WELD COUNTY, Colo. — The Weld County Sheriff’s Office arrested a woman they say was trying to sneak drugs into the jail through the mail.
The Sheriff’s Office says it’s a trend jails all across Colorado are seeing right now. They say paper is soaked in drugs, then it’s disguised as mail to the jails.
Capt. Matt Turner says in April, someone sent a piece of mail to an inmate at the Weld County Jail.
“My staff saw something weird, they saw a discoloration on the pages,” Turner said.
They investigated and found something they'd never seen.
“They found that it was actually narcotics that had been soaked into the paper,” Turner said.
Turner said paper has been soaked in meth, fentanyl, ketamine and other drugs, and sent to inmates in jails all over the state. He said people eat or suck on the paper to get high.
“The Weld County Sheriff's office takes this very seriously,” Turner said.
The person who the Sheriff's Office says sent the drug-soaked mail came to visit an inmate on Thursday. The Weld County Sheriff’s Office arrested her right in the lobby.
“This woman was charged with unlawful manufacturing and distribution, and also introduction of contraband in the second degree,” Turner said.
The Sheriff's Office says the inmate receiving the mail was scheduled to be transferred to the Department of Corrections (DOC) and planned on selling the drug-soaked papers while in DOC custody. He's now facing additional charges for having drugs and other items not allowed in the jail.
“So our next goal is what do we do next, what’s the next frontier in interacting with this problem, and I think that's technology,” Turner said. “We have a lot of different features that our community is aware of. We have a body scanner, we have K9s at our disposal, we do effective strip searches, effective searches, we do everything we can to stop this and it’s still getting passed us.”
As people get more creative, so do police.
“One of the things, the inmates will not have the original copy of the mail that comes in, but we are also going to look at other technologies that will help detect drugs in different ways that we don’t have the capability to do right now,” Turner said.
Turner says there are consequences for these actions.
“And, more importantly, we don't interact with it and then just let it go. We're going to pursue people who do this,” Turner said. “Drugs in jails and prisons is nothing new. Over the last few years, we feel like it’s escalating and getting worse. That has to do with new and inventive ways people are finding to get into jails, so our job is trying to get new and inventive ways to stop them.”
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