At its first meeting since Akron City Council rejected the board’s ambitious and controversial rules proposal, the Citizens’ Police Oversight Board decided Wednesday to wait until the new year to chart its path forward.
January will be a big month for Akron politics and police. Mayor-elect Shammas Malik will be sworn in. Malik’s new administration – including a new law director who will advise the CPOB – will take over. The CPOB hopes to hire its first full-time auditor to look into alleged police misconduct. And five new City Council members will take their seats.
And, importantly, the police union, which has clashed with the CPOB and successfully lobbied City Council over the board’s desired rules, will have a new president.
After four years as police union leader, Fraternal Order of Police Akron Lodge 7 President Clay Cozart will be out of the job. Sources tell Signal Akron that Brian Lucey was elected president by a slim margin over Cozart. Lucey was previously the union’s treasurer.
“On the rules, we agreed we’re taking no further action at this time awaiting our auditor, and of course we have a new administration coming in,” CPOB Member Bob Gippin said at the meeting. “We will also have a new FOP administration. We’re actually the old folks on the block now in terms of the players. It seemed prudent just to hold off until after the first of the year and involve the other folks.”
On Dec. 4, Akron City Council voted 9-4 to reject the CPOB’s proposed rules, which would have given the board power to subpoena police officers and conduct investigations of alleged police misconduct at the same time as the police department.
The board’s proposals drew the ire of the police union, which said repeatedly but vaguely that they would violate its collective bargaining agreement with the city. The union said it would file a grievance with the city if the board actually conducted a parallel investigation or tried to subpoena an officer.
The CPOB did not discuss whether it will pursue the same rules proposals in 2024 as it recently sought unsuccessfully. Three of the four City Council members who didn’t vote to immediately reject the board’s proposal – Malik, Tara Mosley, and Russel Neal Jr. – are no longer on City Council. Only Linda Omobien remains.
Even if all five of the new council members want the CPOB to have subpoena and parallel investigation power, they would still be outnumbered by the seven remaining council members who rejected the proposal.
Akron settles federal civil rights lawsuit against police department
The City of Akron settled a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by two people who alleged false arrest, an illegal search, and excessive use of force by Akron police officers. The suit stemmed from an incident that occurred more than three years ago in West Akron.
Chief Judge Sara Lioi dismissed the case on Monday after both sides reached an agreement. Imokhai Okolo, a local civil rights attorney who represented Andre Hilton and his mother, Desire Littlejohn, said the city agreed to pay his clients an unspecified amount of money while not admitting fault by the city or officers.
The complaint states that Hilton, who was 19 when the incident occurred in October 2020, was a passenger in a car that was pulled over in front of his father’s house in West Akron. He got out of the car to question the officer, it states, and two officers tackled him to the ground. He was punched in the face multiple times and kneed in his head, back and legs, including after he was handcuffed, the suit states. He was then taken to jail, where he was held for six days and charged with resisting arrest and carrying a concealed weapon. A grand jury declined to indict him.
During the arrest, Hilton’s mother, Desire Littlejohn, came to the scene, the lawsuit states, and called the non-emergency police line. A police officer on the scene told her to hang up, which she did, but the dispatcher called her back. When Littlejohn answered, “the officer took the phone away from her,” cuffed her, and put her in his squad car, according to the suit. Charges against her were eventually dropped.
The lawsuit was first filed in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas in October of 2022 before it was filed in federal court the next month. Okolo became the attorney for the plaintiffs in August while their original attorney dealt with health issues.
“Andre and his family took the road to accountability this system of justice in our country has to provide – a civil lawsuit for money damages,” Okolo said in a statement to Signal Akron. “That road is filled with case law that makes it extremely difficult for individuals harmed by police to be successful. Over the years, case law has been designed by judges to protect police officers and municipalities at any cost. Andre is lucky to have made it down that road and gotten some money out of it, but this road certainly did not produce the accountability and justice Andre and our community deserves.”
Stephanie Marsh, chief communications officer for the City of Akron, declined to comment. The APD has not responded to a request to comment.
