Pima County taxpayers paid $18,000 on renovations and equipment for an employee cafe at the jail that has been closed for months, newly released records show.
The amount of money spent on the cafe is significantly more than the Pima County Sheriff’s Department claimed nine months ago when the Arizona Daily Star first reported that the niece of a high-ranking department official was operating restaurants out of the jail and the department’s headquarters rent-free and without a contract. The jail location closed days later, after the Star’s investigation revealed that it was operating without a health permit.
At the time, the Sheriff’s Department provided the Star with $5,500 in receipts for equipment for the jail cafe, in response to a public-records request. But the department turned over records of nearly $13,000 more in equipment and renovations in response to another public-records query by the Star last month.
The new documents show the total amount spent on the two locations was $30,000.
Incomplete receipts
In 2012, Chief Deputy Chris Radtke’s niece took over operations of the cafe for employees, located inside the sheriff’s headquarters since the mid-1990s. Records show that days before she opened, the department purchased more than $12,000 in kitchen equipment for the existing restaurant space.
Two years later, then-owner Nikki Thompson expanded the business and opened a second location of Off the Record — The Exclusive Café, inside the jail.
The department spent thousands of dollars remodeling the space — which had previously been used as a mail room — and purchasing equipment to prepare hot and cold meals for jail employees, records show.
The original amount of $5,500 that was provided to the Star in November, included only receipts for a freezer and a refrigerated sandwich table.
However, a visit to the location revealed multiple pieces of kitchen equipment that weren’t included on the receipts.
A few weeks after the news story was published, Capt. Buddy Janes, the department’s administrative services director, provided the Star with four additional expenses for renovations to the jail cafe, totaling nearly $5,000.
When asked why the receipts for the missing kitchen equipment weren’t provided, Janes said it was an oversight.
When the Star made it’s request, Janes said he contacted jail personnel and asked for a list of equipment and expenses.
At the time, he was unaware that the list was incomplete, Janes said.
In addition, some of the equipment purchased for the jail cafe is the same type that’s used in the inmate kitchen, so the staff members compiling the list might not have known from the invoices which pieces were for the cafe.
“Someone should have just walked down there and looked,” he said.
Janes initially told the Star that the funds for both cafes came from RICO funds, which is money given to law enforcement agencies that is seized in criminal cases. Later, he said the money came from the department’s general fund.
Sheriff Chris Nanos said in November that the cafes provide employees with a necessary service. Corrections officers can’t leave the jail during their shifts, and there are very few restaurants near the headquarters south-side location, he said.
Multiple sources told the Star in February that they had been interviewed by the FBI regarding with the possible misuse of department funds in connection of the cafe, but the agency would not confirm or deny the investigation. The county also eventually conceded that steps in the procurement process were skipped when the department didn’t offer the opportunity to bid for the contract to other vendors.
Up for bid
In December, the county offered the lease for the cafe at headquarters to the Department of Economic Security blind vendor program, which turned down the contract.
On June 20, the lease went to public auction, but in the seven months following the Star’s investigation, Thompson continued to operate the restaurant without paying rent. She did not participate in the auction to win the county contract and closed the restaurant days before.
The winning bid for the cafe space at department headquarters was $200 per month in rent, said Lisa Josker, director of facilities management for Pima County.
The county will begin advertising the lease for the jail location next month, Josker said.
Contact reporter Caitlin Schmidt at cschmidt@tucson.com or 573-4191. Twitter: @caitlinschmidt
