AKRON, Ohio — Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan shared an update Friday morning regarding recommendations from the Racial Equity and Social Justice Taskforce that the city is working on next.
This comes from final recommendations made by RESJ earlier this year on Feb. 28.
“The remaining items that the Criminal Justice Subcommittee recommended that the City implement in 2022 have garnered agreement,” according to a press release from Mayor Horrigan’s office. “These recommendations either require coordination with additional agencies and private entities that are not directly under City management or are under legal and fiscal review.”
- Body-worn cameras should be worn by all deployed uniformed officers, including SWAT.
- Uniformed officers should be required to wear body worn cameras while engaged in secondary employment.
- Body worn cameras should be activated: immediately when responding to in-progress calls; on other calls when exiting the police vehicle; and whenever reportable force is used.
Read the full document from Akron below:
“When the taskforce submitted their final recommendations to me this year, I vowed that they would not sit on a shelf as a lifeless document but would be a plan of action with specific benchmarks that the community would use to hold us accountable for creating real change," Mayor Horrigan said. "I'm thankful in light of what our city is currently experiencing, that these recommendations exist and that we have been diligently working on them since we received them. This is only the beginning and I'm looking forward to hearing more ideas and action items from our community in the days and weeks ahead.”
Additionally, his office noted that city officials are reviewing the fiscal implications of creating a full-time deputy police auditor position. The city’s full response to the Criminal Justice Subcommittee’s recommendations will be included in the September report and Implementation Plan.
Mayor Horrigan’s office also included the following list of recommendations from RESJ that have already been implemented:
- The City created job descriptions for the Police Auditor and an administrative assistant and implemented the recommendations to make those positions full-time. The Auditor position is filled and the City is searching and recruiting for the administrative assistant position.
- Body-worn camera recordings are uploaded by each uniformed police officer to the designated server at the end of each shift.
- Officers are subject to discipline for failing to wear or activate body-worn cameras as well as failure to upload recordings as required.
- The Police Auditor has immediate access to unredacted body-worn camera recordings, or, if it is authoritatively determined that such access is legally impermissible, the auditor has access to redacted body-worn camera recordings upon request within 72 hours.
- Members of the public have access to redacted body-worn camera videos of the use of deadly force that causes serious bodily injury within seven days as required by the ordinance enacted by the Akron City Council.
MORE HEADLINES:
Editor's note: Video in the player above was originally published in an unrelated story on July 14, 2022.
