Wayne Bullard

Just three days after Ione police cracked down on visitors smuggling drugs into Preston Youth Correctional Facility, Mule Creek State Prison investigators also launched a bust - only in this case, the target was one of their own.

Yesterday, 38-year-old correctional officer Wayne Dion Bullard was arrested on suspicion of selling a controlled substance to prisoners in custody and bringing a weapon into prison. Bullard has worked at Mule Creek since 1998. He was arrested by a special investigative division of the California Department of Corrections that works out of Mule Creek.

Sources inside Mule Creek State Prison alerted the Ledger Dispatch to Bullard's arrest yesterday afternoon.

Reached by phone, officials from the Amador County Sheriff's Office confirmed that Bullard had been arrested by CDCR investigators, with assistance from sheriff's deputies and the Amador County Combined Narcotics Enforcement Team.

"If it's true, it's shocking and embarrassing," said one Mule Creek State Prison correctional officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I hope it's not; but the fact that the narcotics task force was involved doesn't look good."

The officer also worried that Bullard's arrest might have a devastating impact on morale at the prison, especially coming on the heels of the arrest of Mule Creek correctional officer Danny Akemon in 2008 for sex crimes, and the arrest of recently retired Mule Creek correctional officer Mark Tindall in January 2010, also for sex crimes. Both Akemon and Tindall were arrested by detectives from the Amador County Sheriff's Office for offenses against citizens in the community. Amador sheriff's officials are quick to point out that, in the case of Bullard, the alleged offenses occurred inside Mule Creek State Prison, and that the investigation against him is largely internal.

Bullard's bail was set at $100,000, which he posted the same day.