As the Citizens’ Police Oversight Board takes on the investigation of Jayland Walker’s killing by Akron police, Signal Akron’s Doug Brown spoke with some Akron community leaders.
The quotes are lightly edited for clarity.
Robert DeJournett, senior pastor at St. Ashworth Temple Church of God in Christ and Walker family spokesperson
“I don’t know how to answer that. Since Issue 10 passed, that would make us closer, but since it passed I think we’re still at somewhat of a standstill until we clearly define the responsibilities and the powers of the police oversight board, and that is yet to be unfolded in my opinion whether we’re closer or not. That’s a really good question, though, because I can’t say yes and I can’t say no.”
Imokhai Okolo, managing attorney at the Okolo Law Firm
The fact that we have a civilian review board, inherently it’s a step closer. It’s a step in a different direction than it was before. Now what direction that is in, only time will tell how effective the civilian review board will be, how diligent they can be, how efficient they can be. I think time is still going to be telling on that.
We’re hitting the end of the year. I want to say not much has necessarily been done, but there’s been some roadblocks, hiccups, challenges.
My hope is they are trying, that they have the heart to try and do something for the community. I think the fact that we even have a civilian review board helps, but oftentimes we find these things are just Band-Aids on larger problems, especially when civilian review boards don’t have the power to do anything.
Rev. Raymond Greene, executive director of The Freedom Bloc
I think we’re closer to police accountability because the community is watching. The community is documenting these things, the community is having encounters with police and becoming better in writing out reports, writing out complaints with the police department, having conversations with us. In that realm we are a lot closer to having police accountability.
On top of that, we have a new mayor who campaigned on believing in police accountability. On those avenues we are a lot closer today than we were yesterday. We still have a lot of people on city council who have affinity for the police, who believe the police can do no wrong, and those things present potholes for us that we have to work around by continuing to build trust with the community, continu[ing] to build up candidates that want to see a safer Akron created. We have to work to get those people into office so we can really hold our police department accountable.
As police oversight board tries to find its footing, new city council ruling makes it harder. Read more here.
On a grassroots level, on the ground level, there’s more accountability coming, but as an institution we’re still far away.
We need to elect new officials. We got a new mayor now, we got two new people coming into office now. We’re about one or two votes away from having a city council that is more amenable to voting on things that’s more humane than not. We’ve got to keep fighting. This is a 400-year fight that we really dug into the last three years, so we can’t expect things to change overnight.
We’ve got to be as diligent as they are and continue to move the pieces on the chess board to put ourselves in a better position to govern the city of Akron.
Judi Hill, president of the Akron NAACP
(Sighs) Now that we have a new administration and people will have a clear view of the expectations and they’ve had a chance to see what’s happening and not happening, I think we’ll be able to move forward better. But we had to go through where we are with the Citizens’ Police Oversight Board because people didn’t know, they had no idea. They knew that they wanted to be engaged in change, they just didn’t know what that change was going to entail.
They haven’t really had a good opportunity to come together. When you bring a team like that together, they need to learn how to work together as a team. They need to learn each other and look at their skill sets, but they didn’t have that kind of leadership to help them do that.
Two, they were flying by the seat of their pants, they were playing politics – ‘if you guys vote me in as chair, I’ll do this’ – they were doing that kind of stupid stuff that city council has been doing for years instead of learning each other to see who would be the best person. They came in with that stuff. Once you come in and learn each other, then you can see better. But when you don’t have the guidance, it’s kind of hard.
I would have thought some things would have happened that didn’t, but that’s okay because it’s a new group.
What happened is what I thought would happen because they didn’t want it to work. If it had been under an administration that wanted it to work, I think they would have ensured that they had a retreat and had a good understanding of what a group they were looking for, and help them digest Issue 10, the language, what they should start with, help guide them through the process a little bit better. They kind of threw them in, and said, ‘here, you guys wanted to do this, now do it.’
I think it made it stressful for the members who volunteer their time and energy to help the city.
Kemp Boyd, Citizens’ Police Oversight Board chair
I do think it’s closer, and I think the closeness came from when Issue 10 did pass. Have we arrived? Not at all. But I think we’re closer today than what we were. Through some of these conversations, through this board being in place, it tells you that we’re closer than what we were.
However, we can’t just rest on being close. We want to make sure we’re an effective board. In order for us to be effective, there are certain rules that need to be in place in order for us to do that. Then as we do that, we really believe that we can kind of lean in and help community policing get much better than where it was before our board was appointed.
