By Chris Stewart
Dayton Daily News
COLUMBUS — Confronted with two high-profile police killings in his own state last year and others across the country, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed an executive order Wednesday that will go into effect immediately to address relationships between police departments and the communities they serve.
“The governor of this state is not going to look the other way. We are going to heal our communities,” Kasich said. “We are going to get ahead of the curve on what we have seen in other parts of this country. It is not acceptable to have these divisions between our friends in the African-American community and law enforcement.”
The order will require the state to develop a first-of-its kind set of uniform standards governing deadly use of force and recruiting and hiring policies to ensure every Ohio police agency has a diverse, professional department, he said.
Kasich said “nothing can be fixed in a day” but the state doesn’t have time to wait.
The governor accepted five of seven top-level task force recommendations given to him in a 600-page report during a week that saw another American city reel from the effects of a breakdown in community-police relations after the death of a black man in police custody — this time in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, who died after sustaining injuries to the spine.
The Ohio Task Force on Community-Police Relations was formed in January after the 2014 deaths of John Crawford III, 22, in Beavercreek and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland. A new 12-member Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board of community members and police will be formed to implement the executive order, Kasich said.
The Ohio report calls for:
-- Greater accountability and oversight of police and agencies;
-- More community education and involvement;
-- A grand jury process review as it applies to use of force to be conducted by the Supreme Court of Ohio or other authority;
-- Increased recruitment of minority candidates;
-- Statewide, standardized minimum hiring policies for departments;
-- A greater emphasis and investment in police training.
“The community needs to trust law enforcement; law enforcement needs to understand the community,” Kasich said.
The executive order ensures no department will be exempt from the new standards, he said.
The governor appointed 22 members to the task force co-chaired by former Ohio Sen. Nina Turner, D-Cleveland, and John Born, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety. Hundreds attended four forums across the state where task force member often heard difficult and emotional testimony of parents who lost their children during interactions with law enforcement, according to the report.
Born said it’s difficult to get a handle on each agency or department’s individual policies -- especially when it comes to use of lethal force because there is no statewide standard or required annual reporting.
Many agencies share similar use of force policies, Born said, but what’s tough is “ensuring that every officer knows what that policy is, can articulate that policy, but more importantly follows that policy.”
Crawford was fatally shot in August by a police officer who mistook the air rifle the Fairfield man picked up off a shelf in the Beavercreek Walmart for a real gun. In November, Rice was playing with an air-soft pistol and was shot by police in a Cleveland park. Both were black and shot by white officers.
State Rep. Alicia Reece, D-Cincinnati, and Ohio Legislative Black Caucus president, said the new collaborative is similar to what worked to repair police relations in her city following riots in 2001.
“This is a historic step,” Reece said. “Today is a major step in telling the people not only have you been heard, but now we are entering the second phase of implementing some of the things you said are important to you.”
Reece said the outcome of the Crawford shooting in Beavercreek may have been different had uniform policing standards come sooner.
“When you have standards how you deal with these incidents. When you have accountability if you don’t deal with it correctly, then you have a different response.”
Task force recommendations that did not make it on Kasich’s Wednesday executive order were calls for greater transparency in the grand jury process and an examination of possible judicial reform, said task force member Tom Roberts, a former state senator from Dayton and member of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.
“Many times we heard in testimony questions about the grand jury. I don’t think we can do away with the grand jury, but I think there can be some improvements especially as it relates to African-Americans and the police department when there’s an officer involved, Roberts said. “The cozy relationship between the police department and the prosecutor is a deep concern.”
Roberts said the grand jury system could look more like that in Wisconsin where an independent body is called on to hear officer-involved shooting cases.
Kasich said the effort would get funded but didn’t provide specifics. If state funding doesn’t come through, smaller departments could be in jeopardy, said task force member Chief Michael J. Navarre of the Oregon Police Department.
“There are a lot of small police departments in Ohio. If they cannot meet these requirements then maybe they should think about contracting with their sheriff’s office, or combining with other departments, or coming up with innovative ways to meet those requirements,” he said.
Michael Wright, the Dayton attorney for the Crawford family, was just beginning to read the 600-page report released by Kasich’s task force on police-community relations, released Wednesday. His initial assessment was that the report is a only “first step.”
Copyright 2015 the Dayton Daily News