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Why it took so long to report a troubling Cuyahoga jail death
We now know why a state inspector found that a Cuyahoga County jail officer showed a “complete lack of urgency or concern” in the death of Michael Papp.
County officials released body-worn camera footage of the incident last week, about three days after we published what we knew of the egregious case findings and how they reflect a pattern of repeated failures at the jail.
“He’s cold. As cold as cold can be,” two medical professionals said in the video.
The officer who found Papp’s body shuffled by as a nurse expressed her frustration.
“I asked him, why didn’t he call a medical emergency?” she told a supervisor.
“This is fucked up” and “rigor mortis” are heard as medical staff call the time of death.
The officer, who took paid trauma leave after the incident, was never disciplined.
If it hadn’t taken 133 days to get the footage, we would have included that scene in our reporting. But delays like this, which a county spokesperson said were not intentional, are common when asking for footage from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department.
Papp died in July 2024 after 20 hours in the jail. We got our hands on the state inspection report in May. There were more violations of state standards in Papp’s case than in any of the 20 deaths at the jail since 2020, records showed.
We immediately asked for camera footage.
It took three months to obtain the surveillance video, which was choppy and lacked timestamps. In an apparent glitch, the video freezes as the corrections officer opens Papp’s door. The video resumes, and the officer suddenly reappears at the other side of the pod.
We already knew that the officer slowly checked 19 other cells before sitting down at the phone. We can’t be certain what he said, who he talked to or how long he was on the phone.
What we could see was the corrections officer stand up, fill a cup with water and chat with a nurse. There’s no indication that he tells her that Papp is lying motionless in a nearby cell.
The officer wasn’t wearing a body camera, which is assigned only to special teams officers, jail investigators and supervisors.
From the limited footage we had received, we sent screenshots of supervisors who appeared to be wearing body cameras and followed up with another request. That’s the footage we got late last week, after publication.
State inspectors who reviewed Papp’s death were only shown the glitchy surveillance footage, not the scathing body camera video, according to a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Here is the updated story with the recently released video.
– Doug Livingston and Brittany Hailer
How Celebrezze guilty plea impacts family legacy
Former Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze pleaded guilty last week to tampering with public records for creating a false court entry to steer work to Mark Dottore, a longtime family friend whom she’d repeatedly appointed to oversee lucrative divorce cases.
Celebrezze said little during the hearing and declined comment to reporters as she left the courtroom with her attorney. She will be sentenced at a later date.
Her conviction has tarnished the reputation of the political dynasty that produced power and influence from Cleveland to Washington, D.C.
Since the 1920s, Celebrezze family members have occupied an extraordinary sweep of public offices, from Cleveland mayor and state attorney general to the state Supreme Court, appellate courts and county benches.
In 2009, Leslie Ann Celebrezze became the family’s first woman to run and the first to win an election when voters tapped her to replace her father as a Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court judge.
– Mark Puente
Lakewood police stopped publishing full-body photos
For months, hundreds of booking photos from the Lakewood Police Department website were being posted on an anonymous Facebook page where commenters ridiculed people who entered the city jail.
A jail official said police had no idea that the full-body images were being mistakenly fed to a city website, allowing someone to post the photos daily to a Facebook page called Cuyahoga County Mugshots OH. The public page, which uses a sheriff’s vehicle as its profile picture and the jail’s address, features mostly photos from Lakewood.
Police officials ended the practice after The Marshall Project - Cleveland asked why the department doesn’t take more traditional headshots, which typically only show an individual’s face. Some of the full-body images posted showed officers smiling next to the people, who in some cases were handcuffed behind their backs or wearing nothing but underwear. Other photos depicted people in spit hoods, obscuring their faces entirely. The photos attracted racist and body-shaming Facebook comments, while others pleaded with the page’s moderators to take their photos down.
Lakewood Police Capt. Gary Stone, the jail administrator, said the camera is set to photograph people showing as much of their body as possible. This aids jail staff in identifying incarcerated persons and fully documents their condition upon entry, he added. Stone stressed that the department also takes headshots of people like traditional booking images.
“We have chosen to change the default setting so that [full-body] intake photos are not automatically posted,” Stone wrote in a statement. “They remain a public record, so if they are requested, they will be released to the inquiring party.”
A message seeking comment from the administrator of the Facebook page was not immediately returned.
– The Marshall Project - Cleveland staff
Around the 216
- The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department spent over $27 million in overtime for deputies and jail correctional officers in 2025, elevating calls for greater fiscal oversight by County Executive Chris Ronayne. Cleveland.com
- “Tanisha’s Law,” named after Tanisha Anderson, who died in 2014 during an encounter with Cleveland police, will change how officers respond to mental health crisis calls. Ideasteam
- A Portage County deputy accused of illegally detaining a man who he thought was an undocumented immigrant has agreed to plead guilty to attempted abduction. Charges against a second law enforcement officer are pending. 19 News