SAFETY & JUSTICE
Cleveland has more police per resident than Cincinnati, Columbus, Toledo, Akron, Indianapolis, Detroit, and Buffalo. But it’s not working. We must be smart about new resources to improve public safety with a new model of policing and act quickly to lower crime and gun violence with evidence-based programs to stop violence before it starts. We can't have safety and justice without police accountability.
Back to the PLAN
• Ensure more well-trained police are on the street - Get most of our police out from behind desks, where half our cops work today, and retrain and re-assign them for neighborhood policing. We have the resources. We have to re-allocate them for safety.
• Add a Mental Health option to 911, to ensure mental health and crisis specialists as co-first responders, and neighborhood safety teams to prevent crime before it happens, and make our seniors, families, youth, and businesses safer.
• Double down on a co-responder model by expanding the ADAMHS Board pilot citywide to ensure mental health support and crisis intervention are working with the Cleveland Division of Police to address the root causes of crime and incidents involving drug abuse, mental illness and domestic violence receive the right response and are connected to social services.
• Fully commit to proven models of violence interrupter programs, and scale across all five police districts to stop violence before it starts.
• Beef up the Police Intelligence Unit to target violent offenders, appoint a dedicated Officer for Gun Intelligence and move away from hot spot methodologies that rely on racial profiles and result in overpoliced neighborhoods.
• Increase the number of detectives in the Homicide Unit to ensure justice is served for victims of crime.
• Ban homemade ghost guns that are untraceable and increase penalties if used in violent crimes to target gun dealers and prevent gun trafficking.
• Fight for better gun laws and stronger enforcement, background checks, incentives to turn guns in, and tough penalties for gun crimes and illegal sales. We must take the fight to the state and federal level and strategically join lawsuits against the gun merchants and their lobbyists.
• Focused deterrence that targets police resources towards the 1% of individuals who commit the majority of crimes.
End cash bail for non-violent misdemeanors, to decriminalize poverty.
• Fund successful re-entry programs like Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry’s “Project Care” that once offered citizens returning from prison the opportunity to transition back into society.