Pictured is Cuyahyoga County Executive Armond Budish

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By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief

This is Part Seven of a Multi-part Series on Cuyahoga County Public Corruption

CLICK HERE TO READ PART SIX OF THE MULTI-PART SERIES ON CUYAHOGA COUNTY PUBLIC CORRUPTION

CLICK HERE TO GO TO READ PART FIVE OF THE MULTI-PART SERIES ON CUYAHOGA COUNTY PUBLIC CORRUPTION

CLICK HERE TO READ PART FOUR OF THE MULTI-PART SERIES ON CUYAHOGA COUNTY PUBLIC CORRUPTION

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-State and federal authorities, led by the FBI, raided the downtown Cleveland headquarters of Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish on Thursday, a shakedown that follows eight county jail death's in recent months, a theft indictment of former Cuyahoga County Jail director Ken Mills and two others, and a scathing U.S. Marshals report issued late last year that found the county jail in total chaos.

Cuyahoga County Jail Warden Eric Ivey was demoted, effective Feb. 11, to assistant warden by Budish for allegedly violating the county's nepotism policy, Budish saying the investigation of Ivey, who is Black, is ongoing.

Claims of extortion by Budish and his administration also cloud the investigation as Budish, a fare- haired-boy of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party,  fights back, last week distributing YouTube videos of his alleged innocence, and of his administration, allegedly.

The second largest of 88 counties statewide, Cuyhoga County is roughly 29 percent Black and includes the largely Black major American city of Cleveland.

An activist coalition, led by Puncture the Silence Cleveland, Black Lives Matter Cleveland, the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus and the Ohio Student Association, is upset, and has  been picketing over the last several months.

"Another detainee with a non-violent offense has died," a protester said." 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 Cleveland NAACP held a forum over the jail injustices but has said little since.

The FBI raid also follows pickets of Budish and Cuyahoga County Council, among others, at Cuyahoga County Administrative headquarters , and at the Justice Center in  downtown Cleveland.

Activists also picketed in front of his Beachwood home, an upper middle class gated community, and a Cleveland suburb, one of its richest.

County officials and jail administrators, and possibly Budish, 65,  ignored, all but the more recent of the eight troubling county jail deaths, authorities say.

A Democratic stronghold, Cuyahoga County 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, a licensed attorney and former state representative, 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.

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.

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, and in the absence of a county grand jury.

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.