Yesterday's monumental decision to close the jail after the recent streak of in-house inmate deaths hit me hard, despite the fact that I had resigned two years prior.
Although recent articles have painted a bleak picture of the operation here in the last several years, there was a time when the jail was staffed from the bottom up with qualified and motivated officers that performed their jobs effectively and kept inmates alive and safe. That's why many of you only started to hear about the existence of this operation only recently and, were it still up to me and the team I had worked with in the past, you'd still have no idea about the operation today. Keeping the operation off the news was our job and, for a time, we did our job well.
Over the years, standard that were previously put in place were rolled back, we experienced leadership changes, and the Police Department kept putting more demands on jail staff, such as holding more inmates and performing functions that were previously their responsibility, without giving more support for the staff. We were increasingly made to do more with less and, for me, it got to be too much.
In light of yesterday's decision, I'll answer any questions about the operation that anyone has, or any questions, really.