Sumter County detention center officer arrested for giving cellphone to inmate

A now-former Sumter County Sheriff’s Office Detention Center officer got a glimpse of the other side of the bars Thursday after being arrested on accusations he gave his cellphone to an inmate in the jail.

Bernard Williams Jr., 29, of Pioneer Drive off U.S. Highway 15 South in Sumter, faces a charge of contraband, according to a news release from Sumter County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Adrienne Sarvis.

He was arrested on Thursday and given a $5,000 personal recognizance bond.

A warrant states Williams gave his cellphone to an inmate on June 27, the day he was arrested. He reportedly admitted to bringing the device into the detention center, where cell phones are not permitted, and giving it to an inmate, who is not permitted to have such a device.

He has been fired, Sarvis confirmed.

Illegal contraband such as cellphones in prisons have been at the forefront of conversation in South Carolina since Robert Johnson, a former state correctional officer at Lee Correctional Institution, was shot and left for dead at his home in Sumter in 2010 in a hit orchestrated by an inmate using a phone. That year also saw an inmate use, in part, a smuggled cellphone, to escape from another maximum-security prison in the state.

In 2018, seven inmates at the state prison in Lee County were killed and dozens injured in what officials have said was a gang fight over territory and contraband including cellphones.

Several other inmates at Lee Correctional were charged in May for using cellphones to livestream onto Facebook.

The Federal Communications Commission has shown willingness to work with the South Carolina Department of Corrections to help figure out the best way to keep cellphones out of inmates’ hands.

Federal officials oversaw a five-day test of a cellphone signal jamming technology in April, according to The Associated Press, making progress on the state-level effort to combat what officials have long said is the top security threat within the state prison system.