Two state jail inspectors arrived here from Albany. The Erie County sheriff said his office sympathizes with any family suffering a sudden loss. And a mother expressed her anguish over the third Holding Center suicide in four months.

These events unfolded Thursday a day after the hanging death in Erie County’s busy and controversial downtown jail:

•The chairman of the State Commission of Correction, Thomas A. Beilein, sent two inspectors to the Holding Center to immediately investigate the latest death and begin a sweeping review of the suicide-screening program at the jail and Correctional Facility in Alden.

•Sheriff Timothy B. Howard welcomed the inspectors and said his staff intends to place inmates who are on drug detoxification under constant watch. Howard again endorsed the county’s legal strategy to fight a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit over jail conditions and to deflect its offer of a suicide-prevention expert if the expert expects unfettered access to the jails.

•Amherst police acknowledged they did not tell Holding Center personnel that Wednesday’s victim, Jeremy Kiekbush, 29, was a clear suicide risk because there is no system for passing along the information.

Assistant Police Chief Timothy M. Green said the Amherst department is willing to work with sheriff’s personnel to ensure that the Holding Center receives such information, as it does now from Buffalo police and from Erie County deputies with their suspects.

•A 10 percent raise for the sheriff’s jail superintendent, Robert A. Koch Jr., was again put aside in the Erie County Legislature. The raise would have brought Koch’s base salary to almost $105,000 a year, but several legislators, as well as Howard, agreed this wasn’t the time to consider it.

•Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature approved a statement, 11-4, imploring the sheriff, County Executive Chris Collins and County Attorney Cheryl A. Green to, among other things, open the jails to the suicide-prevention expert. So did Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz, who repeated his call for Green to resign, saying she has given poor advice in the matter.

“It is time for the confrontational stance of this administration to end,” Poloncarz said, “and for the county to allow the federal and state governments complete and unfettered access to the jails to help the county address the issues and problems at each facility.”

The mother of one recent suicide victim, Adam Murr, 31, a robbery suspect who hanged himself in the Holding Center in December, said she believes the federal government should turn up the pressure.

“I got one hour’s sleep last night after hearing about this latest kid who died,” Faye Johanson said. “It’s a travesty that he died, and it’s a travesty that Adam died, and it’s a travesty that Daniel Nye died.”

“I have recommended to someone in the federal government that they bring in the National Guard and go in there and find out what is going on, because this is ridiculous,” she said. “Three young men in the last four months.”

On Dec. 17, Murr tied his shoelaces to a vent in his cell and hanged himself. He was wheeled out of the facility just one day after Green told a federal judge the county’s jails need no special Justice Department attention with respect to beatings, maintenance, health care, mental health care and suicide prevention.

Green had said the county’s suicide-prevention measures are more than adequate, and she asked U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny to dismiss the Justice Department suit.

Skretny has yet to rule on that matter, or the Justice Department’s subsequent offer to let its suicide-prevention expert examine the facilities.

Murr’s death was followed by the Feb. 13 suicide of Nye, 26, of Cheektowaga. Nye, held on minor charges, also created a noose with his shoelaces and tied them to bars on his cell window.

Wednesday, Kiekbush, an inmate who had attempted suicide by cop during a high-speed chase Monday in Niagara County, was found hanging from a bedsheet. Despite his wish for death, he had been placed under general supervision in the Holding Center and not on the constant watch reserved for inmates who might harm themselves.

Amherst police had not passed along information that Kiekbush’s wife believed he might harm himself and that after the chase Kiekbush stated he wished that police had killed him.

“No, we didn’t tell them,” Timothy Green said. “If they would like to create a real system — not a word-of-mouth system — where we can give them copies of the paperwork, I’d be all for that. We’re willing to sit down with Tim Howard and come up with a better system.”

In the weeks between the deaths of Murr and Kiekbush, a Holding Center inmate already on suicide watch swallowed a quantity of aspirin in an attempt to kill herself. And last week, officers in the Correctional Facility cut down an inmate hanging from a bedsheet in his suicide attempt, which Cheryl Green has called an attempt to get better housing and food.

“Since December, five inmates at Erie County correctional facilities have attempted to commit suicide, and three of those five inmates have taken their own life while in the custody of the Sheriff’s Office — most recently yesterday,” Beilein said Thursday.

While the Commission of Correction examines all such deaths, Beilein said he ordered a comprehensive review of the suicide screening program at the county jails.

At a news conference, Howard expressed his appreciation and pledged cooperation with the state team. He said the last three suicide victims appeared to have histories of heroin use, so the jail will place an estimated 130 to 140 inmates a day in constant-watch units while they are on detoxification programs. He also said he might propose placing two inmates in each cell because suicides then become more rare.

“We also know that there is some scientific theory out there that suicides are contagious. When they have occurred in a school they are often followed by a second and third suicide within the same school,” he said. “And that certainly is a possibility of what happened most recently here.”

Howard said the Justice Department is over-reaching by expecting to send its lawyers and its suicide-prevention expert, Lindsay M. Hayes of the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, into the jails without a county lawyer present.

“I would have to ask the general public, who do you trust more, the federal government, the state government or your local government?” Howard said.

“And I think most people I talk to say they have most trust in their local government.”

News Staff Reporter Gene Warner contributed to this report.

Copyright 2010, The Buffalo News