Industrious inmates are inundating the county’s emergency phone center with non-emergency calls in an attempt to reach outside contacts, and Sheriff James Haywood wants it to stop.
“It's causing our system to get overloaded. They're calling back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to back,” he said.
During the last convening of the Sunflower County Board of Supervisors, Haywood informed the members that Parchman’s inmates are placing hundreds of non-emergency calls to the E-911 operators, and it is overwhelming them to the point that they are unable to adequately answer actual emergency calls.
Haywood said, "Inmates are trying to call out on cell phones and they think that they can call out and use a code and dial out."
He said the inmates are under the impression that they can get an outside number through E-911 if they make the call and are fast enough to enter a code in the phone behind the call. Haywood said that during one shift, when he manned the phones on a Saturday, he had over 300 calls from Parchman alone.
"Like 37 in one hour," he said.
Haywood asserted that he is not sure if the call-in system is flawed in some way, but officials have tried to replicate the steps made by the inmates, but with no success.
Nevertheless, the inmates apparently are laboring under the impression that it actually works.
Haywood said he has reached out to the Mississippi Department of Corrections officials, to AT&T officials and others about the problem and they are searching for a solution. He said the prison has a blocking system for cell phone calls but that it doesn't block the emergency calls to 911.
"The problem is you cannot block 911 calls," Haywood said.
According to federal law, it is illegal, he said.
Haywood said the influx of calls is literally wearing his 911 operators out.
He said that they have always received some calls from the prison, but he attributes the staggering increase in calls to the installation of a new cell phone tower by a local phone company.
The Mississippi Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell visited the Indianola Rotary Club last week, and according to Haywood, Tindell suggested establishing an additional call center near Parchman to intercept the barrage of calls and possibly ease the pressure on the county’s emergency system.
However, Haywood said he does not know if the idea is feasible, but, "It would make them (Parchman) start getting all of the 911 calls in that area," he said. According to him, it was just a suggestion and a preliminary idea. Nothing has been evaluated, finalized or acted upon. Right now, there is no immediate, permanent solution.
Haywood said the Parchman inmates are tying up the system so much that emergency calls to ambulances and such are really being hampered.
He said it's possible that there are just a few inmates making the calls, but they are continually and constantly calling 911. He said there's no way to screen the calls because you never know which call is going to be an actual lifesaving emergency call.
People, possibly including workers, are bringing the contraband phones into the prison.
"They are not supposed to have cell phones in the system, but when you can get $1,000 for a cell phone, people will take a chance to bring a phone in," Haywood said.
Haywood said the amount of money they can get for bringing a phone into a prison is just too much for a low-paid person to resist. He called the whole situation “ridiculous.”
Haywood said based on his last communication with MDOC officials, plans are underway to increase the number of shakedowns in the hope of locating the smuggled devices and hopefully reducing the number of calls to 911.
"You can even tell when they are doing shakedowns at Parchman, because that's the time you don't get calls, but once those things are over with or people are not around, those calls are being made and it's just utterly ridiculous," said Haywood.
Haywood said that he has personally experienced a situation wherein an inmate called him from a Rankin County prison, but when prison officials conducted a shakedown they could not find the phone. But the next day the prisoner called again from the same number.
There is technology available to trace the illegal devices back to their owners, but a lot of the phones in use are older model phones, which make it more difficult.
He said the newer phones are easier to track.
Haywood said they can also find out which prisoners have phones by the photos that the inmates post on social media.
According to Haywood, other counties do not seem to be having the same issues as Sunflower County. He said he is also working with E-911 Director John Thompson to find a solution.
In apparent defense of the prison system, Haywood acknowledged that the facilities are understaffed and overfilled with inmates and the imbalance makes shakedowns even more difficult.
“It's hard getting good correctional officers. I admire those who stayed and work, I really do,” Haywood said. He said people should take their hats off to the ones who are working at the prison facility.
In light of the current situation, the prisons are not the only entity experiencing a lack of personnel.
Haywood said he normally has two dispatchers, although most of the time it’s just one, but he really needs three people on staff, he said.
