“Consequently, the focus of this fatality inquiry was on how drugs entered ERC, how they are detected and interdicted, and what could be done to prevent the introduction of drugs into this facility”
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Edmonton Remand Center staff should be subject to random searches to help cut the supply of illicit drugs into the city jail, a judge has recommended in response to two fatal overdoses at the institution.
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Johnathan Glover and Peter Tut Khor died in 2016 after taking lethal doses of fentanyl while incarcerated at the correctional facility in northwest Edmonton.
Glover was admitted in May of that year and told a nurse he was having withdrawals, while Khor had a long history of mental illness and was detained on a Canada Border Services warrant awaiting deportation to Sudan.
Both obtained unprescribed drugs on the jail’s illicit market and overdosed in cells. Both deaths were ruled accidental.
In fatality reports released Wednesday, provincial court Judge Kirk MacDonald focused on how best to limit the supply of street drugs into the jail — which has seen dozens of overdoses since Glover and Khor died.
“The common factor in the deaths of Mr. Khor and Mr. Glover was the presence of illicit drugs,” MacDonald wrote. “Consequently, the focus of this fatality inquiry was on how drugs entered ERC, how they are detected and interdicted, and what could be done to prevent the introduction of drugs into this facility.”
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The inquiry produced six recommendations, the most controversial of which, MacDonald acknowledged, is random security and drug screening for all staff entering the centre.
During the inquiry, several witnesses recommended the center require all staff to pass through the center’s state-of-the-art body scanner, which MacDonald concluded would be too costly and time intensive — noting a shift change at the massive jail sees traffic on the level of a large airport.
“Random searches would be more practical, less resource and personnel intensive, and have the requisite deterrent and interdictive effect,” he said.
Khor, 24, was found unresponsive in his cell on the remand center’s maximum security pod on May 14, 2016, after picking up an unknown object in a common area and covering his cell camera with toilet paper.
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Glover died in hospital Sept. 1, 2016, under similar circumstances. After a search of his cell he turned up methamphetamine, Glover was moved to a “dry” cell, where cameras later spotted him using a fishing line to exchange contraband with an inmate in an adjacent cell.
After a short time moving erratically around his cell, Glover slumped over on his bed and stopped moving. Emergency crews found him without a pulse and, while they were briefly able to resuscitate him, Glover later died in hospital.
MacDonald noted that once jail staff noticed the inmates’ conditions, “medical intervention was swift, vigorous and multifaceted.” He said the best thing to do to prevent similar deaths is to keep inmates from accessing drugs.
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Remand center managers and staff interviewed during the inquiry said inmates mostly commonly smuggle drugs in condoms or Kinder Egg capsules secreted inside their bodies. Drugs also come in through the mail, and, more rarely, with corrections employees, contractors and lawyers.
Remand center staff made an average of 387 drug seizures a year between 2014 and 2020. 2016 was the seven-year high with 641 seizures. The center began using the body scanner in December 2017.
In addition to random staff screenings — which MacDonald noted would require negotiation with multiple unions — he recommended the remand center install a cell-monitoring camera system on max pod that cycles through each cell. The current system requires an employee to manually select the cell they wish to view.
He also suggested that one corrections officer per shift be trained to use the overdose-reversing drug Naloxone, and that dry cells be “bracketed” with an empty cell to prevent the passing of drugs.
The fatality reports come one week after the mother of Timothy McConnell, an inmate who died by suicide at the remand center last year, revealed her son had made repeated requests for opioid addiction treatment before his death.
Also this week, staff at the remand center went public with concerns over plans to replace four paramedics assigned to the jail with nurses.
