Demolition Of The Baltimore City Detention Center Completed Tuesday
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- The demolition of the Baltimore City Detention Center will be completed Tuesday.
Governor Larry Hogan will speak at the event. WJZ will stream it live on this page at 9:15 a.m.
Hogan shut down the detention center in July 2015, and the $27 million demolition began in 2019. The detention center has been called the worst jail in the country.
At the start of demolition in 2019, Governor Hogan removed the first brick, and Tuesday, Hogan operated an excavator to tear out a window after speaking to a crowd at the scene.
Conditions inside the jail lead Hogan to call it a disaster of a facility and an embarrassment to the state, with dozens of health and safety code violations.
"The roof was crumbling and the facility had serious flooding and sewage issues," Hogan said. "With gang members essentially given free rein to run the facility."
Perhaps no name is more strongly associated with the jail than Tavon White, the inmate-turned-federal witness who ran a lucrative drug empire from his cell.
His testimony put more than a dozen police officers behind bars and exposed just how bad the corruption had become.
A new treatment center housing 1,400 people struggling with addiction and mental health issues will replace it, the governor's office said.
"We are bringing to an end the long checkered history of the former jail and we're making way for the transformative facility that will go in its place," Hogan said.
"We've now reached the end of the critical phase and are moving into the actual design phase of therapy treatment center on this site that will hopefully encourage individuals to change their paths," said Robert Green, Secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services.
The design phase will take two years, Green said.
