Cleveland City Council Passes Tanisha's Law, Creating Community Crisis Response Department

In a bid to better serve Clevelanders in midst of mental health crises, City Council passed Tanisha’s Law on Monday evening, the result of a process that searched for a co-response model for the city’s Division of EMS.

Earlier in the day, during a meeting with the Finance, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee, several councilmembers applauded recent rewrites and a years-long effort that was initially met with doubt by the Bibb administration.

But Tanisha’s Law is now law. In the coming months, a brand new Community Crisis Response Department will be installed at City Hall, along with a soon-to-be-hired deputy commissioner who will hire unarmed crisis responders who can be dispatched instead of police to certain 911 calls.

The move will inevitably cut down on police strain and unnecessary criminal charges that would only flood an already overworked justice system with cases that should, the theory goes, be dealt with by these new clinicians.

“Here’s an example that reasonable people can come up with reasonable solutions,” Ward 10 Councilman Michael Polensek said at the committee meeting Monday afternoon. Though City Hall still has a lot of hiring to do, Polensek said, “I believe we’re on the right path and the right course.”

On November 13, 2014, Anderson’s family called 911 twice claiming that Tanisha was disturbing the peace. She had been discharged a month earlier for bipolar disorder, and was trying to hastily leave their home on Ansel Road.

Officers Scott Aldrige and Brian Myers arrived. They took Anderson to the back of a squad car, where, according to CPD’s account, Anderson kicked Aldrige and Myers. She went limp. An ambulance was called.

The family painted a different narrative: Anderson was claustrophobic, so she leapt out of the squad car and fought with Aldridge and Myers. Alridge slammed her to the ground. He kneed her back in a prone position. Shortly after, she passed out.

Anderson was rushed to the Cleveland Clinic, but it was too late. She died, the Medical Examiner’s office later reported, due to “physical restraint in a prone position” mixed with her heart disease, diabetes, obesity and bipolar disorder. Her death, the coroner said, “was homicidal in nature.”

Michael Anderson, Tanisha’s uncle, spent the next decade lobbying city and county politicians to guage what legislators could do to prevent the next unnecessary death at the hands of police. In November 2024, Michael, along with Ward 8 Councilwoman Stephanie Howse-Jones workshopped a potential law—one that would create a bureau of co-responders—with law students at Case Western. Council wouldn’t entertain the measure until the following year.

It’s a narrative that many on Monday seemed to relate to or sympathize with, as did Ward 13 Councilman Brian Kazy, whose daughter suffers from a developmental disability.

“When I kept on going over that case, I could just imagine that everybody at this table has met my daughter,” Kazy, whos was added as the law’s co-sponsor on Monday, told the room.

He looked across the table to Howse-Jones. “You should wear this one with a badge of honor,” he told her. “When you’re done with your time in public service, look back and say, ‘Hey, this was one of my greatest accomplishments.”

Council President Blaine Griffin agreed.

“It’s definitely something [the family’s] been fighting for for a long time,” he said.

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