Five charged with smuggle drugs into jail

Disney-character coloring books arriving at the Cape May County Correctional Center and addressed “To Daddy” in a child’s handwriting were saturated with a narcotic drug as part of a smuggling operation, authorities said. Two inmates at the correctional center, a state prison inmate and two others were charged with distribution of a controlled substance after they allegedly turned Suboxone, a prescription drug designed to treat opioid addiction, into a paste. The paste was then painted onto children’s pictures and sent through inmate mail. The arrests were the result of a two-month investigation that began when Corrections Officer Richard Harron Jr. developed a source who alerted him to the smuggling. As a result, corrections officers began watching the mail for the contraband, Shaffer said. An officer in the mailroom, William Coombs Sr., had found coloring book pages with what he called “an orangey substance blotted on the page.” More Photos