LINCOLN COUNTY, Mo. – Police bodycam footage from February shows a Lincoln County Jail employee assisting with an inmate intake. At one point in the video, the inmate recognizes him, but not because he is an employee, but because he has seen the man in jail before.

The inmate says, “You a police?”

The employee answers, “C.O., Lieutenant.”

The jail employee is Casey Thompson, who’s a convicted felon after pleading guilty to felony drug possession in 2018. How can he be a lieutenant corrections officer six years later? We asked Lincoln County Sheriff Rick Harrell, who said, “He’s not!”

“He’s a heck of a good clerk,” the sheriff said.

FOX 2 was able to speak with Thompson. In the interview, he said he didn’t have access to computer databases, a master key, or law enforcement equipment.

In response to asking Thompson why he called himself a lieutenant corrections officer, he said, “I think I just got scared in the moment. I hadn’t been put in that position and I just spoke; I didn’t really think it through.”

The Sheriff later added, “The inmate who’s being volatile at the time is less likely to punch a lieutenant in the face than a clerk in the face, so it could have potentially been something where it was a defense mechanism.”

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Harrell says he warned Thompson that he could not misrepresent himself. The sheriff added that he believes this is a good news story.

“In Lincoln County, we want to walk the walk. We talk about one of the biggest barriers for felons to be a productive member of society is employment, so as a county, we have employed inmate workers for many years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work.” Harrell said.. “I think Casey Thompson is, so far, he’s one of those people we can look to and say—that’s what’s possible.”

Thompson’s salary is at $48,000, which is $6,400 more than every Lincoln County corrections officer. Harrell says this is based on multiple duties, which for Thompson includes running at least three departments: kitchen, commissary, and procurement.

Thompson told FOX 2 he recognized places where the jail could save money when he was serving his sentence. He said he told a captain back then, ‘I wonder if they’d give me a shot to come back and try to do this,’ I said, ‘I think we could probably do it and do it better and save some money,’ and he said, ‘You know, they might.’”

“I’m shopping four to five vendors for each one of those every week. We are shopping price, price…to try to get the taxpayers the most bang for their buck.”

The Sheriff said Thompson recently found $80,000 in savings in the kitchen alone, which he says allowed recent raises for corrections officers—from $13 an hour to $20 an hour.

“He’s one of the people who did the work and found the money and saved those dollars in order to get that salary where it is today,” Harrell said.

Thompson said he’s learned his lesson about how he identified himself that February day and that it won’t happen again.

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