The El Paso County Jail in Colorado Springs, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021.
A refurbished locker room for deputies. A new training facility and high-tech locks and security cameras. A $600,000 conveyer belt to move inmate property from one place to another and new doors throughout.
All those renovations at the El Paso County Jail some of them part of a longstanding wish list were paid for with federal COVID-19 relief funds.
But it took until November for officials to furnish inmate face coverings inside the jail.
The predictable result was that even as almost $16 million in construction was underway at the jail, inmates and corrections deputies were suffering, unmasked, through the state’s worst jail outbreak.