CLEVELAND, Ohio -- At least 36 complaints have been filed with the Ohio attorney general’s office since 2019, including that Petland sold sick and dying dogs to consumers.
We’re talking about pet owners sad and angry because of “puppy mill” dogs who were the victim of filthy and poor upbringings on Today in Ohio.
Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editorial board member Lisa Garvin, impact editor Leila Atassi and content director Laura Johnston.
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More Today in Ohio
- Guilty until proven innocent? Ohio’s upside down approach to justice in its anti-texting law: Today in Ohio
- Monday was a big step forward for Ohioans taking back their government from leaders who have stolen it: Today in Ohio
- A gas company asks Ohio regulators to increase rates, and the regulators say how about a decrease instead: Today in Ohio
Here’s what else we’re asking about today:
Many pet store chains have stopped selling dogs, as many of the puppies they obtained came from puppy mills with horrendous records, but one chain remains in the business, and heartsick dog owners have been complaining to the attorney general about it. The dogs have died quite young. What’s the story here?
The dam has fully burst. What is the latest state wildlife area to be the target of frackers, and how many pristine pieces of Ohio land have Mike DeWine and the Legislature now put in peril in their chase for the almighty dollar?
A British company has some dynamite plans for a facility that would make Brook Park a top stop for astronauts in training. What is Blue Abyss proposing?
Reporter Steve Litt updated us over the weekend about the status of Irishtown Bend, the Cuyahoga River site that is being fortified to avoid collapse, with big plans for what will go atop the foundation. What did he tell us?
The government of Haiti has collapsed, and gun toting gangs have put the entire nation into chaos. That has hit Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine hard. What is the governor’s longstanding tie to the Caribbean nation?
The El Nino weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean clearly did what El Nino’s have in the past, gave us one of the mildest winters we’ve ever seen. But does the El Nino affect continue into spring? What can people in Ohio and Greater Cleveland expect in coming months for the El Nino?
We keep waiting for the shoe to drop on Joann Crafts, with a bankruptcy filing expected for the Northeast Ohio company. But last week, the crafts retailer took steps to get out of financial trouble. What were they?
You might think that a Congressman like Dave Joyce, who has won election after election, would be safe from challenges within his party. But he’s got several. What do they claim is wrong with Joyce?
We talked last week about parts of a study conducted as part of a lawsuit about the terrible conditions at the Cuyahoga County jail. Reporter Adam Ferrise wrote a second story about the study, focusing on terrible food and use-of-force investigations. Pretty bad, huh?
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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.
Chris (00:02.922)
It’s the final day of winter. Tomorrow begins the spring. It’s also the primary election day where we’ll know whether the Trump factor continues to win over Ohio and whether we will have the same prosecutor in Cuyahoga County or could it’s today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plane dealer. I’m Chris Quinn here with the cast of regulars Lisa Garvin, Laura Johnston, Layla Tasi, and we’re starting out with a reader favorite.
a story about animals. Many pet store chains have stopped selling dogs as many of the puppies they obtained came from puppy mills with horrendous records. But one chain remains in the business and heartsick dog owners have been complaining to the attorney general about it. The dogs have died quite young. Layla, what is the story here from Jake Zuckerman?
Leila (00:55.274)
Yeah, some Petland customers have filed complaints with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office against Petland because the puppies that they purchased there either died within days of coming home or within a year or were discovered to be suffering from infections or debilitating diseases that racked up thousands of dollars in medical bills. And Petland has pretty much refused to refund their money in a lot of cases.
And not only that, but in some cases, customers have complained that they were subject to finance charges as high as 130%. So Jake Zuckerman tells us there have been 36 of these cases filed since 2019. There have also been some lawsuits. The dog owners say Petland sells mass-produced puppy mill dogs that became the victims of filthy and poor upbringings. One woman, for example, bought a poodle Yorkie mix named Toy in June of 2020.
for $2,500 from PedLand. That’s not cheap. I mean, these aren’t, you’re not getting bargain dogs. You know, this is kind of what you would get from a breeder too. And Toy was born with what she called bad organs. And this puppy died within six months. She did get, managed to get a refund after she filed her complaint with the AG’s office, but that appears to be pretty rare. In 2015, a couple bought a Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy that they named Oliver for $3,800. And it quickly became
Lisa (01:52.178)
And this puppy died within six months. She did get managed to get a refund after she filed her complaint. And this is kind of what she’s been doing. She’s been getting a lot of money.
Leila (02:16.77)
completely lethargic and he was eventually diagnosed with congenital renal dysplasia, which is a kidney disease, and he was dead before he turned a year old. So Petland says, you know, it exercises high standards in sourcing its dogs and provides proper medical care. And they say that they don’t allow puppies with known illnesses to be sent home, but they say dogs like people sometimes do get sick or die before their time.
Lisa (02:26.994)
says, you know, society has standards and sources, and it’s dog provides proper medical care. And they say that they don’t allow puppies with no illnesses to be sent home. But they say dogs like people. Sometimes you get so. And they say that the dogs flat to the company are less than.
Leila (02:46.722)
to the company are less than 0.02% of all the puppies sold in the past eight years. So they’re just talking about a small sliver of the business that they do.
Chris (02:57.262)
It must be a high profit margin enterprise for them to continue doing it because it really does give them a black eye. They look terrible in a story like this and it’s not the first time. And I guess they just play on your sympathy. You walk into the pet store and there’s this cute puppy and people’s hearts melt and they bring it home. But the story was filled with heartache. I mean, there’s nothing worse than watching a young dog suffer and die.
Leila (03:21.569)
Yeah.
Chris (03:23.962)
I don’t understand. It must just make them so much money that they’re willing to take the bad publicity of stories like this just to get the cash. And I don’t, the other thing that really bothers in my mind, they’re a real business, they’ve been around a while. Why wouldn’t they source their puppies from legitimate places instead of puppy mills?
Lisa (03:44.99)
Do you know what bothers me about this story? Oh, go ahead. No, what bothers me about this story is that Mike Ganodakis is a lobbyist for this group, which is why regulators I don’t think are cracking down. As we know, Mike Ganodakis is the head of Right to Life, the anti-abortion group here in Ohio, and he’s lobbying for PetLink.
Leila (03:45.066)
Well, I mean, because if you look at the... No, no, please, Lisa.
Chris (03:48.005)
Go ahead, Lisa.
Chris (04:05.39)
I know. I mean, he’s lobbying for Patland. This is a horrible thing. I don’t know why Dave Yost isn’t paying more attention to it. He’s declined to, to look into it, even though these complaints are coming in fairly steadily. There’s so much about this that is just wrong. And you look at it and think why, why can’t we get on top of this? Go ahead, Layla.
Leila (04:26.642)
I was just going to say, if you’re, you know, Chris, you know that I’ve been looking around for a puppy. And when you look at breeders of specific breeds, like the kind they sell at Petland, they’re charging similar prices to what Petland is charging. So where else can Petland source their dogs from if not, if they’re going to go to actual breeders, they’re going to be paying a premium themselves. Then they’ll have to jack up the prices and they’ll never sell a dog. So they, of course, they’re going to try to get them from the lowest.
the puppy mills where they’re mass produced, essentially.
Chris (05:00.41)
Right, and they’re not, there’s no care taken. So there’s a lot of suffering. I mean, the parents of these dogs are mistreated and there’s very little care given. They just want the cute puppies that people will fall in love with and take home. And that’s where the heartache begins. It’s a very good story by Jake. He very carefully went through all the complaints to put it together. It’s worth checking out. It’s on cleveland.com and you’re listening to Today in Ohio.
The dam has fully burst. What is the latest state wildlife area to be the target of frackers? And how many pristine pieces of Ohio land have Mike DeWine and the legislature now put in peril in their chase for the almighty dollar? Lisa, we talked about a new one just last week, and now we have yet another.
Lisa (05:45.198)
yet another, and this is number five. There’s an application for drilling under the 85 acre Keene Wildlife Area in Harrison County. Of course, as we said last week, in the other story, the applicant’s identity is shielded by state law, and they want to access natural gas underneath the wildlife area, and they’ll have a well pad about a mile away from the line of the wildlife area. The comment period on this latest lease ends on April 28th.
The Keene Wildlife Area is very close to Salt Fork State Park, which is the state’s largest. And that’s also where there’s a $59 million oil and gas lease that was granted earlier. And it’s also very close to the Muskingum Conservancy Watershed District. And now that district has leased 31,000 acres. They’ve earned more than $278 million in lease payments and royalties. And they’ve also sold 1.2 billion acres
billion gallons of surface water for fracking between 2011 and 2022. So people who are backing frackings, they’re downplaying the environmental concerns, they say there’s no environmental threat, and of course it brings in millions in tax revenue.
Chris (06:57.09)
Yeah, to say there’s no environmental threat is just horse hockey because the state has protected the drillers from revealing what they pump into the ground. How do you know there’s no environmental threat if you can’t publicly say what the chemicals are that you’re pumping into the ground? You know, Cuyahoga County has had more than a 50-year legacy when its river went on fire. People still talk about that to this day. All it’s going to take is one incident in one of these state parks.
Lisa (07:05.364)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (07:24.518)
and the Mike DeWine legacy, no matter what else he did, is gonna be, this is the guy that destroyed a state park or a wildlife area or something. I still don’t understand why they did this. They don’t need the money. Ohio is flush with cash and they have endangered something you can never replace. Once it’s destroyed, it’s destroyed. And this will be the legacy. This would be Matt Huffman’s legacy and Mike DeWine’s legacy. It boggles the mind that they are so willing.
to ransom the future for a few bucks now.
Lisa (07:56.282)
Well, and it’s interesting, you know, in talking about the Muskingum Conservancy watershed district, they’re selling billions of gallons of surface water. You know, that’s the other thing about fracking, it requires huge amounts of water. So you know, yeah.
Chris (08:08.914)
Right. It’s a terrible thing that they’re doing. There is no one that has any sanity looking at this saying this is the right thing. It’s that the oil and gas drillers go in and they buy everybody off and they give it to them. But you’re looking 50 years down the road. What are you doing for the children of tomorrow? And the risks they’re taking are huge here.
And again, protecting them. We don’t even know what they’re putting into the ground. They could be putting arsenic down there for all we know. It’s going to leach into the groundwater eventually, and there will be results of that, but they’ve protected them because they’re just all for sale. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. A British company has some dynamic plans for a facility that would make Brook Park a top stop for astronauts in training. Laura, what is Blue Abyss and what is it proposing?
Lisa (08:37.779)
Mm-hmm.
laura (09:02.794)
This is so cool. And I had no idea that Ohio, Brook Park, Northeast Ohio, could be a center for the world for astronaut training. But no company on Earth can provide everything required to train someone for space in the same place. But Blue Abyss, which is a British company, wants to change all that. They want to open in Brook Park in 2026 in this $250 million, $300,000 square foot facility. It would include a planetarium, a hotel.
164 foot deep pool, a centrifuge that spins to simulate the force during takeoff, hyper and hypo-baric chambers to simulate air pressure found in deep underwater or in space, as well as a parabolic plane which flies in a curve to simulate zero gravity for less than a minute at a time. So the goal is to train space tourists, those people who have so much money they don’t know what to do with and would like to see space.
and researchers. They could also partner with institutions like universities and hospitals to do experiments right here on Earth. And this could bring all sorts of businesses to Northeast Ohio because it’s all around NASA Glenn Research Center. And they’re getting a lot of attention for this, which means Ohio could be this big player in a new space economy.
Chris (10:21.862)
What’s cool about this is when you think about the astronaut industry, you think about Texas and Florida and maybe Alabama, you don’t generally think about Ohio. We have the NASA facility, but you’re right. This could completely change the dynamic and make Ohio one of the centers.
laura (10:31.711)
No.
laura (10:39.218)
Absolutely, because this is not something that anybody is going to be able to put in. Actually, for all the stuff they’re putting in, I was like, 250 million? It feels like that’s a low ball when you think about how much it’s going to cost us to build a new jail or something. I mean, a pool that’s 164 feet deep, I can’t even fathom that. That is just incredible. They’re going to put like a space station.
capsule down there to simulate what it’s like. Think about your ears pop if you go down 12 feet in a deep end of a pool, what it will be like if you’re dealing with that. They’re going to have all sorts of this cool stuff that simulates space or deep underwater because of that exploration. This is not something that you’ll be able to replicate easily. They’re going to have one more in England, but if this becomes a real thing that lots of people do, then it’s going to be very busy.
Chris (11:34.41)
Okay, we’ll have to hope it comes to fruition. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Reporter Steve Litt updated us over the weekend about the status of Irish town Bend, the Cuyahoga River site that is being fortified to avoid its collapse. There’s big plans for what will go atop the whole thing when it’s over. Lalo, what did he tell us that’s new?
Leila (11:55.771)
Well, this is very well-timed story for St. Patrick’s Day. He described for us the heritage site that they’re planning for Irish Town Bend that will pay homage to the bustling 19th century Irish immigrant community that once settled on that hillside along the river. And the heritage project is part of the latest plans for this new $40 million 25-acre park at Irish Town Bend. It’ll be built after the Port of Cleveland finishes stabilizing the hillside. The heritage site is going to be a key attraction.
Lisa (11:58.23)
St. Patrick’s Day, describe to us the heritage sites that they’re planning for an Irish-time event that will pay homage to the Boston Indians, essentially how you see the community that they’re settling.
Lisa (12:11.546)
And the heritage project is part of the latest plans for this new $40 million 25 acre park in Irishman. It’ll be built after the Port of Cleveland finishes stabilizing the whole site. The heritage site is gonna be a key attraction on a mile long loop trail. The trail will connect a dozen features including interpretive markers, on panoramic over the roof.
Leila (12:23.422)
on a mile long loop trail. The trail will connect a dozen features, including interpretive markers, the pond, panoramic overlooks, a riverfront walkway, railroad tunnels with heavy stone arches, and concrete pylons that supported cranes on what was once a coal dock. The designers of this project envisioned a cluster of open air steel structures that would rise directly above buried foundations.
in what was one of the most densely packed sections of Irish town. The walls could be etched with 19th century photographic images that show how crowded this area once was. Because these foundations of the houses on the hillside are buried under eight to 10 feet of soil, it would be impossible to excavate them without really regrading the slope and installing some pretty expensive retaining walls. So instead they’re thinking about building outdoor rooms to suggest.
the 19th century houses in the central portion of the site. And in other spots, there would be dozens of solitary steel door frames that would come up out of the native grasses there and then suggest where the houses once stood. It’s a very cool kind of ghostly feeling to the place. And then there will be this walkway that will recreate a once crowded alley that cut between rows of densely packed houses.
The site could also include an open air mock-up of a 19th century living room within the footprint of a former house. Visitors could picnic with a view of the downtown skyline while sitting on Victorian-era furniture cast in bronze. All such cool ideas. If it’s carried out according to the plans, this would be the largest Irish history site in the city. It just sounds like such a wonderful concept for this location.
Chris (14:14.342)
Yeah, as Steve always does, he loads his stories with lovely detail. I did not know the entire history of the Irish in that neighborhood, and he puts that all together and, you know, he describes how people think it’s a shantytown, but these were masonry structures. These were very, very solid things. And the idea of putting those door frames up to demonstrate the density, that is cool. They don’t have enough money though, right? They still have to raise some money.
Leila (14:30.797)
Right.
Leila (14:36.974)
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, that’s right. They need planners. They’ve raised about $19.5 million of the $40 million that they need to build the 25-acre park. So they’re still looking for donors to make up the rest.
Chris (14:55.194)
All right. Well, it’s cool that we’re celebrating the Irish and it was a very nice story to have for St. Patrick’s Day weekend. I am somebody who the genetic testing shows is about 98 and a half percent Irish. So I would care about this. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. The government of Haiti has collapsed and gun toting gangs have put the entire nation into chaos. And that is hit Ohio Governor Mike DeWine of all people. Lisa, what is the governor’s longstanding tie to the Caribbean nation?
Leila (15:01.972)
Yeah.
Lisa (15:06.393)
Hahaha
Leila (15:07.76)
Yeah.
Lisa (15:24.59)
Yeah, he and his wife actually created a set of schools called the Becky Dewine School that has seven campuses in Sit Solei, which is a slum in Haiti. But all of those campuses are now closed by gang violence that has taken over Porto Prince and other parts of the country. Father Tom Hagen runs the charity that operates the Becky Dewine School. Several teachers and students, he says, have been killed, although not on campus. They’ve been killed.
died from random gunfire. He says this is the worst violence he’s seen in his 25 years in Haiti. The Becky Wine School was founded in 1999. It was named for their daughter, Becky, who died in a car crash in 1999 at the age of 22. The Dewines have visited Haiti often. They’ve included, you know, a first graduating class of the schools in 2013.
Governor DeWine says he hopes the closure is only temporary. There are about 10,000 students served by the schools and many of them are reliant on free lunches provided by the school. He says they deserve to have a school and they deserve to be fed.
Chris (16:29.41)
Yeah, I didn’t know. I somehow had missed this. How many times he had traveled there, although he hasn’t been able to for the past few years because of how chaotic and crazy it is. I mean, the gangs have killed all sorts of people. It sounds like the country is just completely upside down right now. But what a commitment. I mean, this was a longstanding commitment that he’s made to this school.
Lisa (16:45.996)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (16:49.518)
Right, and he’s kept it up. He’s visited at least 20 times. And these schools have gone through problems before. In the January 2010 earthquake, it destroyed two school campuses and heavily damaged the five others, but they managed to recover pretty quickly.
Chris (17:05.642)
Okay, you’re listening to Today in Ohio. The El Nino weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean clearly did what El Nino’s have in the past and given us one of the mildest winters we’ve ever seen, as I mentioned earlier. Today is the final day of that winter, although we’re getting a little bit of snow as we start recording. But here’s the question. Does the El Nino continue to affect weather into the spring? Laura, what can the people in Ohio and greater Cleveland expect in the coming months because of El Nino?
laura (17:35.87)
Well, El Nino tapers off starting now, so it really won’t affect us as much as you might hope to have a nice warm spring. And that past El Nino springs basically show it’s a fairly average, regular spring. Of course, we’re averaging temperatures, so sometimes it’s colder, sometimes it’s warmer. But this El Nino phenomenon has meant that spring has started earlier, about two weeks earlier in Northeast Ohio.
I mean, my neighbor across the street was mowing their lawn. I was like, oh my gosh, he’s going to be doing this until November. Once you start, you don’t stop. Not ready to do that yet. So, I have daffodils blooming. I know a lot. You know, the first sythia is out in full force. So that’s about two weeks early and there’s this really cool map that Zachary Smith has in his story of phrenology. I hope I’m saying that right. That just shows where spring has sprung already in Ohio. But...
I do worry that when we get used to these warmer temperatures, like last week we had our windows open in the 60s and sunny, that it makes it that much more sad when you’re like it’s cold and I could get snow into April.
Chris (18:47.098)
Yeah, but did you go out on Saturday? How can you say anything about the weather that’s not positive after we had another weekend day to die for?
laura (18:49.458)
Yes, Saturday was.
laura (18:55.782)
Yes, I went out and played tennis. It was super nice. And then I skied my final day of the season on Sunday. Well, it did the wintry mix, like the worst precipitation possible in northeast Ohio.
Chris (19:09.318)
Okay, you’re listening to Today in Ohio. Leo, this next story has just dramatically changed because Joanne Fabrics just filed for bankruptcy. But last week, when we were wondering when they would file, we saw that they took some steps to get out of financial trouble. What steps did they take as they prepared for the filing that came this morning?
Leila (19:29.072)
Well, they added a turnaround expert to their board and they decided to pay their CFO a $400,000 bonus to stick around for the next at least six months. They’ve been without a CEO since May and they’ve laid off people at their headquarters. But then in an SEC filing, Joanne said the company added Pamela Corey to its board of directors. She described herself as a
proven business leader with experience turning around troubled companies and named corporate restructuring and bankruptcy as one of her core leadership competency. She’s serving as a director on many other companies for about a year at a time, it seems, including Bed Bath and beyond. Also, they approved a one-time bonus for CFO Scott Cichella. He’s also part of the interim office of the CEO and he’s helped lead the company since the former CEO abruptly retired.
$400,000 bonus that they gave him requires him to stick around for at least six months. So that’s sad. They filed. I missed that news. That’s blah.
Chris (20:27.13)
in the, in the just filed. Yeah, they just filed, it just went up this morning. They’re planning to take it private and turning it over to lenders and other industry parties. And they say they’ve had so much agreement from the lenders, they expect to emerge from bankruptcy very, very quickly. So they, they hope to still be around. It’s been a Northeast Ohio presence for quite some time, and they’re hoping it continues.
Leila (20:44.588)
Wow.
Leila (20:51.166)
I love Joanne.
Lisa (20:52.622)
I do too. And as a friend of mine who makes dolls for a living, primitive dolls, the Joannes and Wooster closed permanently. And she’s like, I have nowhere else to go for fabric and sewing notions and stuff. Michael’s doesn’t really have it. So it’s a big blow.
Leila (21:02.262)
Aww.
Leila (21:08.577)
Yeah.
laura (21:10.354)
You think that during the pandemic everybody...
Chris (21:10.778)
I guess the online competition is what drove it out because people are buying that stuff online now.
Leila (21:17.134)
But online is really insufficient for things like fabric. I mean, it’s such a tactile kind of shopping thing. You really need to have it. And you’re right, Lisa, they’re really, none of their competitors have the kind of selection that they have there when it comes to fabric specifically.
Lisa (21:20.995)
Mm-hmm.
laura (21:21.622)
I agree.
Lisa (21:23.634)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (21:31.366)
Mm-hmm.
laura (21:33.022)
And remember during the pandemic, I feel like everybody was crafting and there was, because people had time and there was this resurgence. So I wonder what happened.
Leila (21:38.53)
Yeah.
Leila (21:41.858)
Hmm.
Chris (21:43.59)
Okay, you’re listening to Today in Ohio. You might think that a congressman like Dave Joyce, who has won election after election after election, would be safe from challenges within his party, but he’s got several tomorrow. What do they claim is wrong with Joyce, Lisa?
Lisa (21:59.962)
Well, they say he’s not conservative enough. And Joyce, you know, luckily for the people who have him as a congressman, he’s pretty moderate. I mean, he runs the Cannabis Caucus. You know, he reaches across the aisle, but his two challengers say, nope, not conservative enough. One of them is Elaine Cross of Kent. She’s a former Portage County Republican Vice Chair and a small business owner. She calls herself a constitutional conservative, a freedom activist, and follower of Jesus Christ.
She wants to cut government spending, fight government overreach. And she says she brought together the moderate old guard and the Tea Party while she was, you know, the head of the party in Portage County. As for abortion, she says she’s for life without any exceptions. She herself had an abortion at 18 and later regretted it. As far as Israel and Ukraine aid, she supports Israel, but she wants more accountability for Ukraine aid.
And for border security, she says, build the wall and have more severe penalty like jail time and fines and enforce existing laws for illegal immigrants. But she only has $533 in her campaign account. Dave Joyce has about 2.2 million. Kenneth Polk is the other one. Say Brook Township is where he’s from. He is a former Ohio and Colorado dentist whose license was revoked over malpractice allegations that he says were politically motivated.
He was also on the former practice squad, a quarterback for the Browns and the Dolphins in the 70s. He says the country is going down the tubes and moving towards socialism. He said he would end the Affordable Care Act, it’s too socialist. And he says that President Obama weaponized the Department of Justice and the FBI. And he said he would model his behavior on Trump, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Elise Stefan.
Chris (23:53.182)
Don’t you just love people who have had abortions but now say no one else can get one? I mean, here’s somebody that clearly was in a desperate situation and felt that was their only answer, but no one else can do it because they know more. The idea, you just, you listen to this kind of rhetoric and the idea that, you know, getting rid of Obamacare socialism when so many people have benefited from that, so many people have health benefits for the first time.
Lisa (23:58.162)
Right.
Chris (24:22.598)
You just wonder where they’re coming from and where, you know, do they spend all day just learning their dogma by watching Fox News?
Lisa (24:29.298)
Well, and I think they’re jumping in, they’re trying to be Trumpy because Dave Joyce isn’t very Trumpy. So I think they’re saying, we’ll just ride the Trump train and see if that gets us into office.
Chris (24:38.53)
Yeah, I don’t see that working against Dave Joyce. It is remarkable how many people only see the world now in terms of Trump and non-Trump, us versus them. I wrote a simple column about the gaffes we make because I wore two different shoes last week, and I was stunned at the number of people that tried to turn then to something political. It was just one of those like, really, you’re gonna take that? That’s how...
That’s how binary you see the world that any subject you see has to be deciphered through a prism of Trumpism and non-Trumpism.
Leila (25:14.936)
I’m dying for an example, Chris. How did they turn your shoe gaff into something political? Just, you got anything?
Chris (25:22.118)
Well, the column was about how politicians don’t admit mistakes. And so that turns the thing on to, you know, because I heard from so many people that have done silly things, tuck their shirts into their underwear or their dresses into their underwear. And I mean, they were hilarious stories. It was worth the embarrassment of wearing two different shoes to spend Friday reading one story after another because everybody did it in good humor.
Leila (25:27.824)
Oh.
Chris (25:50.086)
But my overarching point was we’ve had some incredible errors by politicians in Ohio that they have not acknowledged. When they tried to destroy our ability to change the Constitution instead of saying, okay, voters clearly saw through that one, we shouldn’t have done that. And the idea that nobody’s admitting that they erred on the vouchers. They said we want to expand school vouchers so that kids in underperforming districts have an option.
And as our story showed, it’s people in Rocky River who are using it, and that’s not an underperforming district. But the whole idea that you immediately see this as Trump, people said the inability to admit error is all because of Trump, because he won’t admit errors, and that’s the world today. It’s like, okay, not really, but, and this was kind of a fun story, right? It was supposed to make you smile, and I think most people...
took it in that stead. I certainly was smiling. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. We talked last week about parts of a study conducted on the Cuyahoga County jail and the lawsuit about the terrible conditions there. Reporter Adam Farice wrote a second story about the study, looking at the terrible food and use of force there. Laura, what did he find?
laura (27:07.046)
Yeah, he really delved into this 252 page report and the jail report was conducted in 2021 and 2022. We just didn’t find out about it until now because of this lawsuit over the conditions of the jail, which is sad in itself. So some of the changes required by the settlement have been made. Others are in the works and a jail expert is going to monitor the progress.
with the first report expected in about six months. So some really detailed findings here. 83% of the jail inmates were diagnosed with mental illness or a substance abuse disorder. Let that sit in, 83%. Yet the mental health pod that houses the patient’s, I guess, acute mental illness inmates is quote, problematic. And it lacked an area where doctors could privately meet with inmates.
and that the policies on suicide prevention were very weak. That the use of force investigations that they did called they were inadequate. The monitor here reviewed 62 cases where officers used force against inmates. And the documentation was more concerned with covering up their behinds basically than explaining what happened. And if you’ve got 83% of your jail where people have substance abuse or mental illness, you can’t...
You have to be understanding. You can’t just strap people in restraint chairs and put them in 24-hour isolation like was going on in the jail in part because they don’t have enough staffing and they’re not properly trained.
Chris (28:39.826)
As we pointed out last week, the county kept this secret for over a year. They got this in 2022 and could have released it to the public, could have had some accountability, and they kept it secret until Adam Ferreis fought for it, arguing it was public record now that the case had been settled. But the county could have come out with that and said, hey, we’ve got this study, here are the problems it found, here’s what we’re doing to address them. And it kept its secret. In the middle of a debate,
about building a new jail.
laura (29:10.526)
Right. And I don’t think that any of these findings are really surprising. We knew all of this was an issue. You asked specifically about the food. The report found the food is cold, meals are unappetizing and insufficient. We knew that. Inmates are not receiving enough nutritious food. And we’ve detailed how bad the glop is that they serve, and then how Trinity is the same supplier of the food and also the commissary, where people are spending like $5 on.
ho-hos and ding-dongs, right? Well, if you’re starving because the food’s inedible, you’re gonna be buying junk food at the commissary. So there is a monitor that’s supposed to ensure Trinity abides by the terms of its contract, which by the way, even though the county council knew how bad it was, they extended the contract with the same service provider. So I really hope that the county lives up to its word here because this is a bad situation that hasn’t really, I mean.
We don’t have the same number of people dying in the jail, thank God, but it’s not much vastly improved.
Chris (30:09.098)
All right. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. That’s it for the Monday episode. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Laura. Thanks, Leila. Thank you for listening. Come back Tuesday. We’ll be talking about the news.