Athens residents take action to investigate Athens policing
Athens Police Officer Joseph McGrew watches the crowd of protesters on Court Street in Athens, Ohio, on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2020.
After George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis Police Officer while being arrested in late May, many Athenians took to the streets to protest in support of Black Lives Matter, while Athens City Council declared racism a public health crisis.
With storefront windows displaying support for Black lives, LGBTQ flags on Court Street and an all Democratic City Council, Athens appears to be a politically progressive city.
Some residents say Athens is not progressive enough, however, when it comes to biased policing against minorities — a group of Athens residents have taken the initiative to file public records requests for police arrest reports.
Athens County Cop Watch, a group of community members monitoring police presence in the county and compiling policing data, claims the Athens Police Department (APD) mirrors national trends of racist policing through data the organization has compiled from the department.
Athens County Cop Watch formed when several members discussed their concerns about local policing trends after attending Black Lives Matter protests throughout the summer, said Damon Krane, an Athens County Cop Watch member and former mayoral candidate for the city of Athens.
“Our organizational origin was just a matter of finding one another at local demonstrations as parts of the movement for Black lives,” Krane said. “There was already a local incarnation of the national movement [in Athens] and within that we tried to think about what more specific role we could play in support of the broader movement.”
According to the group’s findings, Black residents in Athens are more likely than white residents to be charged with a non violent offense and be pulled over by a police officer. The group also claims the department’s use of force on Black people is about two times greater than that of white citizens.
Brendan Moran, a data researcher for Athens County Cop Watch, did not agree with the way in which some of the analyzed data was used. He said the number of arrests in most instances were too small and in some instances made too weak of an argument.
Moran said he knew the arrest numbers for some analyses were small, and he told members not to use the data, calling it “shoddy” and saying it distracted from the true nature of the group's argument, which aims to call out a trend of over-policing within APD.
In an independent analysis of census and police data by The New Political, Black persons in Athens made up 8.4% of arrests from the same 2015-2020 arrest reports the group requested. Based on census population data, Black citizens — who make up only 5.6% of the Athens population — have an arrest rate of 58.6%.
“The whole point of the group was to get the raw data out there, let people play with it and let people have it because it’s difficult to get,” Moran said.
APD Chief of Police Tom Pyle said some of the data analysis by Athens County Cop Watch is incomplete because APD had not prioritized recording of race and gender when executing arrests or traffic stops until 2018. He said this would explain why some of the data on arrests contains “unknown” when describing race in arrests.
The department began collecting race and gender data to comply with standards from the Ohio Law Enforcement Collaborative, a board created in 2014 by former Ohio Gov. John Kasich designed to establish state policing standards.
In analyzing the 2018 and 2019 police annuals reports, Black people made up 9% of arrests. When calculating the rate of arrests in proportion to demographics, Black people were 1.5 times more likely to be arrested than white people and had an arrest rate of 60.7%.
In response, however, Pyle said Cop Watch had gathered incomplete data sets in order to form an argument aligning with their opinions.
“I think it's a matter of them being biased and not admitting to it,” Pyle said. “Is it really a surprise that this group gathered incomplete data sets and used it to support an allegation that police are racist when they already had that opinion before they asked for the data?”
Mayor Steve Patterson said the higher arrest rate may be due to an influx of people coming into the city during certain times of the year, such as Halloween or Palmer Fest. Patterson also said the data warranted looking into and that it would be something he would task Pyle with.
But aside from what the numbers look like, Moran said APD and the city should do more to address instances of racist policing and police use of force when executing an arrest.
In a joint interview, members of Cop Watch said they are concerned by what they see as a lack of action from Athens City Council to address the discrepancy in arrests. They specifically point to the council’s June 22 resolution, which was passed unanimously and declared racism a public health crisis within the city.
The resolution called for examining city codes and reviewing internal policies on hiring practices and promotion. It also suggested creating a work group to promote racial equity and community engagement in Athens, Councilmember Sarah Grace said.
“I put this forward because it was important to me that as a city we recognize that nationally, racism is a public health crisis and that we don't look at it with a short-term narrow lens,” Grace said.
Similar resolutions have been passed by various city councils in Ohio. In Columbus for instance, Mayor Andrew Ginther appointed a 16 member Civilian Review Board Work Group in July. The group recently drafted recommendations for the creation of a Civilian Police Review Board to provide oversight of the Columbus Division of Police.
Krane said the city of Athens has not taken such action and has not conducted any investigations or internal revisions. He also said the council contradicted itself in claiming APD had no problems with racist policing.
“City Council passes these types of resolutions all the time that they don’t adhere to. It makes the council look progressive. They get some headlines out of it, and then they just do whatever they want. So far, this resolution is following this same pattern,” Krane said.
Patterson, however, said the city moved to take action even before the resolution was introduced to Athens City Council. Some of those actions included engagement with local groups such as Bobcats Lead Change and the Racial Equity Coalition of Athens County, which is tasked with reviewing city policies and making recommendations on the basis of racial equity, according to Patterson.
“There has been a lot that has been going on,” Patterson said. “The Cop Watch group is just going to say what they want to say, it’s just not accurate in that nothing has been done.”
Patterson also added that Pyle reached out to the Joint Police Advisory Council — a council in Athens meant to maintain lines of communication between members of the city-university community and the police department — to create a required course for the purpose of educating officers on the history of racism.
“Part of the acknowledgement of systemic racism comes with educating yourself and the willingness to educate yourself,” Patterson said. “It's easy for a lot of people to be a performative ally and it's another to engage and become part of the solution. I’m committed here in the city of Athens to make that a reality, but it’s going to take time and a lot of education at the individual level and institutional level.”
Although members of Athens County Cop Watch said the council resolution was a step in the right direction, they also said the council needs to take action that reflects the resolution’s intent. Another point of contention by the group includes the city's renewal of the police union contract, which is set to expire at the end of 2020.
Krane claims the city did not make its intent to carry negotiations public until a City Council meeting on Dec. 7, in which council discussed minor changes to the language of the contracts, with the exception of wage increases, insurance policy and uniform budget allowance changes.
Pyle said even though negotiations did officially start in October, the city has no obligation to announce negotiations given that they are not made public until there is a resulting contract.
Athens County Cop Watch has proposed anti-racist policing initiatives that could be implemented in Athens. One is the White Bird CAHOOTS model, an initiative that stands for Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets. Launched in Eugene, Oregon in 1989, the initiative provides a community-based response to crises involving mental illness, homelessness, and addiction, instead of sending a police officer.
Moran said CAHOOTS could address about 16% to 17% of APD arrests seen in the past five years; arrests involving drug possession, mental health issues, and other instances that could be handled with counseling rather than a police officer.
Another proposal would be to defund the department. The APD budget in 2019 was $4,799,423, according to the city’s 2019 annual report, which the group said is excessive compared to the city’s population.
Pyle said he would not advocate for defunding the department and instead welcomed comment from concerned groups. He said Athens County Cop Watch and APD have the same goal of creating a community that requires less police intervention, but the methods of reaching that goal are different.
“I’ll sit down with anybody. I don’t have a problem if they want to meet me at a place of their choosing and go through statistics and share what they have and hear what I have to say in response to those things. I’ll do that with anybody; I have nothing to hide,” Pyle said.
