Nesquehoning and Carbon County has reached an agreement on which law enforcement agency will handle cases at the Carbon County Correctional Facility.

In April, the borough reached out to Carbon County District Attorney Michael Greek regarding the growing number of cases at the prison that require days and sometimes months of work, taking officers away from the town. The correctional facility is located within Nesquehoning’s borough limits.

Nesquehoning police Chief Sean Smith said that the cases have taken a lot of his department’s time and was interfering with properly covering the borough. Nesquehoning has five full-time and three part-time police officers on its staff.

Smith said Greek was very open to the idea of the county handling cases at the prison and will handle investigations moving forward. The borough will still respond at night to begin an investigation, but will hand all evidence and interviews over to the county for further investigation.

Greek said Thursday that the borough had been experiencing an increase in calls at the prison and this new agreement will help the borough moving forward.

“I felt that our (two county) detectives were in a better position to investigate and charge incidents arising at the prison,” Greek said. “While Nesquehoning will still respond to emergency calls at the prison, the county detectives will be responsible for any subsequent investigation.”

Smith said that prior to this agreement, his department was responding to the prison about three to five times a week for various incidents, including drugs, assaults and other cases.

Some of those cases would take months to complete.

For example, Smith said if a few inmates would get into a fight in a cellblock, the investigation could take weeks until all interviews and tapes are reviewed by the responding officer.

“If that same officer got two or three calls like that, it would take him away from other duties for months,” Smith said. “It was bogging us down to the point where we weren’t being proactive and weren’t patrolling enough. It was actually slowing down our response times.”

Smith said the working relationship his department has with Greek and his office and at the prison has been encouraging and he is happy this agreement was reached.

Nesquehoning Borough Council has discussed the issue of borough police covering cases at the prison for months, and voiced concerns about taking its officers away from the coverage of borough residents.