off the pigs.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/14/593204274/alabama-sheriff-legally-took-750-000-meant-to-feed-inmates-bought-beach-house

America
Alabama Sheriff Legally Took $750,000 Meant To Feed Inmates,
Bought Beach House

March 14, 20184:26 PM ET
Camila Domonoske square 2017

Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin took home as personal
profit more than $750,000 that was budgeted to feed jail
inmates, which is legal in Alabama, according to state law
and local officials.
Brynn Anderson/AP

A sheriff in Alabama took home as personal profit more than
$750,000 that was budgeted to feed jail inmates -- and then
purchased a $740,000 beach house, a reporter at The
Birmingham News found.

And it's perfectly legal in Alabama, according to state law
and local officials.

Alabama has a Depression-era law that allows sheriffs to
"keep and retain" unspent money from jail food-provision
accounts. Sheriffs across the state take excess money as
personal income -- and, in the event of a shortfall, are
personally liable for covering the gap.

Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin told the News that he
follows that practice of taking extra money from the fund,
saying, "The law says it's a personal account and that's the
way I've always done it."

Sheriffs across the state do the same thing and have for
decades. But the scale of the practice is not clear: "It is
presently unknown how much money sheriffs across the state
have taken because most do not report it as income on state
financial disclosure forms," the Southern Center for Human
Rights wrote in January.

But in Etowah County, the News found the paper trail.

'Following the letter of the law'

The News discovered the eye-popping figures on ethics
disclosures that Entrekin sent to the state: Over the course
of three years, he received more than $750,000 in extra
compensation from "Food Provisions." The exact amount over
$750,000 is unclear, because Entrekin was not required to
specify above a $250,000 a year threshold, the paper
writes.

The paper also found that Entrekin and his wife own several
properties worth a combined $1.7 million, including a
$740,000 four-bedroom house in Orange Beach, Ala., purchased
in September.

Without the provision funds, Entrekin earns a little more
than $93,000 a year, the paper says.

In a statement emailed to NPR, Entrekin said the "liberal
media has began attacking me for following the letter of the
law."
FROM THE ARCHIVES
2009: Ala. Sheriff Jailed For Starving Inmates
Listen

"The Food Bill is a controversial issue that's used every
election cycle to attack the Sheriff's Office," Entrekin
said. "Alabama Law is clear regarding my personal financial
responsibilities of feeding inmates. Until the legislature
acts otherwise, the Sheriff must follow the current law."

Before he made headlines for profiting off the law, Entrekin
was better known for being indebted by it.

When Entrekin's predecessor died while still in office, all
the money in the food provision account went to his estate
-- as state law dictated, a county official told NPR.
Entrekin had to borrow $150,000 to keep the inmates fed. He
was paying down that debt for years, The Gadsden Times
reported.

In 2009, while he was still in debt from paying for inmates'
food, Entrekin told the Times that he personally thought the
law needed to be changed. But he noted that it might cost
more money for taxpayers if the county commission had to
manage jail kitchens through an open bid process.

David Akins, the chief administrative officer of the Etowah
County Commission, agrees with that assessment. He says the
commission is not eager to take on that duty, as some other
local governments have done.

"The sheriff can feed inmates cheaper than the county can,"
he said.

Inmate's diets, sheriff's responsibility

Alabama's controversial system hearkens back to a different
era, when county jails were more of a mom and pop operation
and feeding inmates was often the responsibility of a
sheriff's wife.

Today in Alabama, sheriffs are personally responsible for
feeding inmates in their jails and receive funds to cover
the cost. For state inmates, it's less than $2 per inmate
per day; for county, city or federal inmates, the amount can
be higher.
Criminal Justice Collaborative
Criminal Justice Collaborative

If sheriffs feed inmates on less than that, they can "keep
and retain" whatever is left over.

Lawyer Aaron Littman, at the Southern Center for Human
Rights, said in a January statement that the practice of
pocketing leftover funds was a "dubious interpretation" of
the law that "raises grave ethical concerns, invites public
corruption, and creates a perverse incentive to spend as
little as possible on feeding people who are in jail." He
argues the sheriffs are supposed to manage the funds, not
personally profit from them.

But local governments across the state say the law is clear
that the money can be kept for personal use.

"That's the way it was set up years ago," Akins from the
Etowah County Commission tells NPR. "That's just the way
it's been in the state. ... Of course, state legislators
could always change that if they wanted to."

He doesn't see a problem with the practice.

"I think if the inmates were not being fed properly, it
might be a concern," he said. "But I'll guarantee you that
if they're not fed properly, the federal government would
let us know about it."

'Sheriff Corn Dog' and bankrupt car lots

In some cases, the federal government has objected.

In 2009, then-Sheriff Greg Bartlett of Morgan County was
briefly tossed in jail after acknowledging that he had
personally profited, to the tune of $212,000, from a surplus
in the jail-food account. Prisoners testified about
receiving meager meals.

To cut corners, Bartlett used charitable donations and
"special deals," as CBS put it -- including once splitting a
$1,000 truck full of corn dogs with a sheriff of a nearby
county and then feeding the inmates corn dogs twice a day
for weeks.

He defended himself by noting that his profit was legal
under state law, but an exasperated federal judge said the
sheriff had an obligation to feed his inmates adequate
food.

The story made national headlines, and Bartlett agreed to no
longer dip into the jail food fund.
Newstime: Alabama sheriff legally took $750,000 meant to
feed inmates, bought beach house

In 2015, a sheriff in Morgan County loaned $150,000 from the
inmate food fund to a corrupt car lot. The loan was revealed
when the business, facing theft and scam charges, went
bankrupt.

Again, that sheriff's use of the food money was legal under
state law; it was only prohibited in Morgan County because
of the county's particular history.

Aside from individual lawsuits like those, it's hard to tell
exactly how much money earmarked for inmate food is going to
sheriffs.

This January, two advocacy groups sued for access to records
that could reveal how much jail food money was being turned
into personal profit. The groups said 49 sheriffs had
refused to provide records of where funds were spent.

Then in February, reporter Connor Sheets of the News began
revealing Entrekin's spending history and his ethics
disclosures.

'I put two and two together'

Sheets' investigation has also made headlines because of the
arrest of a key source.

Sheets spoke with a landscaper named Matt Qualls who mowed
Entrekin's lawn in 2015 and noticed the name of the account
on his checks -- the "Sheriff Todd Entrekin Food Provision
Account." He shared pictures with Sheets.

"A couple people I knew came through the jail, and they say
they got meat maybe once a month, and every other day, it
was just beans and vegetables," Qualls told Sheets. "I put
two and two together and realized that that money could have
gone toward some meat or something."

Sheets' initial story was published on Feb. 18. On Feb. 22,
Qualls was arrested and charged with drug trafficking after
an anonymous call complained of the smell of marijuana from
an apartment.

Qualls, who had never been arrested before, faces six
charges and is being held on a $55,000 bond, Sheets reports.
He is detained in a jail that Entrekin oversees.

Qualls was arrested by Rainbow City Police, not by the
sheriff's department.

The Etowah County Drug Enforcement Unit added extra charges
to his case, including a charge of drug trafficking, which
the Rainbow City Police chief said was based on inaccurate
weight calculations. (The unit counted 14 grams of pot,
infused in five cups of butter, as more than than 1,000
grams worth of marijuana.)

"Penalties for drug trafficking are extremely steep in
Alabama, where people have been imprisoned for life for the
crime," Sheets notes.

The sheriff's office denies involvement in Qualls' case,
noting that the landscaper was not arrested or charged by
the sheriff's office. The extra charges were added by the
Drug Enforcement Unit, which consist of agents drawn from
the sheriff's department, the FBI and other law enforcement
agencies.
Correction March 15, 2018

A previous version of this story stated sheriffs do not need
to report extra income of less than $250,000 a year. That is
inaccurate. There is a $250,000 cap on mandatory reporting
from a single source.
Posted on: def3.i2p