CLEVELAND — As students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District return to class, safety remains top of mind.
Three students were killed near Cleveland schools during last academic year. Now, a collaboration between Cleveland police, CMSD, and Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority police is aimed at protecting students for the 2023-24 school year.
The focus is on safety at dismissal times at four Cleveland high schools: John Adams, John F. Kennedy, Garrett Morgan, and John Marshall.
"Fights and just the crime and the violence [are] defiantly increasing," Robben Adhikari, owner of a home care business less than a half-mile up the street from John Marshall, said. "When I used to walk down here two to three years ago, there's, like, less people. But nowadays, since I'm a business owner here, I see a lot of people that [are] in my parking lot — crowding, talking, play-fighting."
Adhikari is a 2019 John Marshall graduate and has seen violence increase in the seven to eight months since he's been at his current business location in a shopping plaza on West 140th Street.
"We are like, four businesses here … and we try to avoid those kind[s] of stuff like crowd gatherings," he told 3News. "But you know, we can only do so much."
According to a memo from transit police, the cross-agency team found the increased violence is due to non-students coming to schools around dismissal times to commit crime along with students being involved in mischief or violence at and near schools, businesses, and train stations.
Deputy Chief Sammy Morris from the Cleveland Division of Police says this partnership will make a positive impact on the communities each department serves.
"This an example of the successful partnerships that we have established with our law enforcement partners and the community," Morris added. "As a result of these partnerships, we are working together for the safety and wellbeing of our CMSD Scholars."
The three-department collaboration comes after a student was shot and killed at a bus stop outside of John Adams College & Career Academy this past January. The transit police memo indicates safety strategies include:
- Adjusting dismissal times to better align with bus schedules to disburse students quicker.
- Adjusting bus times to disburse students quicker.
- Providing after-school activities to allow students the ability to remain in school until a bus arrives.
- Providing more police/security presence to keep students safe and mitigate issues before escalation.
The departments will meet biweekly to share intelligence, maximize visibility at hot spots, and develop cross-agency solutions.
