Commissioners debate jail toilet problem

BANGOR – County officials hope they didn’t flush thousands of dollars down the toilet a year ago when they retrofitted the commodes at Penobscot County Jail.

The county spent $4,000 to modify eight toilets to resist overflowing, but at least one mischievous inmate recently figured out how to flood his toilet using a plastic cup, Sheriff Glenn Ross said Tuesday at a meeting of the Penobscot County commissioners.

The modifications were made because inmates were using bedding and clothing to clog the toilets, Ross said after Tuesday’s meeting. One office flooded half a dozen times, he said.

“We had problems with the regular ones,” the sheriff said. “Water in a facility is never good.”

The retrofitted toilets also are used in Maine’s state prisons, where officials recently installed electronic water regulators to prevent overflowing.

“There’s got to be a solution that doesn’t cost four grand,” Commissioner Tom Davis said Tuesday, suggesting that the jail replace the plastic cups with water bottles or soup bowls.

“I still feel that we bought something that didn’t work,” Ross said, adding that he thinks the company that provided the toilets should be held responsible.

For now, inmates will use a different size cup, Ross said.

“We believe we can make the changes,” he said.

In other business Tuesday, the commissioners heard a plan to improve online information sharing between the county and the state.

Cliff Warren, the county’s information technologies administrator, said he’s working with state officials to align the software used by the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department and the Maine State Police.

“I can see this as a great benefit to our patrol officers,” Warren said Tuesday.

Under the existing system, a sheriff’s deputy running a name or license plate has access to information in the county database, but not the state police database. For example, a deputy could pull over a driver for a traffic violation and not know that a state trooper recently arrested the person for assault.

Similarly, the state police don’t have access to county information.

If successful, the collaboration between Penobscot County and the state could expand to municipalities and other counties, as well as courts, jails and district attorneys, Warren said.

“This could be expanded on a large level,” he said. “There are a number of services, I think, that could be exchanged.”

Eventually, patrol officers could use laptops to access county and state law enforcement systems while on the road, Warren said.

“If this works, they can look up the information in their cruisers,” he said.