Faith leaders and community members, including the mother of a 26-year-old man who died this March, honored the 16 men who have died in Allegheny County Jail since April 2020 on Thursday evening at an event organized by the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network.
“If they were not in that jail, they would be alive today,” Brandi Fisher, president of the nonprofit Alliance for Police Accountability, told the crowd outside the Allegheny County Courthouse.
The event took place right before a tense jail oversight board meeting where the results of a survey taken at the height of the coronavirus pandemic revealed harrowing conditions inside the jail.
The group demanded immediate jail reforms