Ohio Governor John Kasich has issued an executive order creating a state community-police advisory board. The moves follows recommendations from the governor's task force on police-community relations. Ohio Public Radio's Jo Ingles reports.
Clashes between police and protestors in Baltimore have been all over the news in recent days. Gov. Kasich says he doesn’t want something like that to happen here.
“We don’t want to have people in the streets, burning buildings, hating one another. We have to do this. It has to work and it will work because we are all going to be in there together,” Kasich says.
The Ohio Task Force on Community and Police Relations that Kasich set up with an executive order at the end of last year has come up with seven action items.
“We will create the first statewide standards on a number of these things from transparency, how our law enforcement agencies are transparent to the community, how, in fact, we are going to make sure that the hiring practices, and the recruiting practices within these agencies are held up, that they use the best practices to do it, a clear policy on deadly force, the use of deadly force which we know is absolutely critical and to make sure that we create a true collaboration between community and police,” Kasich says.
The Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board will focus on bringing together citizens and law enforcement officials in communities. The Director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, John Born, says it is important to establish trust.
“Trust is difficult to build and it’s even more difficult to build when you lose it so this is a win or lose every day,” Born says.
Kasich says he doesn’t know what the price tag will be for the recommendations being made. He thinks some grants might be available for some of the items being suggested. But the lack of cost estimates and a way to pay for these recommendations concerns Mike Weinman with the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police.
“It was interesting to hear him say that it might not be in this budget though. You know, and so when is this funding going to come and if there is funding, how much funding? There’s some questions that have to be answered there,” Weinman says.
And Weinman says he’s also got questions about the recommendation that says there should be clear standards for policing and use of deadly force throughout the state.
“We’ve got some 800 police agencies in this state. You know, we are talking about standards. What might work for one agency might not work for another. We’ve got rural areas. We’ve got urban areas. So standardization is a nice thing to talk about but does it really apply? You know, what happens in Columbus, does that really apply to what happens in Oxford?,” Weinman asks.
Recently, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s task force looking into police and community relations also recommended more training. Kasich says he’s going to let the collaborative panel he’s created with this executive order decide some of hiring and recruiting practices, training and other issues that were addressed by both task forces.
