Oklahoma County Jail facing fines from health department

The Oklahoma County Jail is facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines from the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

OKLAHOMA COUNTY, Okla. (KFOR) - The Oklahoma County Jail is facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines from the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

The department filed a case late last month after they found multiple and repeated deficiencies within the jail.

The jail is staring down the barrel of about $350,000 in fines.

This is after an unannounced follow-up inspection from the state health department where multiple and repeated issues were found and listed in the official filing as “…life safety and health, and security violations…”

These included issues ranging from monitoring inmates, to inmates having prescription meds, to pest control problems. The full filing can be read below.

"Some people might be scared to speak up, but I'm not,” said Barbara North, whose daughter was recently in the jail on drug possession. “I'm a taxpayer just like everybody else."

North claims her daughter was a victim of some of those deficiencies.

"She was eaten by bedbugs,” North said. "She's suffered enough being a drug addict. They don't have to do this to her."

The compliance case was filed by the department just a few days before the June primaries where voters approved the $260 million bond funding for a new jail. The case was filed to push the jail into compliance.

Jail Trust Chair Jim Couch responded to the filing and that full statement can be read below.

"You tell how it makes me feel as a mother and a grandmother, aggravated,” North said. "It's got to stop. It's really got to stop."

The order states the jail must correct the issues immediately. If not, they can be subject to more fines for each day they continue to operate with the deficiencies listed.