Troubling reports out of Dayton regarding their inability to attract people of color to join the local police force.

The city of Dayton kept its police recruiting program dark for nearly a year and unfunded despite spending more than $550,000 settling a federal lawsuit calling for the city to hire a more diverse pool of police and fire candidates.

The city is being forced by the U.S. Department of Justice to diversify its safety departments as it scrambles to replace a mass exodus of officers set to retire beginning next year.

The city is also paying about $400,000 in relief to black applicants who took the civil service test in 2006, but did not pass or were not hired. It also paid a California-based testing firm $150,000 to revamp the test.

The ABJ reports on new scanners police will be using in the area. However, while they acknowledge civil liberties concerns over the new technology, they only present opinions from those supportive of the technology.

Police throughout Northeast Ohio are getting some new ”bionic eyes” to help catch criminals.

The Summit County Emergency Management Agency/Division of Public Safety is buying 15 mobile license plate readers to hand out to sheriff’s offices and police departments in nine counties.

[…]

Civil liberty concerns

Wherever the mobile license plate readers have popped up, so has some anxiety about ”Big Brother” technology moving in and civil liberties being violated. Law-enforcement officials dismissed those concerns, though, noting that law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear.

While the system might help catch criminals, it also could be used to exonerate people, they said.

”We’re looking at license plates anyway,” Summit Sheriff Drew Alexander said. ”We’re just doing it with the human eye.”

He said he likes the system because it can improve safety during traffic stops by alerting officers immediately to a potential problem.

”It gives that officer a little bit of an edge he needs,” he said.

Positive steps being taken in Akron on police-community relations.

Akron city leaders announced plans Tuesday to form a citizens group that would work with law enforcement to enhance communications.

The move came on the same day that nearly two-dozen residents attended a meeting to air complaints of alleged police misconduct.

The citizens group is just one offshoot of an ongoing, 16-week assessment of the Akron Police Department by a national consulting firm.

Some good community policing skills being built in the city of Lima.

Some of the city’s police officers were in the classroom Monday learning new ways to deal with the public in a more gentle tone that should help make their jobs easier.

Many of the people police deal with have just been a victim of a crime or may be arrested. Learning a new way to communicate with them in a kinder tone will help in the overall communication process, said Sgt. Paula Strickler of the Lima Police Department.

“If they’re upset and we walk up and say, ‘What do you need? What’s your problem?’ it may anger them more but if we approach it with, ‘I’m here to help,’ it may calm them down,” Strickler said.

The new approach, which actually is not that new because the department has been training new officers with the technique for the past six years, is just another tool to help police officers do their jobs better, she said.

Despite this ruling, Toledo police must still work to resolve issues in how they respond to calls involving people with mental illnesses.

Toledo police officers involved in three fatal shootings - including one involving a 62-year-old mentally ill woman brandishing scissors - acted in self-defense when they fired their weapons, the department’s firearm review board concluded yesterday.

The five-member board heard testimony and reviewed evidence related to the three shootings before ruling the officers were justified in using deadly force. Chief Mike Navarre concurred with the decisions, which in effect closed the department’s investigations of the incidents.

But for the family of Linda Hicks, who was fatally shot Dec. 15, the decision doesn’t answer their questions or quell their concerns.

“I want to get everything all together - what happened, what happened in that room, why they shot her so many times. I want to know what happened,” said Evelyn Patterson, Ms. Hicks’ aunt who raised her and her two children.

“I don’t feel good,” she said of the incident. “I can’t sleep at night worrying about what they did to her.”

The DDN shows its support for Dayton Police Chief Biehl who instructed officers not to ask residents for their immigration status.

Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl is right that his officers shouldn’t be questioning victims or witnesses about their citizenship or immigration status — notwithstanding objections about the policy from the police union.

Let’s be honest. Most times, if that question comes up, it’s with Hispanics, not whites and blacks.

The practice itself can be a form of profiling, which invites lawsuits. But, arguably more important, the approach discourages Hispanics from reporting crimes and cooperating with police.

Dayton police (and community officials) have long been frustrated that they don’t always get the help they hope for from some people in the black community. They say they need victims and witnesses to come forward if they’re going to be successful at locking up the bad guys. They say it’s a shame because so often the victims who would benefit are themselves black.

Local activists are rallying around Dayton Police Chief Biehl after he rightfully instructed officers not to ask for a person’s immigration status when investigating a scene.

Police Chief Richard Biehl got a show of support from Dayton’s Hispanic community for prohibiting officers from asking the immigration status of a witness or victim of a crime.

Sister Maria Stacy, director of the local Hispanic Catholic Ministry, Lucia Prier, a social worker at the East End Community Services Center and David E. Larson, an immigration lawyer, commended Biehl’s action during the City Commission meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 13.

“I think the police chief was courageous to issue the policy directive. It was the right thing to do from a human rights and a safety standpoint,” said Larson, recently appointed to Dayton’s Human Relations Council. “It is impossible for any of us to know the extent that crime goes unreported.”

Dayton resident Juan Arias said he believes the executive order lays the groundwork for a better society, a better future.

“I stand before you a human being and ask my rights to be respected,” he said.

Kudos to Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl who has taken a step in improving relations between immigrant communities and local police.

City police officers are now prohibited from asking the immigration status of a witness or victim of a crime in hopes it eases fears some ethnic groups have of law enforcement.

Police Chief Richard Biehl issued the executive order to his nearly 390 officers on Dec. 30 telling them, “Citizens must feel free to call for police services without fear of undue repercussions.”

Biehl’s order, aimed mostly at the Latino community, goes on to say a “Police presence within the entire community is extremely important to engender a feeling of safety and trust…”

The order is being cheered by the city’s Hispanic community, whose leaders have said many victims of crimes who can’t provide documented citizenship don’t report incidents to police because they fear being arrested or even deported.

The ABJ praises the Ohio Supreme Court over their recent ruling requiring police to obtain a warrant before they search someone’s cell phone.

Justice Judith Lanzinger put the challenge in four words: ”Cell phones defy categorization.” Yet the courts must plunge into the task, anyway, seeking to draw clear distinctions and critical boundaries involving police searches and seizures in criminal investigations. On Tuesday, Lanzinger, writing for a 4-3 majority of the Ohio Supreme Court, delivered a careful argument, and the majority landed where it belonged. It upheld the Fourth Amendment principle protecting an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

The decision stemmed from a drug case. A woman taken to the hospital after a drug overdose agreed during questioning by police officers to call her drug dealer. Police officers soon arrested the dealer, and in doing so, confiscated his cell phone, eventually recovering call records and phone numbers. A jury convicted the dealer for trafficking in cocaine and other charges. He received 12 years in prison.

The defendant appealed his conviction, arguing that the trial court erred in failing to suppress the evidence found on the cell phone. The court of appeals upheld the conviction. A 2-1 majority sided with the trial court, reaffirming the view that a cell phone is essentially a closed container and thus subject to search during a lawful arrest.

Residents in Toledo continue to question officials over why a 62 year old mentally ill women was shot and killed by a police officer earlier this week.

The shooting death of a 62-year-old woman armed with a 10-inch scissors by a Toledo police officer this week sparked calls for full disclosure of the incident and greater care when dealing with the mentally ill.

Linda Hicks was shot at least three times by Officer Diane Chandler, who responded with her partner to the adult family home at 1321 Fernwood Ave. when the caretaker called 911.

Police Chief Mike Navarre said Ms. Hicks didn’t comply with the officers’ commands and tried to attack Officer Chandler with the scissors.

A five-person police firearms review board will review the shooting after the initial investigation, which includes a complete forensics analysis, the chief said.

Sixteen religious leaders from different churches gathered yesterday in front of the home where Ms. Hicks was killed to demand answers.

“We need some serious answers of what it looks like every time something goes down, someone is shot and killed, so our concern is to try and help the police make it better, that these things will not continue to happen,” said the Rev. Theodis Horton of Shiloh Baptist Church. “When you see a 62-year-old woman taken out by police, it is really sad and it hurts our community.”

Troubling news out of Toledo and police try and piece together how a 62 year old mentally ill woman was shot and killed after they were called to her residence.

When one of the mentally ill people who Tanya Murphy cares for in her home on Fernwood Avenue became agitated and violent, she called 911 and immediately asked for a crisis team.

Minutes later, 62-year-old Linda Hicks, one of two residents staying in the state-licensed Marria’s Adult Family Home was dead - shot in the head Monday night by one of the two police officers dispatched to the central Toledo address because she was threatening people with scissors.

Police Chief Mike Navarre identified the officer who shot Ms. Hicks as Diane Chandler, 33, who has been on the force since 2006. The second officer at the scene was Rebecca Kenney, 34, who has been on the force since 2003.

Ms. Murphy had difficulty discussing the incident yesterday and would only say: “She came at me with the scissors.”

When placing her call to 911, Ms. Murphy specifically asked for “crisis police.”

Yesterday, she said the outcome should have been different.

The Ohio Supreme Court issued a wonderful ruling yesterday affirming that police officers must have a warrant before they search a person’s cell phone.

Police can’t examine the contents of a suspect’s cell phone without a warrant, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday in a first-of-its-kind case over privacy and technology.

[…]

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Smith’s position, contends that as cell phones become more like personal computers, the data they hold should be protected from unreasonable intrusions.

“There is so much information that we keep in our cell phones,” ACLU of Ohio lawyer Carrie Davis said yesterday. “It is not a simple telephone. Because of that, people have an expectation that the information they keep will be private.”

Lanzinger’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer and Justices Paul E. Pfeifer and Maureen O’Connor.

Cleveland area attorney Terry Gilbert breaks down the shooting by police officers of teenager Brandon McCloud in 2005.

Detective Phillip Habeeb waited outside the house for the right moment to make the early-morning entry, anxious to confront the 15-year-old boy he suspected of robbing a pizza deliveryman hours earlier. He and his partner, John Kraynik, were understandably upset, having arrested the same kid for a similar robbery six months earlier. They thought he’d learned his lesson during their last interrogation session, but apparently sterner and more aggressive measures were required. Armed with a search warrant, they waited for signs of movement in the house.

With time to burn, Habeeb called a radio dispatcher on his cell phone and chatted with her about the plan. The flirtatious dispatcher mused that if the detective was out of breath chasing the kid, “you know he’s running.” When the dispatcher suggested that he should “just shoot to kill,” Habeeb replied, “Absolutely.”

A few minutes later, Brandon McCloud lay dead in a pool of blood, shot 10 times in his own bedroom.

Critics and supporters debate a new initiative by Columbus city officials to install security cameras in several neighborhoods.

As Columbus moves forward with plans to monitor neighborhoods with security cameras, civil libertarians warn that the costs — both to privacy and pocketbooks — might outweigh the benefits.

[…]

But with few exceptions, studies of camera surveillance in the United States and England haven’t found a statistically significant impact on crime rates. Criminals simply move to nearby areas without cameras, experts caution.

“All it really does is give people the illusion of safety,” said Gary Daniels, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union’s regional office in Columbus.

ACLU of Ohio Executive Director weighs in on the recent murders in Cleveland and how Community Problem Oriented Policing may have helped stop the murders faster.

In the aftermath of the Imperial Avenue murders, a full investigation into the events and response from law enforcement is necessary. However, these gruesome events are not an isolated incident and may be indicative of other problems.

The overwhelming theme emerging from much of the news coverage is that there was a staggering breakdown in communication — whether that was between the community and police, different law enforcement agencies, or amongst neighbors. A substantial part of this collapse may have been ushered in by recent cutbacks in community policing practices that seek to create partnerships between law enforcement and neighborhoods.

Community policing focuses on how police and residents can partner to prevent crime in their neighborhoods by working together. In this particular case, if there was a police officer in the neighborhood meeting with residents on a regular basis, there may have been a more coordinated response to reports of odd smells, women spotted at the Anthony Sowell residence and other irregularities.

As news reports continue to surface telling of people who tried to sound the alarm but were either not heard, had no one to follow up on their concerns, or did not know where to report their fears, we can see the value of community policing principles. We must prioritize initiatives that strengthen police-community relationships in order to prevent tragedies like this from ever occurring again.

Christine Link, Cleveland

Link is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

Troubling reports of Columbus police officers randomly searching public buses raise questions over whether individuals are are to decline a search and how the police choose who is searched.

The Central Ohio Transit Authority is now using police dogs to increase security, 10TV’s Angela An reported Wednesday.

While assaults against passengers and drivers are down compared to last year, police made 35 percent more arrests this year on buses and bus stops. There have been 158 arrests to date in 2009, An reported.

“The reason we started with bomb dogs is to make sure people aren’t bringing suspicious packages on the buses and leaving them behind,” said COTA’s security director Stan Alverson.

The dogs are joining undercover officers in searching for anything illegal, from explosives to drugs.

This week the Ohio Supreme Court heard a case challenging whether police have a right to search through a person’s cell phone without a court order.

Police may be able to take cell phones from people they arrest, but that doesn’t give them the right to scroll through call logs in search of incriminating information without a warrant, a defense attorney told the Ohio Supreme Court yesterday.

[…]

The case has attracted interest from outside groups. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief on behalf of Smith, while the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association filed a brief in favor of police and prosecutors.

The court is expected to rule in several months.

ACLU of Ohio Associate Director Gary Daniels discusses the advantages of Tasers when they are used correctly by police officers.

Columbus police used the Taser brand to shock 326 suspects in 2008. How many of those incidents were subject to CPD’s Firearms Review Board?

That would be exactly none.

That’s because the Taser is not considered a firearm.

[…]

Neither Amnesty International nor the American Civil Liberties Union quibbles with the Taser not being deemed a firearm.

“Some people out there think Tasers are inherently bad. That is not our position,” said Gary Daniels of the ACLU of Ohio. “It provides something aside from pepper spray and getting shot and it’s the something-short-of-getting-shot aspect of Tasers that we appreciate.”

The ACLU draws attention to a troubling provision in Ohio Senate Bill 77 that would allow DNA collection of anyone arrested for a felony. While the ACLU opposes this part of the legislation, it supports other aspects such as increased access to DNA testing for convicts, and reforms of interrogation practices

A justice reform bill endorsed by Gov. Ted Strickland and passed by the Senate designed to prevent wrongful convictions also includes a controversial measure to expand the collection of DNA samples to those arrested on felony charges.

Currently, Ohio only takes DNA from people convicted of felonies and violent misdemeanors.

Law enforcement groups support the expansion, saying it gets violent offenders off the street quicker and prevents future crimes.

But others say DNA collection before conviction crosses the line, especially because the bill does not address what happens if a person isn’t convicted.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio opposes the measure, saying it poses a “myriad of civil liberty risks” including violating a person’s constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure, is ripe for abuse and is an invasion of privacy.

“This is certainly troubling,” said ACLU staff lawyer Carrie Davis. “There is no useful purpose of collecting DNA after arrest to avoid wrongful convictions and it poses all kinds of civil risks.

“Collecting DNA from all arrestees is a search and there should be some process, a court order or warrant, for a search,” Davis said.

The Cincinnati Police Chief recently criticized officers who tasered a young woman, but many in the community are still upset about this incident.

The 26-year-old daughter of a Cincinnati councilmember was on her knees, hands in the air, when a Cincinnati police officer fired a Taser at her back, police chief Thomas Streicher said Monday in determining the officer used excessive force.

Streicher has suspended the police powers of the officer, Anthony Plummer, while an internal police investigation is under way into the arrest of Celeste Thomas, the daughter of councilmember Cecil Thomas, a retired Cincinnati police officer.

Police records state that Celeste Thomas was a passenger in a vehicle involved in a hit-skip accident and stopped by police early Sunday morning in Mount Auburn.

Thomas was told to stay inside the vehicle, police said, but disobeyed verbal commands and exited the car, approaching officers.

ACLU of Ohio Associate Director Gary Daniels talks about the dangers of cameras that collect license plate numbers and the room for abuse that may occur.

Are they cutting-edge tools in the war on crime and terrorism? Big Brother in a box? Or maybe a little of both?

Area police are excited about the possibilities offered by the automated license plate reader, a camera with a scanner mounted in a housing on selected police cruisers. The reader takes pictures of motorists’ license plates while police are on patrol, scans the numbers and instantaneously compares them to a database of plates associated with stolen cars and wanted criminal suspects. An alarm goes off inside the cruiser if the computer finds a match.

[…]

But civil libertarians and privacy rights watchdogs say the readers are a step toward a surveillance society in which everyday activities of law-abiding citizens are catalogued by authorities.

“It’s something we’ve been following,” said Gary Daniels, a spokesman for the Ohio American Civil Liberties Union in Columbus. “We’re quickly getting to the point where Americans are very uncomfortable about infringements on what they see as their right to privacy.”

ACLU Staff Counsel Carrie Davis discusses some of the problems with neighborhood watch groups and how they can sometimes unintentionally cause others to unfairly be subject to police scrutiny.

Cruise down the tree-lined streets of the Old Oaks neighborhood on a summer evening and know this: Someone is watching you.

It might be Richard Vickers, who records your license plate number in a notebook as he retrieves gun shell casings from the sidewalk while out on his nightly walk. Or it might be Doug Motz, who alerts via text message: “Watch out for the green van lurking in the alley.”

[…]

Carrie Davis, staff council for the American Civil Liberties Union in Ohio, says block watch members who aren’t trained by police should be cautious of overstepping legal boundaries.

“You have a right to observe what’s going on in the street, but that doesn’t give you a right to go peer in your neighbor’s window,” Davis says.