Two Oklahoma County Jail guards were fired after being accused of smuggling contraband to inmates.
Kaylyn Crawford, 20, and Xzavier Nicholson, 19, were arrested Wednesday, the prison said. Both live in Oklahoma City.
“These two former employees abused the trust placed in them … and compromised the safety of our residents and staff,” Brandi Garner, CEO of the Oklahoma County Detention Center, said in a news release Thursday. “We take our duty to maintain the integrity of this facility very seriously.”
The arrests were made as part of a joint operation by investigators from the prison trust, the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control, the press release said.
Crawford is accused of smuggling marijuana and tobacco to inmate Blake Hill, a trust investigator told a judge in an affidavit about his arrest. He was scheduled to be released on July 31, 2023.
According to the affidavit, Hill had the prison guard’s private phone number on pieces of paper. Hill, 21, is accused of premeditated murder.
Nicholson is accused of smuggling an electronic vaping device and a cell phone to inmate Scout French, the investigator said in an arrest affidavit. He was hired in October.
According to the affidavit, Nicholson was seen on video surveillance cameras handing a brown paper bag to French twice this month. French, 22, is charged with drug trafficking.
Crawford and Nicholson could not be reached for comment Thursday.
More: Judge to ban surprise health inspections at Oklahoma County Jail
The multi-county grand jury that investigated the prison reported last year that “one of the most serious problems is the administration’s inability to adequately staff the prison with experienced employees.”
The arrests come as the prison is locked in a bitter legal battle with the Oklahoma State Department of Health over inspections. The trust that oversees the prison has asked an Oklahoma County judge to permanently ban health inspectors from conducting unannounced inspections. A hearing is scheduled for October.
In a response Monday, the health department informed the judge of the numerous problems inspectors have uncovered since taking over the trust on July 1, 2020. “Because many of the items to be inspected must be observed in real time, the prison appears to want to reduce these inspections to vanity actions,” the lawyers wrote in the response.
