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WHAT COPS DO (AND DON’T DO) A Review of 23,000 Cleveland Police Calls Over One Month

BETWEEN MAY 31 AND JUNE 24,

Cleveland police received more than a thousand calls reporting nuisances and disturbances. They handled approximately 100 calls about robberies, and 50 reporting sexual assault.

That’s not unusual for major metropolitan police departments, according to an analysis the New York Times ran on June 15. In New Orleans, Sacramento, and Montgomery County, Md., the Times found about 4 percent of the officers’ time is spent on “violent crimes,” defined as rape, homicide, felony assault and robbery. For other major metropolitan departments like Baltimore, Phoenix and Seattle, they found between 0.5 percent and 1.8 percent of the calls logged in their dispatch systems fell into the “violent crime” category.

Cleveland, which posts the past seven days’ worth of dispatch calls on an online map, falls roughly in line.

Four weeks of call data collected included over 23,000 calls. (Some calls may not have been captured due to rolling erasure of data from the public map.) Dispatch calls include calls made to 911, as well as reports from police.

Of those 23,000 calls, only 1.75 percent of calls fell into the “violent crime” category.

Some advocates for “defunding the police” have pointed to the small percentage of police work that deals with violent felonies as an argument for shifting resources away from departments.

“[Police are] not out chasing bank robbers or serial killers. The vast majority of police officers make one felony arrest a year,” Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing, told the Socialist magazine Jacobin in a recent interview. “If they make two, they’re cop of the month.”

But it’s important to note that the “violent crime” definition used in the Times’ analysis (and here, for the sake of comparison) is extremely limited. Their definition is based on the one used by the FBI for its Unified Crime Report, which gathers data from police departments around the country.

It doesn’t include crimes that most people would consider violent or potentially violent, like simple assault, domestic violence, or threatening someone with a weapon.

Domestic violence, for example, was one of the most common types of calls handled by the police, accounting for 3.4 percent of calls through the dispatch system. There were almost 900 reports of shots fired, which made up 3.9 percent of calls.

The rest of the dispatch calls are a hodgepodge of irrelevant chatter and life-threatening crises. Police are called to deal with illegal parking, suicide threats, drug overdoses, home security alarms, fist fights and fireworks. The dispatch system also includes police-initiated reports of arrests, warrants served, “park, walk and talk” community relations activities, lunch breaks and shift changes.

Some activists in favor of “defunding the police” – a nebulous

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slogan that encompasses anything from decreasing police funding incrementally to abolishing departments completely – have advocated “unbundling” police activities. That means armed police officers would only respond to certain crimes, while other people, including social workers, would respond to the many other types of calls police now handle.

Proponents of this approach see police continuing to respond to violent crimes. But semi-violent situations, or situations that don’t rise to the UCR definition of violent crime, complicate that idea.

Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza mentioned domestic violence in an NBC interview as the kind of issue where a social worker should respond instead of a police officer.

“What we’re saying is, invest in the resources communities need. So much of policing right now is generated and directed toward quality of life issues: homelessness, drug addiction, domestic violence and conflict,” she said.

But while some domestic violence calls may involve minor incidents, some can turn into murders, not only of domestic violence victims, but also of the people responding. One study estimated that six officers are killed on average every year while responding to domestic violence calls, and over 4,000 are assaulted.

“Domestic violence is an awfully broad category, so I think there are certainly instances where I would think you would want an individual who is well trained in tactics,” said Avidan Cover, a law professor at Case Western University who specializes in civil and human rights. While social workers could create better outcomes than police in less volatile incidents, “How you make determination, say, at the dispatch level is a very difficult [question].”

Cleveland’s dispatch system also contains codes that offer clues to what happened when police responded to those calls – in many cases, not much. (The police department hadn’t answered our request for information about the CAD system or disposition codes by press time.)

When police responded to calls labeled as domestic violence, the most common code was “ADV” – which, in the Cincinnati dispatch system, is translated as “Advised.” That accounted for 14 percent of domestic violence calls. The second most common was “NC,” which probably means “noise complaint.”

Only 2.4 percent of those calls are labeled as ending in “ARR,” or arrest.

That’s far lower, for comparison, than the percentage of Cincinnati domestic violence calls that end in arrest. For the same time period, nearly 14 percent of domestic violence dispatch calls there ended with an arrest. The most likely outcome label was “offense report,” which accounted for a third of cases.

Police responses to “shots fired” calls were even less likely to yield results. In a third of cases, police labeled those calls as “UTL,” or | clevescene.com | July 1-7, 2020 9

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“unable to locate,” likely meaning the shooter didn’t stick around until the cops arrived. Another 7 percent are labeled “GOA,” or “gone on arrival.”

Less than half a percent of shotsfired calls ended in an arrest.

Cover noted that in a best-case scenario, outcomes other than arrest indicate officers successfully mediated a conflict or de-escalated a situation, or at least made the community member who called them feel heard and supported. In a worstcase scenario, it can mean officers failed to take a report seriously.

There’s no shortage, in Cleveland or nationally, of media stories about police failing to help victims. Last year, a Plain Dealer project focused on a woman who reported her violent rape to the Cleveland police. After months of waiting for an arrest, she learned the detectives initially assigned to her case hadn’t made a single phone call to find out her rapist’s identity.

As the #defundpolice argument has picked up steam, survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault have posted countless stories on social media about police failing to act when called.

When crime victims can’t count on cops to protect them, Cover said it adds a second element to the “defund the police” argument.

“One [element] is, calling the police results in violence to people: unnecessary, state-sanctioned violent death; and the other is, why even bother calling [if] the work they’re doing is ineffectual. If that’s the proposition...maybe you shouldn’t call the police,” he said.

Cover said that he doesn’t support defunding the police, and believes that effective, safe policing may require even greater police funding. But he also pointed to Cleveland’s 2019 budget, a third of which went to policing. Meanwhile, public health, economic development and housing each got two percent or less.

“Those priorities seem out of

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whack to me,” he added. -Cid Standifer

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Cuyahoga County Preparing to Bailout Hilton Cleveland Downtown

Cuyahoga County Council’s Finance and Budget committee met Monday afternoon to receive additional information about a proposed bailout of the Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel.

The controversial measure, proposed in recent weeks, would entail an additional $7.9 million expenditure from the county’s general fund, at minimum. It would cover the balance of Hilton Worldwide’s expected 2020 contribution to debt service and taxes, which the hotel chain alleges it cannot pay due to significant loss of business caused by Covid-19.

The county maintains that as the owner of the facility — Hilton Worldwide merely manages it for an annual fee — taxpayers are obligated to cover the full debt and tax load. In fact, the county has objected to the “bailout” terminology on these grounds.

Until now, county taxpayers and Hilton have teamed up each year to cover the substantial payments on $230 million in municipal bonds taken out in 2014 to finance the hotel’s construction. Hilton has already paid $3.7 million in the first half of 2020 but said it will be

making no more payments for the rest of the year. The county now claims it is on the hook for $6.5 million in debt service and $1.4 million in taxes, (all on top of the $9.5 million it had budgeted for its own contributions).

Monday, presenters from CHMWarnick, the hotel asset management company that the county retains to provide updates about the Hilton’s financial performance, gave a PowerPoint outlining the grim regional and nationwide trends that supposedly justify Hilton’s inability to pay its freight. (Last week, County Council extended CHMWarnick’s consulting contract for three more years, to the tune of about $250,000 per year.)

Hilton’s occupancy numbers are alleged to be proprietary information, but CHMWarnick provided data about recent group cancellations at the Hilton and per-room revenue losses on various hotel classes. The Hilton Cleveland Downtown is considered an “upper upscale” hotel, one tier below the topmost “luxury” class.

In March, an 80 percent yearover-year decline in revenue perroom nationwide was described as unprecedented in history. “Nothing comes close,” said CHMWarnick VP Larry Trabulsi. Covid’s effects, he said, have been even more severe for luxury and upper upscale hotels than midscale and economy brands.

Cleveland.com reported Monday that the lease agreement between the county and Hilton from 2013, promoted by then-County Executive Ed FitzGerald and approved by county council with only one dissenting vote, obligated county taxpayers to cover shortfalls on projected revenue.

Multiple county councilpeople Monday proclaimed their ongoing support for the hotel, in spite of the recent financial peril.

“While I understand these concerns,” said Councilman Michael Gallagher, “that hotel, at a cost of $230 million, produced $180 million for Northeast Ohio [via the RNC]. Any suggestion that the hotel, in any way shape or form, is a mistake ... is a mistake.”

Councilwoman Sunny Simon and Committee Chair Dale Miller both suggested that the committee should henceforth monitor the hotel’s financial progress on a monthly basis, on the theory that if conditions improve — if there’s a vaccine, for example — the county’s bailout might be amended or rendered unnecessary. -Sam Allard

Cleveland, My Friend Who’s Also Kind of a Mess

It’s been almost three months since I’ve been to Playhouse Square, and I really miss it.

Yes, fine, I’m a normie who likes that incredibly bougie section of Cleveland with a chandelier in the middle of it. You caught me. For what it’s worth, it’s also the section of the city where universities, media organizations, businesses and nonprofits all exist together within a quarter mile radius but sure, it’s definitely more than a bit pretentious.

I’ve spent many of my most precious moments over the past six years in the space between the Scene office next to the baseball stadium and the western edge of the Cleveland State campus on East 18th. Between Scene, the County building, the City Club, the United Way, Starbucks, the Center for Community Solutions, IdeaStream, and the Urban College, that slice of downtown pretty much represents most of my Cleveland experience. And if I had the money and the confidence (or perhaps the opposite of that), I’d get rid of the chandelier and replace it with a no-frills sign that simply says, “Do Better.”

It’s not an effort to call out anyone. That’s really not my style. Instead, it would be an attempt to call in folks. To remind our leaders and our lay people that Cleveland deserves their hard work and that, when you do give it all you have, you can actually make a difference in this city.

I know that sounds too fluffy and sentimental. Cheesy, even. But it’s objectively true, and often not in a positive way. From TownHall to City Hall, this city enables people who would be nobodys in other places. Some lawyer from an outlying suburban community probably would not be given free rein to lead an expensive, yet entirely empty and unplanned, effort to bring a massive tech industry into the city. And though many of the same names and faces continue to hold onto tremendous amounts of power in every city, Cleveland’s whos-who can be simultaneously too small time to be impactful yet too big to fail.

And what happens, because Cleveland is such a big small town, is that so many people are so interconnected that not only do the select few have outsized influence but those who aren’t inside that circle of influence face disdain or backlash when they offer any critique.

So today, I’m going to address my

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good friend, Cleveland. Not because I’m leaving, though I am. The “blow things up and don’t look back” thing is reserved specifically for bad action movies. I try to avoid burning bridges when I can and I like Cleveland enough to never want to do that to her. But the city deserves a Do Better agenda and I’ll spell it out as best as I can:

Talk is cheap but accountability is worth its weight in gold

We need to stop letting people talk about things without explaining exactly what they mean and what specific actionable steps they will take to achieve it (cough, cough, equity). How? By changing the ways they communicate with us and forcing them to, at some point, produce a clear plan that they can be held accountable to.

Most of the men are mediocre at best and badass women need more respect

Cleveland, your women are leading the boardroom meeting and you act like they’re there to get the coffee. Stop it. It’s rude and sloppy but, more importantly, it means your pissing away so much potential.

If you go to almost any meeting of the whos-who in Cleveland, any major governing event — heck, even just take a look at who’s on the commissions and boards — you’d think that there are maybe fifteen women in this city. That’s because Cleveland loves to give women ceremonial power and keep the substantive power for its men.

This is especially true in the marketing, arts, and creative industries in this city. There are dozens of women working four times as hard as men, with at least twice the talent and six times the level of out-of-office commitments, who are only vaguely referenced by their workplace or a brand that they cultivated for which they get zero credit. Those women are reimagining our city and some of y’all are salivating for a male architect or two.

In the public sector, there are a decent number of women in really good positions but very few in really great ones. I hope more women will run in 2021. We need to have competitive races with women candidates running to represent every single powerful institution here. And if we want to make sure that happens- we need other women

Hard-working people don’t get paid to criticize, the least you can do is listen

Many of Cleveland’s most ardent supporters have almost no ability to share their views on the city. People in media, public service, labor, nonprofits — folks who get paid a salary that would only be tolerated in this city, and one that’s only tolerated because it means you get to stay here and work in this region — are constantly maligned or silenced. It’s as if only if you have a private sector job and a home that’s on half an acre of suburban property can you speak openly about the city.

And that is so incredibly stupid. Because why on earth would you prioritize someone who seeks only potential private gain above the person who literally works on behalf of the public?

How about, instead of inviting them all into a room and telling them they need to spend three days only discussing what they love about Cleveland, just sit with them one-onone and pick their brains. Buy them coffee, ask them what tiny thing you can change that might make the city better. Be honest with them and

DIGIT WIDGET

$3,066,151.68 Overtime payments that the City of Cleveland shelled out from May 30 - June 6 to cover heightened security during downtown protests and the military curfew imposed in the aftermath.

18 Tamir Rice’s age, as of 6/25/2020, if he hadn’t been shot and killed by Officer Timothy Loehmann in November, 2014.

526 Fireworks complaints that the City of Cleveland received between June 1 -21.

100% Percentage of very low income Clevelanders who live in neighborhoods where the monthly water bill is 4% or more of total household income.

tell them what you can and can’t do. And for God’s sake stop firing them. Or reporting their actions to their bosses. Or trying to see problems where there aren’t any.

I love Cleveland. I will never root for your garbage football team but the city is amazing. And you know what makes it amazing? The people who dedicate every day to this city despite the fact that the talking heads ignore them and their jobs might be at stake if they dare to critique the Mayor’s cabinet members. These people spend every day giving their all to this city. They don’t have time to relax in Playhouse Square and look at the chandelier. They’re doing the work. The rest of us need to Do Better.

-Hannah Lebovits

CPT Wants RTA to Defund Transit Police, Shift Dollars to Fare Reduction and Service

Clevelanders for Public Transit rallied two weeks ago calling on the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) to cut funding to its police force. Echoing local and nationwide calls to defund and restructure police departments, CPT asked RTA to reduce its transit police funding by half and redirect those dollars to fare reduction and the restoration of routes that have been cut in recent years.

In Cleveland, the city’s division of police is by far the largest law enforcement agency, but several others operate with more limited jurisdictions. These include RTA’s transit police, the CMHA police, the Metroparks rangers and the Cleveland Clinic police, not to mention the cornucopia of cops out in University Circle, which include squadrons from University Circle itself (the “UCPD”), Case Western Reserve University, and University Hospitals.

RTA’s Transit Police was created

Sam Allard

in 1977, shortly after the agency’s founding in 1974, and its mission is all about providing “a safe and orderly transit environment.” But transit police officers spend most of their time writing fare evasion tickets. Or at least they did in 2017, when officers told Scene that they believed law enforcement at RTA had been reduced to a crude form of revenue generation. (RTA was making $25 a pop for first-time fare evaders, and officers were required to write 10 citations per shift.) Later that year, local judge Emanuella Groves ruled that having armed RTA police enforcing fares was unconstitutional.

In 2010, the ACLU found that RTA’s fare enforcement mechanism (armed officers on the Red Line and HealthLine) disproportionately affected Black riders. The $25 fee was in fact implemented to prevent needless interactions with the criminal justice system, though fare evasion remains a fourth-degree misdemeanor.

Late last year, Cleveland Councilman Kerry McCormack said he had drafted a bill to decriminalize fare evasion. Council lawyers were reportedly checking on a few details, but McCormack’s stated goal was to make penalties for fare evasion effectively the same as penalties for parking violations.

Though ridership has steadily declined in recent years, RTA’s police presence has increased. The agency now has 128 full-time officers on its payroll, plus at least 20 part-time officers and additional staff, making it the fourth-largest law enforcement agency in Cuyahoga County. RTA spends upwards of $14 million each year on the transit police.

CPT believes that these “limited resources would be better used to fund service and reduce the cost of fares.” -Sam Allard

scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene