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June 7, 2004, 2:38AM
TDCJ tackles cell phone smuggling
Devices becoming one of most prized contraband items
By STEVE McVICKER
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
On a Monday night in April, 22-year-old Eula May Johnson, a prison guard for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, pulled her car into the parking lot of a southwest Houston shopping center.
There, authorities say, she met with an associate of a prison gang member serving time in the Darrington Unit in Brazoria County, where Johnson worked.
Within minutes, undercover officers converged on the pair. Investigators say Johnson was in possession of a quarter-ounce of heroin and a cellular telephone, as well as the $250 in cash she had been paid to smuggle the phone and drugs into the gang member's prison cell. Johnson is charged with bribery and drug possession.
But while drugs, along with cash and tobacco, have long been highly valued contraband, TDCJ officials say cell phones have joined the ranks of the most prized illicit commodities inside Texas prison cells.
"It's a big problem," said Lt. Terry Cobbs of the prison system's inspector general's office. "And they're not getting the phones so that they can call their mothers on Mother's Day. They're getting them to keep their communications open on the outside with their organized criminal activities and to make sure they're getting all the drugs that they need."
Even Huntsville lawyer Yolanda Torres, who specializes in cases involving inmates' rights, has no objection to the crackdown on the smuggling of cell phones.
"It's not like they're using them to call their lawyers," said Torres, who has fought to give prisoners better telephone access to their attorneys.
The Texas Legislature attempted to address the problem in 2003 by making it a third-degree felony to provide an inmate with a cell phone, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Nevertheless, said Cobbs, inmates keep finding ways to get the phones into prison. He points to a recent incident at the Darrington Unit as an example of how widespread the problem has become.
Last fall, Cobbs received a call from the FBI's Violent Crime Task Force in Austin, which was monitoring cell phone calls from a Darrington inmate to his associates in the free world. Citing security reasons, Cobbs declined to name the inmate or his friends.
"We knew who had the phone," Cobbs said. "We knew who he was talking to and we were recording those calls. So we decided to let them keep talking unless we learned of something that we needed to stop."
Eventually, investigators decided to raid the inmate's cell. They forgot to turn off the prison's water system first, however, and the inmate flushed the phone down his toilet.
"And, of course, the commodes in those prisons will flush down a small tree," said Cobbs. "I mean, you better stand back and not get your shirt caught because it took that cell phone right down."
Determined to retrieve the phone, prison officials shut down the water lines and ordered several unlucky inmates to don waders. Armed with garden rakes, they were sent into the prison's sewer traps, where they dragged the bottom for the submerged phone.
"They were pulling up cell phones like they were going fishing," said Cobbs."And you'd think they'd be those inexpensive disposable phones like you buy at Wal-Mart. But we've even been seeing camera phones."
TDCJ Inspector General John Moriarty said his office -- the equivalent of an internal affairs division -- has 50 cell phone prosecutions in progress, most with multiple defendants. Of those, he said, 47 originated at the Darrington Unit.
Cobbs maintains that more phones have been seized at Darrington because officials there have cracked down aggressively.
"We're staying focused on it," said Arthur Velasquez, the warden at Darrington since September 2002. "But I also attribute it to my staff going out and doing a good job."
Velasquez has been a warden at various Texas prisons for almost 20 of his 27 years with the prison system. But he said it wasn't until early last year that he noticed the proliferation of cell phones.
Besides finding the phones through random searches, he said, his officers work on tips from informants.
After one such tip, he said, Maj. Frank Rodriguez opened a large jar of salad dressing on Thursday and found a cell phone and charger. The equipment had been sealed in a plastic bag and hidden in the white goo.
Inmates also just outsmart themselves sometimes, Velasquez added.
In one instance, he said, a prison employee took a call from an inmate's relative, who said he was returning a call from the inmate. A search of the prisoner's cell turned up the illegal phone.
Suspicions about another inmate arose after a routine check of his incoming mail.
"The person who wrote it said that they had put some more minutes on his phone," Velasquez said. "So we shook (the prisoner) down and found it."
Although he jokes that searches have turned up "all brands and all plans," Velasquez said the phones present a serious security problem.
"(Inmates) can call out and arrange any type of thing," he said. "They could even set up an escape."
To help combat the infiltration, metal detectors recently were installed at the Darrington Unit. Prison officials also say they have talked with cell phone companies about jamming the cellular signal to prisons, but were told that would affect service to the surrounding areas.
"Because of the locations of the prisons, we have to be careful not to jam legitimate signals," Moriarty said. "And the FCC regulates that pretty tightly. We're exploring a lot of options, but we don't have the silver bullet at this point."
Moriarty, Velasquez and Cobbs also acknowledge that corrupt guards are a big part of the smuggling problem.
"The majority of (the guards) are hard-working, good people," Cobbs said. "But we still have a significant number that are working for the convicts for extra pay. And some of them are making damn good money."
Cobbs believes such guards are a bigger problem in TDCJ than in other areas of law enforcement because of low pay, lack of training and minimal background checks. Houston attorney Charles Gaston, who represents Johnson, the former Darrington guard now charged with bribery, agrees.
"Here you've got a poorly educated black girl working in a prison, and her only qualification was that she applied for the job," said Gaston, who also is black. "They don't pay her (much) and she's got an illegitimate child. So you walk up to her and ask her, `Would she take a cell phone into prison and also take a little heroin in there? And here's a couple hundred dollars for your trouble.' Do you think she'd take it?"
Salaries for TDCJ guards start at just over $1,700 monthly. The prison system is budgeted for about 26,000 guard positions, but more than 2,000 are vacant.
Cobbs said the situation has gotten so bad that he believes prisoners could even get guns smuggled in. But, he said, he hasn't figured out how they get their cell phones to work.
"I take my phone into a prison and I can't get any reception through all that concrete and steel," he said.
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2613109