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VAN ZANDT COUNTY \u2013 A former Van Zandt County detention officer was placed under arrest after it was discovered he was communicating with an inmate over the phone. According to the Van Zandt County Sheriff\u2019s Office and our news partner KETK, on March 16 it was discovered that Damion Smith was in possession of a cell phone while on duty and was using the phone to communicate with a female inmate, which is a violation of both departmental policy and state law.<\/p>\n
It was later discovered that Smith had initially been untruthful with investigators and had later recanted those statements before he was terminated from his position.<\/p>\n
Following the investigation, Smith was taken into custody from his home on Tuesday and was charged with contraband in a correctional facility and a false report to a peace officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis type of behavior will not be tolerated by our employees. When an employee criminally violates the law, the Van Zandt County Sheriff\u2019s Office will take appropriate action,\u201d Sheriff Bridger said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VAN ZANDT COUNTY \u2013 A former Van Zandt County detention officer was placed under arrest after it was discovered he was communicating with an inmate over the phone. According to the Van Zandt County Sheriff\u2019s Office and our news partner KETK, on March 16 it was discovered that Damion Smith was in possession of a … Continue reading Former detention officer arrested<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1493142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2026\/03\/2026-03-31_231629-201x200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1492940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 15:04:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2026\/03\/2026-03-31_231629-201x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1492940"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1493532,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492940\/revisions\/1493532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1493142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1492940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1492940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1492940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}