Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat told Atlanta City Council members even more people will die if they vote to end a lease allowing his department to house county inmates at the city’s jail.

The sheriff cautioned that terminating Fulton’s lease at the Atlanta City Detention Center late next year would mean an influx of detainees into the county’s already-crowded and notoriously dangerous Fulton County Jail, leading to additional violence and potentially more deaths.

The Rice Street facility is under a consent decree following a scathing Justice Department investigation that detailed the “abhorrent” and “unconstitutional” conditions there.

Officials say the jail is overcrowded and understaffed. Many of the locks don’t work, giving inmates free rein of entire cellblocks in a facility w

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