TWO CAUGHT SELLING CIGARETTES TO INMATES

Nicotine-craving prisoners at a downtown Huber release center lowered a
basket on a string through a hole in the wall and got a couple guys on State
St. to pass up cigarettes in exchange for money.

The sellers wound up in jail themselves and on Thursday were charged with a
two-year felony -- delivering articles to inmates.

"It was kind of a little impromptu store going on there," said Deputy Daniel
Suszek, who investigated the case. "If you could stand there long enough and
pass stuff up, you could make a tidy sum."

The two men charged in the case are Miller L. Brown, 49, and Seth Allen, 18,
both of Milwaukee.

A few factors were working against this business enterprise. First, it was
going on in daylight, about 6 p.m. Tuesday, along heavily traveled State St.
in front of the Community Correctional Center, 1004 N. 10th St.

Second, law enforcement officers in the County Jail across the street could
watch it from their windows. Sheriff's Capt. Gary Kasza, who works in the
jail record area, notified deputies of the activity and then stayed in radio
communication with them so they could arrest Brown, who tried to get lost in
the line of people waiting next door for a free meal at St. Benedict's.

Right after Brown was arrested, Allen came along. He started passing
cigarettes up the homemade elevator, the criminal complaint says. He, too,
was taken into custody.

By the time the deputies got inside the center, everyone had scattered and
the cigarette passing apparatus -- possibly made from shoelaces -- had been
flushed or otherwise destroyed.

Smoking is not allowed at the center, and cigarettes are considered
contraband. But the former hospital still has nooks and crannies where a
person could sneak a puff.

"One cigarette can go for several dollars. It's a lucrative business," said
Gerald Weinzatl, assistant superintendent of the center, which holds nearly
400 prisoners who are searched each day when they return from work or
school.

Matches and lighters also are forbidden at the center.

"Those would have to come up with the cigarettes," Weinzatl said. "This is
certainly not going to be tolerated."

Dogs were brought in to check the building for illegal drugs, but none was
found. No cigarettes were recovered.

The cigarettes were being passed up one floor above street level through a
hole in a concrete windowsill that had crumbled. Weinzatl said the hole will
be patched.

There was no mention of patches, the nicotine kind, for the inmates.