CLEVELAND — Frustrated by ongoing poor conditions at the Cuyahoga County Jail, Cleveland City Councilman Basheer Jones held a rally Thursday evening on the steps of the County Common Pleas Court and Jail on Lakeside Avenue.
Jones, who does volunteer tutoring at the facility, has seen a number of the jail's problems firsthand and has decribed the conditions and treatment of the inmates as 'inhumane.'
"We need immediate change of the inhumane conditions of the Cuyahoga County Jail," says Jones.
Nine inmates have died in the Cuyahoga County Jail since the beginning of 2018. A scathing report from the U.S. Marshals service was followed by a failed state inspection, and numerous lawsuits have been filed accusing operators of denying inmates medical assistance, forcing inmates to sleep on the floor, and even serving food with bugs in it.
In June, Gov. Mike DeWine ordered the Ohio Bureau of Adult Detention to conduct regular compliance monitoring at the Cuyahoga County Jail at least every 30 days. DeWine says he will consider taking legal action if the jail fails to make significant improvements.
Jones says he says he has seen first hand, the issued detailed in the Marshals' report, adding it is traumatizing to both inmates and staff. "I'm only in there two or three hours and I'm already feeling a level of trauma," says Jones. "People sleeping on the floor, inmates in their cells with their toilets broken for weeks and they have to wake up and go to bed in the smell of their own feces in urine."
Cleveland NCAAP president Danielle Sydnor says conditions must improve for the sake of the inmate and tax payers who fund the jail. "We as tax payers expect for people to have humane conditions," she says. "We're not asking people to have luxury type settings, but just the humanity they deserve as a human beings."
The rally comes as Cuyahoga County also looks to find its next sheriff to replace the retired Clifford Pinkney. Sgt. David G. Schilling Jr., will serve as the acting sheriff while a national search is conducted.