One of the criminal cases touted last week by a new law enforcement task force offers a glimpse into the logistics of a well-known problem at Tennessee’s largest and most infamous prison. The federal criminal indictment, filed in September, details the way an incarcerated man, his girlfriend on the outside and three correctional officers allegedly conspired to smuggle drugs like fentanyl, heroin and cocaine into CoreCivic’s Trousdale Turner Correctional Center using contraband cell phones, thousands of dollars in Cash App transfers and daytime drug handoffs at a nearby hotel.
The case was one of several highlighted that was attributed to the work of the Homeland Security Task Force, a newly constituted group of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies officials said are working together on cases involving violence and drug trafficking with ties to transnational criminal organizations. But there is nothing new about reports of hard drugs making their way into Trousdale Turner.
A federal lawsuit filed last year by the family of a man who died of a fentanyl overdose there alleged that officers at Trousdale were running “an elaborate scheme to smuggle, distribute, and profit from inmate consumption of opioids and other drugs,” which included having drones fly over the prison walls and drop drugs into the yard. The Banner also reported that nearly two dozen Trousdale employees had been criminally charged in 2023 and 2024 for crimes including smuggling drugs into the prison…