{"id":54794,"date":"2022-09-09T23:44:30","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T03:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=54794"},"modified":"2022-09-09T23:44:33","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T03:44:33","slug":"lee-county-jail-is-refusing-to-take-inmates-in-due-to-covid-19-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/09\/lee-county-jail-is-refusing-to-take-inmates-in-due-to-covid-19-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee County Jail is refusing to take inmates in due to COVID-19 restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"730\" height=\"417\" src=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Jail-Facility-1-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-54795\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Jail-Facility-1-1.jpg 730w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Jail-Facility-1-1-300x171.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 730px) 100vw, 730px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The Lee County Jail is refusing to take more inmates in due to COVID-19 restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The jail issued a memo to police departments saying it\u2019s still operating under COVID-19 restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That means they will take suspected accused of violent felonies and DUIs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A police officer who doesn\u2019t want to be named said, \u201ctwo and a half years almost, of basically going out doing our jobs, arresting people not knowing if they\u2019re going to be accepted by the jail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The officer asked for his name to be withheld because he fears the consequences of speaking out against the Lee County jail\u2019s policy of not taking in every suspect arrested by Fort Myers, Sanibel, or Cape Coral police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the same criminals over and over that puts, puts us in a difficult spot when dealing with them on the street, because they know there are no consequences for their actions,\u201d the officer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Cape Coral Police Department arrested a man for punching a coach during this brawl at mariner high school at the end of the report you see this note saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDue to the lee county jail not accepting arrestees due to covid mitigation, Church was issued an NTA or notice to appear. And was released.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey just told us that they\u2019re not going to accept the person. Regardless of the charge, even if it\u2019s a felony, they don\u2019t provide a reason,\u201d the officer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We tried to reach out to the Lee County Sheriff\u2019s Office to ask why the covid restrictions are still in place. LSCO refused to answer any questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Collier County and Charlotte County Jails accept all arrestees with no restrictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lee County Jail is refusing to take more inmates in due to COVID-19 restrictions. The jail issued a memo to police departments saying it\u2019s still operating under COVID-19 restrictions.&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":54795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1617],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54796,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54794\/revisions\/54796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}