CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Community Police Commission hosted a four-hour training session that reviewed the Cleveland Division of Police’s current use of force policies. The training included use of force scenarios based on real-world situations and allowed participants to provide feedback.
“We can use that feedback as we finalize the training, but it also gives police an opportunity to hear directly from the community as they implement the training. And we just thought that overall another goal would be to build relationships,” said Dr. John Adams, co-chair of the Cleveland Community Police Commission.
Adams says that after listening to some of the reactions to the scenarios, there is still a certain level of mistrust or incomprehension.
“Residents don’t trust them in their decisions, and it’s important for us to trust them in their decisions,” Brenda Bickerstaff said.
Bickerstaff is one of many residents who attended the meeting and has a personal connection to police-involved shootings.
“My brother was killed by police on January 26, 2022,” Bickerstaff said.
Many residents, including Bickerstaff, wanted to see how the department had updated its use-of-force policies and questioned police on their training methods.
“When my brother was killed by police, they didn’t use that training today. They do things differently and think outside the box. That’s great and they are still able to create safety for themselves and the person they are interacting with,” Bickerstaff said.
Their updated policy states that deadly force can only be used when necessary and there is an imminent deadly threat to officers or others. It also requires officers to deescalate situations before using force.
Despite these changes, the number of use of force incidents has increased over the past three years. According to CDP, there were 279 use of force incidents last year and 211 in 2022.
“We’re working to actively rebuild that. We’re taking steps like this where we’re actually proactively engaging our community and letting them see behind the scenes of what we’re doing. Because at the end of the day, we’re doing revolutionary work and we want to show that. We want to make people feel like we have the best trained officers taking care of them,” said Mark Muguth, commander of the Bureau of Support Services.
Muguth says that in the future, they want to include different topics and scenarios to give the community a better understanding of how to protect the community and themselves.
The idea is to give the community and the police a non-biased perspective.
“It removes the stigma and fear of not knowing what could happen in that situation. Now you can go out there with more tools in your tool bag instead of maybe more fear in your bag,” said Cleveland resident Aiyana Taylor.
Adams says they plan to hold more immersive learning sessions in different communities around Cleveland to get as much feedback as possible.
“It’s critical because we’re working to figure out what we can do to address community concerns, but also to keep police safe and make sure we’re not enforcing policies, training or disciplinary actions that are unfair or unrealistic. So I think community feedback is critical because people are bringing their experiences from their own communities and these issues need to be addressed,” Adams said.
