NEWTON COUNTY, Ga. — A growing number of Georgia jails are installing high-tech, X-ray scanners to prevent contraband from making it inside.
Even after more than 40 years of law enforcement experience, Newton County Sheriff Ezell Brown admitted even he's been stunned by the images their Tek84 scanner has revealed.
“We've had knives, bags of marijuana, bags of meth, and smoking devices inside of their private areas," he explained. "Someone had methamphetamine hid under her false teeth. We recently found a cell phone in [an inmate's] body cavity and also found a shank. He even said 'I thought we would never find it, but y'all are high tech here.'”
How jails are getting better at catching contraband | PHOTOS
In 2019, the Newton County Sheriff's Office became the second department in the state to purchase and install a Tek84 machine, which identifies metal and non-metal items hidden in clothing or within the body.
In the five years since, nearly every metro Atlanta jail has followed suit and also purchased a Tek84 or similar x-ray scanner, including Fulton, Dekalb, Forsyth, Polk, Floyd, Lumpkin, and Athens-Clarke counties. Previously, most were using standard metal detectors.
Brown said the Tek84 machine cost the county $150,000, a price tag he believes was well worth the investment for what he calls "the greatest tool since sliced bread."
"Since we purchased this machine, there's been no contraband within our facility," he said.
Temetris Atkins, chief deputy of the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office, said they installed two Tek84 scanners at the jail in 2022.
One is used exclusively for inmates being processed into the facility. Another is at the public entrance and is used for any staff or visitors who don't successfully pass through the standard metal detector first.
"We always knew people were creative, but this piece of equipment allowed us to detect more things than we usually detect," Atkins said. "We've seen where people have hidden things inside their dreadlocks like tobacco, marijuana and a cell phone. As other people get creative, we have to be just as creative."
Atkins admits contraband is a familiar issue within the Dekalb County Jail’s walls, partially because of the facility's location off a busy road in Decatur.
"Unlike a traditional jail where the back doors can have all these fences, we don't have luxury of that," Atkins said. "We have those difficulties just based on us being [an] urban jail."
In 2022, the first year the machines were installed in the jail, Dekalb County Sheriff's Office records show 10 people were charged with having or attempting to bring contraband on jail property.
The following year, in 2023, that number more than quadrupled to 43.
So far, in 2024, at least ten people have been charged with trying to sneak contraband into the jail. One of them was a probation officer.
"From the outside, it might seem like this is an increasing problem," 11Alive Investigator Savannah Levins said. "But I imagine you'd say you're just getting better at catching it."
"That's exactly right," Atkins said. "We are reducing the contraband in the Dekalb County Jail.”
In fact, Atkins said the machines recently helped them infiltrate a contraband network they might not have otherwise uncovered.
"What we're seeing is people inside coercing people on the outside to try to help them introduce the contraband into the system," he explained, noting one recent example where the scanner detected contraband hidden in an inmate's hair.
"He had himself arrested on a very minor charge that he knew he would get out on," Atkins said. "His goal was to bring that in. It was like a ring of these guys that were doing it.”
Just this month, two Henry County jail inmates attacked an officer with shanks. The next day, an inmate at the Fulton County jail was stabbed to death by fellow inmates using a homemade knife.
"Anything that's introduced from the outside can cause a problem on the inside," Atkins said. "Care, custody and control is what we do, and if we can stop [contraband] right at the interception point then we feel we're doing our due diligence."