Over the last few months, people within the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office have reached out and spoken off the record, claiming that the conditions at the Charles Webster Detention Facility are far worse than anyone can imagine.
Seasoned street cops are being forced to fill-in at the jail and some of them are quietly saying they do not feel safe entering the building.
Chief Deputy Patrick Clayton has been quoted by Greg Rickabaugh, publisher of the Jail Report, as saying that the building is falling apart and inmates are using broken parts of the building to fashion weapons, or shanks, and he blames it all on a lack of funding.
In February, Sheriff Richard Roundtree, in a rare appearance before the Augusta Commission, pleaded for extra funding for what he termed a crisis.
“We are in an emergency situation,” Roundtree told the commission.
According to Roundtree, equipment in both the jail’s kitchen and laundry is old and outdated. The jail personnel can no longer wash clothing and linens, and inmates are having to eat off of Styrofoam plates.
My sources tell me that locks throughout the building are not operational, and neither are an alarming number of cameras. Inmates are constantly caught with contraband, from cell phones to “jail hooch,” and even the guards have been caught supplying the banned articles. I am told that mold has set in on some parts of the building.
Yes, you read that right, the building reportedly has mold, which was the very reason the old jail at 401 Walton Way had to be demolished recently.
Thinking that perhaps this might be a trend, I called Rep. Jodi Lott and asked her if this was a problem throughout Georgia. Lott’s reaction was that while she had heard of problems in Richmond County, being as she is the representative for Columbia County, she was much more familiar with the Columbia County jail and that no one had complained to her about the conditions at that facility.
“Why don’t you ask for a tour of both of the jails. I’m sure they would let you come in and see the facilities, that’s what I would do,” Lott said.
I took her advice.
To get access to the Richmond County jail, I called Clayton, and he referred me to Colonel Calvin Chew. I left two detailed messages for Chew. In the second message, I informed Chew that Mayor Garnett Johnson wanted to join in on the tour, and I never received the courtesy of a return call.
Chew, like the sheriff has over the past nearly three years, ignored me.
When I reached out to Clayton again, I received this text: “The colonel is over the jail, so it will have to come from the colonel or the sheriff.”
I’m glad I didn’t hold my breath waiting. If they won’t respond to a request to allow the mayor in the building, they certainly aren’t going to allow me in.
In contrast, I called Major Steve Morris and requested to tour the Columbia County Detention Center.
“When do you want to come out here?” Morris responded.
Now, please understand that I am not mixing apples and oranges, as the Columbia County facility is about one-third the size of the Webster facility; however, a jail is a jail. All of them look virtually the same, but I discovered that not all of them are operated in the same manner.
While the Columbia County Detention Center is smaller, roughly 50% of the inmates at any given time are not from Columbia County, and I could tell from the tattoos that the inmate population is not made up of Boy and Girl Scouts.
The first thing that one notices in the jail is the silence. Unlike what you see on television, the Columbia County facility has a quiet and calm atmosphere.
The floors are so shiny that you can almost see your reflection. I paid particular attention to the corners and door jambs, as that is where floor scum build-up occurs, and those areas were clean and shiny as well.
It is hardly possible to tell the difference between the older and newer areas of the building. Each of the jail pods has two sets of locked doors, and hallways also have locked access points as you move from one area to another. I know that all of the locks work, because we passed through each of them.
I verified that all but two cameras in the facility were operational, and my guides, Captain John Sherman and Major Butch Askew, explained that both of those cameras were in the outer perimeters of the parking lot and positioned high up on poles. Sherman said they were waiting on a county bucket truck, and that the broken cameras should be operational within 24 hours.
Redundancy is key, says Sherman and Askew, the facility has back-ups for the back-up systems and replacement equipment is stored on site.
“We have an around the clock maintenance team. When a light bulb blows out, it is replaced immediately. The sheriff (Clay Whittle) doesn’t allow even the smallest maintenance issue to go unfixed,” Sherman said.
While the cameras throughout the building are manned 24-hours a day and night, they are the second line of defense. Each jail pod has an officer inside the pod watching the inmates with the naked eye.
Having a human guard stationed on each cell block means that the inmates can’t fiddle around with and disable the locks, they can’t find materials to make shanks and they do not have the ability to ferment alcohol in their cells.
I noticed that some of the inmates wore different uniforms and was told they are “trustees,” inmates who have earned the privilege to work in the facility rather than sit in a cell all day.
Whittle also allows inmates to have a cigarette out in the recreation yard, and that, too, is a privilege that is earned.
While the dishwashing equipment in the Webster facility has been broken for months, the kitchen at the Columbia County facility looks like what you would expect to find on a U.S. aircraft carrier.
Everything, from the floors to the steel equipment, is polished to a sheen. While the kitchen pumps out over 1,000 meals a day, it is maintained to the level unseen in most restaurants. It has a health department score of 100%.
I also found out the county employees can come by and enjoy a meal when they want, and that the kitchen also cooks for the county’s Meals on Wheels program. While the seniors do not necessarily get the same meals as the inmates, what I saw tells me that the quality of the food prepared is far beyond processed chicken tenders and tater tots.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two jails is that Whittle’s office and that of his administrative staff are inside the jail itself; in contrast, Roundtree and his administration are miles away from the Webster facility and sources say that Roundtree is rarely if ever seen inside the jail.
However, while Roundtree is certainly responsible for the hideous condition of the jail, this is more of a systemic problem in Augusta. The commission has declined to place the jail on SPLOST to keep it maintained and District One Commissioner Jordan Johnson has declared publicly that he will not vote to build more jail pods for the persistently overcrowded facility.
The sheriff is not the only one to allow a building in his care to go to seed. The Parks and Recreation Department has let multiple buildings, such as the Boathouse at the Marina to suffer neglect and the Fire Department has chronically neglected the historic Fire Station Number 7 on Central Avenue.
While it is sad that the Boathouse is going to have to be demolished, the fact that the cameras and locks are broken at the moldy detention center is a matter of public safety that must be addressed.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
