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.

The PD issues a call for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason to make good on his promise of reform to the criminal justice system after troubling racial disparities in sentencing were uncovered.

Minorities call it the “Just Us” system.

And it is. And it has been that way for far too long in Cuyahoga County.

In 2002, the Rev. Marvin McMickle — after completing a four-month term as a Cuyahoga County grand jury foreman — complained that the criminal justice system “had an apartheid feel to it.”

Last year, a two-part series in The Plain Dealer documented that white defendants were much more likely to have felony drug charges reduced to misdemeanors, or to receive treatment in lieu of conviction, than black defendants charged with the same crime.

The findings, based on a six-month review of hundreds of the lowest-level felony drug cases resolved between 2004 and 2007, cried out for immediate action to end the system of injustice.

Unfortunately, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason dragged his feet — his promised study only now materializing 14 months later with proposals for a team of Cleveland State University and University of Cincinnati researchers to study inequities at every stage of the process.

The Ohio BMV sent letters out to tens of thousands of Ohioans asking for proof that they can legally own a car. Several immigrant rights advocates contend that this may be a case of racial profiling.

Members of Central Ohio’s Hispanic community say they are the victim of racial profiling by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. The BMV sent out 47,457 letters last week to vehicle owners that do no have Social Security numbers, drivers license numbers or state identification numbers attached to their vehicle registrations.

Owners receiving the letter were told they have 60 days to produce identification or their registration will be canceled. The letter follows a change in policy that closed a legal loophole allowing undocumented immigrants without insurance or a drivers license to register a vehicle using the power of attorney process.

Stripped of their valid vehicle registration, undocumented workers could be pulled over, arrested and deported back to their home country if caught driving unregistered vehicles.

“This is nothing else but racial profiling,“ said a Columbus resident who received one of the letters this week and wished to remain anonymous. The man stated he is an American citizen and an Ohio resident for 26 years. “Nobody else got a letter, only the Spanish people.“

The ACLU of Ohio was one of several organizations that participated in a vigil in Mount Vernon after a serious attack on a boy because of his ethnicity. Only one of five assailants was charged and he pled to a relatively minor offense of ethnic intimidation.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of Ohio has called on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an independent investigation into a May 30, 2008, incident against a Hispanic minor.

Robert Cantu said he was dragged through a parking lot with a noose around his neck, and was the target of racial slurs.

In addition to conducting an independent investigation, LULAC is asking the DOJ to prosecute all parties involved in the incident, and investigate selective prosecution and police practices unfavorable toward minorities.

The power to determine post-conviction DNA testing lies with the legislature, not the courts, declares U.S. Supreme Court.

Prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing after their conviction, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, even though the technology provides an “unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty.”

In the court’s first examination of how to treat the rapidly evolving field of biological testing, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a majority that said it is up to the states and Congress to decide who has a right to testing that might prove innocence long after conviction.

The “challenges DNA technology poses to our criminal justice systems and our traditional notions of finality” are better left to elected officials than federal judges, Roberts wrote for the majority in a 5 to 4 decision.

Ohioans should call their state legislators and encourage them to support both SB 22 and 77. Both would greatly expand the rights of the incarcerated and relieve the overcrowded prison system in Ohio.

A bill that would expand DNA testing and try to improve the way authorities conduct investigations and another that would let prisoners earn shorter sentences each passed Senate committees yesterday.

But only the DNA bill appears to have a bright future.

The criminal-sentencing bill would allow most prisoners to get out early by earning up to five days of credit per month, up from the current one day, if they participate in education and rehabilitation programs. But even though it won the battle yesterday, it seems likely to lose the war in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Senate President Bill M. Harris, R-Ashland, had hoped that the committee process would temper the strong opposition to the bill, but that didn’t happen. He wanted to include it in the new two-year budget, saving an estimated $50 million over the biennium to help close a $3.2 billion shortfall.

A new report by the ACLU uncovers threats to Muslim-Americans’ ability to donate to the charity of their choice. The ACLU currently has litigation underway in Toledo challenging the government’s shut down of KindHearts, a local non-profit, without any trial or evidence of wrong-doing.

The fight against terrorism has dealt a harsh blow to Muslim charities and interfered with their donors’ religious freedom, a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union concludes.

The report says statutes that it describes as overly broad and enforced in a discriminatory manner, coupled with a lack of due process, have starved Islamic charities of money and impeded Muslims’ ability to fulfill zakat, their religious requirement to make charitable donations.

The report is based on interviews with more than 100 Muslim community leaders as well as experts on antiterrorism laws and regulations. Though it gives no estimate of the decline in donations to Muslim groups, it says a total of nine Islamic charities have closed as a result of government action against them since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The city of Akron announces plans to address the police-community relations issues that have plagued the city in recent years.

Akron intends to hire more police and do a lot more talking with residents to help bridge a widening communication gap and rising crime rate.

The announcement came this morning from Mayor Don Plusquellic, whose six-term reign is in jeopardy in this month’s recall election.

Plusquellic, in a joint news conference with Police Chief Craig Gilbride, said the city intends to form a citizens advisory board and a Crime Control Plan Steering committee.

Both groups, whose members have yet to be finalized, are intended to foster, among other things, resident input with police on issues facing neighborhoods.

”These two panels are intended to make sure that police and residents are sharing what they know to make the whole community safer,” Plusquellic said.

The Dispatch reports on the use of laws that supposedly prohibit people from participating in gang activites, but often result in racial profiling.

Three tattooed dots on a man’s hand that officers noted six years ago during a routine booking for a gun charge tipped off Columbus police to another potential investigation.

[…]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio thinks that it unfairly skews enforcement toward urban areas, education director Shakyra Diaz said. The risk for guilt by association is great and could land innocent people on watch lists, she said.

To establish a person as an active gang member, police use criteria such as dress, hangouts, associates and the person’s own admissions.

More and more legislators are joining the call for fair and reasonable sentencing guidelines for drug offenders.

President Barack Obama wants to stop punishing crack cocaine offenders more harshly than those caught with powder cocaine.

It’s a notion that has had growing support among judges and lawmakers, but is only now being championed by the White House.

In 1986, when the use of crack cocaine was taking off, Congress set mandatory sentences of at least five years in prison for convictions with 5 or more grams of crack. It takes getting caught with 100 times as much powder cocaine — 500 grams — to run into the same five-year sentence.

ACLU Staff Counsel Carrie Davis discusses the growing trend of police departments and schools using social networking sites to profile young people for certain crimes.

Dayton area teens who use the Web to communicate with their friends could be in for a surprise if their postings include activities that break school rules.

[…]

Police need to exercise restraint in developing suspicions on the basis of what is said on social networking sites, said Carrie Davis, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

“Really, what they’re doing is using people’s speech and associations as a basis for suspicion,” Davis said.

It is a challenge for law enforcement because technology has developed at a rate that outpaced the laws, she said.

“They’re dealing with technologies that didn’t exist when the laws were written,” Davis said. “Most of our privacy laws were written in the 1970s.”

Some Ohio legislators propose pulling sentencing reform out of the state budget. Opponents argue this would delay much-needed changes, endanger prisoners and correctional officers, and wreak havoc on the budget.

Sentencing reforms that the Strickland administration has touted to reduce prison crowding by nearly 7,000 inmates a year and save about $30 million might be pulled out of the proposed biennial budget.

Strickland’s sentencing plan, along with a counterproposal by the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association that focused primarily on relaxing drug-law penalties, may be shifted to another legislative committee to be considered separately — and later.

That could spell trouble, both for the proposed sentencing overhaul and the state budget, which would spring another leak with the removal of cost savings, according to prisons chief Terry Collins.

[…]

The Akron Beacon Journal urges lawmakers to act in the best interest of Ohioans when reforming prisons rather than out of fear of looking “soft on crime.”

Fearful of the criticism ‘’soft on crime,” state lawmakers are unlikely to include Ted Strickland’s sentencing reforms in the next two-year state budget.
State Rep. John Carney, a Columbus Democrat and a key voice in this debate, admitted this week that constituents’ fears about rising crime are overwhelming the hard evidence presented by the governor and Terry Collins, the director of the Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, about rapidly rising prison costs.

Carney and colleagues on both sides of the aisle are in danger of succumbing yet again to the tough-on-crime reflex. The trouble is, decades of harsh sentencing laws are pushing Ohio and other states to the edge of fiscal disaster, with voters also demanding cost-cutting in government. The common-sense plan advanced by Strickland and Collins would meet both demands. It would reduce the likelihood of repeat offenses and save the state the cost of housing and caring for a rapidly rising prison population.

[…]

Given the current budget squeeze, state lawmakers should consider leading rather than fanning fears. They should keep the governor’s proposals in the budget bill.

[…]

ACLU of Ohio Executive Director Chris Link weighs in on the recent troubles at the Mansfield Correctional Facility and actions the Ohio General Assembly must take in order to alleviate Ohio’s overcrowded prisons.

The recent turmoil at the Mansfield Correctional Institution illustrates that lawmakers cannot wait any longer to initiate meaningful prison reform (”Mansfield guards say prison riot looms,” Dispatch article, April 1). As we have learned from the past, the combination of prisoner overcrowding and inadequate numbers of guards can lead to disaster and must not be ignored.

The prison population has risen steadily for years with no end in sight. A large portion of the inmates are low-level offenders who are only incarcerated for a short time. In previous years, these people would have received rehabilitation in order to keep them out of the prison system and increase the likelihood they would not commit future crimes.

Unfortunately, our misguided prison policy from recent years has slashed many of these programs and relied solely on punishing prisoners.

As a result, many prison facilities have far exceeded their maximum occupancy. Coupled with overcrowding are the drastic cuts the state has made in personnel. Not only is this an obvious security risk, the lack of guards means that there will be fewer opportunities for inmates to be away from their cells.

This often causes psychological stress for prisoners and raises tensions in the facility. Legislation is pending in the General Assembly to reform our broken sentencing policies and direct more funds toward rehabilitation. If the prison population is reduced, there will be more resources to hire guards and fewer prisoners to monitor. This issue must be addressed now before another tragedy occurs.

CHRISTINE LINK
Executive director
American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio
Cleveland

Officials in Cuyahoga County continue on the path of investigating racial discrimination in their justice system.

Cuyahoga County is one step closer to identifying possible racial inequities in the county’s criminal justice system and bringing transparency to what some judges call a culture of secrecy among the court’s players.

Five research groups from across the country have submitted proposals to analyze the impact of race on every aspect of case processing from arrest to sentencing.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason has assembled an advisory committee to help choose which firm is best qualified to slog through tens of thousands of court files, interview players at every level of the system, draw conclusions and recommend possible changes.

The ACLU of Ohio has been at the forefront of correcting disproportionate sentencing of drug paraphernalia cases in the City of Cleveland. We are dedicated to improving fair enforcement, judicial equity, and community relations.

Remember that public service announcement that the Partnership for a Drug Free American launched back in 1987 that starred an egg and a frying pan? An announcer told viewers that the egg was their brain. He then cracked the egg and, as it sizzled in the pan, he intoned, “This is your brain on drugs.”

The ad — a hit at pot parties — was about as effective in combating drug use as Cleveland’s policy of automatically leveling felony charges against people caughe with traces of drugs in pipes and syringes.

To his credit, Mayor Frank Jackson realizes that. This month, he changed the city’s procedure for handling drug paraphernalia cases.

Now, drug abusers arrested with drug residues in crack pipes and heroin needles will face misdemeanor charges, which means they can seek treatment through the Greater Cleveland Drug Court.

Giving offenders a better chance to kick their habit is the kind of strategic response required to truly help them. We already know that scary ads and prison sentences don’t often work.

Lima continues on the path to establishing better police-community relations following the tragic shooting death of Tarkia Wilson in January 2008.

The police department residents have come to know through the years is changing and will continue to change to streamline the process and prioritize resources to better serve the public, said Harry Dolan, a community policing expert.

“It’s really an issue of how best to use the resources. That’s what it really comes down to,” Dolan said.

Dolan, who is the police chief in Raleigh, N.C., is in Lima this week teaching new officers and offering a refresher course for the veterans, on community-oriented policing.

Margo Pierce at the City Beat picked up an action alert the ACLU sent out regarding legislation that would ban corporal punishment in Ohio.

Violence begets violence; it certainly doesn’t have the effect of bringing about effective communication that ultimately leads people to understand and embrace positive actions. So why would Ohio schools – institutions of learning and thought – allow hitting kids as punishment?

The history of abuse and tyranny connected with physical violence ought to be enough of a motivator for lawmakers to take a stand against adult violence in the schools. But politicians are politicians so logic doesn’t always apply, that’s why the ACLU is encouraging people to call the members of the Ohio House Education Committee today, the group is voting on House Bill 26, “which would end the use of corporal punishment in all public schools.”

More data has come out about the dangerous over population of prisons.

One in every 25 adult Ohioans is in prison, jail or on parole or probation, a study by the Pew Center on the States shows.

While the national average is one in 31 U.S. adults, the numbers are more dramatic for Latinos (one in 27), men (one in 18), and blacks (one in 11), according to One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections, released yesterday.

Ohio’s one-in-25 rate was sixth among the states. Georgia had the highest at one in 13, and New Hampshire the lowest at one in 88.