Mower County Sheriff Barry J.

Wednesday, March 28, 2001

Mower County Sheriff Barry J. Simonson apprised the county commissioners Tuesday of the conditions in the "Crowbar Hotel."

Only 48 hours after two murder suspects escaped from the second-floor county jail above the Austin-Mower County Law Enforcement Center, Simonson said the jail is adequate, but obsolete.

Simonson said the county jail satisfies the Minnesota Department of Corrections and also has passed an inspection conducted by the National Institute of Corrections.

He said the jail served more than 250,000 prisoner days before the escape on Sunday morning.

Simonson said it was the responsibility of the county commissioners to decide whether to "repair it, expand or build a new jail."

Len Miller, Fourth District county commissioner, inquired about Steele County’s plans for a new county jail. According to Simonson, Steele County is planning to build a new 100-bed facility and that Mower County is interested in five beds for any overflow prisoner population from its own jail.

Then Simonson talked bluntly about the nearly 30-year-old Mower County Jail.

"It’s not just the issues of overcrowding that’s a problem," he said. "It’s the obsolescence."

Windows without bars, the lack of an alarm system to notify LEC dispatchers there was a problem, inadequate video surveillance of all areas of the jail and other alleged inadequacies of the county jail have surfaced this week in the aftermath of Sunday’s breakout.

Simonson talked about how the accused murderers were able to "jimmy" the locks on their cells to escape and overpower a guard. The three prisoners shared a common area accessed by separate cells in the jail.

But the single most vulnerable point of the Mower County Jail may be the entrance, according to Simonson.

One door is used by peace officers to escort prisoners upstairs to the jail. It is the same door that detention officers use to report to work, that public health nurses use to attend to prisoners, that vendors use to deliver items and that attorneys and other prisoners use.

The commissioners listened solemnly to the county sheriff’s explanation of the escape and the jail conditions. Then one of them, David Hillier, Third District commissioner and county board chairman, said: "We do really need to decide if it is a quick fix that is needed or something larger and that may take a year or more to implement."

The county sheriff showed his impatience at the situation, which has been criticized by citizens for allowing two felons to overpower two guards, break a window and then jump to freedom. Another escapee suffered a broken leg in the escape and was recaptured outside the jail in the LEC parking lot.

"I think there are some things we can do in the short term," the sheriff told the commissioners.

The Mower County Jail’s capacity is 45 prisoners at the maximum. Before Sunday’s escape, the last escape occurred in 1982.

After Tuesday’s meeting, Hillier expressed the county board’s "pleasure that the jailers are recovering" and said the county board "must look at the problems and then proceed to solve them."

Miller said, "The safety of our county employees and the citizens of our county" is uppermost in his mind. He also said, "We must take whatever means that something like this won’t happen again in the future."

Call Lee Bonorden at 434-2232 or e-mail him at newsroom@austindailyherald.com.