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A new life for old bars
Fence will be built around employee parking lot at jail
Terry Maketa has found a use for the cell bars that once held inmates at the downtown Metro Jail: a fence for the employee parking lot at the Criminal Justice Center.
The El Paso County sheriff says he’ll use the old bars to block off public access to the parking lot at the jail, southeast of downtown Colorado Springs. The fence will run about 150 feet.
The downtown Metro Jail is being repaired and renovated after it closed in the spring of 2005 because of safety concerns.
“When we started talking about demoing Metro and pulling out all the bars and doors and everything, I thought, ‘You know what, those steel bars still hold a value, and they’d make a great fence,’” the sheriff said.
“Right now, there’s no barriers or limits to keep people from going back into our fleet area, the coroner’s fleet area or our employee parking,” he said. “So we just want to increase the security of it.
“We’ve had vehicles broken into, tires slashed, nails set up in front of the tires. So it’s primarily as a deterrent to provide a little bit of safer parking for our employees.”
No one has gotten hurt, but CJC Bureau Chief Paula Presley said an employee was approached by a released inmate in the parking lot recently. She said that the inmate had tried to contact the employee several times.
“We have inmates that have threatened — I mean, they can look out their windows and see the type of cars employees drive. They know what time they get off shift,” Maketa said. “We’ve had threats, but nothing physical.”
The recycled fence will save the sheriff’s office $6,000 to $8,000.
Not all of the Metro Jail’s cell bars will be used for the fence.
Maketa said the rest will be sold to a scrap yard.
The fence won’t be built until next year, Maketa said, citing a limited budget for the remainder of 2007. County commissioners said last month that approximately $4.1 million must be trimmed from the county budget by year’s end.
Maketa said he had to go to the commissioners to get extra money this year when his office ran out of money for fuel and ammunition.
“We’re still trying to keep gas in our cars,” he said. “Our budget is just way too tight. It’s something that we won’t get extra money for, so we’ll probably have to use inmate labor. We’ll come up with a way to erect it.”
CONTACT THE WRITER: 476-4813 or kim.nguyen@gazette.com
