LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — A Lake County corrections officers was arrested while trying to smuggle drugs into the Lake County Jail, deputies said.
Investigators said they stopped Jimmy Ankrom before the drugs made it inside.
Ankrom had arrived for his shift when he was searched and the drugs were discovered, deputies said.
He was then taken inside in cuffs.
“We don’t want someone like that working for this organization,” said Fred Jones with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. “We think that he was possibly taking it to an inmate. Within the pod that he would have been working. It one of those cases where we are glad that we made contact with him prior to him going to his duty station.”
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Officials said they got a tip and that when Ankrom showed up to work, he was searched and then arrested after they found meth and tobacco in his pockets.
Officials said they are looking into which inmate Ankrom was trying to deliver drugs to. They also trying to find out where the correction deputy got them.
“Everything that he worked for going to the academy for 5 months, getting state certified that is all lost,” Jones said.
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Officials said there was no discipline in his file and that they believe this was the first time Ankrom tried something like this.
Ankrom is on paid leave pending the outcome of the investigation.