University of Akron Professor David Licate said he’s neither a cheerleader nor an unfair critic of law enforcement.
It’s all about research. And justice writ large, according to the professor.
That’s why Akron City Council leadership met with Licate — the chair of the university’s Criminal Justice Studies Department — to discuss the possibility of conducting a comprehensive use-of-force review of the Akron Police Department.
The discussion, City Council President Margo Sommerville said, was “enlightening” and “promising.”
“It’s necessary, because we are, we are dealing with human lives, and we’re dealing with, you know, unrest in our communities,” Licate said.
If all parties agree, Licate and his team would review APD policies for a fraction of the cost of Mayor Shammas Malik’s rejected $640,000 plan to hire a New York law firm and Chicago policing consultants.
The professor and his staff have the knowledge and experience necessary to provide the city with a comprehensive assessment of the Akron Police Department’s use-of-force policy, Sommerville said at Monday’s City Council meeting.
She said council leadership suggested exploring the alternative, so that momentum is not lost, and that working with the university could be a significantly cheaper option — 85% to 90% cheaper, Sommerville said.
“We do not want to lose sight of the critical need for us to review our use-of-force policy,” she said.
Licate met with Malik and city administrators Tuesday to continue the discussion, but no concrete proposals have been made.
“I plan to engage with Council leadership, the auditor’s office, the police union, and other stakeholders regarding future use of force review proposals,” Malik said in a statement to Signal Akron. “I have so much respect for the University of Akron and I look forward to developing a long-term partnership with their Department of Criminal Justice Studies but conversations about the use of force review are very preliminary at this point.”
Akron professor: Use-of-force review is ‘necessary’
While Licate does not have an exact price tag for a potential use-of-force review, when faculty are contracted for a project, there is a process for buying them out of a course load. For one faculty member with a $60,000 salary, he said the cost of hiring them for a few months could be around $15,000.
Akron should invest in a review, Licate said, because the use-of-force incidents impact the quality-of-life of Akron residents. At the university level, this issue makes Akron unappealing to prospective students.
But for the APD to be a healthy organization, the city must do more than a use-of-force review, Licate said. Administrative practices need to “fall in line” and be repaired. Healthy organizations are also resistant to deviance, corruption or malfeasance, he said.
When Licate started his time at Akron as an adjunct professor in 2000, he became part of a 10-year effort to combine scattered criminal justice programs into one department. The university has had some form of a criminal justice program since the 1960s, but the department’s capacity is relatively new, Licate said.
The new department was built out in 2018, and the staff is composed of criminologists, crime analysts and researchers who specialize in policing, corrections and law research. Licate’s resume alone includes a number of crime analysis trainings, crime and policing analyses and consulting projects, including providing consultations for the APD.
His mission, and the mission of the department, is to build healthy and intelligent criminal justice organizations, he said.
Cincinnati is the ‘gold standard’ for policing reform, professor says
When looking at policing reform efforts across the country, the Cincinnati policing policies are the “gold standard,” he said.
In 2002, the City of Cincinnati entered a Collaborative Agreement with the Fraternal Order of Police, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Cincinnati Black United Front. The agreement resulted in a decades-long timeline of targeted police policy reform.
The reason it has been successful is that the people in leadership positions “bought in” to the process, the professor said. If leadership is not committed, the process is “dead in the water,” Licate said.
“I’ve seen this so many times now in working with departments — if they don’t have good policies and good procedures and good training rotations, then when the next administration comes in, it’s like starting from square one,” Licate said.
