RICHLAND COUNTY, S.C. — The Richland County Sheriff's Department says they will continue to investigate drugs in the jail after deputies arrested Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center guards 37-year-old Bridget Williams and 50-year-old Ashanti Rembert in connection to drug charges after an unscheduled search of employees cars at the jail.
There have been multiple overdoses at the jail over the several weeks, with some of them resulting in inmates' deaths. The jail has also been subject to a lawsuit over conditions and an investigation from the Department of Justice.
Richland County Administrator Leonardo Brown says officials still aren't sure how the drugs were brought into the jail, but that there's a number of ways they're looking to see if it happened.
"You may have contraband coming to the facility from an individual who is doing the wrong thing," said Brown. "You may have contraband that may come to the facility from someone who is utilizing drone technology. You may have contraband coming through legal mail. So these are things we are trying to address."
Brown says steps have been taken to improve conditions at the jail, including new locking mechanisms, raising staff pay to help recruit employees, better access to technology resources, and improvements to food.
"Whether it’s staffing … whether it is the facility itself. Whether it’s external parties that we maybe need to provide services to the facilities such as food or health. All of those things the county has addressed and still continues to address to provide improvements whenever we can."
Richland County Councilman Don Weaver says the county has made improvements to the employee screening process.
“We're trying to recruit a little more seasoned employee. Better screening, trying to relay to them the severity if you will of bringing in something like that," said Weaver. "We’ve also done better pay packages to try and recruit folks with a little more incentive pay so I think that has helped a little bit."
News 19 reached out to the lawyers representing a group of inmates suing Richland County over conditions at the jail, they declined to comment. Brown also declined to comment on the litigation.