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Twenty-one K9 units sweep the Hamilton County jail

419 views · Published 31 January 2018 · 0:23 · Indexed 21 September 2026

Channel: LOCAL 12 · 2018 · News & Politics

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CINCINNATI (WKRC) - The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office brought in 21 K9 units for a drug sweep at the jail on January 24. While they're searching for all contraband, jail officials are focusing on heroin.

The search dogs are from nine local agencies. Coordinators keep the search under wraps until the last minute. They bring the inmates into the day area in the pods and let the dogs do their work. "This is just one of the things we do to combat the drug epidemic in this county and keep the drugs out of our jail."

Chief Deputy Mark Schoonover said inmates can get creative. "These inmates have 24 hours a day to figure out how they're going to get contraband into the jail and they've been very inventive over the years on how they do that. So we have to take every measure we could possibly take to prevent that from happening."

In one previous case, deputies decided to test a stain on a Bible being brought into the jail. The stain was heroin. "They'll go to great lengths to get contraband into the jail and we go to great lengths to stop that."

The dogs did find some crystal meth in a common area.

Chief Deputy Schoonover said they try to do these sweeps two or three times a year. He says whether or not they find anything is irrelevant, the searches send the message that they won't tolerate contraband.

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