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Chain gang marks 20 years in Clallam County

An old fashioned chain gang is making the rounds in Clallam County.
An old fashioned chain gang is making the rounds in Clallam County. (Photo: KING)

The rattle of a chain gang can be heard across Clallam County these days.

Shackled inmates from the Clallam County jail work five days a week in the mud and tough terrain of the Olympic Peninsula hauling thousands of pounds of trash.

"It keeps getting worse it seems," said Deputy Owen McCann. "This is my third year on the chain gang, and we keep picking up more trash."

The chain gang has collected 14,000 pounds of trash since January alone.

About half of the garbage is from people who don't want to pay for trash pick-up. The rest comes from homeless camps including countless heroin needles.

The chain gang has been around for 20 years. Over the past decade, inmates have picked up nearly 620,000 pounds of garbage and cleaned more than 4,000 miles of streets. They've retrieved boats filled with garbage from local waterways and dismantled derelict meth labs.

"We find a lot of car parts, probably enough to build three or four cars, right now," said Sgt. Don Wenzl.

The low and medium security inmates are not chained together, but they are shackled from their ankles to their waists to keep anyone from trying to escape.

Wenzl said there have been no legal challenges to the chain gang. In fact, he said many defense attorneys ask that their clients be sent to the program.

Some of the inmates currently working the chain gang admit to being guilty of creating the problem that is polluting so many trails, streets and woodlands in Clallam County.

"I've done this myself," said Matthew Martin, who is serving a sentence for shoplifting. "Being through this program, I can see what I was doing was wrong. Cleaning this up sucks. I would never do it again."

County officials estimate the program has saved taxpayers about a million dollars in labor over the past two decades.

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