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Chicago jail inmates refusing food, demanding better conditions

Cook County Jail inmates said they are staging a hunger strike over their continued detention as COVID-19 spreads inside one of the nation’s largest jails

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Inmates inside Cook County Jail post messages in a window and signal to protesters outside during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photo/Brian Cassella of Chicago Tribune via TNS

By Megan Crepeau
Chicago Tribune

COOK COUNTY, Ill. — Cook County Jail detainees worried their tiers will be overtaken by COVID-19 have started refusing regular food and demanding better conditions, the Tribune has learned, a development sheriff’s officials are downplaying.

Inmates told the newspaper they are staging what they describe as hunger strikes over their continued detention as the coronavirus spreads inside one of the nation’s largest jails.

“Inmates put out a stress signal to each other, like, man, we need to stand together,” Donnelle Thurman told the newspaper in a phone interview this week, noting that people like him facing first-degree murder charges have little to lose.

“I’m fighting 45 years to life (if convicted),” he said. “I could possibly lose my life by a virus ’cause I can’t go home, or I could lose my life to the justice system.”

He and other inmates on three tiers in Division 11, and one tier in Division 10, have intermittently refused their food trays for a couple of days at a time in recent weeks, a statement from the sheriff’s office confirmed.

But it would be “reckless and inaccurate” to describe that as a hunger strike, sheriff’s officials said, noting that the detainees were eating food from the commissary instead and jail procedures define “hunger strike” as abstaining from food altogether.

Still, the sheriff’s officials confirmed they have forwarded a petition from the inmates, who requested their demands be reviewed by a judge.

Among their demands: release on bond, increased access to calls with family, cleaner conditions and a reopening of the courthouse so their cases could be heard more quickly. Thurman said he realizes the chances are slim that a murder defendant gets released on bond pending trial, so they were sure to make additional requests.

“(The strike) was based on trying to get us something, because of the fact they said we are violent criminals and cannot leave Cook County,” he said.

The jail has become a hot spot for the virus and a hot spot of controversy. Authorities have scrambled to release detainees in recent weeks in the hope of stemming the disease’s spread, with a focus on those facing nonviolent charges.

Activists have demonstrated in favor of emptying the jail completely, and defense attorneys have repeatedly brought cases up for emergency bail reviews even for those charged with more serious offenses.

Prosecutors and some judges, in turn, have expressed serious concern that releasing defendants with violent charges or backgrounds could endanger the public.

Sheriffs pointed to a brutal attack on jail guards in maximum-security Division 9 on Tuesday as an example of the risks some defendants pose, even behind bars.

Meanwhile, the jail’s population has reached all-time lows — with just 4,322 people behind bars as of Wednesday. Those remaining are much more likely to have violent cases.

Sherrif Polk is one of them, locked up since last year on charges of first-degree murder in the killing of an 18-year-old man on the North Side in 2016.

“We matter too,” he said. “We felt like since they were just releasing nonviolent offenders … we felt (a hunger strike) would be our only chance to try to prove a point.”

Veteran public defender Marijane Placek, who represents Thurman, told the Tribune she had never seen a mass hunger strike at Cook County Jail in her decades of practice.

“The jail has always (had) such a transitory population,” she said. “It’s not a place where people get to know each other, trust one another, and know that people have their back. The fact that this is happening so quickly, you can imagine how desperate conditions must be.”

The transitory, “revolving-door” nature of the jail is part of the reason it could pose such a risk to public health, experts have said. As of Wednesday evening, there were 181 detainees with confirmed COVID-19 infections, and 156 others who previously tested positive but are now recovering. Three detainees died at local hospitals after testing positive.

Polk told the Tribune that those on his tier and others refused food for all three meals on Friday. Those who had money on their commissary accounts bought snacks to pass out among detainees instead, items such as honey buns, noodles and sausages.

They started accepting their food trays after a supervisor at the jail came to speak to them, and they felt their message had been heard.

Thurman, in a different area of Division 11, said their food action lasted a few days longer.

They refused trays beginning April 8, Thurman said, in support of the petition that they wanted delivered to the chief judge. After a couple of days, a supervisor said he would deliver the petition, and most of Thurman’s fellow detainees began to take their trays again.

A sheriff’s office spokeswoman confirmed that a petition from Division 11 detainees addressed to Chief Judge Timothy Evans has been “forwarded on.”

Conditions in the division have improved significantly in recent days, Thurman said. Detainees have face masks and can get hand sanitizer on demand. The tier is regularly sprayed with bleach, and detainees are now mostly housed in single cells rather than being confined with a cellmate.

But a few detainees, including Thurman, decided they would continue fasting until they were assured that their petition had actually been delivered.

“I am as healthy as I’m ever going to be,” he said Monday night, noting that he practices Islam and is used to fasting for religious purposes. “I’m hearing daily that people are dying and the numbers are outrageous. It’s not me I’m actually afraid for, it’s everyone else.”

Detainees have written messages in the windows of some parts of the jail: “We matter 2,” one reads, thanking activists outside for demonstrating.

And inmates watch the news regularly for any updates, Polk said.

“Basically every time they bring up Cook County, we expect them to be like ‘the judge just said also offenders with serious cases, they also get the release,’” he told the Tribune on Tuesday. “Our hopes is so high.”

Placek scoffed at the notion that released detainees would go out and reoffend like “something out of a bad Western.”

“What they’re afraid of is somehow these people will form some sort of marauding bands,” Placek said. “Because they don’t see them as human beings, they have no sympathy for them.”

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©2020 the Chicago Tribune

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