Weeks after an activist group booked a room at the Joy Park Community Center for a Feb. 8 forum, city employees learned the event would focus on Jazmir Tucker — the 15-year-old recently killed by an Akron police officer — and made moves viewed by event organizers and Tucker’s family as “disrespectful” when the city required the event’s planners to hire Akron police to provide security.
The rift centers on how city parks staffers required Akron police officers to attend the event and for the organizers to pay them to do so after they learned it would focus on Tucker and feature his family. The event was originally communicated to the city as a general panel on Black History Month.
The city said the police were necessary for safety. Organizers called it extortion.
“We’re holding this event for a young man that was killed by Akron police and the city is saying we need to secure this event with Akron police,” said Greg Levy, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which first secured the permit for the event at Joy Park Community Center before connecting with Ashley Green and centering the event on the killing her of son, Jazmir.
“Did Akron police keep Jazmir safe? The whole point of this movement is Akron police don’t keep us safe,” Levy said.
The since-canceled, reinstated and reorganized event at Joy Park on Saturday is “not the way the event was portrayed” when the Akron branch of the PSL applied for the permit last month, said city spokesperson Stephanie Marsh. A panel discussion with an estimated 40 attendees, as originally described, is not something that typically needs security, she said, but concerns arose when they saw a flyer online indicating Tucker’s family was involved and the event could be a “rally” with many more people showing up than anticipated.
Akron’s Recreation and Parks policies indicate “an off-duty police officer may be required” to work events “based on event size” when people rent community centers — organizers are required to pay for it when police are hired. Levy and fellow PSL member Matthew Charlebois called the city’s requirement that they hire two officers for their event arbitrary, unnecessary and counterproductive.
“The family feels that having police in this situation is a unique threat to the safety of the environment because of the fact that police killed Jazmir Tucker,” Levy said Friday. “From the family’s perspective, they’re making the environment unsafe and they’re willfully obstructing the will of the family.”
The event got the city’s attention late last month when Green, Tucker’s mother, posted a flyer on Facebook indicating the event was centered on “Justice for Jazmir.” The flyer called for an “end to the war on Black America.”
Levy said PSL soon fielded calls from the park’s safety liaison, who was “very concerned about the tone of the poster.” The city told them to “tone down the rhetoric on the poster.”
PSL member Charlebois secured the permit on Jan. 13 for a Black History Month panel discussion. He said he didn’t know what the event would be at the time and, after connecting with Tucker’s family last month, they decided to collaborate and center it on the teenager. There was never an intention for the event to be a “rally” or anything that could be considered dangerous, Charlebois told Signal Akron on Friday, and they still planned for it to be an educational panel discussion.
After a meeting with city and parks officials, Levy released a video on social media on Wednesday criticizing the new requirement that Akron police officers work the event. They reluctantly agreed, he said. Soon after, he said they got a call from a parks staffer saying the permit was canceled by the city. Marsh, the spokesperson, said the city refunded the deposit.
On Thursday, after news about the city’s involvement with the event spread on social media, the organizers were told the event permit was reinstated, but with the same conditions about requiring police to be there.
Marsh told Signal Akron on Friday that she understands why the Tucker family wouldn’t want to have Akron police staff their event and said the city came up with a compromise: They would allow them to hire people not connected to the APD, such as Summit County Sheriff’s Office deputies or a private company.
“The city is willing to make this event happen,” she said.
Levy, Charlebois and the Tucker family decided on Friday morning to go forward with the event, moving it from inside the Joy Park Community Center building to the park’s parking lot, hoping to avoid the regulations required to hold the event inside.
“Please dress warm,” PSL wrote on social media.
