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.
This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.