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A two-cell jail system for Gallup

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The Warden of the Gallup Jail is paid $1,346.15 per week. What is the total output in the salaries per week of all employees involved in running the jail? What is the person that heads the [Na’ Nihzoonzhi Center] paid per week? What is the total output in salaries per week of all employees involved in running the NCI? What is the cost per month for food, utilities, and clothing for the inmates in both places? What is the cost of beds, blankets, metal trays, pots, pans, silverware, refrigerators, stoves, and garbage cans for both places?

The overwhelming majority of the people that land in the Gallup Jail and the NCI are there for alcohol- or drug-related offenses, and many prefer jail or NCI to starving or freezing in the dirt. The sentences for the majority of these offenders should be permanent expulsion from Gallup, instead of jail or prison.

Instead of a two-story jail, Gallup could go the other way and build a two-cell jail, like the jail on the Andy Griffith Show that deputy Barney called “The Rock.” Gallup would be cleaner, and would save many thousands of dollars per week by no longer housing, feeding, and clothing the repeat dunks, day after day.

The only NCI in NM would finally be discontinued. The staff to run [it] would be drastically reduced. Same with the [staff] to run the Gallup [Police Department], the sheriff’s dept. and the state police. No longer would the drunks dictate to us. The tourists could come back without being harassed by drunken panhandlers, and Gallup would lose the Title ‘’DRUNK CITY.”

The so-called “STINGS,” where law enforcement furnishes their own DRUNKS and under-age people — that in reality translates into entrapments, police officers increasing jail or prison time; a larger Jail for Gallup, more prisons for NM (12 to date).  Continuing with Motel NCI has had a Reverse Effect. All of Gallup could be as Drunk-Free as The Hospital Area. This is Doable. There’s Nothing to it But to Do it.

Louis Maldonado,

Gallup

(505) 567-4909