Fremont County Sheriff explains the issues behind why dangerous inmates have escaped from his jail

FREMONT COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) - In the past year and a half, four inmates have escaped from the Fremont County Jail.

Some of these people have been charged with very serious crimes, like attempted murder. One escape happened just last week on September 26.

KRDO13 Investigates sat down with Fremont County Sheriff Allen Cooper, to try and get at the root of the problem and figure out what is being done to address the issue.

Ultimately, Sheriff Cooper attributes the escapes to a number of problems within the jail, but primarily cited staffing and funding shortfalls.

"Whenever you have new equipment, new processes, or new people, that's when you have your problems," Cooper told KRDO13 Investigates, about the majority of his staff being newer and inexperienced deputies.

He also stated that most inmates will not take the opportunity, or want to make the effort to escape, because most are being charged with a non-violent crime, or one that not very serious, and they don't want to add more penalties to their charges for trying to escape custody.

Cooper also explained that most people are only in their jail for a short period of time, and they're constantly rotating through inmates.

KRDO13 Investigates then asked why some people would consider taking the risk, considering the trend that has emerged for the jail in recent years.

"Because of the move to depopulate the jails, a lot of those people that may have been in here for overnight, 24 hours, 72 hours, they're no longer here. And because of the backlog in getting people into the department, Corrections people that are in transition to Department of Corrections, spend a little more time here." said Cooper about the shift in those that they house at the jail, and the threats they pose in wanting to act up.

When discussing the four inmates who have successfully escaped in the last 18 months, Cooper began by explaining the case of two inmates who walked through two sets of open doors, which lead out to the dumpster area in May 2023. He chalked it up to simple human error.

"Basically an escape of opportunity. We had kitchen trustees that were authorized to take trash outside and put it in a dumpster," said Cooper, "We had a staff member that was running the doors in master control, that was quite honestly a little bit overworked." he explained, on how the doors ended up open.

Next, in the case of the most recent escape on September 26, carried out by Anthony White with the help of a woman from the outside, Cooper says he climbed through a ceiling tile while in a bathroom, and landed in the building lobby, before exiting. He was later tracked down with that woman in Pueblo West.

"It's something that should not happen. That's it in a nutshell. Should not happen. So again, this last one was Mr. White. It's altered the way we deal with him, and it's altered where he can go within the facility." explained Cooper.

White is accused of multiple first degree felonies, which stem from allegedly murdering his cellmate in a Cañon City prison in 2022, as well as kidnapping and assaulting a guard at another state prison in Logan County earlier that year.

When asked why such a violent criminal was even being held in a county detention center like his, Cooper stated:

"That's one of the idiosyncrasies of our state system. We all agree he should not be here. He should be in a detention facility designed to hold Level One prisoners. But because he is accused of committing a homicide at Territorial [Correctional Facility], our district attorney filed charges on that, which gives the state the ability to put him in my facility." the Sheriff said.

Cooper adds that he has about 13 'Level One' inmates, out of the roughly 100 he houses per day.

In another inmate escape on June 7th of this year, Kegan Vanvliet is seen jogging on security camera footage out of the jail after he slipped through two sliding doors that were believed to be locked, but weren't.

Sheriff Cooper explains that the office mistakenly cancelled the services of a contracted company who was responsible for evaluating the sensor's within the detention center's doorways, which led to the faulty sensors never being recognized, and those doors being labeled as open, even though they were not. That's when Cooper says he discovered that 85% of the doors sensors had some kind of faultiness at that time. He says those issues have since been fixed.

"One of the things that we're looking at doing is redoing all the sensors and all the electronic locks and go to something more current. Of course, like everything else that's got a price tag attached." said Cooper.

On the topic of funding, Cooper explains that his revenue is down 15% this year, and his expenses are up 35%.

One of the costs driving up Cooper's expenses, is the state-mandated medical care he has to provide to his detainees, which he says due to the nursing shortage in the state, ended up costing him 28% more than previous years, for finding new services.

In addition to the contrast in funds, he's been facing a 20% deficit in his detention center staffing, however the Sheriff explains, that deficit is ironically what has been allowing him to maintain operations.

"The only thing that's keeping the ship afloat right now is the salary savings that I have because I'm not fully staffed," Cooper said.

When asked if was concerning that he would not even be able to afford being fully staffed, he replied, "A little. It keeps me up at night sometimes."

The Sheriff said he has explained his dire financial situation to county leaders this week, and said that if he can't get more money into his budget, he will need to make cuts to staffing next year, because salaries take up the most space in their budget.

Cooper also says that there are no state grant programs available for detention centers, compared to prisons. Cooper says he would obviously love to see more assistance from the state for rural jails like his in Fremont County, however if nothing at all, he would appreciate a grant to go towards a mental health service he has in mind for his jail.

"I wanted in-house an in-house clinician to come in and sit down face to face with the people that needed to see them as opposed to do it on like a telehealth," explained Cooper, "I would say probably 70% of the people I have in my facility at any given time suffer from mental health issues. Some are relatively minor, and I say 'minor', as in anger management, up to people with full blown psychosis."

"I'm mindful that we can't lock up everybody that has a mental health issue or a mental health crisis, nor should we. You know, I really believe that we should get those people help if we can." he added about the desired program.

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