Pitkin County commissioners on Tuesday approved $1.3 million in short-term fixes for the county jail to make it safer for inmates and employees.
The fixes, however, will more than likely not be incorporated into long-term plans for the Pitkin County Jail, which officials have said needs to be completely gutted and re-designed or rebuilt elsewhere.
“I hold out little hope that we can incorporate this fix into a new design,” said Board Chairwoman Kelly McNicholas Kury, who told her colleagues she’d been reading up on new jail designs and realized the current facility is very dated.
Pitkin County sheriff’s deputies transferred all long-term jail inmates to the Garfield County Jail in March as part of a plan to upgrade safety measures at the 30-year-old jail. No inmates currently are kept at the jail for more than 48 hours and the jail’s work release program which allowed inmates to work during the day and report back at night was temporarily canceled.
Pitkin County deputies to wear body cameras within a year aspentimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aspentimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Derek Johnson’s latest Colorado Department of Corrections photo.
Johnson, 53, was rejected from a similar program known as “community corrections” in Garfield County in February, said Assistant District Attorney Ben Sollars. Though Sollars serves on the Garfield County Community Corrections Board, he said he didn’t recall the exact reasons for the rejection.
“We always saw this case as something that warranted a sentence to the Department of Corrections,” he said, citing the large amount of money and merchandise stolen, the long years of deception, the breach of trust and the impact to the community. “That didn’t change … in a short amount of time (Johnson served behind bars).”
Two teenagers are facing a raft of felony and misdemeanor charges after allegedly stealing three cars, breaking into seven more and stealing from their Snowmass Village neighbors two months ago
Thieves in Aspen cut hole in wall, steal $500k in goods from Louis Vuitton store
The thieves cut a hole in the drywall to enter the store and were inside for about an hour Saturday night, according to Aspen Police. Author: Jason Auslander Aspen Times Published: 1:16 PM MDT June 10, 2021 Updated: 1:16 PM MDT June 10, 2021
ASPEN, Colo. Thieves cut a hole in the storeroom wall of the Louis Vuitton store in downtown Aspen on Saturday and stole as much as $500,000 worth of merchandise, police said Tuesday.
One man and one woman along with two vehicles were caught on surveillance video, though there could have been more thieves and more vehicles involved in the brazen burglary, said Sgt. Rick Magnuson, head of the investigative unit at the Aspen Police Department.