'Snakes' plague jail toilets

By BRIAN WALKER

Staff Writer

COEUR d'ALENE — Shawn Riley is fed up with those stinking "toilet snakes" at the Kootenai County jail.

Riley, the county's building and grounds supervisor, told Kootenai County commissioners on Wednesday that inmates have cost taxpayers $23,268 the past two years to fish out shirts, sheets, blankets and other linens from sewer lines after they’d been flushed down the toilet.

"This is a ticking time bomb," Riley said. "One of these days — and all it takes is happening once — is if a pipe gets busted, you'll be transporting a lot more inmates out of the area."

Riley said the cost for the plugged-up toilets this year has already reached $4,719.

County staff tend to the problems when they can, but the linens are often so far in the depths of the sewer system that a professional company specializing in such work needs to be called.

And, seemingly more often than not, the problems arise during off-hours such as holidays, weekends and nights, increasing the bill.

"They seem to enjoy doing it on holidays," Riley said, adding one incident on New Year's Eve led to an $1,800 bill.

Riley told commissioners he budgets $1,200 to clean grease traps each year and he doesn't mind doing that because it's a maintenance issue.

But he doesn't budget for "toilet snakes."

"I have no control over this whatsoever," he said. "It's a jail operations issue.

"I don't want to pay for it anymore," he said.

Commissioners will hold a follow-up meeting on the issue with jail staff to consider the budget request.

In the meantime, Commissioner Bob Bingham said getting to the root of the problem needs to be explored because the expense is costing the county regardless.

Kootenai County Sheriff's Office Capt. John Holecek said if inmates are caught with a not-so-royal flush, it's a felony called “injury to jail.”

However, offenders are rarely caught.

"In some of the bigger pods, there may be 45 to 50 people who could've potentially done it," Holecek said, adding that video zeroing in on the toilets isn’t allowed because it invades prisoners’ privacy. "It's a tough problem that we've been dealing with."

Holecek said each time such an incident occurs, an investigation is conducted.

"We do our best to hold the person accountable," he said. "But, if we don't have video, it's hard to hold them accountable criminally."