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‘I Can’t Breathe’: Tasha Grant’s Final Hours, on Video

County officials have released body camera video depicting some of the final days of Tasha Grant.

This is The Marshall Project - Cleveland’s newsletter, a twice monthly digest of criminal justice news from around Ohio gathered by our staff of local journalists. Want this delivered to your inbox? Sign up for future newsletters.

Video captures final hours of Tasha Grant’s restraint death

Cuyahoga County officials released four body camera videos Monday depicting some of the final days of Tasha Grant, whose death while restrained by MetroHealth Medical Center police officers and a deputy in May was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner.

National experts on death investigations and forensic pathology say the footage raises questions about the sedative given to Grant and the medical care the 39-year-old double amputee did not receive, even after complaining 23 times that she could not breathe during the forceful restraint.

A photo of the MetroHealth Medical Center. The building is white and rectangular, has two lines of visible windows, and the word “MetroHealth” is on the top right of the building. In front of that building is a lower beige/orange-toned building.
Tasha Grant was incarcerated at the Cuyahoga County Jail when she complained of chest pain. She was transferred to MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, pictured here, where she died after being physically restrained by police.

“I’m sure you’re not just supposed to leave the patient lying there without, at minimum, attaching devices to monitor pulse, respirations, and oxygen saturation,” said Paul Parker, a former police officer with three decades of investigating deaths for major medical examiners’ offices around the country.

In failing mental and physical health, Grant experienced chest pain at the county jail. She was transported in the custody of a sheriff deputy to the hospital, where she died three days later, handcuffed to a bed.

The last video starts at least 30 seconds late, making it unclear who initially found Grant unresponsive.

At one point, an officer told Grant she must be able to breathe because she was physically able to yell, “I can’t breathe.”

“That’s some version of, ‘If you can speak, you can breathe,’ which we've said is a myth,” said Eric Jaeger, a paramedic and a national expert on the use of restraint. “When someone’s saying, ‘I can’t breathe,’ you have to take that seriously.”

Read the full story here, and our coverage of the medical examiner’s homicide ruling and the sheriff’s refusal to allow an independent investigation.

– The Marshall Project - Cleveland

Cleveland police hire data firm to look for potential bias

Amid public perception that Cleveland police officers target Black drivers, the city has contracted with a data analytics firm to help department leaders monitor bias and discrimination in officer interactions.

The move comes a year after a Marshall Project - Cleveland and News 5 Cleveland analysis of 17,000 police stops found police searched Black people more than three times as often as White people during 2023 stops — despite finding contraband at similar rates.

Sigma Squared software is supposed to provide police leaders the ability to examine practices in near real time and make necessary adjustments. Police leaders in the past have had to wait a year for annual data on encounters that triggered an arrest, a warning, a citation or a search and seizure. Read the story here.

– Mark Puente

Citing the need to keep out drug-soaked paper, state prison officials have expanded the opening and scanning of confidential attorney mail to incarcerated clients in every Ohio prison.

Since 2021, Ohio prisons have required attorneys to obtain control numbers that, when added to envelopes, are supposed to verify the authenticity of the sender and ensure that letters are only inspected, not read, before being handed to incarcerated people.

That process changed in 2024 when state officials directed staff in four prisons to open, copy and digitize all mail from attorneys, even letters arriving with a valid control number. Prison officials declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

Attorneys for Ohio Justice and Policy Center, a statewide advocacy organization for prisoners’ civil rights, said they first noticed its confidential letters being opened and read by staff in December. The organization, claiming a constitutional violation of attorney-client privilege, sued the state prison director and the four prison wardens in federal court.

State officials responded by eventually expanding the practice to every Ohio prison. In response, the attorneys refiled their lawsuit, arguing that incarcerated people seeking legal advice on sensitive matters like alleged abuse and mistreatment should be free from eavesdropping mailroom staff.

Meanwhile, there’s little evidence that legal mail is a major pipeline for drugs, according to state data. In fact, there have been few drug seizures from legal mail since 2021, though the number of overall drug confiscations has climbed each year since the crackdown began in 2021, the Marshall Project - Cleveland reported in June.

“The policy at hand is too burdensome for justification,” Cleveland attorney Louis Grube wrote for the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, which filed a letter in late September supporting the Ohio Justice and Policy Center lawsuit.

– Doug Livingston

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