NEW DEVICE CAN FIND DRUGS IN JAIL

Goshen - What if you could search every person who enters a secure facility
for explosives and drugs?

What if you could do so without jeopardizing anyone's civil rights? The
Orange County Sheriff's Office hopes two new devices it will soon employ to
screen inmates and visitors at the county jail will move the agency one
step closer to that scenario. With the ion mobility spectrometers,
officials hope to curb the flow of contraband into the 753-bed jail and
avert another drug outbreak like the one that led to the high-profile
overdose death of 27-year-old inmate Kathleen Brennan in 2003. And they
hope to do so without violating a federal court order that bans strips
searches on certain low-level inmates without probable cause. The
spectrometers are less threatening than a drug-sniffing dog and no more
invasive than the metal detector wands one might see at an airport or rock
concert. "This was a great solution for us because, if it's noninvasive,
it's likely constitutional," Undersheriff Kenneth Jones said. "We don't
make the rules but we have to follow them. So, we adapt." Even before the
post-9/11 security push brought larger, walk-through spectrometers to
airports and government buildings, prisons and ports across the country had
begun using similar devices to combat drug trafficking. Locally, sheriff's
officials sought out the technology after a federal class-action lawsuit
brought by several former inmates resulted in the strip-search
restrictions. The decision to buy the machines was clinched in November
2003, after an inmate smuggled more than 80 bags of heroin into the jail,
which led to Brennan's overdose. The incident is the subject of a $5
million wrongful death lawsuit by her family. The spectrometers, which are
scheduled to be in use by summer's end, may well provide a way to tighten
security without skirting strip-search rules. As long as the machines are
accurate and used uniformly, James Monroe, the Goshen attorney litigating
the strip-search suit, said a positive test "would be a basis for further
inquiry." New civil rights issues could arise, however, if correction staff
use positive spectrometer results as the sole reason to ban jail visitors.
That's what the New York Civil Liberties Union says was happening to
seemingly innocent people who underwent ion scans while visiting the state
prisons that employ them, Green Haven and Elmira. "The problem has been in
New York, that if somebody tests positive, they're turned away, banned from
seeing their loved ones and entered into the file as a drug user," said
Christopher Dunn, the NYCLU's associate legal director. "We don't have a
problem with the technology. It has to be used sensibly."

The 'Nose' Knows

Developed over two decades with support from federal anti-drug forces, ion
mobility spectrometers have emerged since Sept. 11 as the must-have gadget
for all manner of security agencies. The two handheld devices recently
bought by the Orange County Sheriff's Office resemble a cross between a
DustBuster and a Geiger counter.

They each cost $29,795 and work by either analyzing a swab sample or
"sniffing" the air around a person. Every ion absorbed has a characteristic
speed, which is then analyzed by the spectrometer. The model purchased by
the county - General Electric's VaporTracer2 - scans for up to 40 known
narcotic or explosive compounds. The machines are so sensitive they can
detect traces of chemicals down to parts per trillion, but they can be
calibrated to ignore "incidental hits" that may have resulted from minor
contact with a banned substance.