sheriff petePete Meskill keeps the blueprints in a locked drawer in his office.
Yep, Sheriff Pete's dream jail is a real beaut. Modelled on the Federal Supermax in Florence, Colorado, Sheriff Pete Meskill's detailed plans include a huge glass panopticon tower in the center of a wagon wheel-like maze of cells with totally automated doors, wall nozzles for remote control water cannon, state of the art surveillance and inmate monitoring cameras. The latest Star Wars lock-up technology for drunks and wife beaters.
Sheriff Pete estimates that he can bring in his new county jail for something over $17.5 million. That that eyebrown wrenching amount may account for the entire yearly budget of Tompkins County, New York doesn't phase the Sheriff one bit. He has aleady prepared a detailed proposal for a 150 year bond float. It's comforting to know that the new jail would be entirely paid for by 2156, down to the electrified moat.
And Sherrif Pete's got the land for the new jail all staked out and surveyed by his friend, Bruce Shickel. Turns out the land is in Bruce's name too. But that's no problem. Bruce is related to Sheriff Pete by marriage. That's the way things are done up in these here parts. What do those city slickers down in the flats know with their graduate degrees and fancy titles?
Now, the man on the street might wonder how a dinky little upstate county like Tompkins would consider building a $17.5 million facility for 75 random alimony cheats, marijuahana growers, serial fall-down drunks. Well, Sheriff Pete has that all figured out. He's been padding the headcount at the old jail for the last 8 years.
When he's not locking up members of his own rather large extended family, Sheriff Pete has been importing winos from as far away as Schuyler and Lewis Counties. Meskill read once that the His or Her Majesties' Royal Navy used similiar tactics to flesh out their crews -- patrol the gin pots in every port city and round up all the drunks. When some poor prolifigate would wake up in the morning with a royal hangover, he'd find himself staring at the lights off the coast of Calais. Or in the case of someone unfortunate to end up in Sheriff Pete's clutches, a rather naked aluminum toilet.
Sheriff Pete has kept the jail population overflowing for years. You do your crime in Lewis County, get arraigned in Tompkins County and then, thanks to overcrowding, get farmed out to do your time in at the calaboose in Tioga Couny.
Meskill has made the construction of a new jail his number 1 priority, And, it shows in the numbers. Since Sheriff Pete came into office, routine traffic violations logged by county law enforcement has decreased 95%. Speeders don't pay. Unless you're nabbed for DWI, DUI or hit and ru, you get off with a ticket and a fine. And most of the fine gets split betweem the municpality you've stopped in or the state. Not a penny goes to the construction budget for Sheriff Pete's new jail.
The roads of Tompkins County have become the new Wild West. There ain't a cruiser in sight. All the deputies hang out at the jail, playing cards with Sheriff Pete's cousins from Arkansas, all decked out and friendly in yellow TCCJ jumpsuits. Watch out for the Dukes of Slaterville, pardner.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 2:56 PM
