18 men from Portage, Lake counties accused of attempting to start gang in drug treatment program

Jan 20, 2020 at 1:49 PM

Eighteen men were kicked out of the Northeast Ohio Community Alternative Program last week for allegedly trying to start a gang, the "NEObloods," while they were in the program.

NEOCAP focuses on rehabilitating people who have felony convictions back into society. While it is a secure facility, it is not a prison and residents are there between four and six months. Men and women who want to go there have to apply to the program and must have a felony conviction. There is often a wait of several weeks before new residents can get in.

The 18 men came from Portage and Lake counties, according to court documents. At least nine Portage County men were accused of being part of the scheme, three of whom now face harsher sentences after a hearing to terminate their intervention in lieu of conviction in Judge Laurie Pittman’s courtroom on Friday. Pittman also sits on the judicial advisory board for NEOCAP.

Lisa Roe, operations director at the NEOCAP men’s facility in Warren, testified on Friday that 18 men came into a large conference-style room in the facility on Jan. 3 and had a 53-minute meeting discussing plans, including a "need to respect ourselves" and taking over rooms in the rest of the facility to restrict access to other NEOCAP participants, which is against NEOCAP rules.

Roe said the meeting was filmed on a security camera. On Jan. 6, one of the participants in that meeting was asked to turn over his personal locker, and the participant, Zachary Mace, 21, whose current residence is listed as the Portage County jail, became violent, staff said.

Roe said other program members had come to back him up. Nine staff members came to help restrain Mace, she said.

"We were seeing behaviors we didn’t normally see," Roe said.

Deputy Director of NEOCAP Kim Massary said NEOCAP is considered the best treatment facility in Ohio and has won multiple awards for its program. NEOCAP had a 90% completion rate in 2019, Massary said, and 493 of the 560 people who went through the NEOCAP program last year completed it. Only 52 of those people who entered the program in 2019 were terminated from the program. The facility serves Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, Portage and Trumbull counties.

A surveillance video that was not shown in court but was shown to attorneys in the case, shows 18 men sitting in a room talking, according to Roe, who said the topic of the discussion changed frequently when other staff members came into the room. Other participants in the facility who came into the room were either told to leave or were voted on to see if they would get a place at the table, Roe said.

Attorneys for three of the participants said the meeting could not be seen as a ploy to take over the facility as the men are doing nothing but sitting there.

Roe responded by saying the residents at NEOCAP are specifically told not to engage in behavior that they can see violates the rules of the facility, and this would have clearly violated the rules.

"The residents knew they were not supposed to do this and still chose to," she said.

The facility investigated the incident and did not involve outside law enforcement other than asking Trumbull County’s jail to house Mace for the night, Roe said. The facility is based in Warren and works with Trumbull County probation officers. No further charges have been filed.

Three residents, Trevor Svoda 19, Chase Young and Mace, had their cases heard on Friday in Pittman’s court. The sentences they received were the sentences they would have received if they violated the terms of their intervention in lieu, which Pittman found that they all did.

Holmes’s intervention in lieu of conviction was terminated and he was sentenced to 100 days in jail for trafficking in marijuana, a fifth-degree felony.

Svoda’s intervention in lieu of conviction was also terminated, and he will serve 12 months in prison for trafficking in marijuana, a fourth-degree felony, and possessing criminal tools, a fifth-degree felony. He was ordered to pay a $300 fine and court costs.

Mace’s intervention in lieu of conviction was terminated and he will serve 18 months in prison for aggravated possession of drugs, a fourth-degree felony, as well as pay a $300 fine and court costs.

The rest of the former residents’ cases will be heard in Judge Becky Doherty’s courtroom in Portage County Common Pleas Court within the next few weeks.

Contact reporter Eileen McClory at 330-298-1128, emcclory@recordpub.com or @Eileen_McClory.