On the morning of Oct. 22, Ravenna police fielded a call about a woman vandalizing scarecrows in the city’s new “pocket park” next to Guido’s restaurant.
Dash and body cam footage show an officer approaching the woman, who said she lived in Akron and had been released from the county jail the previous evening.
It’s not a new story for Ravenna police, who say they frequently encounter recently released people the Portage County Sheriff’s Office has dropped off in the center of town. Most make their way home from there, but some, like the woman in the park, are simply stuck.
The sheriff’s office did not respond to The Portager’s repeated requests for comment. Ravenna police provided documentation of the incident, including body and dash cam footage.
On the body cam footage, Ravenna officer Josh Twigg is heard saying to fellow officer Heather Waldeck, “Unfortunately, this is what we deal with. This is the sheriff department’s drop-off point, straight out of jail. It’s people who don’t even know the area. They just drop them off. There’s people out of state they drop off sometimes. The courthouse is their drop-off point. It’s right in the middle of the city. Really? There’s people that they’ve dropped off at the courthouse, that they drive right past their house. Always get dropped off here. It’s been a battle for years.”
The woman in the Oct. 22 incident was compliant with the Ravenna patrolman’s requests to clean up the debris from the scarecrows and enter the patrol car, but provided little information. The Portager is not naming her because she was unavailable for comment, having been arrested Oct. 24 and booked into the Summit County jail on charges of assault and criminal mischief.
Sheriff’s office records indicate she had been booked into the Portage County Jail on Sept. 26, 2024, for violating the terms and conditions of her probation, which stemmed from July 2021 convictions of receiving stolen property and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
The woman was released at 6:33 p.m. Oct. 21. PARTA does not run buses from Ravenna to Akron, so without transportation, she would have had to catch a 3:45 bus from the Ravenna courthouse to Kent’s central bus station. From there, she would have had to transfer to the Akron Express, which leaves Kent at 5 p.m. The closest stop to her given address was a 45-minute walk.
In other words, the journey home that evening on public transit was impossible.
The woman told Twigg she had not been provided with a bus token and stated that she had $2, but no wallet or I.D. Wrapped in a black fleece blanket, she said she had spent the night outside. She said she had not asked to be dropped off in downtown Ravenna, but had been told that’s where deputies would take her.
Though the day was shaping up to be warm, the temperature the previous night had dropped to the low 40s. The woman did not say she had been collecting the clothes the scarecrows were wearing to keep warm, but she did not correct the Ravenna patrolman when he stated she had been doing just that.
A broken system
Former PARTA employee and current community activist Frank Hairston said he used to coordinate with a former sheriff and the courts to ensure that inmates were released when the appropriate buses were available and provided each inmate with a bus token.
The current sheriff, Bruce Zuchowski, has not continued that procedure, he said.
Hope on Wheels and Hope Town head Ted St. John provided some perspective.
“Over the course of a year, there may be less than a handful of individuals that do get dropped off and don’t have a way out of Ravenna,” St. John said. “Some of these folks, they choose to be dropped off there because they want to get into Ravenna before they call their family to come help them, because they don’t want them to know that they were in jail.”
Ravenna Police Chief Jeff Wallis said the number is closer to one person a month, and questioned the assumption that most former detainees want to be dropped off in downtown Ravenna. No matter the number, and no matter some people’s claims that the former detainees shouldn’t have committed a crime in the first place, the drop-offs can leave people in a vulnerable situation, he said.
“You’re not leaving them with any resources. You can’t just drop somebody off with no means. It’s like dropping them off in the middle of nowhere. It’s not the right thing to do. You know there’s a problem,” he said.
The sheriff’s office has said it would be unsafe for Infirmary Road residents to open the jail doors and let former detainees walk out. But dropping them in Ravenna ignores the safety of Ravenna’s citizens and businesses, not to mention that of the former inmates, Wallis said.
The burden falls on Ravenna police, who end up taking them where sheriff’s deputies don’t or won’t, he said. Even so, he acknowledged that the sheriff is not solely responsible for a solution that local law enforcement, social service organizations and courts have a stake in, he said.
“They have the power to change it,” he said, suggesting that county agencies could and should collaborate to find a solution.
Social services have not been asked for help
County Commissioner Tony Badalamenti said there is no need for the county to provide funding for transports. Deborah Mann, president of the board of trustees of Axess to Family Services, said several nonprofits are already set up to do them.
They’re just not getting the calls, she said.
Karyn Kravetz, associate director for the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Portage County, said a University Hospitals nurse screens all new inmates for physical and mental health issues and conducts a suicide risk assessment.
If an inmate asks for substance or mental health services, local nonprofits such as Coleman or Townhall II provide them, she said. To ensure inmates’ successful discharge, the agencies can also link inmates to services such as SNAP and Medicaid and arrange for medications.
Since none of the agencies have case workers available around the clock, the sticking point is the ride home, Kravetz said.
“It’s always the same when I talk to the nonprofits. They just never know when they’re going to get discharged from jail,” she said. “And we don’t have a 24-hour homeless shelter that can accept people with any kind of background.”
Similarly, Wallis said his department doesn’t know people are being dropped off until it’s already happened. Instead of waiting for another agency, it is faster and more efficient for his officers to do the transports themselves, he said.
“It’s also less traumatizing to the people,” he said. “We don’t say, ‘Well, we’ve called somebody. You just sit here and wait.’”
No change to sheriff’s policy
Wallis said he has tried for years to convince Zuchowski to end his office’s practice of dropping released prisoners in the center of town, but there hasn’t been any change to the policy.
The Portager ran a story on this very issue in April 2023. At the time, Chief Deputy Ralph Spidalieri said the sheriff’s office was already exceeding its mandate.
It is standard practice to provide released prisoners with bus tokens, he said in 2023.
“We are going above and beyond to take care of these people,” Spidalieri said. “We are not obligated to do as much as we do. If they’re asking us to go to Ravenna, we drop them in Ravenna. If somebody gets over there and they decide they can’t get the hookup they thought they were going to get, they may tell the Ravenna police anything they want. We can’t control what they say.”
Ravenna Council Member Amy Michael watched as the woman entered a squad car in the most recent incident. She fumed that the sheriff’s office continues its practice of dropping released inmates in downtown Ravenna despite city leaders’ pleas that they stop.
“You’re putting somebody already at risk back into a situation that they are going to be at risk again. They’re already labeled because they have a record. They have no form of I.D., they have no way to drive anywhere, and they’re left in our downtown,” Michael said.
Before he was elected, Zuchowski promised he was going to work on solutions, but never followed through, she said. As it is, the sheriff’s release policy creates a potential safety issue for Ravenna’s businesses and residents and requires time and effort from city service workers and police.
The sheriff’s office should coordinate release times with the court, ensuring that the appropriate buses are running, and that inmates being released have a bus pass, she said.
“Why are they dropping them late at night when there’s no public transportation available?” Michael asked. “People find food for dogs that are strays. They find shelter for dogs that are strays. But they abandon human beings and they drive away knowing they have no help. They’re left behind.”
Badalamenti said the county commissioners can’t just write a blank check to people or nonprofit agencies willing to pick up recently released people, and that nobody has approached county leaders with a specific monetary request.
“The sticking point seems to be that nobody knows how many people it would be, say, per year. Nobody has any idea about anything,” he said, adding that the sheriff’s office chooses not to communicate with the commissioners or nonprofits. He said he has not spoken with Zuchowski in two years.
There are plenty of creative ways to get things done “if you want to,” Mann said. “I don’t understand why he is not taking them to Akron, especially when they’re patrolling up and down 76,” she said. “I don’t know what the harm is of dropping that person home.”
St. John, though, referenced liability concerns and the possibility of recently released individuals requesting rides to addresses they’ve been restrained from approaching. Though Hope on Wheels is not a 24/7 on-call service, he said his agency is willing to step up should funding be made available.
How other counties handle release
Each county handles inmate releases differently.
Back when the Portage County Jail was housed at the courthouse, officers would simply open the doors and bid former detainees adieu.
In 1995, the new Portage County Justice Center opened on Infirmary Road, a poorly lit and sparsely populated two-lane strip of blacktop, without sidewalks.
When the jail opened, then-Sheriff Duane Kaley allegedly cut a deal with local residents not to release people out the front door, Assistant Jail Administrator Sonny Jones told The Portager in 2023. Stranded miles from the nearest town, they might end up pounding on neighbors’ doors looking for help.
Also in 2023, Jail Administrator Brian Morgenstern told The Portager that there is no room in the sheriff’s office budget to transport people to their desired destinations, and added that officers cannot take former detainees’ word that they are wanted at whatever address they provide.
Mahoning County’s jail is across the street from a downtown Youngstown bus station. Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene said in 2023 that inmates have free use of a phone and access to the jail’s reception area until they can arrange their own next steps, but when all else fails, the former detainees may have no choice but to walk.
Summit County sheriff’s staff that same year said former detainees were released to the street. The jail is located just outside of downtown Akron, and efforts are made to release prisoners during daylight hours, they said.
Staff at the Geauga County Safety Center said in 2023 that deputies will take former detainees anywhere in the county, including to private homes. The jail is in rural Munson Township, but those released are also permitted to simply walk out the front door, staff said.
Establishing a ride program for people released from the Portage County jail would both set a precedent and lead to a bigger issue, St. John said.
“Let’s say you start it and you do rides, and you give them rides to where they want to go,” he said. “Everybody’s going to hear about it, and it’s going to be a taxi service out of the jail, and the cost would just skyrocket. Everybody will say, ‘I got no one to pick me up.’ The numbers will go straight up.”
Hank Gibson, chief probation officer for Portage County, agreed that the system is broken.
“We as a community have to do better at getting these people to their destinations once they’re released. We can’t just drop them anywhere. There has to be a better way,” Gibson said.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.