The orange-clad inmate was about to leave the Erie County Holding Center visitation room when he dropped a small, white packet. With subtle footwork and a bare glance downward, he slid the drugs under a counter where visitation stalls meet.
Jail supervisors expected that a fellow inmate planned to tie his shoes in the same spot later that day to pick up the drugs, encased in a plastic soap wrapper.
Another Holding Center resident tried to trade fentanyl-laced powder with a fellow inmate for food. A female visitor transferred drugs into an inmate’s mouth through a French kiss. And officers at the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden pulled suspected, synthetic marijuana out of an incarcerated man’s prosthetic leg.
That’s just what was caught in the first two weeks of January – a short stretch in a long contraband war.
County jail administrators say they are experiencing an unprecedented rise in drug contraband inside the jails. While smuggling in illegal material is not new, the potential for deadly drugs like fentanyl to cause harm or death to jail residents has sheriff’s officials more concerned than ever.
Video from the Holding Center visitation room shows Juan Rodriguez dropping a small, white packet and pushing it into a corner with his feet on Jan. 3, 2024.
The Erie County jails have seen a 66% increase in the number of incidents of intercepted contraband, and a doubling of contraband arrests, from 2022 to 2023. Jail supervisors are certain that number will climb even further this year, based on what they’ve seen in the past few weeks.
They said other similar counties in New York, like Monroe and Suffolk, are also experiencing year-over-year growth in intercepted contraband.
“You could say, ‘Oh, they’re just trying to combat drugs – they’re a bunch of cops.’ It’s not that,” said Jeff Hartman, chief of operations for the Holding Center. “We’re looking at it as poison. It’s poisoning our…
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