On Nov. 21, Judge Laurie Pittman drove along Infirmary Road, eyes anxiously scanning the ditches for what she hoped she wouldn’t find.
A woman, maybe still alive. Worst case, maybe not.
Back at the courthouse, Pittman’s staff were making phone calls, she said. Police. Hospitals. Rehab centers. Shelters. Mental health facilities.
The roadside and ditches yielded nothing. The phone calls led nowhere.
Where could the woman be?
She knew the woman: Months before, she’d approved her placement in the Portage County Jail and had arranged for her subsequent transfer to Northcoast Behavioral Healthcare for treatment.
Though the woman could answer Pittman’s questions and was declared legally competent on Nov. 20, the judge told The Portager she still felt “something was a little off.”
So, facing the woman and Public Defender James Foltz that day, Pittman had added an unusual stipulation to the woman’s release orders: Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski was to release the woman on Nov. 20, but only if she had safe and secure transportation to her mother’s home in Akron. Should that prove problematic, he was to release her on Nov. 21 and have one of his officers personally transport her to her mother’s home.
It is standard procedure for a sheriff’s office representative to stand in Pittman’s courtroom, noting bail amounts, release dates and other information. Should there be any questions, Pittman knew she’d receive a phone call.
There was one phone call, Pittman told The Portager.
It came from Susan Schlarb, Zuchowski’s secretary. Pittman said Schlarb left a message with her journal clerk indicating that the sheriff’s office would not comply with the judge’s order.
Pittman said she only learned on Nov. 21 from Jail Administrator Sonny Jones that the woman had been released the previous day, without any of the safeguards she’d ordered in place.
“I didn’t believe that they were going to do that, that they would violate my order, even though I heard Susan’s message,” Pittman told The Portager.
The judge’s mind went back to the defendant and public defender she’d seen the previous day.
It didn’t matter that Foltz had been unable to locate the mother. He didn’t even have time: The woman had been released less than an hour after she’d been returned to the county jail, and Schlarb’s call came in while Pittman’s journal clerk was on her lunch break.
With no alternative, Pittman stopped her search and resumed her schedule. Where was the woman?
Somehow, as ordered, the woman reported to the Portage County Adult Probation offices on Nov. 21. Chief Probation Officer Hank Gibson told The Portager that the woman was bedraggled, her clothes covered with leaves. He described her ability to communicate as “incoherent,” “all over the place.”
She could not definitively say where she had been, or where she had spent the previous night. She could not say what she intended to do next, or where.
Together, Gibson and Pittman arranged for Coleman Health Services to complete a mental and physical evaluation on the woman, who was afterward taken to a lockdown mental health facility in Stark County.
Pittman, along with Ravenna Police Chief Jeff Wallis and Ravenna Council Member Amy Michael, had long objected to the Portage County Sheriff’s Office’s practice of dropping newly released detainees in front of the county courthouse. Sometimes the buses were running. Sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes the newly freed men and women had funds for a bus pass. Sometimes they didn’t.
Now, Pittman said, the sheriff’s office is simply opening the front doors of the county justice center and telling newly released inmates without rides to start walking. Pittman, who lives on Infirmary Road, said she started noticing them walking along the roadside the week of Nov. 13.
The Portage County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to The Portager’s request for comment, and outgoing prosecutor Vic Vigluicci said he is not “privy” to the PCSO’s release policies, “nor any changes thereto.”
Alarmed that people are walking along the road at all hours of the day and even after dark, Pittman said she soon started writing a new demand in all prisoners’ release orders: The sheriff’s office is not to release any prisoners who don’t have rides after 3 p.m. and even then is to take them to a bus stop in front of the Walmart between Kent and Ravenna.
Knowing that some newly released detainees lack money, phones and even temporary housing, Pittman said she targeted the shopping area for its proximity to Shepherd’s House, a nearby shelter.
Even if someone can’t pass a background check required for admittance, they can at least go into a store to get warm, Pittman reasons. When the warming center opens in Ravenna, Pittman said she will write that destination into her release orders, as well.
Speaking to the Portager on Nov. 27, Pittman said she knows the sheriff is routinely disregarding her orders. All she has to do is look out her front window.
Sometimes she recognizes the people, having seen them earlier that day in her courtroom. Day and night she watches them dodge cars speeding down the two-lane, poorly lit stretch of blacktop. There are no sidewalks, and the berm is narrow.
“Now we’re getting some people walking by my house right now,” she said. “Three. I recognize one of them as ‘mine’ that I did the arraignment on today. So that means he violated my order. The other night I saw somebody go by. It was 6; it’s pitch black out here.”
Pittman’s plans
Pittman said she plans to speak with Vigluicci about the sheriff’s office routinely violating transportation stipulations on release orders she has issued.
Contempt of court carries penalties ranging from fines to jail time, she said.
Pittman also contacted Family and Community Services Executive Director Mark Frisone, who said he is willing to add the county jail to scheduled stops for Emerald Transportation, a transit service the organization operates.
First, Frisone said, he needs to meet with Zuchowski to see if a time could be scheduled and how pervasive the issue is. Daily? Weekly? Is the sheriff’s office willing or even able to coordinate detainees’ release times with a schedule Emerald Transportation would set? Can detainees be held or at least be allowed to stay at the Justice Center until that time? Will Zuchowski even take such a meeting?
Though Emerald Transportation’s vans do take clients door to door, it can be thought of as a transportation option, not a taxi service, Frisone said. On-demand rides are not an option.
Frisone said he would also contact PARTA to determine if the transportation authority would be willing to donate bus tickets for the newly released detainees. PARTA stopped using bus tokens last year, and no longer allows riders to transfer from bus to bus.
Another case
Charles Bates was released from the county jail in the afternoon of Nov. 27. He collapsed as he made his way along Infirmary Road.
“They sent me walking about 2:30, 3,” Bates said. “I said, ‘What about a ride?’ They said, ‘We don’t give rides no more.’ They didn’t want to hear nothing about it. They told me to get out and walk or they were going to put me back in jail. I didn’t want to go back in there. I got out and I walked as far as I could.”
That proved to be 1.3 miles. Bates, who said he could neither read nor write, was headed toward Mantua, not Ravenna.
Scheduled for surgery on Dec. 10 for artery blockages in his legs and heart, Bates collapsed along the roadside. He said he was able to call 911 and remembers an EMT helping him off the ground.
Bates’ next stop was University Hospitals Portage Medical Center, where he was evaluated and released the next day. He did secure a ride to Center of Hope the next morning. Staff there provided him with funds to stay a month at Western Reserve Residential Rooms in Ravenna.
Residents there are not allowed to cook food, but he’s grateful for a warm bed.
“With God’s help, I’m going to stay right here until I can afford to get me a better place. I was kind of homeless until they got me this place, and now I’m going to do my best to hang onto it until I can get something better,” he said.
Dismissing some people’s belief that criminals should not be accorded special rides, Pittman asked, “What if they break into one of my neighbor’s houses because they want to get warm, and they get shot? What if a car swerves and has an accident because this person’s walking the road? The berm is like two feet.”
Justice, she said, should be just.
“Not everybody who gets arrested is guilty,” the judge said. “That’s why we have our system, and even if they are, aren’t we still our brother’s keeper? What if it’s your son or daughter? I don’t understand this mentality. It’s just cruel.”
Getting out of jail
There is no bus service on the section of Infirmary Road that houses the county jail. If the sheriff’s office is releasing detainees to walk where they may, and if they are released in time on weekdays, newly freed inmates without rides must hike over two miles from the Portage County Justice Center to a stop just south of Lover’s Lane. There, they can take a bus northbound to UH Portage or southbound to downtown Ravenna.
Those buses run about every 25 minutes from about 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. on weekdays. There is no weekend service. Should an inmate be released on a Saturday, the nearest stop is another mile away, at UH Portage: That bus runs every two hours from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and only goes to the Stow-Kent shopping area, with a stop at PARTA’s Central Gateway in Kent.
Further complicating logistics for newly released inmates, PARTA hasn’t issued bus tokens since it switched to digital fares in 2023. The transportation authority used to provide the sheriff’s office with free bus tokens, “but I don’t think anybody’s even reached out to us about this in some time,” PARTA Chief Operating Officer Brian Trautman said.
Like anyone else, the sheriff’s office could open a digital account, buy and print out bus passes, and hand them to whoever needs them, he said. The sheriff’s office could also apply to PARTA’s reduced fare grant program, “but that’s not happened,” Trautman said.
Trautman said PARTA would have to know when prisoners are being released and where they need to go.
“It’s not that PARTA’s not willing to assist, but we can’t determine what people need through guesswork,” he said.
Since PARTA no longer allows riders to transfer between buses free of charge, each ride means another dollar. Assuming one ride from Infirmary Road or UH Portage to downtown Ravenna or Kent’s Central Gateway, and then another one to the final destination, a newly released detainee would have to have two tickets or at least $2 in cash. Exact change is required.
How it used to be
Back when the Portage County Jail was housed at the courthouse, officers would simply open the doors and bid former detainees adieu.
Then in 1995, the new Portage County Justice Center opened on Infirmary Road. Nearby residents started complaining to then-Sheriff Duane Kaley that newly released detainees were knocking on their doors, even late at night.
Former Portage County Sheriff David Doak, who was chief deputy under Kaley, remembers the conversations.
“Right after the facility opened, because it’s so far from Ravenna, I don’t think anyone anticipated the problem when people got released. So we worked with Frank [Hairston, former PARTA employee] and tried to work something out so that they could get into town,” he said.
Doak said he continued the policy of coordinating prisoners’ release times with bus schedules then in place. Deputies would take former detainees to downtown Kent or Ravenna, present them with the schedules, and give them a bus token.
Doak retired when his term ended in 2020 and was succeeded by Zuchowski. The practice ended.
“There was no communication. When they bring people into jail, they know their history, they know where they live, they know when they’re going to be discharged, and all they need to do is see if they got transportation. If they don’t have transportation, what’s the best way to get them where they need to go?” Hairston said.
To him, it’s common sense. Know the relevant bus schedules, print out the number of bus tickets a person needs, and take them to the courthouse in time to make all necessary connections.
“That’s all you have to do. It’s not rocket science. But you have to have a heart, and you have to want to do what’s right,” Hairston said.
Reaction from elected officials
Portage County’s commissioners have no control over the sheriff, but that didn’t stop two of them from airing their thoughts.
“Legally [Zuchowski] can do that, but it’s not taking into consideration the residents in that area, that the [former] inmates will be knocking on doors, walking down an unlit street that has high traffic,” Commissioner Sabrina Christian-Bennett said. “Our biggest concern is their safety. Someone could hit someone; that would be devastating. Those are the concerns I’ve heard from the residents. It’s a rightful concern.”
Michael, the Ravenna council member, said concerned residents had contacted her about Zuchowski’s apparent policy shift, as well.
“People voted him back in, and he can do what he wants, so he’s a man of power, I guess,” Michael said. “That’s not how we like to do business in Ravenna, but the county, maybe they do things differently. We at least try to keep everyone safe.”
Outgoing Commissioner Tony Badalamenti said the new practice, if it is one, “makes no sense. I have no idea what the sheriff’s plan is or why he has chosen to do that.”
County commissioner and former police officer Mike Tinlin said he had not heard about former detainees walking along Infirmary Road, but noted that the hands of law enforcement personnel are tied.
“I just know from my background that when you release somebody, you can’t tell them they have to stay there until they get a ride or a bus comes. You can’t willfully hold someone and tell them they can’t leave. Once their documents are signed, they’re free to go,” he said.
Ravenna Police Chief Wallis, whose officers have long transported former sheriff’s office detainees where they needed to go in or out of the county, likened the sheriff’s apparent policy shift to a double-edged sword.
“It makes it easier for the city. The unintended consequence is it makes it less safe for the people being released and the residents on and around Infirmary Road,” he said.
Lake Rockwell resident Bruce Smith told The Portager he’d narrowly missed hitting a person clad in dark clothing walking along Infirmary Road one evening.
Out again later that night, he said he saw another person walking down the road.
“It was dark, and I was very lucky to see her. She was walking on Infirmary toward Ravenna,” he said, adding that he was concerned lives might be at stake. “I think it’s very dangerous for them to be walking, especially at night on infirmary Road.”
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.