An incident occurred over the weekend at the Cascade County Detention Center. Despite the metal detectors and security measures in place, drugs are being smuggled in.

“This is a multi-person group, looking to smuggle drugs in our facility and were successful. They were able to smuggle methamphetamine, fentanyl and suboxone into the Cascade County jail,” explained Sheriff Jesse Slaughter.

During a news conference on Thursday, Sheriff Slaughter said they will be suspending all in-person visits until this problem is solved.

“We have to get this matter not only repaired, but we also have to look into new security measures to ensure this doesn't occur again,” Slaughter said, as this issue is not new to the Cascade County Detention Center.

“Our detention center and our detention staff were able to locate a certain individual, who had a lot of the drugs, and we think most of them on their person, so we believe we did recover most of them and lower the risk to the people inside the facility.

Sheriff Slaughter said he attributes a portion of this problem to a Montana Supreme Court ruling, law 46-5-105, which is “Reasonable suspicion required before strip search.”

“[This] denies us the ability to strip search people with misdemeanors. So, with a lot of these [drug] rings, the most common way they do it is they bail out an individual on a misdemeanor. That person is then instructed to go out of the community and to put drugs inside whatever body or orifice they want and bring them back inside the facility because we're not allowed to strip search said people,” explained Slaughter.

Sheriff Slaughter believes by lessening their ability to do thorough searches, it could cause a larger risk to the community.

“This type of behavior not only causes issues inside the facility with our staff and with the inmates, but it also causes problems in our community because people are badly hurt by this,” said Slaughter. “So, I have extreme empathy for the people, the family members and staff who won't get in-person visits.”

The detectives within the sheriff’s office are conducting an in-depth criminal investigation into this incident.

We will update you if we get more information.

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