The number of months has increased since newly elected Sheriff Jerry Sheridan’s term began at the helm of Maricopa County’s large prisons and overdose.

Earlier this month, the sheriff’s office announced last week that there had been dozens of overdose in one prison. One person died. after that, Fox 10 reported The next day, two more overdose was reported at Estrella Prison. They believe that drugs are smuggled by prisoners.

The office said it had installed X-ray machines to mitigate the issue, and Sheridan joined the show to discuss it.

Complete conversation

Lauren Gilger: Good morning, sheriff. Thank you for coming in.

Jerry Sheridan: good morning. Thank you for taking me.

Gilger: Please tell me how bad this overdose problem is. What you know is bad for years. As you know, you can see that headlines are being reported everywhere. The Republic of Arizona now reports that prisons have seen far higher overdose rates than last year. What does it look like from your perspective?

Sheridan: That’s a bad thing. Not good. The past eight years have been a very bad thing. And when I became sheriff in January, I inherited some issues so we’ve taken some major steps to reduce the amount of drugs and of course the overdose. . m I’m very worried about it. I am a sheriff and feel personally responsible for those deaths.

Gilger: Let’s ask what’s behind it. And before we talk about the solution here, you will say that these drugs are being smuggled by prisoners. Most of them have so far been in women’s prisons. What does it look like?

Sheridan: Well, that’s true. Drugs come in the prison system from prisoners, most often coming out of the streets and coming out of the streets, and they carry them in the caves of the body. Obtain a search warrant and a health care provider to remove the drug.

Gilger: Predecessor Paul Penzone has installed body-scan equipment for this purpose to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering prison. They say they have installed an X-ray machine to address this issue. Is that adding to those body scan machines?

Sheridan: correct. The body scanners brought by the previous administration did not enter the body cavity. It’s like an airport. They are X-ray-like line scan machines where you put your bag in. And it’s also where you hold your arms, you know, we all have experienced them, but they are body cavity. They just look at their clothes.

Gilger: One of the big changes you made when you took office was to remove the requirements your predecessor introduced to scan employees, and employees were found guilty of smuggling The drugs to the prison were to remove the prison that came later. You took that requirement away. Please tell me the reason.

Sheridan: I did. Because in my experience overseeing the prison system and monitoring what was going on, there were two sheriff employees who found themselves bringing drugs. It’s been over 25 years. And if I continued to trust the employees and trust about 2,000 employees, I didn’t think I was sending the right message. And it really helped.

But I also placed some other things and we are sniffing dogs to ingest. The X-ray device doesn’t work as well as finding these drugs, but it has increased the amount of what we call a shakedown, prison shakedowns and executive teams, and special response teams. It’s like a prison SWAT team coming in and doing a search.

I also strengthened the intelligence troops in prisons, and when I was there when I was the chief of the prison system, I had a very large prison intelligence troops, and they were a lot in the first place. prevented drugs from entering.

Gilger: So, some other measures you can take have the 2025 incident in which you were involved in an employee you know?

Sheridan: no.

Gilger: So have you heard from employees that you feel better about it? Did they feel like they are being targeted under the old policies?

Sheridan: They felt they were not trusted and believed in me, we hire people. They have experienced extensive training, background, polygraphs, psychotests and all of these things. We employ the best employees, so I trust them to do their job. Sometimes, let’s face it. Sometimes someone goes, go wrong, do something, but that’s because I’m not blaming the other 2,000 people, it’s not going to put them through it.

Gilger: Let’s ask about what we can do here. As you know, in addition to these body scan machines, X-ray machines give you the opportunity to get a warrant to search someone else’s body cavity, right? What else can I do? Is this about putting more naloxone into the gel? Many drugs are smuggled into fentanyl, which is located there.

Sheridan: right. Fentanyl is such a dangerous drug. It won’t take that long. The problem we had at Estrella Prison was that we had some overdose in the housing unit. We thought we had identified women who had the medication. We moved her to another residential unit and, behold, we had two more overdoses within a few hours, so we determined who this was. We are in the process of looking at whether we are unable to commit manslaughter for her or other crimes. So we are actively pursuing that.

Gilger: Are there any training personnel who detect this very quickly, as this can be fatal?

Sheridan: Yes, absolutely. All officers have Narcans on them, so they immediately give them Narcans when they see someone they are not doing well.

Gilger: A few years ago I was visiting the prison with former sheriff Paul Penzone, and he showed me all the measures they had put in place to prevent this, but the numbers were still high. is. At some point, do you think this is kind of impossible? Likewise, is there a system that is innocent here?

Sheridan: There is no one that is innocent. By the way, you will always be keeping drugs in prisons, but there is a difference between prisons and prisons, but officers have to be diligent in the past. We have to work.

And one of the big issues we have is that I have around 840 officers short. Therefore, prisoners may not be searched thoroughly as they do not have time to do it and move many prisoners between one facility and another. So they move around and sometimes those drugs get over the search process.