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Official Women's March Cleveland Anniversary: Jan 19, 2019.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-An activist coalition, led by Puncture the Silence Cleveland, Black Lives Matter Cleveland, and the Ohio Student Association, will picket the Cuyahoga County Jail at the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland at noon on Tuesday, Jan 8.

"Another detainee with a non-violent offense has died, the Facebook event page for the protest says." Evidence of guard brutality toward a detainee who talked to the U.S. Marshals has come to light and people are still locked up in unacceptable conditions."

The protest follows a picket last month at Cuyahoga County Administrative Headquarters over the jail, and one in Beachwood last week in front of the the home of upper middle class Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish.

At issue are eight recent jail deaths that county officials and jail administrators ignored, all but the more recent death, which happened last month, and an investigative finding in November  by U.S. Marshals of unconstitutional and reprehensible jail conditions.

Led by the Imperial Women Coalition and Black on Black Crime Inc., community activists began picketing the county jail last summer over its deplorable conditions, a jail deemed by experts as one of the worst in the country.

The overcrowded county jail last year merged with the Cleveland jail, which paid the county $5.6 million during the transition and merger period and is now paying the per diem rate.

Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, is governed by a county executive,  Budish, and an 11-member county council, a relatively new county governance structure that took effect in 2011 after voters scrapped the three county commissioners and the elected offices of the county sheriff, auditor, treasurer, and clerk of courts.

Those offices, and all but the judges and county prosecutor, which is now Mike O'Malley, are appointed positions under the purview of the county executive.

Appointed Cuyahoga County Sheriff Clifford Pinkney, who reports to Budish, is the county's first Black sheriff.

Data show that the jail was in chaos before, during and after the change in county governance, and that Blacks in particular have been disenfranchised for decades regarding systemic problems in the now infamous Cuyahoga County Jail.

Chief Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge John Russo, via a letter to his judicial colleges, urged the other 33 judges on the general division bench to clear their dockets of people they have illegally jailed, a demand or gesture in response to an ongoing FBI investigation over seven or more county jail deaths in the last seven months.

Activists want both jail and court reforms via consent decrees with the federal government that are monitored by a federal judge.

A damning report released in November by U.S. Marshals on county jail conditions generated local and national news, a dreadful look at how inmates are mistreated such as withholding food for punishment, jailing juveniles with adults, rat and roach infested jail facilities, and a paramilitary jail corrections officers unit dubbed "The Men in Black" that intimidates and harasses inmates.

Inhumane and unconstitutional jail conditions are at the heart of the investigation by federal officials, prompting an impending lawsuit seeking a court injunction and a federal takeover of the jail.

Pregnant women are jailed on the floor, and health care is inadequate, data show.  This is coupled with malicious prosecutions, excessive bonds and heightened criminal sentences that disproportionately target the Black community.

Indictment fixing by prosecutors, judges and the office of the county clerk of courts is routine, public records reveal.

Data show that Blacks in particular, and others, are often jailed illegally, sometimes to appease the prosecution, other times for political favors, and generally to perpetrate a money enterprise that centers around resources the county gets for jailing people.

Those fiscal jail resources, which further greed and public corruption, investigators have said, include a per diem rate to the county for each inmate, a jail shopping store that delivers food and other goods weekly to inmates, and expensive phone calls simply for inmates to talk locally to family members, and sometimes even to their lawyers.