Checkmite
16th March 2009, 01:13 PM
MONTAGUE, Texas – For months, perhaps longer, the Montague County Jail was "Animal House" meets Mayberry. Inside the small brick building across from the courthouse, inmates had the run of the place, having sex with their jailer girlfriends, bringing in recliners, taking drugs and chatting on cell phones supplied by friends or guards, according to authorities. They also disabled some of the surveillance cameras and made weapons out of nails.
The doors to two groups of cells didn't lock, but apparently no one tried to escape — perhaps because they had everything they needed inside.
The jailhouse escapades — some of which date to 2006, according to authorities — have rocked Montague (pronounced mahn-TAYG), a farming and ranching town of several hundred people near the Oklahoma line, about 65 miles northwest of Fort Worth.
There were whispers in the past year about an affair between a female jailer and male inmate, but folks dismissed the rumors as small-town gossip. It was not until late last month, when a Texas grand jury returned a 106-count indictment against the former sheriff and 16 others, that the inmates-gone-wild scandal broke wide open.
The indictment charged Bill Keating, sheriff from 2004 until December, with official oppression and having sex with female inmates. The others indicted include nine guards — seven women and two men — who were charged with various offenses involving sex or drugs and other contraband. Four inmates also were charged.
Linkaroony! (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090316/ap_on_re_us/animal_house_jail)
While this is truly a horrible thing, and I do hope the offenders get what they deserve, I couldn't help but notice that the fellow in the deepest of the hot water is the sheriff of Montague, Texas. If Buford T. Justice were still in charge there, surely none of this would've happened.
The doors to two groups of cells didn't lock, but apparently no one tried to escape — perhaps because they had everything they needed inside.
The jailhouse escapades — some of which date to 2006, according to authorities — have rocked Montague (pronounced mahn-TAYG), a farming and ranching town of several hundred people near the Oklahoma line, about 65 miles northwest of Fort Worth.
There were whispers in the past year about an affair between a female jailer and male inmate, but folks dismissed the rumors as small-town gossip. It was not until late last month, when a Texas grand jury returned a 106-count indictment against the former sheriff and 16 others, that the inmates-gone-wild scandal broke wide open.
The indictment charged Bill Keating, sheriff from 2004 until December, with official oppression and having sex with female inmates. The others indicted include nine guards — seven women and two men — who were charged with various offenses involving sex or drugs and other contraband. Four inmates also were charged.
Linkaroony! (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090316/ap_on_re_us/animal_house_jail)
While this is truly a horrible thing, and I do hope the offenders get what they deserve, I couldn't help but notice that the fellow in the deepest of the hot water is the sheriff of Montague, Texas. If Buford T. Justice were still in charge there, surely none of this would've happened.