Sam Allard / Scene
Attorney Bobby DiCello holds up a photo of Jayland Walker.
In the aftermath of the police shooting of Jayland Walker comes a critical new year for citizen oversight of police in Akron. It also means new faces in high places: mayor, law director, police chief, police union president and police auditor. Looming over it all is the challenge of renegotiating a labor deal that’s blocking a citizen panel from investigating officers.
With the threat of a lawsuit by the police union and cautious advice from the last administration’s law director, the Akron City Council in December rejected a request by the voter-approved and newly-formed Citizens’ Police Oversight Board (CPOB) to wield investigative and subpoena powers to review police conduct.
Some see the existing collective bargaining agreement as a shield against changing the long-standing policy that allows only Akron officers to investigate fellow officers in internal disciplinary cases.
The existing labor agreement expires at the end of 2024. Negotiations on a new deal will begin in early fall. First-term Mayor Shammas Malik has kept former Fraternal Order of Police President Frank Williams on as the city’s director of labor relations, while promoting Major Brian Harding to interim police chief.
Meanwhile, the 400-plus members of the FOP Akron Lodge #7 narrowly elected Detective Brian Lucey, a treasurer in the union, over Clay Cozart, whose tenure as the union’s president spanned local protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a full-throated defense of the eight Akron officers who fired over 90 shots at Walker, and opposition to the police oversight board formed in response to Walker’s killing. (A Summit County grand jury declined to indict the eight officers following a state investigation. The Walker family’s lawsuit against the city is pending in federal court.)
While campaigning for the police oversight board, Mayor Malik said that the pursuit of justice “may mean that we need to renegotiate the contract.” In his first town hall meeting this month to solicit feedback on the police chief search, Malik would not commit to giving the police oversight board a seat at the negotiating table. He said, however, that he is “considering” how the board’s input could inform the private talks.
“Our hope and our belief is that some of the things that we're looking for to be an effective board is going to happen through the new collective bargaining negotiation,” CPOB Chair Kemp Boyd told The Marshall Project. “But that's not in our hands or in our control.”
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