{"id":306079,"date":"2014-07-01T14:41:51","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T19:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/?p=306079"},"modified":"2014-07-02T14:26:56","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T19:26:56","slug":"van-zandt-county-inmates-transferred-due-to-security-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=306079","title":{"rendered":"Van Zandt County Inmates Transferred due to Security Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"thumb_Van-Zandt-County-Sheriffs-Dept\"<\/a>CANTON — Authorities in Van Zandt County say they had to move all the county’s jail inmates to neighboring jails temporarily due to a security issue. According to a news release, the Van Zandt County Sheriff\u2019s Office Detention Staff observed Monday that its inmate population had discovered a method to compromise the high security locking systems within the facility. Officials say detention staff immediately contacted private contractors responsible for the design and installation of the locks. Following an inspection of the facility, it was determined that although the locks were functioning as designed, an engineering flaw existed with the mechanisms enabling a simple process to defeat the security of the lock. <\/p>\n

Officials say this issue affected confinement cells in high security sections of the facility as well as ingress and egress access to the building. State and county officials were immediately notified of the situation and the Sheriff\u2019s Emergency Action Plan was implemented, according to the news release. Because the separate, newer Minimum Security Confinement Facility was not equipped with the same locking systems, of the currently incarcerated 161 inmates, 90 were required to be transported to the Henderson County Jail and 35 to the Kaufman County Jail. The remaining female inmates were transported to the Upshur County Jail for the safety and security of the inmates and the jail staff, according to officials.<\/p>\n

Sheriff Michael Lindsey Ray stated, \u201cBecause of the vigilance of the Van Zandt County Detention Staff, a very serious situation was discovered and dealt with expeditiously and appropriately. Because there are many very dangerous inmates currently confined in our county jail, the alertness of jail staff most certainly prevented a very dangerous situation from becoming a potentially deadly situation.\u201d The company responsible for the locking systems is preparing replacement parts for shipping and it is expected to take ten days to two weeks for contractors to replace the internal components of the
\ndefective locks.<\/p>\n

The Van Zandt County Sheriff\u2019s Office currently spends approximately $20 per day to house each inmate in the 196-bed institution which was constructed in 1992. The cost to outsource an inmate, out of county, is $30 per day. Sheriff Ray stated, \u201cObviously we want to get this problem corrected as quickly as possible because of the high cost of outsourcing such a large portion of the inmate population. However, my number one priority is the safety and security of our community. We will begin returning the inmates to the jail as soon as we determine that the risk of escape has been mitigated.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sheriff Ray continued, \u201cI am truly grateful to Henderson County Sheriff Ray Nutt, Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes and Upshur County Sheriff Anthony Betterton for assisting my office on such short notice in proactively dealing with this very serious issue. It is so good to have sheriffs in our neighboring and nearby counties who are such good neighbors to our community in time of such urgent need.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CANTON — Authorities in Van Zandt County say they had to move all the county’s jail inmates to neighboring jails temporarily due to a security issue. According to a news release, the Van Zandt County Sheriff\u2019s Office Detention Staff observed Monday that its inmate population had discovered a method to compromise the high security locking … Continue reading Van Zandt County Inmates Transferred due to Security Issue<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-11 10:20:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306079","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306079"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306085,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306079\/revisions\/306085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}