CLEVELAND — Cuyahoga County corrections officer Idris-Farid Clark faces new charges in addition to his indictment for a 2018 assault inside the jail.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced on Thursday that Clark was arrested for extortion and intimidation "for actions that occurred on or about August 21, 2019."
According to Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas documents, Clark told a fellow corrections officer that he needed them to "testify on his behalf at his trial to the lack of training we received and how the jail is ran." Clark then said if people refused to testify for him, he would release any compromising prison videos he had of them.
Clark stated to the officer, "I'm not gonna burn for no one. If I go down, others are going down too."
FBI investigators then monitored and recorded a pair of phone calls between Clark and the fellow anonymous corrections officer. In both calls, Clark told the officer that he possessed videos that would be implicating to that particular officer. He then asked the officer to access and provide videos from the Cuyahoga County Jail's computer server that would help in his defense. Clark also told the officer to tell other members of the corrections staff to help him provide videos.
Clark is in custody at the Geauga County Jail with bond set at $100,000.
In April, Clark was charged with felonious assault and several other charges stemming from the spraying of an inmate who was placed in a restraint chair, with pepper foam. Fellow corrections officer Robert Marsh was also charged for the incident.
Last month, the woman who was seen in the controversial video inside the Cuyahoga County Jail filed a civil-rights complaint against both Clark and Marsh.
The suit alleges claims for excessive force, First Amendment retaliation, assault, battery, failure to train and supervise employees and related state-law claims including civil liability.
Nine inmates have died at the Cuyahoga County Jail since the start of 2018. The facility has since found itself at the center of a massive scandal involving alleged corruption and mistreatment of inmates. A scathing report from the U.S. Marshals service was followed by a failed state inspection, and numerous lawsuits have been filed accusing operators of denying inmates medical assistance, forcing inmates to sleep on the floor, and even serving food with bugs in it.