Pictured are indicted Cuyahoga County Corrections Officer Andre Julious Bacsa, County Executive Armond Budish and Common Pleas Judge Nancy FuerstClevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com,Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Sexual assault of women inmates is on the rise in the troubled and inhumane Cuyahoga County Jail in Cleveland where some dozen inmates have died since 2018, many of the deaths questionable and still under investigation by authorities, and at least one of them involving the murder of an inmate.
Corrections officer Andre Julius Bacsa, who is White and weights at least 300 lbs, was indicted by a county grand jury on three counts of rape, three counts of sexual battery, five counts of kidnapping, one count of sexual imposition and one count of intimidation of a crime victim.
He was arrested on June 29 and is now on administrative leave without pay. He remains in jail on a $100,000 bond and will be arraigned on July 12.
Hired in 2019, prosecutors say Bacsa sexually assaulted three inmates from May 1 through June 5. How many of his rape victims were men and how many were women is unclear.
These latest atrocities are part of a pattern of escalating violations of the constitutional and statutory rights of inmates, particularly in the last three years in a county jail that serves some 26,000 inmates annually.
A damning report released in November of 2018 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" who intimidate and harass inmates.
The report also found profound mistreatment of female inmates, and that pregnant women were being jailed on floor mats and denied adequate healthcare.Several lawsuits remain pending regarding the county's now infamous jail and County Executive Armond Budish, whose offices in downtown Cleveland have been raided twice since the series of jail deaths, remains under investigation by the FBI and other authorities.
There have been indictments of at least a dozen jail guards, the former jail director, and former jail warden Eric Ivey, who is Black.
Ivey took a misdemeanor plea deal with probation and no jail time before Common Pleas Judge Nancy Fuerst with an agreement that he snitch on others. The current jail warden is Michelle Henry, a White woman and the jail's first female warden.
In the midst of it all sheriff Cliff Pinkney, the county's first Black sheriff appointed by Budish, resigned, his replacement being David Schilling, who later retired and has since been replaced with current Sheriff Chris Viland.
The Cuyahoga County Jail is the state's second most populated jail behind Franklin County, which includes Columbus and is the largest of Ohio's counties.Prior to the coronavirus outbreak hit Cleveland in March of 2020 Budish and the 34 largely White general division common pleas judges, then under the leadership of then presiding and administrative Judge John Russo, whom new chief Judge Brendan Sheehan replaced after Russo decided to step down as chief, did nothing to reduce illegal prosecutions and excessive sentences, and continued to keep the jail overcrowded.
Russo was succeeded by current chief Judge Brendan Sheehan.
Former chief Judge Fuerst, whom Russo ousted as chief judge in 2013, acted, in many ways, in the same manner as he did when she led the general division common pleas court in the county, if not worse in some instances. In fact, there is a pattern of misbehavior under most if not all of the chief judges there, data show.
Fuerst is under fire by activists for heightened malfeasance against Black defendants since 2018 relative to pending criminal cases she is presiding over, cases that sources say are nothing more than malicious prosecutions at the hands of the offices of County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley, an overzealous prosecutor
Public records reveal that Judge Fuerst is denying Blacks and activists indigent counsel and their speedy trial rights, and the judge is scheduling trials not journalized or put in writing and then arbitrarily jailing Black defendants maliciously accused of crimes against racist White cops when they do not appear for her unconstitutional trials.
Public records also reveal that the crooked and allegedly racist judge is refusing to journalize when Black defendants appear for trial and White cops falsely accusing them of crimes do not, and is ordering Blacks to trials she schedules in under 24 hours without formal notice and then jailing them via arrest warrants if they fail to appear. And, data show that she is covering up alleged indictment fixing by fellow judges, prosecutors and the clerk of courts, grand jury tampering, and falsification of court records, much of it with the help of corrupt attorneys she handpicks and appoints to felony cases of indigent Blacks.
Activists want Fuerst's resignation and have called for an FBI investigation on public corruption charges. They say the judge should be indicted and, herself, jailed or imprisoned if found guilty on any such charges.
"We have witnessed Judge Nancy Fuerst abuse her power and we want her prosecuted and off the bench so she cannot hurt anymore people," activist Alfred Porter Jr., whose Black on Black Crime group has initiated pickets against the judge for documented malfeasance, has said.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest Newspaper, once branded Fuerst 'Jimmy Dimora corrupt' in an article, referencing the former county commissioner now serving a 28 year sentence for racketeering and other crimes in office.
In a recent case before her an appeals court reversed a whopping 15 convictions.
Since Chief Judge Sheehan took over as presiding and administrative judge in 2019, things have gotten somewhat better in terms of the crowding in the jail, data show. Sheehan led the way in bringing the understaffed jail into compliance as to the number inmates housed there after the coronavirus outbreak, but only to have it creep back up to over 1,500 inmates by May of this year.
The FBI and other authorities have been swarming the jail since 2018 after inmates began popping up dead.
The Cleveland jail merged with the county jail per a regionalism plan adopted by county and city officials in 2017, which created nothing but more problems. Activists say the jail remains a problem and that they are also concerned with an array of other issues, including excessive bail, malicious prosecutions, racism, grand jury tampering, indictment fixing, denial of indigent counsel and speedy trial rights to Black defendants, and excessive sentences.
Data also show that White inmates were getting favorable treatment and that Black inmates were more harshly disciplined.
Cleveland community activists picketed in front of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center in 2018 over judicial and prosecutorial malfeasance, police misconduct, and the overcrowding of the county jail, a continuation of activist rallies that began in 2016. Hastened by the coronavirus outbreak, activists had been picketing regularly at the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland over jail conditions, in front of Budish' gated home in affluent Beachwood, where they called for his resignation, and at county administrative headquarters before county council meetings.
