Escape at O'Hare airport prompts changes to how Brown County transports inmates from out of state
Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the status of Brown County's use of REDI Transport for criminal case defendants.
GREEN BAY - A recent escape of a Brown County prisoner at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has prompted a review that's likely to change how prisoners are transported on behalf of the county.
The Brown County prisoner escaped while being brought back to Green Bay to face charges involving cocaine and methamphetamine use. His escape — he walked away from a former law-enforcement officer who was buying him pizza and hopped a car-rental company's shuttle bus — has prompted a review that's changed how Brown brings inmates back from other states.
For now, Sheriff Todd Delain has suspended the contract with REDI Transports, the Green Bay company with whom the county contracts to transport prisoners to Brown County, for nationwide extraditions.
The prisoner was able to hop onto a rental-car shuttle bus and disappear into the O'Hare crowd. He was on the loose for roughly 10 days before being captured in Georgia.
Among other questions that members of the county's Public Safety Committee are asking: how did a handcuffed prisoner manage to escape the lone person — a retired sheriff's official — escorting him.
"They've done thousands of transports — for us and their other clients — with only two escapes" in more than a year, Delain said, adding that both prisoners were caught. "But having even one person walk away is not acceptable."
It cost Brown County $3,900 to bring Tyler James Martinez, 31, from Downey, California, via Los Angeles International Airport and O'Hare, to face three felony drug charges and an equal number of misdemeanors filed in June 2021. A case filed a month later added three felonies to Martinez's charges; one involved possession of an electric weapon.
Brown County pays REDI Transports for about two dozen such long-distance transports per year, Delain said. In the five years of REDI's contract with Brown County, the business has conducted a total of 46,834 transports for the county.
The Martinez case was the lone escape of a Brown County prisoner, sheriff's office figures show. The county's review of the incident says the employee escorting the prisoner no longer works for REDI Transports.
REDI Transports officials declined an interview, but company President and CEO Crystal Cook said in an email Monday, "we have been asked to attend and answer questions by the Public Safety Committee at their June 7 meeting. We are preparing information to provide to the committee members and feel it would be inappropriate to discuss this topic prior to meeting with them."
Nationwide, REDI and its predecessor, Lock & Load, have done more than 1 million transports for 240 clients, Brown County officials said.
REDI succeeded Wisconsin Lock & Load, a Green Bay company that began performing transports for the county in 2007. Cook took over the company from her father, Lock & Load founder Gregg Haney.
Members of the Public Safety Committee had a mixed response to the situation. Some members seem to believe Delain had brought the situation under control by suspending REDI from transport duties and using sheriff's officers to conduct transports.
County Board member Andy Nicholson, however, demanded to know what protocols REDI Transports followed before the Martinez escape, and an earlier situation in which an Indiana prisoner bound at the wrists and waist escaped through the door of a transport van waiting in a McDonald's drive-thru line in northwest Indiana.
A sheriff's review concluded that having only one guard traveling with the inmate was inadequate. REDI began requiring two transportation agents per prisoner after the Martinez escape, the sheriff's review found.
Out-of-state transports back to Brown County, for now, are handled by sheriff's officers.
"REDI Transports (erred) by assigning only one transportation agent to the conveyance of Martinez," a sheriff's office review of the incident found. "In a crowded airport … a single transportation agent could not be expected to maintain custody of Martinez, provide a meal, or safely provide basic human hygiene while alone."
In addition, the review recommends:
» Doing research on the prisoner to include police reports and local "behavior concerns."
» Providing more effective training. The sheriff's review questioned whether existing training standards are sufficient.
» Trying to book direct flights on trips where air travel is required. Flying into Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport may add an hour or two in travel time to Green Bay, but would reduce opportunities for escape by minimizing the time the prisoner is in a crowded airport.
» Checking "restraint devices" regularly during a trip, to assure proper fit and function.
» Considering adding federally approved restraint systems, such as "leg immobilizers," as an effective alternative to systems currently used.
Contact Doug Schneider at (920) 431-8333, or DSchneid@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @PGDougSchneider.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Escape at O-Hare airport changes how Brown County transports inmates
