A grassroots group delivered a petition to Sheriff Rob Streck and Montgomery County Commissioners on Tuesday, asking for civilian oversight of the Montgomery County Jail.
The Montgomery County Jail Coalition created the petition in response to recent deaths within the jail.
This includes the death of 19-year-old Isaiah Trammell in 2023. Trammell was an autistic man who died after being in a coma for three days due to hitting his head against the walls of his cell while stimming.
The coalition also pointed to the recent death of Christian Black in March which was ruled a homicide by the coroner’s office.
"It is not just the jail's infrastructure that demands change. No renovations could have prevented the failures that led to the senseless deaths of these two young men. What's missing is accountability," said Joel Pruce, co-chair of the Montgomery County Jail Coalition. "Civilian oversight provides an independent lens, one that fosters transparency, drives improvement, and helps protect lives."
The Montgomery County Jail Coalition’s petition is asking the county to create a permanent, independent civilian oversight group to oversee the Montgomery County Jail.
"The petition is fairly clear: any civilian oversight committee that we can support must be permanent and independent, have access to spaces at no notice, to detainees, the staff, and to issue reports and do investigations," Pruce said. "To audit the health care services being developed because they're being delivered, we know that's part of the equation here. And we won't take no for an answer. This petition is only the very beginning of this effort."
Montgomery County Administrator Michael Colbert and Sheriff Rob Streck released a statement following the petition's submission, saying they value community input but that the “jail is already subject to oversight and review by multiple independent entities.”
"Since 2019, the [Board of County Commissioners] has allocated $6.6 million for jail improvements. The BCC continues to partner with the Sheriff’s Office to identify needed repairs and invest in the facility, including an estimated $20 million behavioral health unit currently in progress," said Streck and Colbert in a prepared statement. "This project addresses the needs of the current population, based on recommendations from the Behavioral Health Task Force. Construction is expected to begin in the near future."
Over 2,000 signatures were collected from over 30 states in one month, about 75% of which were from Ohio. Pruce said the largest concentration of signatures were received from Montgomery and Franklin Counties, as well as Zanesville, where Christian Black's family lives.
"We learned that back in 2017, after a slate of deaths and abuse — the three county commissioners at the time, wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice for a federal investigation into civil rights investigations in the jail," he said. "Sheriff Phil Plummer, who was sheriff at the time, called for a civilian oversight and that never happened. What they did was they formed the Justice Committee, which did its own research and issued its own report and recommendations, which included an ombudsman and a grievance process, neither of which were implemented."
Pruce said the coalition has asked for a response to the petition from the parties involved by Aug. 1.
“In the meantime, we plan to continue to be active, of course, and do some education and research around these issues, because we know that we're not the first county to think about civilian oversight,” he said.
Lydia Artz is a law student at the University of Dayton working with the coalition. She said the coalition hopes to release research findings on other civilian oversight committees at a virtual town hall on July 29.
“We are looking into certain counties that have already initiated oversight bodies, the success of those, the procedure of how they were created,” she said.
Artz said they have found instances where civilian oversight worked and others where it fell short of expectations, including a committee that formed in New York.
“We have some committees that were formed in other states like Essex County in New York, where in theory it sounds great, but in application it's struggled a little bit with some inactivity,” she said. "And so what we really wanna do is create an oversight body, or promote the creation of an oversight party, that is not only just members of the legal community, let's say, or law enforcement. But also civilians and have that kind of mix where we could also have someone who is an expert in mental health or an expert in drug addiction and overdose. So that way we can have multiple perspectives."
The coalition held a press conference outside of the Montgomery County Jail following the submission of their petition. Members of Black's family and Trammell's father, Celsey Trammel, were in attendance to support the movement.
"It's been over two years since Isaiah's died and we still have questions and things that are unanswered," said Celsey Trammell. "If we form this committee, it'll allow transparency throughout our community, throughout Montgomery County."
Trammell said the community is demanding change and that everyone deserves transparency from the jail after the numerous deaths that have occurred within its walls in recent years.
"We have to have change. Not just for my son, but for any human being that has to suffer through a mental health crisis or anything otherwise," he said. "We need accountability in our jail system and within Montgomery County. Our trust and faith in this city and in our county is slowly dwindling and it's picking up speed quickly, and we demand these changes."
Members of the Montgomery County Commission have not yet released a statement on the petition.
"This community has spoken and we hope that the Sheriff and the county commissioners can come to the table with community, together, to address this problem and establish an independent, permanent oversight committee with various rights and privileges in the jail," Pruce said.
