Black, 25, of Zanesville, was taken into custody March 23 after reportedly crashing a stolen vehicle on Interstate 70 in Englewood. He was taken to a local hospital, then to the jail, and then after two altercations with corrections officers, died.
His death was ruled a homicide by the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, which said it was the result of mechanical and positional asphyxiation.
Video from inside the jail shows the two altercations with officers pepper spraying him, using a Taser on him and finally putting him in a restraint chair with handcuffs. The video then shows officers bend him forward with multiple officers pushing down on his back as they removed the handcuffs, after which he goes limp in the chair.
The sheriff’s office said that staff performed CPR, gave Black oxygen and medicine and used a defibrillator before medics arrived to take Black to the hospital. He was placed on life support so that his organs could be donated, and was finally pronounced dead March 26.
Possible charges against the 10 jail employees were presented to the grand jury by special prosecutors from the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office. Those employees were suspended after the incident while an investigation was ongoing, but six returned to work in September after attending training that included instructions on using the emergency restraint chair. The four others remained on leave at the time.
This week, a Montgomery County grand jury declined to charge one corrections officer, who was on paid administrative leave before being “probationary released,” and nine other jail officers connected to Black’s death.
Black’s mom, Misti, sister Chiara, and others attended the rally to support him and be his voice.
“The officers that murdered him, they took them in front of the grand jury and they decided not to indict them. Very heart-wrenching for me. It took me back to the day (in) March when I found him in Miami Valley Hospital. It’s amazing that you can watch somebody be murdered on tape and not be held accountable,” Misti said.
“We’re here to be Christian’s voice. The Montgomery County Jail tried to silence him. I don’t feel like the prosecutor did his job in being Christian’s voice. We’re not sure what was said in there, but like my mom said, there’s no way you saw him be murdered and granted no bail,” Chiara said.
The main message of the rally, Pruce said, was to reinvigorate the call for civilian oversight because they’re always reminded the system will not reform itself.
“The system is not equipped or not inclined to police itself, to hold its own actors accountable for wrongdoing,” he said. “That’s why civilian oversight is really critical. It’s critical that community voices, the experts and the knowledgeable people we have living in this community know best how to reform the system and make it as humane as possible.”
Bobby Beebe, co-chair of the MCJC, said there’s a common theme they keep hearing and seeing throughout all of this, which is adversarial relationships from leadership with the people they’ve been elected to lead or protect.
“The way we start to gain some ground in this adversarial culture of the county government is through citizen oversight,” he said. “We know that the oversight bodies that exist right now don’t work. If those bodies worked, then we wouldn’t be here talking about another death of another family member, friend, and neighbor in a long line of deaths that have happened over the last 10 years.”
Beebe emphasized how many times they’ve been out there on the same street calling for the same things.
“What we need is the community who puts these people in power to be able to hold those people accountability to wield that power in a way that upholds the dignity and human rights of the people that they serve,” he said.
Pruce said they’re also reminded of Khalid Mustafa, who he said was “abused terribly by correctional officers two and a half months before Black was” and was sent to the hospital, but the investigation concluded no wrongdoing.
“If we look far enough back at this jail, we know that the culture of violence is endemic across two sheriff’s, multiple county commissioners, the people turn over and the culture stays the same,” he said. “There’s not amount of training that will change this. We need systemic change. That’s why civilian oversight has been central to our call for at least the last six months.”
The issue involving Mustafa came to light after community activist and blogger David Esrati published a video of the incident, which included an interview with Mustafa, on his blog. Esrati also shared multiple documents linked to Mustafa’s injuries at the jail.
The incident happened in January when six corrections officers went to move him from one cell pod to another, according to an incident report from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
Officers reportedly told Mustafa, who was on the phone at the time, to gather his belongings. Mustafa moved back to his bunk, but then became agitated after there were “words exchanged between Mustafa and (the corrections officers),” the incident report stated.
Credit: DaytonDailyNews
Two corrections officers then grabbed Mustafa’s arms and brought him toward a wall near the shower area in the dayroom, which has no direct cameras, where the men struggled and he was taken to the ground. When Mustafa was taken out of the dayroom, his face was swollen and covered in blood. He was treated by a few jail medical staff employees and transported to a local hospital.
Security footage of the confrontation does not directly show a clear view of what occurred, and the incident reports completed by jail staff all detail different narratives.
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office requested the Warren County Sheriff’s Office conduct an independent investigation of the incident involving Mustafa, which was completed in April. They determined no policy violations happed during the incident.
“Corrections officers utilized force in accordance with their training and within established policy to gain compliance. Once Mr. Mustafa was restrained and handcuffed, he was immediately assessed by jail medical staff and transported to a local hospital for treatment,” Montgomery County Sheriff Rob Streck said in a statement.
Youssef Elzein, of the Dayton Peace Coalition, spoke during the rally in support of Black, but also for Mustafa.
“We keep hearing the same thing justifying the actions of the brutal treatment of human beings,” he said. “If this doesn’t make sense to every one of us here and to the city, the county commissioners and to the sheriff, then shame on them.”
Sydney Dawes contributed to this story.
About the Author
