ATLANTA — The company behind a controversial Fulton County Jail inmate monitoring system said the technology works, but that jail overcrowding has stalled their delivery to the Fulton County sheriff.
Sheriff Patrick "Pat" Labat asked for funding for the electronic wrist monitors after inmate Lashawn Thompson’s body was found in the jail covered with bedbugs in September 2022.
The Alpharetta company called Talitrix said its wrist monitors are currently on 70 inmates at the North Fulton and Rice Street jails.
But it’s about more than wrist monitors. CEO Justin Hawkins says the company also has to hardwire the mental health wings of the jail to support the monitors -- and can’t do it with inmates present.
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The jail "has inmates sleeping on the floor. There’s no place to move them while our staff works for eight hours to put the infrastructure in," Hawkins, who has been CEO since 2021, said.
Labat has pleaded with county commissioners to let him move inmates to other facilities, but community groups have protested that plan and commissioners have stalled.
In September 2021, Talitrix signed a three-year contract with the Fulton County Sheriff's Office. And six months after that, Sheriff Labat paid Talitrix $230,000 from a discretionary account requiring no board approval.
In April 2023, the sheriff requested $2.1 million for a thousand Talitrix monitors to be used on about 420 inmates -- to be deployed three months ago.
Because the wrist monitors need to be charged, two are assigned per inmate. Additional monitors cover lost or damaged monitors.
On Wednesday, commissioner Bob Ellis rebuked the company and the sheriff for failing to deliver the monitors by July.
"We had five people die in the jail -- five people post-July," Ellis said, adding that the monitors could have saved some or all of those lives.
Hawkins said it would have happened faster if his team had space to work.
"If the sheriff is able to move inmates out of (Rice Street jail wings) 3 North and 3 South, we would be able to be fully functional in every area before Christmas," Hawkins told 11Alive.
Hawkins explained he would have happily explained all this to Fulton County commissioners, had they asked. Sheriff Labat’s office tells us the sheriff aims to brief commissioners on it later this month.