Area jails’ crackdowns cut risk of makeshift weapons

Life in Central Florida jails has been a lot safer and more sober since rules prohibited inmates from kissing their wives and holding their babies.

Those “contact visit” reunions throughout the 1990s allowed drugs and contraband to pass almost unrestricted into the cellblocks.

In Orange County alone, loose security led to the heroin deaths of twojail inmates andanescape from the massive 33rd Street jail complex by inmates using a smuggled hacksaw and a handmade blanket.

The illegal flow of contraband virtually ended in 2003 when a two-year FBI sting of corrupt

jailers prompted embarrassed Orange County officials to require every visitor and jail employee to pass through metal detectors and submit to searches, records show.

“Wenolonger allow faceto-face visits,” said Orange County Corrections spokesman Allen Moore, explaining that inmates and their visitors converse in videoconferences. “We do frequent unannounced shakedowns of cells in various random locations inside the jail, which allows us to uncover and deter any contraband activity.”

It’s all part of stricter security that limits inmates’ personal items and access to anything — such as a common toothbrush — that could be turned into a weapon. Shaving razors, for instance, are collected and inspected after each use to make sure the blades are not missing.

“Inmates are so creative,” said Linda Wood, dean of the Institute of Public Safety at Broward College. “You’re taught what to look for — but there’s also new weapons coming all the time.”

Though most jails have outlawed items such as dental floss, which could be used to strangle people or create rope, and long-handled toothbrushes, the handles of which could be sharpened to make shanks, jailers say it’s vital to keep close watch on everything in the clink.

Because a doorjamb can be sharpened into a blade.

“No amount of specially made items or restrictions on personal items can replace the diligence of a trained correctional officer in spotting and preventing contraband within the jail,” Lake County sheriff ’ s spokesman Sgt. Jim Vachon wrote of frequent searches inside his agency’s jail.

In an escape from the Osceola County Jail two years ago, corrections officers later discovered a high-risk inmatecut through the base of a stainless-steel toilet and sink with a saw madefroma metal speaker cover removed from the cell’s ceiling.

The perforated metal plate was shaped into a saw with a flexible metal paper clasp. Jail workers never noticed that and other illegal items because they skipped 53 mandatory searches of the cell that let the inmate and his cellmate work unhindered for days before the escape, records showed.

Since then, Osceola County has spent more than $2 million to improve security, including video cameras inside and outside the jail. And the jail administration has stopped all sales of portable radios designed for inmates, to cut down on bartering.

“Despite everyone’s best efforts … the bad guys are always thinking of new ways to skirt the system,” said Osceola Corrections Deputy Chief Nancy DeFerrari. “We’re constantly aware of that and do everything to combat it.”

Col. James Wimberly, who directs the Broward Sheriff’s Office Department of Detention and Community Control, said almost anything can be turned into a weapon if inmates have enough time. broom can become a club or sharpened into a spear.

Dump the wheels of a mop bucket into a sock, and you’ve got yourself a weighted whip. Or save the metal caster of the bucket wheel for later. It’s prime material for fashioning a blade.

Any piece of metal could be dangerous, according to Wimberly, who has worked in corrections since 1984.

The wiring of a radio or headphones can be combined with a battery — it’s a popular mix for a water

What threats can inmates fashion?

Video: Staff writer Henry Pierson Curtis details the contraband found in lockups: OrlandoSentinel.com heater, cigarette lighter or a makeshift Taser. In jail, such devices are called “stingers.”

Though inmates have often used the devices to heat water, jailers remain wary.

“They could electrocute themselves or others,” Wimberly said.

Even dental floss, that seemingly harmless string in a plastic box, can become a weapon or escape tool. String enough of the stuff together, and you suddenly have a rope or strangling weapon or — as Sicilian mobster Vincenzo Curcio proved — a means to escape.

The legend goes that Curcio, convicted of murdering one man and arranging the murders of seven others, used floss to saw through the bars of his prison cell in Turin and escape in 2000.

But most jails no longer have bars, and items such as dental floss have been banned in Broward and Palm Beach counties. The lack of floss in jail has prompted an angry response from numerous inmates in New York and South Florida.

In October, just in time for National Dental Hygiene Month, five Palm Beach County Jail inmates filed