Chelsea PD looking at holding cell

By Krystal J. Carman

June 10, 2009 — Small towns in Rogers County rely on the county jail to house its arrestees due to the lack of municipal jails.

With the county jail at near or over capacity on a daily basis, Chelsea is looking at adding its own holding facility at the police department.

“Chelsea’s small, but we have a lot of people being arrested,” Chelsea Police Chief Jeremy Housman said. “Having this would help us catch a lot of bad guys.”

Currently, the county jail will only accept an arrestee if they are to be booked on a felony charge. Walton said that is due to being over capacity on housing inmates.

“We hover right above 200 (inmates) which is our limit,” Sheriff Scott Walton said. “We’ve been having meetings with the judges to try and get some of the inmates out the door. Regardless of our efforts to keep the jail population down, we run at or over capacity a lot of the time. We have to go on felony status a lot of times.”

As of Tuesday morning, there were 206 inmates in the Rogers County Jail.

According to Housman, anyone arrested on a misdemeanor charge by the Chelsea Police Department is only held for a short time due to lack of a place to hold them.

“Right now, we can only sit with someone for 30 minutes at the most and let them use the PD phone and cell phones trying to get money to bail them out,” Housman said. “We have had to sit them with dispatchers for three hours trying to find somebody with bond money.

“The worst thing in the world as a police officer is to arrest a bad guy only for (the jail) to tell us they don’t want them. So we have to cut them loose. We don’t turn bad dogs loose after they bite somebody.”

Mayor Carl Carmack is in favor of adding a holding facility at the police department.

“It would be great to hold somebody instead of transporting them to county jail,” Carmack said. “With people who have outstanding town warrants, we could hold them and they’re going to try to post their bond and get out. It would mean more money for the town.

“But we haven’t been able to serve those warrants really because the jail won’t take the town’s violators.”

Carmack added that those violators with large fines associated with the warrants would be worth holding in order to collect the outstanding fines.

Currently, the city has $104,990 in outstanding municipal warrants. That number has fluctuated over the last couple of years and was down to around $85,000 in 2008 when violators were transported to the county jail.

“We collect some of the old warrants and then new ones come in,” Town Clerk Wanda Pelletier said. “This year we have collected some, but not many.”

Some board members and Town Administrator Kenny Weast are concerned about the cost associated with adding the holding facility.

“It may be more of an expense than a benefit,” Weast said at the town meeting Monday.

Housman is suggesting the department add a holding facility where arrestees could be held for eight to 10 hours in order to find bond money or pay warrants and fines.

The Claremore Police Department has a 12 hour holding facility with three cells that Chief Mickey Perry said has been beneficial to his department.

“If the jail is not taking any inmates, we can hold them and they can bond out,” Perry said. “A lot of times, if they’re are in there for quite a few hours, they’re going to find somebody to bond them out.”

At Claremore’s holding facility, arrestees are provided a meal or two, depending on what time they are brought in, and any medical conditions are also addressed.

“If we have someone in the cell, we will go buy something for them to eat,” Perry said. “And any medical issues that come up, they are taken to the hospital.”

The most common use for the Claremore holding cells is for interrogation, according to Perry. Juveniles are usually placed in a room outside the holding cells when held at the Claremore Police Department.

Chelsea’s trustees said they are willing to look at adding the holding cells, but would like more information regarding cost and what would be required to hold arrestees, such as providing certain facilities, food and medical needs and what kind of liability it would put on the town.

Housman informed the board some carpentry work would need to take place to add cells inside the building and that a nurse on call from a local medical facility could help with any medical issues that arise.

Walton said he has no problems with the small communities in the county adding holding facilities.

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