Milwaukee Jail Has Drug Smuggling Problem

Milwaukee County Jail. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Milwaukee County Jail has a contraband problem that could be deadly.

Narcotics and other drugs are finding their way into the county jail. It’s not a new problem for the jail, or unique in the landscape of corrections facilities. But synthetic drugs, like the opioid Fentanyl, are easier to smuggle into a secure facility. And top Milwaukee County Sheriff‘s Office (MCSO) officials are now seeing these new synthetic narcotics contribute to overdoses and, potentially, deaths in the jail.

Two men have died at the jail in 2025. In March, Joseph Boivin, 48, died while in MCSO custody after being transported to Froedtert Hospital. In May, Gabriel Muniz-Jimenez, 33, died while in-custody at the jail. In both cases, jail staff found the men experiencing a health crisis and administered Narcan, a drug used to reverse the effects of opioid overdoses.

The full details are not yet known. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner‘s Office told Urban Milwaukee the cause of death findings for both men are subject to “non-disclosure.” A representative of the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office told Urban Milwaukee both cases are still being investigated.

MCSO Chief Deputy Brian Barkow told Urban Milwaukee he could not say what the causes of the deaths were, and that the determination must be made by the medical examiner. He did say, however, that based on his experience and training with drug overdoses as a law enforcement officer, both cases showed signs of a drug overdose.

Circuit Court records indicate Jimenez-Muniz struggled with substance abuse. He has twice been arrested for possession of methamphetamine. During both arrests he exhibited signs of paranoia during interactions with law enforcement. When he was arrested in 2024 he volunteered to police that he was holding drugs, telling them people were after him and he “wanted to be arrested so he could be taken to a safe place,” according to a criminal complaint. During both possession cases, the court found reason to believe he might not be competent to stand trial and ordered a mental health evaluation.

At the time of his death in May, he was in custody at the jail on the 2024 possession charge.

Milwaukee County Supervisors have discussed the issue of contraband coming into the jail during closed session in recent months. Sup. Sky Capriolo has authored a resolution to facilitate the purchase of a new body scanner and a third drug sniffing dog for the sheriff’s office.

“So we know smuggling drugs is a problem in the jail. It’s a huge threat. It’s a safety concern to people who are in our care,” Capriolo told her colleagues on the Committee on Finance. “Replacing an outdated body scanner and providing a third canine are two ways that we as a board can help the situation and show the community that we are listening and that we do care about this.”

The funding for the scanner and dog would come out of an existing account within the sheriff’s office. The money was previously set aside to pay Racine County to take inmates when the Milwaukee jail is over its population capacity. The MCSO is no longer interested in maintaining the contract with Racine or saving the funds for those transfers. MCSO officials told supervisors they thought the funds would be better used on a new scanner and a drug dog, Capriolo told Urban Milwaukee.

The MCSO provided contraband and overdose data to Capriolo for her resolution, which she included.

“Since 2020 there have been a total of 175 contraband incidents… Narcan… has been administered 50 times in the Milwaukee County Jail… Narcan was administered eight times in the Milwaukee County Jail during a medical emergency incident, with two of these emergency incidents resulting in an in-custody death,” the resolution states.

Synthetic drugs, like Fentanyl, are proving much more difficult for the MCSO to catch.

The drugs are liquified and paper is coated or soaked with them, Barkow said. A small corner of a piece of paper can carry the drug. “You tear off that little corner piece of paper and you ingest it,” he said.

The MCSO recently told supervisors the current body scanner used during intake of people arrested and brought to the jail needs replacing. The new scanner would be used to search these individuals “with a high degree of accuracy,” Barkow said, and the drug dog would be used to supplement the MCSO’s search for drugs across the facility.

“The scanner can’t go where the dog can go,” Barkow said. “And it doesn’t address the other ways that potential narcotics can come into the facility. “

MCSO Deputy Director David Rugaber said the jail brings dogs into the facility once a month for random searches of the employee locker room. “And we have found contraband in the employee’s locker room using canine searches as well,” he said.

Sup. Justin Bielinski raised concerns about bringing dogs into the jail. He pointed to studies that suggested using dogs to search for drugs can be unreliable, and that they can be trained to signal for drugs even when there aren’t any. He also pointed out that police dogs could trigger a trauma response from some inmates that have had bad experiences with them, or whose family members have.

But Rugaber pointed to studies that showed dogs have high rates of success. He also told supervisors the dogs would not be aggressive dogs. They would be “floppy-eared” dogs trained to detect narcotics and other contraband, he said.

The resolution is a way to respond to community “anguish” over in-custody deaths at the jail, Capriolo said.

“We hear from concerned community members and frustrated, devastated family members of people who are incarcerated in our care at the county jail,” Capriolo said. “The message we get from them is very clear: please make the jail a safer place.”