This is the FCB Podcast Network. This is The Laws Extra. Welcome to the Outlaws Extra. This is Darvo to King pen Made. Don't forget too. Like us on Facebook and Facebook dot com, slash the Outlaws Radio, follow us on Twitter and Instagram at the Outlaws or Radio. We have a very special interview that we're gonna get to today with a candidate for Cleveland Municipal Court judge, my dear friend, Sydney Strickland Saffold. I love being able to do these sorts of interviews and bring and bring these interviews to you guys, those of you who are here locally and our listeners outside of our local area, because it gives you some insight as to how the candidates think and what they're looking to do getting into office and things like that. And as many of y'all know, you know this platform, not everybody gets access to it. We don't just interview everybody, you know, you really have to be someone who is genuine and consider it and really care about the people. Those are the folks that we like talking to. So I hope you guys enjoy it. Those of you who have heard our extras before, you know how this goes we're going to take a quick break now and then we're gonna air the interview in its entirety, So stay tuned. You're listening to the Outlaws Extra. These days, it seems like everybody's talking, but no one is actually listening to the things they're saying. Critical thinking isn't dead, but it's definitely low on oxygen. Join me Kia Davis on Jeff Listen to yourself every week as we reason through issues big and small, critique our own ideas, and learn to draw our talking points all the way out to their logical conclusions. Subscribe to Just Listen to Yourself with Kia Davis, an FCB radio podcast on Apple, on Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts. True Welcome back, Welcome back. You're listening to the Outlaws Extra. Make sure that you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcast And if you listen to the show on Apple, please make sure you leave us a five star review and a comment. It's very important for the algorithm and for those of you who've already done so. Thank you, oh so very much. And now let's get to our interview. With Sydney Strickland Sapphil. All right, we have a very special guest on the show today. She is running for judge in Cleveland Municipal Court. We're gonna talk a little bit about that in Justice second. But first, Sydney Strickland Saffo, Welcome to the show. How are you, my friends? I am in my prime. Thank you so much for having me. I love that answer. So first, let's talk about your running for judge. What made you decide that you wanted to take on that task? So I have grown up with My mom is a judge. So every girl's mom is their role model, right, So I've grown up around the court. I grew up with a mother that was a judge, so I've always aspired to it. And then when I was a senior in high school, we got to do what's called a senior project and you could do whatever you wanted to do with it as long as you wrote a paper at the end. And I asked my brother, who is now currently a judgment at the time was a criminal defense attorney, if I could shadow him. And the first day of my shadowing my brother, we walked into the courtroom and he was in the middle of a trial, and when he stood up in the courtroom and began advocating for his client, it was like the whole space filled with magic. It was remarkable, and so now I knew exactly how I was going to get to be what I wanted to be. I've always always wanted to help people, and I've always wanted to fight for people's rights since I can remember. And having grown up with two parents who are really big servants to our public in one way or another, was an example that just I was instilled in me that our responsibility is to each other because people, we belonged to each other, right, and we got to take care of our community. And so I've always wanted to do that, and however I could, I've dedicated my entire life's work, even I worked in between college and law school, and I worked for Save the Children's Foundation in that period of time, and when I was in law school, I worked in the Indigent Defend clinic, which is where you represent people who can't afford their own attorneys. And then when I finished law school, I worked for a law firm where we sued on behalf of people who are terminated for discriminatory reasons or retaliation for complaining about discrimination. And then I joined my brother's practice. So all I've done is dedicate every stage of my working life to helping people. And I think that from the bench, I'll have more reach to do that because as an attorney were we can only help as many people as can fit through the door, right, and sometimes it's defeating because you go into courtrooms or into jurisdictions where you can't accomplish things because the system is so squarely against helping folks in particularly the black community, and it feels like sometimes it's like taking a glass of water and throwing it into the ocean and then washing to see the difference you've made. And from the bench, there's so much impact in a positive way that can be done, and I've just seen it done wrong so often, no no positive impact, no eye towards that goal. And I want to bring that to the bench with me. I want to help as many people as I can, and in doing that, it help keeps all of us safer. Right. If people get the access to the resources they need and mental health treatment, substance to view treatment, stuff like that, they don't commit new crimes. They continue with the programming that we can provide for them. You know, it's it's really interesting. I want to share this because you know, there's been people who come on the show and you know, running for this office for that office, and you know a lot of them say good stuff, but you know a lot of people are kind of skeptical because of things that they've seen. But there was something that I noticed that you said. Then I don't even know if you if you knew that I was paying attention to it, and it stood out to me. This was actually we were out with a group of our mutual friends and and you were having a separate conversation, like you wasn't even talking to me, but I heard something you said, and that just really it kept ringing in my head, like you were talking about what you wanted to do, and I heard you say that you really didn't even you really didn't care about the politics. You just wanted to do the job. And I was like wow, like that just that kept that kept playing in my head, like over and over again, because those are the type of people, in my opinion, that you want in positions of power to leadership, people who actually want to do the job. So talk about what you think that you can accomplish in the job. Okay, So I so that's funny you heard me say that, and it's absolutely true. I don't fancy myself a talented politician by any means, because I just I am what I am right and I'm not going to change that for anything. I really, I really want to do this work. It burns in my belly in a way that I can't explain to you. And it's not just my My political um journey hasn't just been my own, you know. I've had to ask of my family and sacrifice my children to be away from me for like long periods of time because I have to go through the political parts of this experience in order to get the job that I really want to do. And so this whole experience has been really a labor of love with my good friends like you helping and guiding me and advising me because me, because it's just I'm out of my element, like with the politics aspects. Um. But I do I want to do the work. And I also just forgot the actual question. So I'm sorry. What do you want to what do you want to accomplish? What do you look accomplished? In this role. Yes, so okay, so um with my criminals. So I'm a magistrate now, so I just became a magistrate here, which was okay, good points. So the because that's very confusing so magistrates where they used to call magistrates referees back in the day. So a lot of times courts and judges have such an overwhelming caseload that they're permitted through the rules to appoint lawyers to sit as judicial officers to hear cases instead of the judge having to hear them themselves. And so then what I do as a magistrate as I hear cases and in certain cases, I'm able to make a decision and that's that's the decision that's made. But for the decisions that impact people, that are orders that you know are binding, the judge has to sign off on. So she and trust she appoints as many magistrates as she needs. In my court, I think there are seven of us now, and then all those decisions that she must review. She doesn't have to hear the cases now on her own. And staid, we hear them and then she we take notes and we make recommendation to the judge, and the judge either adopts our recommendation, ask further questions about why that's our recommendation, or she can reject it and make a different decision based off of what information we've provided her from the hearing. So I'm a judicial officer that sits on the bench in a robe and here's cases. But I can't make the final outcome or disposition of any given case on my own about the judges approval, So the judge makes that final choice. But so that being said, I had the privilege for the first time in my life of attending an organization called the Ohio Black Judges Association, and we had a seminar. And so my whole career, I've been a defense attorney. And so I'll make this full circle. I know I'm a little bit all over the place. I think the best part of my defense practice to me has been working. I'm certified on the Mental Health Court docket, so they're a handful of lawyers have specialized training with clinicians and the coordinator of the Mental Health Court Docket and the coordinator for the County Board of Mental Health and develop mental disabilities, and we represent people again who can't afford their own attorneys. And suffer from a mental health disability and intellectual disability, develop mental disability and physical disabilities. And in having that training and working in that docket, I've started to notice and long ago noticing that clients of mind that aren't mental Health court eligible have the same kind of trauma from their path that my clients too were mental Health court eligible and have been identified with these different disabilities and no one stopped to ask them. And when you ask someone these questions, that's how you find out they need treatment. And when they go to get treatment, they're identified and diagnosed, and then they get to there's a therapy that they need, they get the medication that they need if it's necessary. So I that's one of the first places I start with all of my clients. How what was your upbringing? Like, how's your childhood? Have you had any trauma? And these are things I want to bring to the bench with me. So I know I mentioned earlier going to the Black the Ohio Black Judges Association seminar, and we had this insanely informative presentation from the Director of the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations aka the Warden of All Warden she's runs our prison system, and she indicated that we every town he gets money is called t CAMP money TCAPN. It's targeted community alternatives to prison And guess what that means. That's the version program money. So every court has access to funding to do these things called diversion programs where if you're an eligible offender, which oftentimes is a first time offender or an offender that committed whatever crime it may be because of a mental health disability or because of a substance abuse addiction. So the analysis is but for being addicted or but for my mental health disability, I wouldn't have committed this crime. And in diversion, it's a beautiful program. You get into diversion by admitting your guilt to the conducts and the crime, but the court doesn't find you guilty. Instead, we use this TEACAP money and put you in programming and get you set up with therapists and doctors and substance abuse treatment programs, and if you successfully complete it, you walk out of the court a year later, maybe less, sometimes more, with no conviction because the case gets dismissed and expunged from your records. So why this is important to me as a judge, is this because I care about serving my community. And if someone doesn't have a conviction on their record, guess what that opens up for them. The whole world opens up. You have job opportunities you couldn't have had because you had a conviction. You have education opportunities you couldn't have because of a conviction. And moreover, you have access to ongoing care that was set up through our court system and will follow you for the rest of your life, so long as you engage in the process. And so that's that's the most important thing that I think I can do with our court, particularly municipal court, because municipal court is it's munity court, they call it. They used to call it the people's court because people often come in there are a lawyer, it's misdemeanors, it's traffic tickets, it's obis. And then there are serious cases. The obis and domestic violence are the two most serious kinds of cases. Be here. But if we can stop someone from drinking because they didn't know they had depression and they were drinking to self medicate because they've never been to a doctor to tell them that before, and we get them treatment then they don't do it again in the future. Net keeps us safer. In same with domestic violence, we can get them into what we call diet programs, which is a domestic violence intervention. So it's a domestic violence intervention program where it gives these folks access to anger management classes, parenting class is, fatherhood initiatives, motherhood initiatives, and all these things that we have at the tips of our fingers if we use our teeth camp money right. And when the director of ODRC was giving her presentation, she said the most shocking thing that I think I've ever heard in my whole entire practice of laws is that when she took over the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and that Cuyahoga County was the only county that did not use the money right, and it opened it up for her to be able to take it back to the prison system because prison had better programs than we do in our call. So we that's my call to action. I didn't before. You know, I've always wanted to be in this position. I know what I want to do with this position. Now I know exactly what I need to do if I get the position and have the opportunity to serve. Wow. Wow, Yeah, I know I didn't know that. I'm sure a lot of people listening didn't know that either. That's prisons. The prisons have better programs than hours, so they get to us our program money. Yeah, that's not She laid a lot of info on it. She also said, which is you know, I'm a young black woman that in the prison population, the female prison population in particular, fifty percent of the win men in Marysville have been diagnosed with mental health disabilities since they got to Marysville. Half of the women in prison have stuff that's going on that they just didn't know about. Maybe they'd out there if they had been identified sooner. Wow wow wow. That's that's powerful stuff. And that kind of leads into my next question as well. And it may be the same issue or maybe something else that you're saying, like, what do you think is one of the one of the biggest, the greatest deficiencies in our system currently that you think you'll have the ability to address. It might be it might be that what you just talked about, or it might be something else that you're saying. That's interested. That's a heavy hitting question, and so I think generally our system, and I think everyone ought to know this, is that we have a big bail reform issue. We have got to decriminalized poverty. There are poll as you and I sit here speaking right now, sitting in the jail because they're poor. I currently have a client who has an open case and he's as signed client. So I'm on a list of private attorneys that take indigent clients and represent them because they don't have the money to afford their own attorney. And my client's bond is five thousand dollars at ten percent, so that means he needs what five hundred dollars to get out, and he cannot get out of jail because he can't post a step bond. I made a motion for the judge to reduce his bond and put him on a GPS monitor if accountability was at issue, right, and so the court is able to keep track of him because he's so truly indigent that he can't get out. And my motion was denied over five hundred dollars. This man has been in jail for four months and it's I've asked for consideration. He's just there. The judge won't grant the motion, and you and you figure with a with a bill that like in the grand scheme of things, that's low, but if you're poor that you can't afford it, you figure that it's probably not like like you probably didn't murder anybody or something like that, Like the bill wouldn't be that low for somebody that committed a crime like that. So yes, and that it is. It's awful. It's awful, and it's making being poor a crime and your innocence until your case has proven guilty or you plead guilty. Right, And so my client is in there presumed innocence with a bond that all he needs is five hundred dollars to get out. And as an attorney, I ethically we're forbidden from you know, posting our clients on. We can't lend money to folks. But he's in a position where no one he had there's nowhere else to turn. We've we've exhausted all our options, and he's maintaining his innocence, so he wants his trial. So he has to sit in the jail until his trial because he can't afford to be out. Even though the court has all of these mechanisms available to make sure they keep up with him. They can put them on GPS, they can put them on house arrest, they can do there's all these different things. They can put you on what's called court supervisor release, which is where you report to a probation officer while your case is pending, just so someone's checking in with you. And none of these options were satisfactory for my client's case, and so he's sitting in there because he can't afford a five hundred dollars bonds. And this is not a unique story for me or my client. That happens all the time. So bill reform is one of the biggest problems I think we need to attack. And yeah, so it really applies mostly to selading cases, but in municipal court this is something that I don't think a lot of people realize. When you're charged with a felony crime and arrested, the first stop in your court journey is at the municipal court for a bond hearing. So the city that charges you brings you before the municipal court there and the municipal court judges set your bond. So muni judges are important for felony cases because we're the first place where a bond is set, and we need judges in place that are setting appropriate and fair bonds and exercising all of the available options that exist before putting someone who can't afford to be out just because of the financial situation in a jail, which is another reason representation matters on the bench right. My professional experience my life experience. I'm a single black mother in Cleveland, which is a city that was named like the worst city in the country for black women to exist in, Like why is that a thing? But my life experience inform how I my temperament, the way I look at things, how I view folks, which is as human beings, Like I in my professional experience sitting with families and moms and holding babies during hearings for clients, and you know I in having the I have clients kids come to my kids birthday parties. I've had clients kids come out to help campaign on stuff. I really really am invested in the humanity of existing amongst each other and others. And when I see people from the bench, I will see my brother or my sons, or my cousins or my clients in every person that comes before my bench but there are judges on the bench that can't do that because they're not black, and they're older white folks, or they don't you know, they've never walked a mile and yeah, and so that informs how they how they handle cases and what their views are and how they dictate their policies and develop them and um, and that actually goes to another customer as well, like what do you think how do you think your experience as a criminal defense attorney will will help you in the role of being a judge. Um, I think that it will be extremely helpful. So I don't want to My one thing I say to all of my clients is I don't sugarcoat anything for anybody, and I don't hype people. Some some folks, you know, do do do bad things and they need to be punished for it. But sometimes that's not the case. Also, and so as a defense attorney and as opposed to being a prosecutor for instance, which a lot of judges come from the prosecutor's office, I work my way through the analysis. I've been sitting in rooms with people and in jail cells with people, asking well, why did this happen? What happened? Because life happens to people too, and sometimes they make the wrong decision and it lands them there. So I think that my professional experience as a defense attorney in particular will be immensely helpful and impactful for people because I can see I'm looking through a different lens. I'm looking through the lens of someone who has heard it all, has tried it all in courtrooms, has litigated at all. But I've met every type of person you can imagine, and most of the people I meet, other folks just immediately chalk off as less than or that they're they're criminals, and they're ne'er do wells, they're bad people. But I don't see anybody that way. I don't judge anybody by what they may have done. That's that's not my place, right It's my place to find and out why they did what they did before I pass any judgment at all. Um. So, as we as we get ready to close, there one thing I definitely want to ask you because I think you're you know, you know, I think you're an awesome person and and I love just the way that you interact with people, the way that you treat people. You have a very welcoming personality a very welcoming heart, and I think that that's something that would be a huge asset, you know, to the bench as well, because you can you can identify with both sides, and I think that's very important because there are, like you just said, there are times where you know people have to suffer the consequences of their actions, and then there are times where you know there can be some other factors where you where you want to try to try to help a person. So, um, for people who are listening, especially for younger people who are listening and and I've heard your journey, your story and what you're doing now, and people who would want to following your footsteps, what advice would you give them. Well, first advice is I would welcome anyone with open arms to come hang out with me for a day. I offer that to young law students all the time, young college kids, if you're curious about what it's like, especially when I'm like practicing. So a lot of my days go like this. I'm in court in four or five different courtrooms in a justice center, sometimes three or four different courthouses in the morning, and then I get on the bench in the afternoon. Please just reach out to me. I'm happy to have someone hang out with me and come see it all from the inside. And I think that any young person listening has to know that you can do whatever you want to do with your life, even if you've made mistakes in your past. You have no idea how many attorneys I practice with it have criminal conviction and have gotten in trouble when they were younger. You know, we grow and we change, so don't let anything deter you. But I like to. I think it's so important. I try every chance I get. If I meet someone from a school that teaches, especially in Cleveland public schools or where there are a lot of black kids, I like to I ask for the opportunity. Can I come meet your students? Can I come talk to your students. I've got games, I've developed a play to make it more digestible, so I'm not boring them like I'm probably boring you right now. But you cannot be what you cannot see. If young kids see someone that looks like them doing something like this, they now, that's the only thing it takes to inspire them to say, oh my gosh, I can do that too. She looks like me. She looks like my mom, she looks like my sister. If she can do it, why couldn't I do it? And so I think every every person with these responsibilities, in these positions, it's we owe a duty to get out there with young folks and show them who we are and interact with them. Be human, so we're not like the wizard behind the curtain. And it's intimidating because they need to know that a we're human being and be they can do it too. You just gotta work hard, study and be prepared to go to school for a long time. But I had a blast in school. I loved school. I love college. I had so much fun in college in law school. So it's not like, oh my gosh, yeah, I go to school for seven years. Those are the best seven years ever. If I could have them back, I'd do it all over. So study hard, you know, like study hard, ask questions and if you ask the wrong person, and there they make it sound like they're not interested in you. I'm interested in you. Come to me, and I'm happy to post you. I'm happy to talk to you. I'm happy to present for children and kids and teenagers and college kids. Whatever of me I'll give it. Wow, that's awesome. That's awesome. I am so glad we were finally able to make this. Absolutely, you are one of the most genuine people I've ever met, and you are the exact kind of person that we need in positions of leadership. It's people like you that have the thought process and the mentality that you have and the desire to do the job. It's people like you. You are the type of person that we need in positions of leadership. So good luck on the campaign trail. That means the world to me. Absolutely, and thank you for finally try to get you for a couple of months now the show. Thank you so so much for having me, and I'll come back to you just say what Absolutely awesome. More time. Thank you to Sydney Strickland Saffo for coming on the show. Really appreciated. We are out of here. We'll see you next time. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network, where real talk lifts. Visit us online at FCB podcasts dot com.
