Alex Rose
Daily Times, Primos, Pa.
MEDIA COURTHOUSE — A former corrections officer at the county jail in Concord was given 23 months restrictive probation and two additional years of probation Monday after pleading guilty to a felony count of contraband for smuggling a controlled substance to an inmate.
Common Pleas Court Judge Dominic F. Pileggi ordered Shahonda Groves to serve 182 days in jail and six months on electronic home monitoring under the restrictive probation portion of a negotiated plea offered by Assistant District Attorney Allison Velez and defense counsel Jessica Mann.
Groves, 50, of Magnolia, N.J., has already satisfied those conditions, Velez said.
Groves was also ordered to pay a $113 lab fee and provide a DNA sample to state police. Other charges for possession with intent to deliver controlled substances and criminal use of a communication facility were dismissed.
Staff at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility learned that an inmate was in possession of contraband and searched that inmate’s cell, according to a release from District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer at the time of Groves’ arrest in August 2021.
Staff members discovered 10 packages of buprenorphine and naloxone film, also known as suboxone, and issued a report to the Delaware County Drug Task Force on July 29, 2021, the release said. Task Force investigators later found that Groves met with someone and obtained the suboxone for cash on several occasions, then delivered it to an inmate at the jail, according to the release.
Groves was one of two officers at the jail arrested in 2021 for smuggling. The other was Chloe Alexandria Vadel, 24, of the 600 block of West Park Lane in Philadelphia, who was caught with contraband in her car when she arrived for work in October. Vadel was sentenced to six to 24 months in a state prison in May after entering an open guilty plea to contraband in March.
The jail at the time of both arrests was run by for-profit GEO Group Inc. The facility returned to county control in April.
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