![]() Much of the blame for the jail’s delinquency, according to Greer-Lee, falls squarely on the shoulders of Tom Dart, the county's sheriff. “These allegations about lack of PPE, cleaning supplies and soap are tired, false reiterations of claims made two years ago, and they are as demonstrably untrue now as they were then.” “Every single thing was done to protect our staff, who worked tirelessly, and the individuals remanded to the custody of the jail since the beginning of the pandemic,” Walberg said. in protest, seeking accountability for the lives lost and hoping to prevent future deaths. ![]() I’m not saying this has to be like a Holiday Inn or a suite, but soap, sanitizing products and tissue - you shouldn’t have to beg for those things.”Įvery day Greer-Lee stands outside the jail at 1 p.m. It’s rodents, and they don’t have the things that they need, like everyday essentials. “You have people back there that have been there for nine, 10 years,” she said. Their actions, she says, led to the avoidable deaths of her husband and a slew of other incarcerated people as well as inhumane conditions including roach and rodent infestation and mold that causes sickness. Greer-Lee has seemingly been on a one-woman crusade for the last 18 months, seeking to hold the leadership at Cook County Jail responsible for what she calls carelessness and to ultimately get the current jail administration removed. For critics, the numbers are evidence of a jail in peril.Ī view of the exterior of the Cook County Jail complex. While resources to verify the data are not readily available, advocates believe the numbers could be even higher.įor Cook County officials, these numbers exemplify a jail under good management. This year, the jail says, there have been three deaths thus far. Six days later he was dead.Īccording to the jail’s data, which was shared with Yahoo News, from 2017 through 2021 there were a total of 57 deaths of incarcerated people in Cook County custody - a sum that falls just under the national jail mortality rate. He was finally admitted to a hospital on April 6. More than a week passed before anything was done, she said. She says her husband told her and jail staff of symptoms as early as March 29, 2020. Greer-Lee claims that in her experience, that couldn’t be further from the truth. “We operate one of the largest jails in the United States, and while every death is tragic, we have for years recorded fewer deaths in custody than comparable jails.” “The Cook County Sheriff’s Office works very hard to protect the health and safety of individuals ordered into its custody,” Matthew Walberg, press secretary for the sheriff’s office, told Yahoo News in an email. The sheriff's office said in a statement that it had no record of Greer-Lee’s complaints or of her calls. They claim Lee was taken to the hospital as soon as he told medical staff he was sick. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images)Ĭook County officials, however, reject the notion that they don’t do everything in their power to protect people in their facility and that the jail is any more dangerous than any other one in America. The Cook County Department of Corrections in Chicago. “He walked into the Cook County Jail a healthy 42-year-old man, and he left out in a body bag.” ![]() “My husband died of pure negligence,” Greer-Lee told Yahoo News, noting that she called the sheriff’s office and jail hospital at least 132 times when her husband fell ill and said nearly all the calls went unanswered. ![]() Some of the deaths have been COVID-related and others not, leaving critics questioning the jail’s commitment to keeping inmates safe. Over time, frustration with jail leadership with regard to the facility’s general upkeep and care for detainees has only intensified as more inmates have died. Since then, at least a dozen more deaths of incarcerated people and jail staff have followed, according to the jail’s records, causing human rights activists to take a closer look. Lee was just the third person to die of the virus in the pretrial detention facility, whose population typically hovers around 6,000 inmates, during a period when there wasn’t much information available about the virus’s spread and containment. Cassandra Greer-Lee lost her husband, Nickolas Lee, to COVID-19 in April 2020 while he was incarcerated in Chicago’s Cook County Jail, the largest single-site jail in the U.S. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |