Butler County jail employees test positive for COVID-19

By MICHELLE FRIEDRICH

Staff Writer

An employee of the Butler County Justice Center tested positive last week for COVID-19, prompting additional sanitation measures and testing for anyone who may have had contact with the worker.

After experiencing COVID-19-related symptoms, the employee tested positive “somewhere toward the end of the week,” said Butler County Sheriff Mark Dobbs, who indicated the turnaround for the test results was fairly quick.

The employee, according to the Butler County Health Department’s exposure list on its website, had worked various shifts in the jail between Aug. 19 and Friday.

“It’s just an inevitable situation,” Dobbs said. “We’re lucky we’ve gotten to this point without having any more exposure than we’ve had.”

Dobbs said justice center staff members are observing the inmates for any symptoms and doing testing where necessary. No inmates are symptomatic at this time, he said.

“We’ve got all kinds of sanitation measures that have been put in place, as well as testing for anyone who would have had contact with this person,” Dobbs explained. “ … Thus far, testing of all potentially infected employees have resulted in negative tests.”

Disinfectant, Dobbs said, is being used everywhere within the jail facility.

“We’re doing everything we can in regard to personal protection equipment and those kinds of things,” Dobbs said.

The jail still is accepting prisoners, but “they are just not staying here,” the sheriff said. “They are going to other counties for the time being.”

This includes “any people that are supposed to be housed in the Butler County jail, regardless of what agency arrests them,” Dobbs said.

The prisoners, Dobbs said, are being transferred to “wherever we can find room for them to go.”

The only prisoners not being accepted at this time are those arrested on Poplar Bluff municipal charges, Dobbs said.

“We’re only taking state charges for the time being,” Dobbs said.

There will be additional costs for transporting and housing prisoners elsewhere, but “most of that will be able to be absorbed by the CARES Act money,” Dobbs said.

For now, Dobbs said, attorneys face-to-face visits with their clients are being limited.

Those visits will be conducted “through a glass barrier over a closed-circuit phone for the time being,” Dobbs said.

A video-visitation system was implemented in 2016 for families to visit with prisoners, and those stations still are operational within the justice center.

“We’re sanitizing them as best we can,” Dobbs said.

Protocols, such as intake-inmate screenings, had been in place for sometime to limit exposure to inmates and staff.

Exposure, Dobbs said, can’t be eliminated “without completely shutting (the jail) down, and that’s not an option.”

Dobbs himself tested positive for COVID-19 in August after having been exposed to the coronavirus at training.

“One of the other sheriffs (who sat at my table) had it,” said Dobbs. “ … They all got tested. Only the two of us (were positive). The others at the table weren’t infected.”

Before Dobbs could return to work following the training, “I already started having symptoms,” and self-isolated.

“The good part was I didn’t expose anyone around here (the sheriff’s department),” said Dobbs, who indicated he did not have a “long period of being asymptomatic.”

“People who give it to you don’t know they had it,” Dobbs said. “It’s almost impossible to trace sometimes.”s