A commissioner criticized the sheriff at a county meeting. His officers arrested her

Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the makeup of the board of commissioners and add more background about Frenchko.

A county commissioner in Ohio criticized the county sheriff for conditions at the jail.

Then the sheriff's officers arrested her.

Now, Niki Frenchko, the Trumbull County commissioner, is suing the sheriff and his department, the county, the deputies and the other commissioners.

Frenchko is the only woman and was the only Republican on the three-person board of commissioners for the northeast Ohio county of 200,000 at the time of the lawsuit. Sheriff Paul Monroe and the other two commissioners named in the lawsuit are Democrats.

Her federal civil rights lawsuit seeks to declare unconstitutional an Ohio law that prohibits "offending the sensibilities of the group" at a public meeting. Ken Paulson, the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, said Frenchko's lawsuit raises important free speech and criminal law questions.

“The First Amendment prohibits retaliation against anyone. There's absolutely no legal justification for using the power of the office to punish someone for speech that you find disagreeable," he said. "That will have to be determined in a courtroom but the issues she's raised here are critically important.”

Monroe and Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa did not respond to The Enquirer's requests for comment.

An Enquirer examination found the arrest was part of a long and bizarre saga that includes an alleged conspiracy, photos of tampons and salsa dancing.

Find the lawsuit complaint here or at the end of this story.

Why did Frenchko criticize the sheriff?

Frenchko is a 49-year-old Army Reserve veteran and former real estate agent with a master's degree in public administration. She campaigned on increased transparency and less cronyism in Trumbull County government and ousted a longtime Democrat in 2020.

She's a polarizing figure in the county. The Trumbull County Republican Party withdrew its support of her because party officials said she was disruptive by taking photos and videos during meetings, according to local reporting. County Commissioner Dennis Malloy told WKBN that Frenchko took a hammer to a plastic divider between commissioners' desks. The former county clerk received about $370,000 in a settlement from a harassment lawsuit she filed concerning Frenchko, the Tribune Chronicle reported.

At a commissioners meeting June 1, 2022, Frenchko read aloud a letter from the mother of a former inmate at the Trumbull County Jail.

"I'm very concerned about inmate medical care. It's not the first time that I've received a complaint call about inmates requesting medical attention and then being told no," Frenchko said at the meeting.

In the letter, Teresa Crew, of Newton Falls, said her son was very ill and asking for antibiotics while in the custody of the jail, but his requests were ignored until he was rushed to the hospital eight days after being booked. Frenchko said he had life-threatening bacterial meningitis and survived but lost hearing in one ear.

Frenchko said she sent the sheriff two emails after receiving the letter and asked to see what the jail's policy was regarding inmates who request medical treatment. The sheriff did not respond, she said. She asked if the other commissioners would join her in sending a letter to the sheriff's department asking about its policy for inmate care.

Then-Commissioner Frank Fuda said sarcastically he guessed they should read all the problems commissioners are contacted about and started listing problems with roads in the county. The meeting was adjourned amid arguing amongst the commissioners.

Fuda told The Enquirer that Frenchko accuses everybody of not knowing their job.

“If you're a parent of the inmate, you don't know when they call you whether the facts are true. But when you investigate it, you'll find that out. Frenchko just did things based on her knowledge,” he said.

Deaths and a failure to meet standards at the Trumbull County Jail

Six people have died in the custody of the Trumbull County Jail since 2020, according to data from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The 31-year-old building in Warren housed 232 adult male inmates at the time of its most recent state inspection in 2022. The jail's capacity is 313.

An Enquirer review of court documents found there have been seven lawsuits related to violations of prisoners' rights, including medical care, involving the Trumbull County Jail filed since 2010.

The county is currently facing a lawsuit from the estate of Alfonso Askew, a 48-year-old father of seven who died in the jail from complications of peptic ulcer disease, according to the coroner's report. Before his death, Askew complained of severe pain and blood in his urine. He told his wife Stacey on the phone that the jail staff weren't doing anything about his serious medical issue, according to court documents. "I'm dying … my stomach is killing me … Oh my god I'm in so much pain," he said to her.

The county denied allegations in court documents. The lawsuit is ongoing.

State inspectors have noted issues with medical treatment in the Trumbull County Jail in annual reports. According to the most recent inspection report, the jail failed to respond to medical and mental health care requests promptly.

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Frenchko is arrested at commission meeting

At a meeting one month after Frenchko read the letter, Fuda asked the clerk to read aloud a letter from the sheriff in which he denied the allegations from Frenchko and requested she publicly apologize.

"Jail records and other relevant information as well as relevant jail personnel substantiated that no request for medical attention was made, let alone denied. According to the inmate himself: 'This Sheriff is doing a great job,'" Monroe said in his letter.

As the clerk read the letter, Frenchko stood up to record her via a Facebook livestream. Frenchko sighed and made multiple comments disagreeing with the letter before she sat down and began to respond. Fuda, the president of the board of commissioners, said she was being disruptive and repeatedly banged his gavel, shouting "Move on."

Trumbull County Sheriff's Sergeant Harold Wix came up behind Frenchko's chair and told her to stand up.

"We're not going to deal with this. You're disrupting the meeting," he said.

After they escorted her out of the meeting, Wix and Sergeant Robert Ross handcuffed Frenchko and took her phone and eyeglasses. The meeting and arrest were captured in Frenchko's livestream.

Allegations of a 'conspiracy'

In court documents, Frenchko said the arrest was coordinated through texts between the other commissioners, the sheriff and the officers.

Fuda said he had nothing to do with the arrest and he doesn't text often anyway since his fingers are stiff from basketball-related injuries.

Frenchko's attorney said in court documents that the defendants erased their text messages leading up to the arrest and claimed they could not be recovered, despite a public records request and a court order not to destroy evidence.

He said texts that were recovered show Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa and county employees shared Frenchko’s mugshot and celebrated the arrest afterward, referring to Frenchko as trash and a “s---bag.”

"When such a small sample of restored text messages sent after the arrest shows clear animosity, planning and celebration, it is inconceivable that the rest of Defendants’ destroyed messages leading up to the arrest exhibited no similar expressions of animosity or planning," he said.

The defendants' attorneys said in court documents that the arrest was not planned and the officers made the decision alone.

Frenchko testified that no deputies had worked at the commissioners' meetings for at least nine months until the week before her arrest.

What does the law say?

The law Frenchko is challenging says that "no person, with purpose to prevent or disrupt a lawful meeting, procession, or gathering shall … make any utterance, gesture, or display which outrages the sensibilities of the group.” It’s been in place since 1974.

A violation of the law is a fourth-degree misdemeanor. The prosecutor dismissed the case in August 2022, a month after Frenchko was arrested.

Frenchko argued the law violates her right to free speech. In court filings, she said the language is vague and discriminates against viewpoints.

“Under the law, citizens have a right to understand what is regarded as prohibited behavior. The notion that you might be punished because you somehow expressed your anger or disappointment with government actions is counter to everything we believe in as a country," Paulson said.

Salsa dancing, pictures of a used tampon at meetings

Both Frenchko and Fuda said even before the arrest, the commissioners' meetings in Trumbull County were chaotic.

Fuda said Frenchko did not let county employees speak and constantly interrupted them.

"I was the president, I tried to get control. You can't control the lady. She doesn't want to hear anybody. Nobody knows anything but her," he said.

Frenchko said she used to sit next to Fuda at the meetings and saw he had a stack of copies of two pictures, one of a used tampon and one of the inside of a garbage receptacle printed out. She said Fuda would hold the pictures up during meetings and walk around with them afterward.

Frenchko said it felt like Fuda was trying to intimidate her.

“Maybe a person who was more sensitive than myself would be embarrassed and leave the room or be quiet. It was like a threat to not talk or not go against them,” she said.

Fuda said he was concerned Frenchko was going to bully the cleaning staff. He said a custodian took the pictures to prove he was cleaning the commissioners' bathroom and put the photos on Fuda's desk. Fuda said he held the photos up to block Frenchko from recording the clerk as part of her Facebook livestream of the meetings.

Frenchko said there was also a man who followed her around town and took pictures of her eating dinner with her children. He imitated salsa dancing and shouted at her while flipping her the middle finger during a commission meeting in 2021. The officer present and Fuda appear unfazed in a video of the meeting.

Frenchko is Hispanic and has posted multiple videos of salsa dancing on her social media.

Frenchko's attorney said the sheriff's department had never before arrested someone for disrupting the meetings.

"There is plenty of objective evidence that defendants treated Commissioner Frenchko differently than any other person because she was a political rival engaged in criticisms against the sheriff’s department," Frenchko's attorney said in court documents.

The attorneys for the other commissioners, the sheriff and the officers argued that Frenchko's disruptions were "far greater than the general arguments displayed during commissioners’ meetings."

What's next

The lawsuit is ongoing.

Frenchko has not been deterred by her arrest and continues to press the sheriff and jail doctor about the concerns she receives from inmates' relatives. On Dec. 10, she forwarded an email she received from a woman who said her husband has diabetes and high blood pressure and isn't getting his medications in the jail.

"Please see to it that this inmate has the meds he requires and update his wife as to his status," Frenchko said to the jail staff.

Frenchko Lawsuit Complaint by CincinnatiEnquirer on Scribd

USA TODAY Network Ohio bureau reporter Laura Bischoff contributed reporting.

Erin Glynn is the watchdog reporter for Butler, Warren and Clermont counties through the Report For America program. The Enquirer needs local donors to help fund her grant-funded position. If you want to support Glynn's work, you can donate to her Report For America position at this website or email her editor Carl Weiser at cweiser@enquirer.com to find out how you can help fund her work. 

Do you know something she should know? Send her a note at eglynn@enquirer.com and follow her on Twitter at @ee_glynn.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio county commissioner was arrested after criticizing the sheriff