“The officer who brought her in asked us to do a more thorough search because she’d been moving around a lot and acting suspicious,” said Arnold. The woman, 28-year-old Alexandra Lemley, of New Matamoras, was a school teacher in Pleasants County, W.Va., at the time of her arrest. In March, a New Matamoras woman entering the jail reportedly had 8 grams of heroin hidden in a body cavity. Both women successfully secreted the items into the jail, but the drugs were discovered after a confidential informant reported their presence, said Arnold. In February, one woman allegedly swallowed a balloon full of pills before entering the jail and another woman reportedly transported marijuana into the jail. Wallace was the fifth person this year to be caught sneaking items into the county detention facility. That leaves inmates to veiling contraband the old fashioned way-inside a body cavity. ![]() Jail employees discovered the method years ago and have since been performing thorough searches of public areas before inmates are allowed to clean, he said. “We would have visiting friends or relatives hide drugs or tobacco in the lobby or public restrooms and then when the inmates would clean those areas they would take them back into the jail,” said Arnold. The jail has also curtailed another method through which inmates with cleaning duties were accessing contraband. ![]() “The K-9 has been coming in once a week on average and that has made a difference,” he said. This is in part thanks to Quick, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office’s drug sniffing K-9, said Arnold. ![]() The Washington County Jail has likely been experiencing less contraband lately as well, said Arnold. However, statewide prison seizures of drugs and alcohol and weapons dropped slightly from 2011 to 2012. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that state prisons have seized 319 cellphones in the year’s first seven months-just 21 fewer than were seized in all of 2012. While drugs and tobacco remain the most popular contraband items locally, prisons throughout Ohio are experiencing a massive upswing in the amount of cell phones successfully finding their way into prisons. “A lot of inmates say they tried to sneak in drugs because they don’t want to give up the habit,” said Arnold. If Wallace had given up the drugs when given the chance, she would have only faced the drug possession charges.
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