CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cleveland City Council voted Wednesday to accept a nearly $8-million grant that will pay to add 30 officers to the police department. But the measure passed only after a debate over whether it is the best way to address rising crime.
Some members supported accepting the federal money without hesitation, saying crime is out of control. Others cautioned that police need to move judiciously, working on prevention as well as attacking crime.
But given the protests calling for reform of police nationally and wariness in parts of Cleveland, Councilman Basheer Jones argued police need to build better relationships with the community first.
“We know we’re living in a city where a lot of crime is taking place,” Jones said. “There’s a ton of community members who believe what I believe, and that is that more police, in and of itself, is not going to change the situation.”
Many in the Black community distrust police, fearing use of force or harassment, Jones said.
“It’s always one-sided. We talk about the crime, but we don’t talk about the crime that happens to community members,” Jones said.
“There’s too many murders, there’s too many killings and people are shooting. … That’s something we have to fight,” Jones said.
“But simultaneously, we also need to work on building a stronger bridge between community and police,” Jones said. “When our officers do something that is wrong, that is harmful to the community, that there is justice there as well.”
Ultimately the council approved legislation accepting the grant 14-1, with Jones opposing. Mayor Frank Jackson is expected sign it into law shortly.
The grant, part of the federal initiative Operation Relentless Pursuit, will provide the city with $7.97 million, enough to hire 30 officers for three years.
The officers will work with federal and state law enforcement to address violent crime in a collaborative effort the White House has dubbed Operation LeGend -- named in honor of four-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was shot and killed while he slept June 29 in Kansas City.
The federal government said it will assign 25 investigators from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to work with the task force.
The new Cleveland hires are expected to join a police cadet class the city already had planned for this fall. Applicants are being reviewed now, Public Safety Director Karrie Howard said. The expanded class could have as many as 80 cadets.
That was cheered by some, including Councilmen Mike Polensek and Jones, both of whom have sounded alarms about rising crime. Data from Cleveland police show 118 homicides so far in 2020, up 35 percent through the same point in 2019.
“Overwhelmingly, the people of the city of Cleveland, they want safe streets,” Polensek said. "They want the violent offenders taken off the streets.
Police Chief Calvin Williams and Howard both sought to calm any ideas that the federal presence would look like Portland, Oregon, where officers in riot gear were deployed to the streets. This work will be an investigative assignment, they said.
“This is going to be a surgical effort,” Howard said. “This is not a random grab-all [effort] and see who we’ve got.”
And Williams challenged other social and safety net programs that focus on crime prevention, re-entry into the community for offenders and social needs to take an active role.
“We on the law enforcement side understand the prevention aspect. We understand the re-entry aspect. … And we’re all for it,” Williams said.
But too often, he said, those roles – areas often beyond officers' training -- are pushed onto law enforcement.
Those efforts are better handled by “those folks that it’s their normal course of business, whether it be psychologists, sociologists, social workers, community activists,” Williams said. “We’re more than willing to support those folks, but you can’t push all that on law enforcement.”
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