something happening,” he said. “It’s dangerous to the ones transporting them. It’s dangerous if somebody wants to hand an inmate something in a hallway, or if an inmate wants to try and escape.”

Strickland agreed, saying the increased travel time between Lexington and Moore would keep Moore officers away from other duties. “If you had to go to Lexington, it would take close to an hour and a half and would keep officers off the streets and unable to respond here,” he said.

In late July, Cleveland County Commission chairman George Skinner met with several representatives from the state Department of Corrections to discuss the possibility of locating a jail at Lexington.

The site — a 240-acre plot of land near the Lexington Assessment and Reception Center — is popular, some officials say, because the land could be leased from the state for as little as $1 per year.

In addition, a jail in Lexington would be located next to other correctional facilities in the area, and allow the Department of Corrections to lease “close to 100 beds a day” in the new facility.

That lease could amount to more than $3,200 per day for county officials.

However, for Beggs and Strickland, financial issues take a back seat to concerns about safety and the transportation of prisoners.

“It would create a lot more problems for us here in Moore,” Strickland said. “We’d have to really research it. It would be a lot more work.”

Work that Beggs worries could be unsafe.

“I would rather have the jail close to the courthouse,” he said. “It becomes a nightmare the further you get away. ”

And while Beggs will acknowledge that technology can solve some problems through the use of video arraignments, “you’ll still need to bring the inmates to the courthouse for a trial,” he said. “And then after the trial you have to transport them back.”

With pressure building on county officials to chose a jail site, commissioners have been scrambling to find a location that is both close to the courthouse and appeals to merchants and homeowners.

Earlier this year, Skinner confirmed commissioners were considering several sites for a new jail facility — including an expansion of the current downtown jail, the Lexington site, and a 30-acre plot of land along Franklin Road.

The Franklin Road site — near the Moore Norman Technology Center — drew the ire of several area residents and spawned two different legislative attempts to derail the project.

Despite those complaints, county officials voted 2-1 this spring to purchase the land for $1.2 million and finalized the purchase a few months ago.

Since then the land — still owned by the county — has remained undeveloped.

In late July, Skinner confirmed the commission was considering a site in Lexington. “Lexington’s a possibility,” he said. “But I don’t know all the details about the land. I really don’t want to talk about it (the jail’s location) until we’ve picked a site.”

To make that decision, Skinner said the three-member commission, Beggs and other county officials would attend a conference in Denver, Colo., sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Prisons next week.

Once they have returned from that conference, he said, they will have a “pretty good idea” where the jail should be located.

“Basically, the conference will give them information on how to run a jail,” Beggs said. “It will give them a better idea of what we’re dealing with. I hope we’ll know something then, but then the decision isn’t in my hands.”