Inmate deaths and inhumane conditions at the Cuyahoga County jail have been in the news for more than a year now, and the reporting team at cleveland.com has made sure to hold County Executive Armond Budish to account.
But we are not the only ones who are supposed to ask the county executive tough questions. The decade-old county charter that voters approved to get rid of the corruption-ridden county commission form of government created a Cuyahoga County Council to demand accountability.
So why has the council been nearly silent on the jail? Why hasn’t Council President Dan Brady set up a rigorous schedule of hearings to compel Budish and his team to explain everything being done to reform the jail?
Those are questions we deal with in a wide-ranging discussion about the jail, a discussion that starts this week’s episode of This Week in the CLE. We also talk about the accidental release from the jail of a murder suspect and wonder whether two separate efforts in Columbus involving the jail are a response to the slow pace of reforms. Also, we discuss the latest information from Budish about the changes he has made in recent months to make the jail safer.
You can read a transcript below or listen through the player that appears on most devices or by downloading the episode.
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Chris Quinn: We spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about the myriad problems at the county jail, and today is no different. The thing I want to talk about is the interest in it at the state level. First, we had the governor turning the screws saying he was so concerned about the lack of action to the inhumane conditions that he was stepping up state inspections. Now we have two legislators -- two Democratic legislators -- saying they will propose legislation to fortify the law governing inspections. Here's the thing: The U.S. Marshals Service issued a report last November depicting horrific conditions at the jail. You'd have thought that this would've sparked the people responsible for the jail -- the county executive, the county council, and the sheriff -- to fix the thing, but here we are seven months later, and we don't see fixes. Jane, is that why we are seeing this unprecedented interest in our jail by the state?
Jane Kahoun: I'm not sure. I do know that Nickie Antonio and Jeff Crossman, the legislators, the Democrats who want to start a conversation about more oversight, they say they've been talking about this a while. They've been following it. They're from Cuyahoga County. They say they're concerned. They say they've even been talking about it before the governor came out with his proposal.
Chris: It just seems odd that seven months in we have both of these state efforts and very little action on the county side.
Jane: Right. I think if you're a politician or you're a public official and you... the state obviously has some responsibility in this because they have an oversight role. You don't want to be the person who sat by, especially if you're from Cuyahoga County and didn't do anything or try to help.
Chris: With nine deaths in the past year.
Jane: With people dying, right.
Chris: I want to welcome Crime and Justice editor Kris Wernowsky to the conversation. Hi, Chris.
Kris Wernowsky: Good afternoon.
Chris: Courtney, we've talked before about the lack of action by the Cuyahoga County council in regard to the jail. We would have expected them to launch weekly hearings about the jail following the Marshals Service report, but they've done almost nothing. Last week, as we discussed, instead of doing their jobs of oversight, they seem to thrown up their hands by proposing we go back to an elected sheriff. They did not seem embarrassed by the governor's interest in the jail. Will they be embarrassed into doing something by the fact that legislators in their own party are taking up the cause?
Courtney Astolfi: I think county council will probably likely continue in the same vein that they've been going the past couple of months. This week there was a hearing about jail issues. They didn't get into meaty topics, like the cause of red zoning and those kinds of things, but I think they're going to continue talking about the jail in those terms, like they've done thus far this year.
Chris: We often talk about the council without identifying them, which allows them to be faceless, so let's name them here so that they will turn on in Internet searches about the jail problems after we publish the transcript. They are Council President, Dan Brady, Pernel Jones, Nan Baker, Dale Miller, Scott Tuma, Michael J. Gallagher, Jack Schron, Yvonne Conwell, Shontel Brown, Cheryl Stephens, and Sunny Simon. Courtney, it's kind of amazing how little we've heard these names with respect to the jail, given that it's their job to provide oversight. How much are we, the taxpayers, spending on salary and benefits in total for all of these people?
Courtney: The total number I have there is $672,000, about.
Chris: That's a lot of money. Well, even absent the council's oversight, County Executive Armond Budish says he has been working to make the jail better. He came by this week with his new jail director and others on his staff to go over the areas they say they have improved. Let's talk about them. The first is staffing. How many COs are they aiming for? Where are they at? What are they doing to reach the number they want to be at.
Courtney: They're just over about 600. That number fluctuates, because COs come and go, quit, after they've been hired. They're aiming for 675. The authorized number of COs to work in the jail was raised earlier this year. Council set aside some extra dollars to bring 675 in. That number should, according to the sheriff, end the practice of red zoning at the downtown jail, but County Executive Budish said that he's basically given the HR department a directive to keep hiring beyond that if they get to that number, because they'll likely need them.
Chris: All right. Let's hit the red zoning in a minute. First, they said they're creating a new position at the jail. They didn't have lieutenants before, and they're going to hire eight of them. What's the point of that?
Courtney: Yeah. The new Jail Administrator, Ronda Gibson, told us that those lieutenants, that adds an extra layer of management. They're kind of going to be, she said, her eyes and ears. They can be out in the jail getting information, responding back to her, just that extra layer of management.
Chris: All right. Let's talk about red zoning, because that has been the big anxiety-increasing thing. This is where they don't have enough COs, so they lock all the inmates down in their cells with nothing. It was an interesting conversation, because they had a lawyer present who wouldn't let them go into specific numbers about how much they reduced it, although at one point they said it was 90% during the week, but then the lawyer told them to stop talking. What's the overall picture right now of red zoning? It sounds like it's very different during the week than the weekends.
Courtney: Yeah. They say on the weekend the red zoning increases. Part of it is attributable, they say, to continued CO call offs. They've also tried to restructure the shifts of when people are working to cover gaps so inmates aren't locked down. It's a combination of having more staff on hand, and then moving the schedule around to try and reduce that, but it's still obviously going on.
Chris: Kris, you were in this meeting. It was kind of astounding when we said, "What can you do to reduce these call offs?" On sunny weekends, they said, all sorts of people call off, and that causes them to do red zoning. Their answer was, "Yeah, we have to talk to the union about it." This seems to be one of the most critical issues there. Were you a little bit surprised by that answer?
Kris: Not really. I mean, I feel like that tends to be an administrative reason for a lot of things. I mean, it's hard to sort of see. I think the COs are in a very difficult situation in that jail. I think that the county, by its lack of oversight at the jail over the past few years, have made a really weird, unsafe environment for both the people that work there and the people who are incarcerated there. I don't know if the CO's call off is some sort of protest or if it is just because it's a beautiful weekend off. But nine out of ten times, when you're talking about people in law enforcement and people in corrections, usually their sort of stock answer is like, "This is something that we have to address in our collective bargaining agreement. They have the right to call off. They have sick days." It's not that surprising, but the level at which it happens at the jail is a little bit alarming.
Mark Naymik: I think the only point that we should jump on is that that is a management issue. It's not an issue that's new. It should have been addressed before nine people have died. I think that's where oversight, whether it's council or our legislators, should get in on. This is a management issue. Call offs are a management issue. It's been going on for-
Chris: A long time.
Courtney: If the solution needs to come through the union, they just negotiated with the union, and that wasn't part of it.
Chris: They're behind already. The food service was abysmal when the Marshals Service inspected. I mean, there was rotting food and no refrigeration for meat. They say they've moved on that. What's going on there?
Courtney: They're talking about how they're soliciting proposals for a food vendor. They can pay some outside group to come in and do it, so they don't have to handle it in-house, which is how a lot of jails work and operate. They put out the request for proposals for this food vendor, though, months ago, and it's still going on. They said we should have an answer in three weeks.
Chris: Part of the reason for tension in the jail is that it was so cluttered, apparently. Inmates were allowed to buy... I guess, are allowed... to buy as much as they want from the commissary. They have no place in their cells to put it. It turns out this might have been a simple thing to fix. What did the county do?
Courtney: Well, the county told this group that came in to provide them suggestions that they weren't going to reduce the amount inmates could buy in commissary, but they were going to get storage containers for their cells.
Chris: They say when the Corrections Association came in this week, they found that that actually was working. The clutter was reduced, as well as anxiety. Then lastly, they said they've had thousands of... I think they said thousands of work orders for the Public Works department to come in and do things like paint and fix things. How is that making a difference?
Courtney: They say that they've improved a lot of the areas in the jail that were pointed out specifically by the U.S. Marshals in their November report. There was an area where folks were held before they went to court. Public Works has come in and really brought that up to better standards. Just a lot of different stuff. There was gunk shoved in the vents, I think because the inmates were trying to resist heating and air conditioning. They said they've cleaned out those vents, just like housekeeping, basic things like that. They've brought those standards up.
Chris: All right. The county council was in the news for another reason this week, for signing off on a secret contract. They claim they could not discuss the contract in much detail because of a court order demanding their silence. Courtney, what's this about?
Courtney: Well, this was the Law Director, Greg Huth. He got up in front of the Board of Control and asked for money for this contract. It's for software that will help them sort paperwork related to court matters. They used this same software a couple of months back when they had a big sweeping subpoena request. The thing is it's probably related to this ongoing investigation, but the point is the county won't even say what it's for. The Law Director wouldn't even say it's for this ongoing case. They err away from transparency in a lot of those cases.
Chris: Yeah. It seems like they err against the wishes or the needs of the taxpayer. I have a hard time believing that the judge who issued this order did not want county taxpayers to know how their money was being spent. Did you try to find out?
Courtney: Yeah. We reached out to Judge Peter Handwork. I didn't get a call back from him, but we put this question to him a couple of months ago about another matter. He told us he wasn't going to start getting into what his seal applied to with the media.
Chris: Adam, you had news out of the jail. Like pretty much everything else we discuss about the jail, it's not good news. For the second time since April, a seriously bad guy was released by accident. Who was it? How did he get out?
Adam Ferrise: He was arrested and charged with killing his mother's boyfriend in Euclid June 12th, got arrested, went downtown to the jail. What happened was he goes to court for his initial appearance, gets a million dollar bond, but has a traffic ticket outstanding, pays his traffic ticket-
Chris: And then they let him go.
Adam: ... right. The order that was put into his file and went back with him... or was supposed to go back with him to the jail... said this person, this inmate, should be released. The Euclid Muny Court realized it within 45 minutes, they said, 40 or 45 minutes, called the jail, said, "Hey, this is wrong. He needs to be held on a million-dollar bond. We're going to fax over the right order right now," which they said they did. Nobody picked up a phone. Nobody on the jail side did anything, apparently. I think it was 28 hours passed before they released him from the jail, so he was in there quite a while with the new order. Somebody could have said, "Hey, there's a million-dollar bond on this guy. He's a murder suspect." He got released for two-and-a-half days.
Mark: I just wanted to jump on that point that you made that the issue was compounded by the fact that when they realized the mistake, they didn't treat as they should. That's pretty serious. A murder suspect is out. They faxed the information. What we do know from that court is that no one really hung around to make sure someone received the fax. That's the kind of thing where they've already pledged to do better training. You stay on that. If you have to drive down there to get an answer, that's what has to happen. It did not.
Chris: Did they get him back?
Adam: They got him back two-and-a-half days later.
Mark: Without incident.
Adam: Yeah.
Chris: What happened in the first case you wrote about back in April?
Adam: The first case, it's kind of complicated. It was a juvenile court case. In that case the kid was accused of armed bank robbery connected to the Rack gang in Cleveland. They did a bunch of armed robberies. This kid was only charged with one.
Chris: It was another miscommunication where one hand didn't know-
Adam: Yeah, once it got bound to adult court, it wasn't put on the docket. Nobody knew he had a $200,000 bond in the jail. He posed bond in two previous cases. They only saw that, and he was released.
Chris: Are they doing anything to stop it from happening a third time?
Adam: I would love to know, because I’ve asked many, many times. I know for the first one the prosecutor’s office sort of said they were going to stop sort of a procedural thing with the court reports that kind of contributed to the first release. For this one, Euclid Muny Court says we’re going to be much more diligent with this kind of stuff. The county is not saying anything.