Some Akron activists are doubling down on their criticism of the city’s police chief and are now demanding he be fired.
“Chief Brian Harding has demonstrated an inability to hold his officers and supervisors accountable for their actions,” said Rev. Ray Greene Jr. of activist group Freedom BLOC Monday. “His failure to act is a significant flaw in the system of accountability and we demand his immediate termination to protect Akron's most vulnerable citizens.”
Greene’s concerns stem from Harding’s rejection of a police auditor’s report that found an officer’s body slam of a woman, Dierra Fields, during an arrest to be not objectively reasonable. Harding disagreed with the report and said the takedown was justified.
“He’s too close to this situation to hold people accountable that he came up to the ranks with,” Greene said. “Right now, in the state that our department is in, we need an outside person to come in and do things differently.”
Greene spoke at a news conference Monday at Freedom BLOC’s headquarters in Akron, alongside Akron NAACP President Judi Hill, as well as Fields and her attorney, Imokhai Okolo.
An Akron jury unanimously acquitted Fields of all criminal charges in June.
“This is a clear insult of our intelligence and a slap in the face to every single resident of the city of Akron,” Okolo said.
While Freedom BLOC and Okolo are calling for Mayor Shammas Malik to fire Harding, Hill wants a different approach. She does not think he should be fired at this point, she said.
Instead, she is calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to open a pattern or practice investigation into the department.
“If you look over time and over history, it doesn't matter who the police chief is. It doesn't matter who the mayor is,” Hill said. “When systemic changes occur, it’s through that pattern and practice investigation, when the Department of Justice comes in.”
Greene added that Freedom BLOC and other groups will soon begin collecting signatures of residents to send to the DOJ asking for an investigation.
A lawsuit will be filed against Officer Thomas Shoemaker in the arrest of Fields, Okolo added. The group is also calling for discipline of supervisors, in accordance with the auditor's recommendations.
The auditor, Anthony Finnell, has also called for better de-escalation techniques.
Akron’s policies state officers should focus on the aggressor and de-escalation when responding to incidents of domestic violence, Finnell said. In this case, Fields was not the aggressor, Finnell wrote in his report. She told officers that her father pushed her out of the house while she was calling 911.
Bodycam “footage clearly shows that Dierra was not the primary aggressor. She simply wanted to remove herself, and her two young children, from that environment,” Finnell wrote in the report.
Proper de-escalation would have prevented the use of force, Finnell wrote.
Fields was present for Monday’s news conference but declined to speak to the media.
In response to the police auditor’s report, both Malik and Harding said they are continuing to review the department’s use of force policy.
Malik plans to expand on his thoughts next week, he said, during a press conference on Wednesday.
Greene and Okolo also called for Akron City Council to strengthen the power of the city’s police oversight board.
Currently, the board, which was created from a voter-approved charter amendment, does not have the authority to impose discipline or enforce its recommendations.
When asked for a comment, the Akron mayor's office referred Ideastream Public Media to a statement released last week in which Malik said he is "confident in Chief Harding’s judgment and ability to lead our police department."
