ATLANTA (AP) — The troubled jail in Atlanta where former President Donald Trump surrendered in August is in such bad shape that inmates are able to make weapons from broken flooring and pipes, an attorney for the sheriff’s office told state lawmakers Thursday.
But Amelia Joiner also said the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office had made progress in recent months to reduce overcrowding across its jail facilities.
Joiner was among several people who testified on the first day of hearings before a state Senate subcommittee studying problems with the jail system in Georgia’s most populous county.
Fulton County’s main jail, which opened in 1989 in a neighborhood west of downtown Atlanta, has been plagued by overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and violence. Ten people have died in Fulton County custody this year, Joiner said.
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The U.S. Department of Justice announced earlier this year that it had opened a civil rights investigation into conditions in the jail system, which has five different facilities. Officials cited in part the death last year of Lashawn Thompson, whose body was found covered in insects.
The subcommittee plans to look at jail funding and management, as well as how quickly Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and the judicial system are processing inmates’ cases, subcommittee Chair Randy Robertson, a Republican, said. Robertson, who used to work at a jail, said the goal was to offer recommendations for lawmakers to consider.
Some Republicans have blamed Willis for the overcrowding, suggesting she has diverted too many prosecutors to pursuing the case that led to the indictments of Trump and 18 others for conspiring to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
Of 3,500 people jailed at the end of August in Fulton County, 35% had yet to be indicted and faced no other charges. Though Trump surrendered at the main jail in August, he was immediately released on bond and returned home.
Willis dismissed criticism in July…
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