Akron is rewriting its policy on crowd control and peaceful protests, but residents at a community town hall Tuesday night expressed concerns that the issue with policing in Akron runs deeper than policy.
Through a settlement with Akron Bail Fund, an activist group, the city must develop new procedures for how police deal with peaceful protests and crowd control, including holding a community forum on the new policies. The settlement stems from a 2023 lawsuit filed after Akron police used tear gas on peaceful protesters and the media following a grand jury's decision not to indict the officers who fatally shot Jayland Walker.
At Tuesday's community forum, Spencer Fomby, a retired police captain and police practices expert hired by the city to rewrite the crowd control policy, fielded questions and concerns from residents.
Many attendees were present at the April 2023 protest on Copley Road that is at the heart of the settlement and expressed concerns about how Akron police responded to peaceful protests. The issue, according to Fomby, may lie with how policy defines peaceful protests versus riots.
"The example I always use with police commanders is if one person throws a plastic bottle, is that an unlawful assembly? And absolutely not," Fomby said. "There's no way that any reasonable police commander would believe because one person threw at the police, the protest is over."
But that would seem to contradict how police handled the Copley Road protest. Police arrived in the second hour of the protest wearing riot gear and armed with tear gas and pepper spray. Officers began pepper spraying peaceful protesters, who responded by throwing a few plastic water bottles at them. Then, officers unleashed more pepper spray and tear gas at protesters, media and people watching from the sidewalk. The city claims the force was in response to the water bottles, but Ideastream Public Media footage shows no bottles were thrown until pepper spray was used.
"If there is crime or violence in the protest, then the officers have guidance on how to deal with the people that are committing crimes versus using force against people who aren't committing crimes," Fomby said.
Residents explained that the Copley Road protest and other protests like it where police used force were confusing and that officers were not clear to protesters on what they were doing. At the Copley Road protest, police ordered protesters to go to the sidewalk and then walked up to people and pepper sprayed them on the sidewalk.
"The officers should be giving announcements when things are happening," Fomby said, "and when, or if they decide they need to disperse a crowd, they should be giving warnings. And those should be clear and audible to the crowd."
However, residents weren't sold that changing the policy will fix the problem. William Reynolds is one of many residents that say it's the attitude of officers that needs to change.
"They don't need to be bullies," he said. "We shouldn't be afraid of them."
Reynolds was recently in Philadelphia after the Eagles won the Super Bowl, where fans rushed to the streets and downed traffic poles, among other activities in celebration, he said.
"The police that I dealt with and interacted with are polite," he said. "They were polite. They weren't rude."
Fomby's job now will be to take resident input and create a new crowd control policy based on national best practices, he said.
"This policy will be robust, and there will be a lot of information in it," Fomby said. "Protest response is one of the most complicated areas of policing and so it requires a pretty detailed policy."
He's already reviewed the police department's crowd control policy when the protest took place, he said.
"I would just say that it lacked a lot of detail. It didn't give specific guidance on use of force, especially use of munitions," Fomby said, "and there was no real description on declaring an unlawful assembly and dispersing crowds."
The new policy may also include ways for crowds or protests to police themselves, without the presence of armed police officers, he said.
"One of the processes that we use to encourage that is that specially trained police officers that we call dialoguing policing officers, they go out and communicate with the crowd in a non-confrontational way," Fomby said, "and those officers are not there for enforcement. They are only there for communication."
Columbus created a Division of Police Dialogue Unit in 2020, when mass protests broke out in response to the murder of George Floyd.
After Fomby writes the policy, there will be a public comment period for more community feedback before it's implemented.
