County receives bids for upgrade of jail cameras

The system that records the movement of inmates and guards at the Cape Girardeau County Jail will get a planned upgrade that was made more urgent by Monday's episode involving male prisoners slipping undetected into a women's cell block.

Seven companies on Thursday submitted bids to the county, ranging from $17,855 to $45,907 to provide digital equipment that will keep far more extensive recordings of the images picked up by security cameras in the jail. The bids were solicited prior to Monday's security breach involving federal detainees held at the jail. The bids will be evaluated quickly, Sheriff John Jordan said, but he gave no time frame for finishing the installation.

The system in place now only records snapshots every three seconds from many of the jail's cameras, Jordan said. When he reviewed the tapes from Monday morning, he said, the cameras had picked up a dark image crawling across the floor.

"It is not a live stream of video being recorded," Jordan said. With a new system, he said, "we would see a live stream sequence of events being recorded. When we put this in six years ago, it was state of the art."

In Monday's incident, two male prisoners were in the female cell block for four hours. In previous statements, Jordan has said one of the male inmates sneaked into the women's area to visit his girlfriend, who is also being held on federal charges.

As a result, the U.S. Marshals Service has removed 19 of the 29 federal prisoners who were in the jail. The removal is costing the county about $1,000 a day in lost boarding fees. Jordan said he will report to the U.S. Marshals Service next week on his progress in beefing up security. The restrictions on the number of federal inmates should only last one to two months, he said.

To move from one cell block to another, the prisoners had help from other inmates. The cell blocks, or pods, all open onto a central area where a jailer is in an enclosed booth. A shelf running the length of the inside of the booth creates enough space that it is difficult to see the floor outside, especially when the jailer is seated, Jordan said.

The area immediately outside the booth was also dimly lit on purpose to make it easier to see into the well-lit interior of the cell blocks. The lights have been turned up, Jordan said, and jailers are no longer allowed to remain seated when an inmate approaches the booth for personal hygiene items they are restricted from having in their cells, such as razors.

"It doesn't take too much to cause a distraction," Jordan said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126