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Mayors Alliance working toward police reforms

The Ohio Mayors Alliance is working to bring changes to cities across the state regarding racial bias and ways to improve community-police relations.

Five mayors, including Jamael Tito Brown of Youngstown, announced the effort Wednesday.

The alliance’s police reform policies will start by focusing on limits on use of force, expanding use of body cameras, improving oversight, strengthening accountability, improving training and recruitment, and rethinking public safety more broadly, the mayors announced.

“Local departments can’t solve the problems alone,” Brown said. “We need external help to help break down some of these barriers to reform that have existed for far too long.”

The alliance is a coalition of about 25 mayors from the state’s largest cities.

The mayors will assess police reform policies in Ohio cities and nationally, share best practices and policy standards, and support local implementation by helping to navigate barriers to reform.

Brown said “Youngstown has problems like everyone else,” but the bigger “problem is when our residents leave the city” and “get pulled over for ‘driving while black.'”

The proposals were announced after numerous protests and rallies in Ohio — including in Youngstown and Warren — and across the nation, largely in response to the May 25 death of George Floyd, an African American, when Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Chauvin and three other officers were fired and arrested.

The alliance will work with the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Office of Criminal Justice Services and the Ohio State University’s Kirwin Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

Brown was joined Wednesday in making the announcement with four other mayors: Andrew J. Ginther of Columbus, Dan Horrigan of Akron, Nan Whaley of Dayton and Wade Kapszukiewicz of Toledo.

“This is a working group,” Kapszukiewicz said. “We’re sharing ideas; we’re sharing data; we’re sharing staff.”

Ideas are easy, it’s the implementation that is difficult, the mayors said.

The network “will draw on best practices and research from around the country to help mayors, city councils and police departments understand what needs to be done to address the very real challenges of racial bias and the need to reform policing practices in communities across Ohio,” Ginther said.

dskolnick@tribtoday.com

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