After another suicide at the Erie County Holding Center, the county's comptroller is calling on the county attorney to resign, saying her advice involving a current dispute with federal regulators is doomed to cost the county millions.
Facing a possible lawsuit from both the NYS Commission on Corrections and The US Dept. of Justice, Erie County Attorney Cheryl Green has denied federal officials access to the jail and holding center facilities, in exchange for a role in their probe.
But after the latest suicide in the Erie County Holding Center Wednesday, Erie County Comptroller Mark Poloncarz is calling on her to reverse herself or step aside.
"We need to stop this confrontational stance and I believe Cheryl Green should resign because of the advice that is going to cost county taxpayers millions of dollars in the long run," Poloncarz tells WBEN.
Authorities say a man arrested after a high-speed chase has committed suicide at Buffalo's downtown jail, the third inmate to kill himself at the facility since December.
Officials say Jeremy Kiekbush of Amherst was found hanging from a bedsheet Wednesday in a cell at the Erie County Holding Center.Authorities say Kiekbush was arrested Monday night after a chase that started in Niagara County and ended in neighboring Orleans County when his car drove off the road. Police say he had turned off his headlights and steered toward two patrol cars.
A sergeant involved in the chase said Kiekbush told him he wished 1 of the officers had killed him.
The U.S. Justice Department has sued the county over conditions at the Holding Center and the main jail outside Buffalo, and county officials have routinely denied federal oversight. Green has regularly said that the county needs a role in the investigation- or at least to be present during it- before allowing federal officials in for the effort.
"Something is completely wrong," Poloncarz says. "It's similar to saying your house is on fire and you tell the fire department ' I don't want you to put the fire out because it's speculative that you'll be able to put out the whole fire and in the meantime something might happen where you are going to sue me,' That's wrong," he says, labeling Green's stance as the "most worst advised, ill-counseled advice in the history of Erie County.".
Erie County Sheriff Tim Howard says "Poloncarz is acting like an armchair lawyer with his remarks," saying the county is willing to allow federal or state access to the jails as long as they are allowed to be present.
"There are certain rights that are reserved for local and state governments, and others reserved for the federal level," Howard says. "For the federal government to come in and demand that they want full access to our facilities and that we can't be present -- it is not appropriate and it's not right."
Howard says the three recent sucides are not acceptable, but not necessarily avoidable, and seperate from the specific issues raised in the federal report. Using different tabulation methods, he disputes federal statistics that say Erie County's jai;/holding center suicide rate is abvove the national average.
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