Downtown Safety Patrol Under Scrutiny as Cuyahoga County Council Debates Crime, Cost, and Responsibility

Two county deputies, members of the Downtown Safety Patrol unit, out on a call in August. Credit: Mark Oprea

The crash that put the future of the Downtown Safety Patrol, with its eight Sheriff’s deputies and one sergeant, into question began with a traffic stop around 9:50 p.m. on March 28 in front of the Galleria.

Deputies Kasey Loudermilk and Robert Piccola had decided to turn their lights on a hastily-parked black Dodge Neon after the car’s driver, 24-year-old Nigel Perry, turned without signaling at a red light near St. Clair and East 9th. The Neon might’ve also been stolen: An investigation later showed Perry had placed forged stickers on the car’s license plate.

When Loudermilk flicked the cruiser’s lights on, Perry took off north, driving “recklessly,” the incident report reads. Loudermilk and Piccola followed. Perry shot up to 98 MPH eastward on I-90, as the deputies, following best practices, prepared to stop Perry’s car with a PIT maneuver.

Four minutes later, flying off the Eddy Road exit, Perry collided with a white Range Rover with plates reading “1BADRN.” Tamya Westmoreland, a mother of one who was getting off work as a nurse at University Hospitals, was thrown from her car. Perry’s Neon slammed into a ditch. Both vehicles caught fire. Westmoreland was rushed to UH and died later that night.

That crash, the procedure of which was defended at length in Loudermilk and Piccola’s incident reports, has propelled three members of Cuyahoga County Council to introduce legislation that could possibly defund and axe the DSP, which costs county taxpayers $1.2 million a year.

Axing the roles of eight deputies, charged with patrolling Downtown in the evenings and early hours, might be hasty with the summer months coming up, as several argued at a heated Cuyahoga County Council meeting on Tuesday.

That argument, which drew staunch public comment and submitted letters of concern by at least a dozen Downtown residents and police officers, rested in a concern that the March 28 crash was the culmination of a suite of unknowns: Why isn’t the DSP explicitly named in the county’s budget? Why doesn’t Cleveland pitch in?

“It’s not a matter of whether this is a worthy endeavor,” District 11 Councilwoman Sunny Simon, who helped introduce a resolution that could cut DSP funds, said on Tuesday.

“It’s not a matter of whether they’re effective and what they’re doing,” she added. “The question is whether the county should assume the responsibility of the city of Cleveland’s role in patrolling and keep it its own streets safe.”

County Council was never fully briefed on how the $1.2 million is fully spent, District 5 Councilman Michael Gallagher said. Especially when, he added, the County is already struggling to navigate, and manage, a deficit that’s upwards of $25 million.

Sheriff Harold Pretel (center) in 2024. Credit: Mark Oprea

“We don’t have the money,” Gallagher said. “It was never budgeted. Go to your homes. You have no money in the bank. Do you go buy groceries? You don’t. You have to plan, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

County Executive Chris Ronayne, who had once texted select councilmembers photos of AR-15 rifles the DSP had confiscated downtown as evidence of the unit’s success, immediately protested Gallagher acting on impulse.

Axing the DSP even for a few weeks, Ronayne said, would lead to a crime spike in a downtown that doesn’t really need such a crime spike. Even if its days.

“I say to you, why suspend the DSP with knee-jerk legislation,” Ronayne asked, “when your real motivation is to get equity in the game from the city of Cleveland?”

“Pull this legislation,” he added. “Don’t suspend the DSP; suspend the legislation.”

Weeks after 26-year-old Jaylon Jennings shot nine people on West 6th Street in the early hours of July 8, 2023, Sheriff Harold Pretel decided to assign a handful of his 187 deputies the downtown beat. The goal was, as he told Scene last year, “to keep the temperature down.”

“We need to keep the pressure on,” Pretel said, “so that negative elements will not feel comfortable engaging in disorder downtown.”

In an analysis by Scene last August, it was unclear if the unit had any demonstrable impact on crime. Data showed a slight uptick in spring, while citywide crime decreased 13 percent, which Bibb pointed to as evidence of his RISE plan working.

In a statement Monday, a county spokesperson backed up the Downtown Safety Patrol’s work keeping Downtown Cleveland a bit safer than it might be without them. Since August 2023, the spokesperson said, the DSP’s taken 291 illegal guns, made 103 felony arrests and carried out 4,946 traffic stops.

But the unit has not been without its own controversy, beyond the high-speed car chase.

In October 2024, one member of the unit shot a 15-year-old who was fleeing from a stolen car that deputies had chased. The shooting is still under investigation and it took months for Cuyahoga County to release footage of the incident, and then only under pressure from the Marshall Project and News 5 Cleveland.

But the majority of public comments this week came from those who’ve either worked hand-in-hand with some of the deputies or have had loved ones hurt at the hands of assailants.

“To dismantle an entire unit because of one incident is outrageous,” Jesse Howles, a Downtown resident whose wife was assaulted near their apartment on Public Square on Christmas Day in 2021, said. “If this patrol unit is defunded, it’s not politicians that will feel it first. It’s people like me and my wife.”

“Nine, highly-trained, skilled, men—that’s more than a lot of departments do with 90 people. Or 900,” resident Renee Lewis said. “You say it’s Cleveland’s job. But CPD is short hundreds of officers!”

“They’re not failing; they’re drowning,” Lewis added. “That’s not leadership—it’s abandonment.”

The future of those nine deputies will be discussed yet again at County Council’s committee meeting on May 13.