When an Ankle Monitor Stops the Show!

Wheeler Painting and Restoration Services provides a wide range of construction and restoration projects. One unique client we serve is a housing provider, who provides housing for men coming out of incarceration. Some of the residents in the houses wear an ankle monitor and other residents do not. This condition is nothing that has ever impacted our work or services that we offer – until it did.

Recently the housing provider hired Wheeler Painting and Restoration Services to finish out a 1,600 square foot basement. The newly finished basement would offer new bedrooms, a bathroom, and a recreation room. This type of build out entails a lot of specialties – saw cutting concrete, new window install, electrical, plumbing, duct-work, framing, insulation, drywall, paint, flooring, and our team always works hard to accommodate all needs of an occupied space.

Now, the basement we were building out was unoccupied, however, the main floor of the house was occupied with several residents and our team communicated with them to keep them up to speed of the daily schedule and progress of work. The team was about half way through the project when they found the Pierce County police on property and had one of the residents under questioning. It seems that long after the electrical rough-in was completed, the carpenters were addressing some electrical trim out and must have hit a wire. The wire that was hit connected to an outlet upstairs where an ankle monitor transponder was plugged into. After a little bit of investigation by the Pierce County police and the community corrects officer, it was determined that the transponders must have been disconnected from power too long and the battery backup failed, therefore bringing a lot of attention to the house because Pierce County police thought that they had “a client in the wind”. It’s not often that the police join us on a job site, but it does happen occasionally. We’ve been working in the basement of a bank when it’s been robbed and the police show up. We have set off alarm systems before and the police show up. We have even hired the police to address traffic control when exterior work required a lane of traffic to be closed down. Regardless of why the police show up on our job site, it all seems to be solved fairly quickly through communication.

Our goal with any given project – commercial or residential is clear lines of communication. Clients, residents, tenants or whoever else is connected with a project will always know where we are in the process of construction and what to expect during our services. It’s never our intention to leave someone with out power or water without proper notification and planning, but at times things do happen and we find ourselves with an ankle monitor that is not communicating with the proper authorities. If you have a project you need assistance with, please feel free to reach out and we will see how we can help you. Be sure to let us know if you have an ankle monitor that we need to keep powered. Until the next crazy story in the Adventures at Wheeler Painting and Restoration Services, be well and do good.