Shaker Heights Council Passes Public Safety Reforms, Avoids Ballot Initiative Vote in November

Campaign manager Ethan Khorama introducing the Shaker Citizens for Fair Ticketing PAC’s new ballot initiative. Credit: Maria Elena Scott

Shaker Heights City Council this week unanimously passed a “Framework for a Fair and Just Shaker,” a set of public safety-focused initiatives spurred by and reached in compromise with Shaker Citizens for Fair Ticketing PAC, the group behind a ballot initiative that would have put more sweeping reforms before voters this November.

“Policy-wise, this is one of the biggest legislative packages for public safety and police reform that’s ever been passed in the state of Ohio,” said Shaker Citizens for Fair Ticketing campaign manager Ethan Khorana.

In addition to acknowledging, “that profiling and bias in policing exist throughout our nation, and that this national problem has disproportionately negatively impacted people of color”, the resolution details plans to:

Establish a community-wide Listening Project, designed and run by an independent third-party to have a community-wide discussion on policing policies and practices.
Expand the city’s Mental Health Response Program with the goal of creating a program that operates 24/7.
Create a 12-person volunteer Community Advisory Group to advise the Mayor–both as an elected official and as safety director, the police chief, the chief administrative officer and City Council.
Post public documents and reports of the Shaker Heights Police Department online to make access easier for the public. The first of its kind for any municipal city in Ohio, the repository will be updated quarterly and will include metrics like demographic data, use of force and ticketing.

For Police Department policy, some of the commitments the city make in the resolution are to:

concentrate traffic enforcement efforts on hazardous violations in which the behavior of a driver is the reason for a citation, like speeding, driving under the influence or distracted driving.
patrol neighborhoods equitably, considering calls for service, incident levels, distribution of population, recommendations from the Listening Project and more.

The group successfully gathered the 1,000 necessary signatures for the amendment campaign — the first proposed charter amendment in the city to do so in 25 years —but ultimately worked with the city to adopt the resolution instead.

“It’s a very big deal not only for Shaker but also [Cuyahoga County],” Khorana said. “We’ve shown that good things come when we focus more on our similarities than on our differences and that out of the chaos of discourse and controversy good things that help and impact people’s lives do come.”

“Right now, police officers just deploy officers how they want to,” said Khorana. “With this new resolution, they’ll use a yearly survey to survey all the neighborhoods in Shaker and ask them if they feel over or under-policed and based on that data is how they will send out officers so that everybody’s getting the adequate amount of patrolling that they need.”

Although it bears a strong resemblance to the ballot language originally proposed by Shaker Citizens for Fair Ticketing, the “Framework for a Fair and Just Shaker” does not include plans for the creation of a Civilian Police Oversight Board. But that could change.

“[The Civilian Police Oversight Board] is essentially postponed and they will put it in the Listening Project to see how folks feel about it in the community and how they would want it to look,” Khorana said. “So the decision on whether or not Shaker will have an oversight board is postponed for right now, but it’s still a possibility in the future.”

The commitments made by Shaker Heights are effective immediately but some of the more complicated aspects of the resolution will come down the line.

For the Listening Project, the city currently plans to prepare and issue a request for proposal, form an internal review group with a representative from Shaker Citizens for Fair Ticketing, review proposals and make a recommendation from October to December of 2023.

Next year it will seek council approval of and finalize the consultant contract and approximate a timeframe for the project. Based on this tentative timeline, a report from the Listening Project will be issued in September 2024.

Expansion of the Mental Health Response Program has a less certain timeline, with discussions about budget and potential funding sources expected to be ongoing through 2023 and 2024. If the Shaker Heights doesn’t receive a grant for the expansion, City Administration will bring up the issue in the budget process for the 2024 budget, which will be completed in December 2023.

Shaker Heights plans to advertise for Community Advisory Group volunteers and form the group in the first quarter of 2024 before holding the first meeting in the second quarter.

Also in 2024, the city is tentatively scheduled to post public records on the repository in August, with plans to post records from 2020-2023 in September.

“The city acknowledges that profiling and bias in policing exists throughout our nation, and that this national problem has disproportionately negatively impacted people of color,” said a joint statement from the city and Shaker Citizens for Fair Ticketing PAC.

“Shaker Heights is committed to its efforts to combat this problem by continuing to work toward safe, equitable, transparent, and accountable policing, to avoid biased or discriminatory policing, and to strive to achieve a just city for all persons who live, work and visit the city.”

Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.