The last time we checked in with Jose Alday–in December–the Santa Ana 33-year-old was pleading not guilty to accepting bribes from an inmate as a jailer in Seal Beach's for-profit city jail.
What a difference five months make, as Alday pleaded guilty to taking money and an iPad in exchange for lavishing the inmate with prohibited contraband and visitor
contacts.
]
Specifically, Alday copped to felony counts
of an officer receiving bribes and possession for sale
of a controlled substance and misdemeanor possession of
controlled substance paraphernalia.
He was sentenced to two years in
state prison, ordered to pay $3,000 in restitution and prohibited from working at Seal Beach City Jail or from holding any public office or employment, including law enforcement, in California–for life.
Alday had been
a non-sworn detention center officer for four years when, several times between July and Christmas Day 2011, he allowed visitors to enter the jail without being
searched, have unauthorized contact with the inmate and pass contraband
that included alcohol to the guard's benefactor.
Besides cash and the iPad, Alday received a cell phone, two leather jackets and other items brought to him
by the unnamed inmate's visitors. But the gift-getting ended when the Seal Beach Police
Department received a tip and launched an investigation.
Busted at the jail, Alday had a substantial amount
of anabolic steroids on him, and a search of his Santa Ana home produced a used methamphetamine pipe.
Before the guilty plea, Alday was looking at a maximum
sentence of five years in state prison with a conviction.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.