A sheriff in Alabama with a yearly salary of nearly $100,000 has also been pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in unused inmate food funds, presumably because he's a real piece of shit.
Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin ultimately bagged more than $750,000 in unused funds over the past three years, according to a new report from AL.com. In September of last year, Entrekin and his wife Karen bought a four-bedroom house in an "upscale section" of the small city of Orange Beach for $740,000. The couple owns multiple properties worth a total of more than $1.7 million.
As far as the legality of such grotesque fuckery, the report notes that the state that just last year nearly elected an alleged child molester has some internal disagreement on what to do with these unused funds. In some counties, any leftover money originally allocated for the purpose of providing food to inmates is given to the county government. Elsewhere, as in Entrekin's case, the argument is that local law allows for the pocketing of the funds at absolutely no benefit to taxpayers.
In a statement over the weekend, Entrekin said we "should be aware" that state law "is clear as to my personal financial responsibilities in the feeding of inmates."
A landscape worker who was hired by Entrekin in 2015 for lawn care services said he noticed the phrase "Food Provision" on Entrekin's checks. "I saw that in the corner of the checks it said Food Provision, and a couple people I knew came through the jail, and they say they got meat maybe once a month and every other day it was just beans and vegetables," he said last month. "I put two and two together and realized that that money could have gone toward some meat or something."
In January, the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit against 49 different sheriffs for allegedly refusing to provide public records showing personal profits related to unused funds. You should absolutely read AL.com's extensive breakdown on all of this right here.
Also, in case you were wondering, Entrekin is (of course) a Republican. In 2013, he was publicly embarrassed with the distinction of the "Rising Republican Star" title. The people who hand out such a thing are seemingly unaware of the oxymoronical nature of a Republican "star," much less one that rises.
