'60 Days In' Season 6: Heather, Vanessa and Tony disappointed with lousy shakedown in Etowah County Jail
In the final episode of '60 Days In' we witnessed a shakedown of the entire facility wherein corrections officers (COs) were about to scan the jail for contraband and other threats to the safety of the facility and the inmates. Chief of Police at the Etowah County Facility, Mr Jonathan Horton, noted in the episode that there have been a lot of improvements in terms of security in the facility. He reminisced that when he first came to the facility, he ordered a full shakedown wherein they recovered $5000 worth of contraband and he was hoping that the same situation doesn't repeat itself. He was also a little worried about undercover inmate Tony who had a lot of contraband on him and it was common knowledge among other inmates.
Back at the female pod, the jail trustees had informed all inmates that a shakedown was on the way and to be "prepared" for it, meaning a fair warning was given to all of them to part with all items that might put them in trouble. Undercover inmate Heather was surprised that the trustees (inmates awaiting sentence for non-violent crimes) knew about the shakedown and she felt that the purpose of this whole exercise was defeated before it even started. She also highlighted that she was wearing warm layers and normally during a lockdown, the inmates have to be stripped down to just one layer of clothing but that was not the case here and she mentioned that she could hide anything under the layers.
Undercover inmate Vanessa's notorious cellie, Angel, was stuffing her groin with something before the shakedown and the former was sure it was contraband. Like Heather, Vanessa too complained about the COs not doing their jobs well as the patdowns were almost next to nothing. She mentioned that a lot of inmates in the pod had a lot of drugs and other stuff on them and was appalled by how lightly they were all being patted to check. Heather and Vanessa were both ready to tell Sheriff Horton about his COs' lousy efforts causing a failure at the shakedown.
At the male pod, Tony was freaking out because he was completely caught off-guard and had zero knowledge of the shakedown. While he was impressed with the COs coming early in the morning to swoop the cells, he was worried that if his contraband was caught that would mean the end of this program and he didn't want to be caught with drugs in a jailhouse facility. He was 100% sure that the COs would find his drugs but he was highly disappointed when the search yielded nothing. "It was a win for Tony but a loss for the jail" he was heard saying later.
At the end of the shakedown, Sherrif Horton's team recovered a couple of dollar bills and a couple of shanks. Horton was "astoundingly pleased" that there was very little contraband this time around as opposed to the first time he had ordered this activity and a whole room was filled up with the recovered items.
