Pubdate: Mon, 28 May 2012
Source: Regina Leader-Post (CN SN)
Copyright: 2012 The Leader-Post Ltd.
Website: http://www.leaderpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/361
Author: Barb Pacholik

CONTRABAND CONSUMES CONS

If a trial probing an alleged drug smuggling ring at the Regina
Correctional Centre has demonstrated anything, it's the ingenuity of
desperate men.

 From drug slang to how-to lessons for packing contraband, evidence
presented at the trial for former jail guard Brent Miles Taylor has
given a behind-the-scenes glimpse into what goes on within the jail's
walls and what occupies the minds of many inmates.

Perhaps defence witness Dan Yandon, a retired jail supervisor, put it
best: "They have 24 hours a day to think about ways of bringing things
in."

With some 550 inmates housed there 24-7, that's an awful lot of
brainstorming. Whether or not the jury accepts that one of those ways
was through jail guard Taylor remains to be seen when deliberations
get underway, likely on Tuesday.

But the evidence also gave an education into the numerous "highways"
used to move illicit items from the outside in. The jail's efforts to
erect roadblocks have limited success - kind of like the old saying,
when a door closes, a window opens.

Jail director Brad Magnusson told the court a lot of contraband used
to come in through visitors. That was until 2005 when visiting became
a "non-contact" sport, conducted through glass screens.

Then there's the "throw overs," packages tossed over the jail's
barbed-wire lined walls and into the exercise yard. Some clever
connivers have even tried to pack the drugs into something that would
seemingly fit, like a baseball, court heard. The guards search the
fields prior to exercise periods.

But if there's a will, there's a way. The court heard about "drop
offs" left by outside suppliers, items stashed by family members in
medical offices to be picked up by an inmate during an appointment,
and the old standard of stuffing drugs into a body cavity, as politely
described in court.

Kevin Lee Stonechild, a.k.a. Rockstar, one of the socalled "frequent
flyers" for whom the jail has a revolving door, put it more bluntly,
referring to "backroads."

The court heard his expletive-filled musings for several days,
captured in most of the 130 wiretaps played at the trial. Among his
stable of potential drug mules, Stonechild spoke of offenders serving
weekends, those in drug treatment court, someone turning himself in on
outstanding warrants, and even a court employee. He also talked about
guard Larry Barager, who was known to carry in drugs. Inmates are
searched. Guards aren't.

As became apparent, Stonechild's passion for drugs is endless, his
patience not so much.

In one wiretap, he urges Laura Reynolds, who became a Crown witness,
to hide drugs in the clothes he's to wear to court, ironically, to
make a good impression. He even mentions how he was one of the first
inmates to think of gluing drugs into the heels of shoes. Reynolds
shuts him down.

The Regina woman knows too well how easy it is to be caught, despite
Stonechild's bravado, in a conversation heard by police, that, "They
can't catch me - I'm f---ing one step ahead." Her record has an entry
for trying to sneak Stonechild drugs during a Fort Qu'appelle court
appearance.

In February 2010, another man leaving Reynolds's house was caught with
"a stall" of drugs wrapped in plastic and balloons that he was
supposed to pack into the jail. "S--- happens," Stonechild said upon
learning of his lost cargo.

The wiretaps expanded vocabularies: "Eight-balls" and "white" for
cocaine, "honey oil" for hash oil, "candy apples" for morphine,
"dillies" for Dilaudid, "rigs" for needles, "brown" for tobacco and
"magic" for a lighter. (Even lighters are contraband, although, as
Yandon testified, the resourceful inmates still manage to start fires
without them.)

Sitting on the remand unit in 2009-10 when the wiretaps were in place,
Stonechild seemed to spend his days playing poker, sleeping, and
dreaming or scheming about drugs.

"I can't stand to be in my right mind when I'm in jail," he once told
Reynolds.

When Taylor was being interrogated, the RCMP'S Sgt. John Kalmakoff
suggested some guards might welcome doped-up inmates: "It makes
everyone calm."

But they also feed what the Crown called the powerful "underground
economy" within the jail.

Even tobacco is a valuable commodity. If confinement alone isn't
enough to put inmates on edge, consider that most of those 500 men are
smokers, or were out on the street. Inmates used to get a supply of
cigarettes handed to them once a week. A new policy in 1997 confined
smoking to limited areas.

Five years later, the province's jails went tobacco-free. It wasn't
only the inmates who struggled. Court heard about a guard, sneaking a
smoke up on the roof, who started a fire when the cigarette fell down
a drainpipe.

In more recent years, it's a different pipeline that has caught the
attention of the corrections officials. Reynolds told court she was
fielding five to 10 calls a day from Stonechild. He and inmate Sanford
Brass are repeatedly heard on the wiretaps trying to arrange for
drugs, even after Brass moves to the Prince Albert prison to serve an
indeterminate sentence as a dangerous offender.

The Regina Integrated Drug Unit's investigation into the jail allowed
police, with a court warrant, to listen in on inmates' calls for six
months ending in March 2010.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, three months later the jail brought in
a new system in which all phone calls, except those to law firms or
the ombudsman's office, are recorded without a court order. It's meant
to control what Magnusson called "issues."

But in this cat-and-mouse game, it's likely some inmate has found a
new hole in the system.
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MAP posted-by: Matt