Arnold Oden arrived early Wednesday morning to shepherd community members into his church so they could start the next chapter of their lives.
“I’m from the House of the Lord and I’m from the streets,” said Oden, a gray-bearded and energetic man. He volunteered to spend all day Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday in front of the House of the Lord, the church he credits with turning his life around years ago, to welcome everybody else trying to change theirs.
“I’m just so happy to be here. It’s a great time right now.”
Oden, 67, was helping with the county’s first “safe surrender” initiative in a decade. The premise behind Wednesday’s Fugitive Safe Surrender program is that people with open criminal warrants in Summit County can walk into the church and safely turn themselves in and, in many cases, go through an assembly-line-like process to resolve their cases by the time they walk out.
Helping people get on with their lives
Cheryl Wells, a parishioner at the House of the Lord and a volunteer at the event, is used to working with people in precarious legal situations as a member of the church’s prison ministries — she regularly leads Bible study in prisons around the state.
“I couldn’t miss this,” Wells said. “I do what I do because I believe there’s hope for people. This is an opportunity that offers hope, so people don’t have to carry a burden. It’s like carrying a sack of potatoes that are rotten, and you’re still trying to carry the potatoes – you’re going to stink.”
Fransohn Bickley, another volunteer and an Akron Urban League employee who works on reducing recidivism, volunteered because “we want to see the outcomes be good instead of the consequences be bad.”
He was among many volunteers, law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, court officials, and others staffing the event. Also present were representatives from the clerks of both the common pleas and municipal courts, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Domestic Relations Court, probation departments and Oriana House.
“We want people to get on with their lives, and this is the safest, most efficient way for them to do that,” said Summit County Sheriff Kandy Fatheree, who mentioned there are 7,000 people with open warrants in the county. More than 1,500 people turned themselves in at the last Safe Surrender event in 2014, and only a small fraction – 39 people – were transported to jail.
Fatheree said she connected with House of the Lord Associate Pastor Herman Matherson more than a year ago to coordinate with all the entities necessary to reduce the backlog of warrants that have piled up since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The church is meant to be a less intimidating place for people to turn themselves in, as opposed to a courthouse or police station.
Akron Municipal Court Judge Jon Oldham and court staffers set up a temporary courtroom in a back room for arraignments and other court proceedings. Three long white folding tables were in the room, each with a computer and folding chairs. One table is for Oldham, one is for the defendant and their attorney, and one is for the prosecutors.
“We’re trying to clear out a backlog of cases that are getting stale and give people a clean slate to move forward and not be worried,” Oldham explained. “Maybe they get that phone call and they have a job opportunity but their employer finds an open case and they’re not going to get that job.”
Down the hall, Summit County Common Pleas Judge Jennifer D. Towell and her staff set up their makeshift courtroom to handle people with felony warrants.
Anyone turning themselves in at this event over the next few days is “to be given favorable consideration,” she said. The event is meant to handle open warrants in a safer environment than if law enforcement tried to arrest someone out in public.
“When someone has a warrant but they’re out in the community, getting picked up is not as safe,” Towell said. “They might be with family, friends, at work in front of colleagues, and it’s just not as safe. When they willingly come in, it’s much easier to process rather than when they get pulled over for a traffic violation and all of a sudden it’s apparent there’s a warrant – maybe they know there’s a warrant so they flee.”
L. Mialon Morris, one of a small group of defense attorneys, saw this event as an opportunity to do community service.
“Having warrants is a burden,” Morris said. “Certainly, if there is a way for you to resolve that for free and on the spot, and to be able to move forward with your life, who wouldn’t do that?”
The cases most likely to be resolved on the same day are typically “the low-level nonviolent offenses” that sometimes lead to warrants after defendants fail to show up to court, said Craig Morgan, Akron’s Chief City Prosecutor.
“Any case that doesn’t involve a victim, we’re going to try and resolve it right here on site,” Morgan said, noting they can’t do that for crimes with victims because of Marsy’s Law, which gives crime victims the right to be notified about and appear at court proceedings.
Event is meant to make people feel safe as they turn themselves in
As they arrived, people turning themselves in were first directed to the church’s large gym, where they were greeted by an intake volunteer like Sylvia Trundle.
Trundle participated in the last safe surrender event in 2014 when she was a captain in the Akron Police Department. She felt compelled to volunteer this time in the wake of the recent killings of police officers in Euclid and Cleveland.
“This is a timely time in our community for people to safely turn themselves in,” Trundle said as the 11th person turned themself in around 10 a.m. Wednesday.
“It’s all about making them feel comfortable, ensuring them this is for real and it’s not a trap or anything,” Trundle said. “We know people may be sitting in the parking lot waiting to see how people are treated. We anticipate the pace will pick up as more and more people hear about this.”
Intake volunteer Brenda Justice is a member of Power of a Dream Sisters Helping Sisters Ministries, which advocates against domestic violence. She volunteered to provide reassurance to people that they were doing the right thing.
“One of the things I do like is, some of them come in by themselves, but a lot of them come in with a support system,” Justice said. “When you have that security blanket with you, you feel better.”
