By Tom Shortell
The Morning Call
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A Northampton County corrections officer was charged Friday with smuggling drugs and a cell phone to inmates at the county jail.
Brian Keith Jenkins, 30, of Easton, faces one count of providing a controlled substance to a confined person and one count of providing a telecommunication device to a confined person. He has worked at the prison nearly four years, according to county documents.
The charges stemmed from a joint Pennsylvania State Police and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigation that began in February, according to county officials. Details of the allegations were not immediately available.
Jenkins was released on bail Friday afternoon, according to county officials. He could not be reached for comment Friday.
Jenkins’ arrest follows a crackdown on contraband following the appointment of Daniel Keen as corrections director in December. Four guards were suspended in early May as part of a state and federal investigation into the prison, but all were cleared and brought back at full pay. Drug- and cell-phone-sniffing dogs turned up no contraband at the prison during a six-and-a-half hour sweep May 27, though Keen said dogs indicated drugs had been present at three locations inside the prison.
“It is extremely disappointing for the command staff, the dedicated frontline officers in addition to the staff working diligently every day to see and/or hear when an officer within our organization has been charged,” Keen said in a statement Friday. “We have a zero tolerance for this type of behavior in our facility. The safety of the staff, institution and public rely on this expectation.”
Northampton County Prison has faced several contraband issues in the past five years. A Bethlehem man smuggled a gun into the prison’s intake area in December 2010 without police or a corrections officer noticing it in his crotch holster. And in 2013, Rene Figueroa, who pleaded no contest to soliciting murder for hire and was convicted of paralyzing a man during a deadly shootout, was caught with a cell phone.