CINCINNATI — Hamilton County's three elected commissioners refuse to comment on inmate escapes, violence and other problems at the county-owned River City Correctional Center because they're not responsible for running or overseeing it, according to county spokeswoman Bridget Doherty.
Beginning last July, the WCPO 9 I-Team has repeatedly requested interviews with commissioners Denise Driehaus, Stephanie Dumas and Alicia Reece, the new commission president, to discuss the facility.
"Commissioners don't have a say in HR over River City," Doherty said following a county commission meeting on Jan. 17. "You're asking a governing question of an authority that's not the governing authority of River City."
River City — a minimum-security, community-based correctional facility (CBCF) — is funded by a $12.8 million Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction grant. Its nine-member volunteer governing board is appointed by the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas and county commissioners. The board hires the executive director and is responsible for overseeing how the director runs the facility.
Board members and the court's administration have declined the I-Team's requests for interviews or failed to respond to our requests.
With our camera recording, the I-Team approached Commissioner Reece after the Jan. 17 meeting and tried to ask her questions about River City. Doherty and Reece's chief-of-staff Quentin Monroe interrupted us.
"If you've got an interview request, it comes to me first," Monroe said. "That's how we do it."
The I-Team copied Monroe on our emailed interview requests to Reece, including an email we sent the week before the Jan. 17 meeting. Monroe and Reece didn't respond to that email. The I-Team told Monroe we did contact him and followed the process he claimed we weren't following.
"OK, but even now you turn on the camera it comes to me first," Monroe said. "You got me?"
Reece said Doherty is "our spokesperson for that issue."
Robert Triozzi — a retired judge and co-director of the Cleveland-Marshall Criminal Justice Center at Cleveland State University — said that based on River City's recent incidents involving inmates with histories of violence and severe mental illnesses, occasional lack of transparency, and the refusal of public officials to discuss the facility and how it operates, it may be time to revisit who's responsible for River City.
"Any sense of not owning the problem suggests that it needs to be addressed," Triozzi said. "Everything that's done is done in our name from a citizen's standpoint."
