By Keoki Kerr
Hawaii News Now
HONOLULU — A machine to screen employees and visitors to the state’s high-security Halawa Prison for drugs and other contraband has been broken for at least four years at the facility where COs have recently been busted for drugs.
In January, Mark Damas, 45, was one of two Halawa Prison corrections officers arrested for smuggling drugs into the facility. James “Kimo” Sanders, 31, another CO at Halawa, was indicted for methamphetamine trafficking and bribery. Shortly after those arrests, Ted Sakai, the head of state prisons, said this about prison staff: “They should be searched going in.”
For years, corrections officers and all other staff arriving at Halawa have not gone through contraband detection machines before entering the facility.
Full story: Contraband screening machine down for 4 years at Halawa Prison