Richard Noggin’ Saturday: Alabama’s Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett

Alabama Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett

I normally don’t add the pics from Jonathon’s site, but in this case, I felt I needed to make an exception by showing the face of evil dressed up as a servant to the people. I read this from Jonathon Turley and thought to myself, “how many of these people are in jail being starved for smoking weed?”

This sounds precisely like something a backwoods redneck sheriff would do. Take in over $200,000 (probably buying his own personal coke) and starve those who are under your care.

My hometown sheriff’s department have a long history of this kind of shit (Tishomingo county, Mississippi).

We had one sheriff who went to prison and got out to become a preacher. Praise Gawd!

Another, Sheriff Bob “Cocaine” Payne, got his nickname for a reason. Can you guess why?

But, as bad as the inmates had it (for about three years I went to the jail every Sunday just to talk to folks who were locked up :under the guise of religion, but I never said religious shit to them) I can never remember it this bad. They just needed someone to talk to from outside, especially when family had given up or they had none. But they had some food, even though other “contraband”  issues were pretty stupid. I can’t tell you how many kids (18 or so) that I spoke with that simply had a dime bag of weed on them and couldn’t even afford the bail or a bail bondsman. Yet, they would languish months and up to a year for such a trivial thing.

I also know Morgan County pretty well (lived there many years ago and have many customers in the town of Decatur). This is a more robust and populated town than most Podunk towns I live around. Right on the river and probably has around 40,000 citizens (my hometown has about 3,000 as a comparison).

So, you would think that they could find a more understanding redneck to run their county. I also wonder if this sorry sob was put into the general population? Can you imagine those he was starving getting their hands on him. What a total piece of shit.

Federal Judge Jails Alabama Sheriff Who Profited After Inmates Went Hungry

U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon in Alabama took the extraordinary step this week of ordering Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett to be locked up in his own jail after testimony showed that he had deprived inmates of adequate food while profiting from the meager diet. Bartlett personally kept $212,000 in “surplus money” from the meal program.

Judge Clemon held the hearing to determine whether the sheriff was in violation of that agreement with some surprising testimony.
Bartlett is to remain the Morgan County jail until he comes up with an adequate plan for feeding the 300 inmates as required under the 2001 court order.

Clemon correctly questioned the legality of allowing sheriffs to keep the surplus money from such programs, noting “He makes money by failing to spend the allocated funds for food for inmates.”

Yet, 55 of Alabama’s 67 counties are allowed to keep make money operating their jail kitchens. The law pays sheriffs $1.75 a day for each prisoner they house and lets the elected officers pocket any profit they can generate. Alabama should be ashamed of creating such a system that is ripe with abuse and conflicts of interest. I have done prison work for roughly three decades and I have never heard of such a system.

Inmates testified that they had to struggled to buy enough food to survive. They described how they would often received half an egg, a spoonful of oatmeal and one piece of toast most days at their 3 a.m. daily breakfast.

Bartlett insisted that he took steps to vary the meal such as spending $1,000 cost for an 18-wheeler full of corn dogs, which he split with another sheriff. He then forced the prisoners to eat corn dogs twice a day until they were all used. The judge was not impressed with the corn dog diet as a point of pride. “So until they were used up, they became the staple diet for inmates in the Morgan County Jail?” Clemon asked.

Alabama should be subject to a federal investigation for this program and the violation of the constitutional rights of the inmates in their care. Congress should also hold hearings on the matter since these sheriffs received federal funding directly linked to inmate care.

For the full story, click here