By Adam Ferrise
Advance Ohio Media, Cleveland
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cuyahoga County Sheriff Christopher Viland ordered jail staff to stop using a new method of locking down inmates that the officers’ union said is unsafe and prohibited by a 2014 arbitration decision.
Cuyahoga County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan said the new policy, called “yellow-zoning,” stopped early Thursday, one day after the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association filed a grievance over the process. The jail had been using the new form of lockdown for about a month.
“We will continue to try new things and do what we can to ensure the safety of the inmates and staff,” Madigan said.
The county said the use of “yellow-zoning” was a pilot program used for about a month to strike a balance between the lack of staff at the jail and letting inmates out of their cells for longer stretches.
Yellow-zoning was enacted when the jail staff was so low that one officer had to supervise two clusters of cells, called pods, at the same time. The jail has used a similar form of lockdown for decades called red-zoning.
However, the difference is that when pods are red-zoned, all 100 inmates are placed on lockdown to ensure the officer can safely supervise them. When the jail began using yellow-zoning, one of those pods was in lockdown while the other 50 inmates were allowed to mingle and roam around in common areas.
Madigan said inmates in one of the yellow-zoned pods initially refused to go into lockdown on Thursday following Viland’s order. She said the inmates “expressed extreme frustration.” Jail supervisors eventually quelled the situation.
The union argued in its grievance that one officer could not adequately supervise one pod with the inmates out and still make the required 15-minute checks on the locked-down pod.
Red-zoning is not without its critics. Several inmates died in recent years, either by suicide or drug overdose when officers failed to make the required checks during lockdowns.
The county and a host of other law enforcement agencies across the country have struggled to retain officers and hire replacements. In Cuyahoga County, the number of corrections officers dropped from a high of 705 in February 2020 to about 597 on Tuesday.
The union argued county officials in 2010 banned the use of yellow-zoning after the union complained. A 2014 arbitration ruling expressly prohibited “yellow-zoning” and only allowed for “red-zoning” under specific circumstances, including having a fully-staffed Special Response Team.
The team — which became the center of some controversy in recent years — wears riot gear and responds to emergencies in the jail. A fully-staffed response team needs about seven officers during each shift.
Recently, only two or three officers staffed the response team each shift.
“We hope to have more officers trained and in the jail as soon we can,” Madigan said.
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