What is Akron’s number one priority?
Public safety, according to Mayor Shammas Malik. “As we’ve said a lot.”
City officials and leaders of Akron’s safety forces shared information about new and ongoing public safety initiatives at a Thursday press conference in the Ocasek Auditorium in downtown Akron. The updates included stories of Akron’s new violence prevention team and a look at a mental health outreach team’s first year, as well as plans to bring more sports opportunities to Akron’s youth.
“Our police and fire departments, of course, are at the core of public safety, and they always will be,” Malik said. “Public safety is also about layering in approaches that focus on upstream causes of violence, right?”
More activities for youth are part of Akron’s public safety strategy
The Akron Police Department and Akron Fire Department, along with local car dealer Ron Marhofer Auto Family, are partnering to host a “Cruise into Summer” event. Akron students and their families are invited to celebrate the beginning of summer at Lock 3 on June 5 from 5 to 7:30 p.m.
The celebration will kick off a “safe summer” with an evening of games, food, entertainment and resources to help students stay safe and busy throughout the summer, said Police Chief Brian Harding.
“‘Cruise into Summer’ is more than just fun,” Harding said. “It’s truly an opportunity for us to continue to build strong, safe and positive relationships with our community and our youth.”
Also, as part of a commitment to keep youth active outside of school hours, the city will adopt the Aspen Institute’s Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports, which outlines eight rights for youth in sports. This document “focuses on creating a shared community understanding that all youth should have real, meaningful opportunities to develop as people through sports,” Malik said.
“Giving our youth an opportunity to work as a team, to learn skills, to develop coping strategies, to see the impact of their hard work — these are all things that help them develop and be successful and help them stay away from negative influences that we all are subject to as we’re growing up,” he said.
By signing this bill of rights, the city said it plans to continue investing in youth recreation. Malik also said the city plans to partner with the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative to get at least 64% of Akron youth participating in sports by the end of 2030.
Already this year, the city budgeted $100,000 for gaming/e-sports rooms at four community centers and $100,000 in grants to support sports and wellness programs through local non-profit organizations.
The grants will help offset the cost of program fees, coaches’ training certifications, mental health support, safety and equipment, Malik said. More information about these grants will be released later this month, he said.
Akron’s new violence prevention team is officially on the ground
The pilot of the Akron Street Team — a community outreach program focused on violence interruption and prevention as well as mentorship — is officially up and running with its three-person credible messenger team, said Tony Ingram, the city’s public safety strategist.
The program focuses on addressing the root causes that lead to violence through credible messengers who offer support and resources to the community.
Akron’s credible messengers are individuals with previous involvement in the justice system who want to be a part of the solution, Ingram said. So far, the team has focused on connecting with previous violent offenders and individuals who are at high risk of engaging in violence in the future. They have visited individuals in hospitals, juvenile court and prisons and have begun outreach through community organizations.
“They go above and beyond,” Ingram said. “And they come from the communities that are most at risk, are known in those communities, are able to interact and engage in ways that we in the traditional systems, quite frankly, have not been able to.”
For example, the outreach team met with a young man who “began to exhibit some different symptoms of trauma” after his father received a long prison sentence, Ingram said. The street team learned that he wanted to become a firefighter, so they connected him with Akron Fire Chief Leon Henderson.
When Henderson met the young man, he told him the key steps to becoming a firefighter are “strong academics, good school attendance and positive decision making.”
Although this is just the beginning of the project, Ingram said he is very excited about the street team’s interactions so far. The city is still working on the metrics for measuring the program’s success, but Ingram said it is important to do the qualitative work and hear from the community, in addition to taking a quantitative approach.
Mental health outreach team to expand to Saturdays
The Summit County Outreach Team (SCOUT) program — a co-responder model that sends crisis-trained members of Akron Fire, Akron Police and Portage Path Behavioral Health to respond to calls for service related to mental health concerns — has steadily increased the number of calls in its first year, Henderson said.
The team responds to low-level mental health calls and offers rapid intervention and support.
The goal, Henderson said, is to “stabilize the situation, reduce the need for emergency department visits or law enforcement involvement and connect individuals with appropriate ongoing care by offering timely, compassionate and specialized assistance.”
In total, SCOUT has responded to 1,051 calls for service in 2024, he said. Of those calls, 417 were for welfare checks; 399 were for residents experiencing psychological episodes, exhibiting “abnormal” behaviors or attempting suicide; 177 were follow-up calls; and 28 were calls to assist police. The remainder of the calls were one-off incidents.
The team operates Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. but plans to expand to Saturdays this year, Henderson said.
City has demolished 88 properties this year
Removing blighted properties improves the appearance of Akron’s neighborhoods, increases the value of surrounding homes and restores pride in the blocks, said Eufrancia Lash, the city’s director of neighborhood assistance.
But most importantly, it improves public safety, he said. The structures can be dangerous, particularly if they are in danger of collapse or if they are prone to people exploring them or living inside them.
In the first 119 days of the year, the city demolished 88 blighted residential structures, Lash said. With the grant funding designated for demolishing vacant, abandoned and dilapidated properties, Lash said there are four more properties to be handled.
The former Rankin School in West Akron has been taken down as well, he said. Lash said an additional 50 properties are expected to be removed this year — a mix of residential and commercial properties.
“While it’s incredibly important to preserve the history that we have here in Akron, we also know that removing blight, taking down unsafe structures, is equally as important,” Lash said.
