SURPRISE SEARCH FINDS CRACK, MARIJUANA IN JAIL

About 50 sheriff's deputies and police officers found one marijuana
cigarette and a single hit of crack cocaine in an unannounced search on
Tuesday for drugs and other contraband in all five residential floors of
the Wake County Jail. The search came four days after 17 inmates were
transferred to other facilities or to solitary confinement within the jail
after a confidential tip that they were involved in "suspected drug
activity," according to Sheriff John Baker.

The jail's director, Sheila Fort-Ray, said a supervisor reported that on
Friday, "when officers arrived to have [the inmates] transferred, they were
running around the pod, calling their friends' names, and there were a lot
of toilets flushing."

Thirteen of the inmates transferred had been housed in the same pod on the
fifth floor up to several days before the transfer occurred, she said.

No charges have been filed against any inmates involved in the
investigation, though some may be charged or disciplined as a result of
Tuesday's search. The jail has 420 cells but is over capacity, housing
roughly 520 inmates, said Sgt. T. Brown, a jail staffer. Several inmates on
each floor sleep on the floor in the dayrooms.

Capt. D.L. Rowe, head of the drugs and vice unit at the sheriff's office,
said searchers discovered several loose pills, powdery substances and other
contraband. The pills had all been obtained legally but not stored as they
should be, Rowe said. Other contraband included toothbrushes and ink pens
that had been filed down to be used for tatooing, cigarette lighters made
of batteries with staples taped to their contacts, and hoarded toiletries.
All the contraband items could be used to sell goods or services for
profit, which is against jailhouse rules, Rowe said.

Investigators split into five teams so they could search each floor
simultaneously. Inmates were taken out of their cells into the day rooms
and were searched and held in a recreational area while officers went
through their belongings.

Searchers observed that two pods of female inmates on the seventh floor
apparently ignored a directive by the sheriff to "leave the cell in the
same shape that you found it in." The cells, some decorated with flowers
fashioned from tinfoil potato chip wrappers and with crosses drawn on the
walls, were strewn with letters, books and personal items by the time
officers were through searching.

The marijuana and the rock of crack cocaine were both found in common
spaces -- air vents connecting cells to locked utility closets, Rowe said.
Those drugs and several powdery substances found that did not test positive
for cocaine will be sent to the City County Bureau of Investigation for
analysis, he said.

"We're hoping to file charges on some of those inmates where drugs were
stored in an air vent where only one inmate had access to it," he said.

Fort-Ray said she was not sure how inmates got the drugs. Basically, only
officers and inmates' attorneys have access to them, she said. "Inmates
have a tendency to store things in their body cavities, swallow things
before they go in [to jail]," she said.

Rowe declared the search a success "as far as rendering the facility
contraband-free."

"The fact that there was a minimal amount found shows that the detention
officers are doing a good job," he said.

But Fort-Ray said there may be another reason for so few drugs found.

"It could have been that [inmates] had disposed of it prior to the search,"
she said.