JONESBORO — The Clayton County Board of Commissioners recently rejected a $508,500 request from Sheriff Levon Allen to buy ankle monitors, which the sheriff said would help alleviate crowding at the jail.
According to Allen’s request to the County Commission at its Dec. 5 meeting, the jail is about 300 inmates over capacity as there are about 1,800 in the jail now. He said there are about 300 inmates who are having to sleep on the floor because of the overcrowding.
The ankle monitors would be placed on inmates who are on own-recognizance release (OR).
The sheriff explained that he already does OR releases and the ankle monitors would help track those inmates. Allen said so far this year, he has done about 400 to 500 OR releases this year.
“If I was able to have an ankle monitor I can place someone on an ankle monitor and still do that release,” he said. “That would at least give me a little more security.”
Allen said OR releases are for inmates who are in for offenses such as criminal trespass, loitering, and public drunkenness.
He said they are in for “small crimes just because they don’t have enough money to bond out, they can’t get out.”
He said a tragic example was the fatal beating of Carlos Zegarra-Arroyo in November. Allen said Zegarra-Arroyos was in jail on a $12,000 bond.
Zegarra-Arroyos was in the jail on non-violent crimes and was brutally beaten by a cellmate, Jacquez Jackson.
“That’s someone (Zegarra-Arroyo) I could have put on an ankle monitor,” Allen said.
The County Commission voted 3-2 to reject the request. Commissioners DeMont Davis, Felicia Franklin and Gail Hambrick voted to reject while Jeff Turner and Alieka Anderson voted for.
During its Nov. 7 meeting, the County Commission unanimously approved a $2.3 million budget amendment for the Sheriff’s Office.
The $2.3 million will go to buy Tasers, body…
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