On June 9, Governor Mike DeWine directed Ohio’s Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board to begin developing uniform minimum standards related to mass protests.
“When protests morph from peaceful to violent, law enforcement must be empowered to act, but our peaceful demonstrators must also feel safe when asserting their First Amendment rights,” said Gov. DeWine. “A statewide standard for law enforcement will be beneficial to help standardize Ohio’s response to large, ongoing protests in the future.”
Members of the collaborative will examine issues surrounding best practices for interaction between law enforcement and crowds that fail to disperse; when tactics involving tear gas, pepper spray, and non-lethal projectiles are necessary and when these tactics should be considered excessive; and how to better protect members of the media from injury.
Ohio’s Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board was formed in 2015 to create uniform minimum standards for Ohio’s law enforcement agencies covering use of force, including deadly force, and hiring, and recruitment.
As of June 9, 79% of all of Ohio’s law enforcement officers work for an agency that has voluntarily complied with these standards or is in the process of certification. These agencies serve 75% of Ohio’s total population. However, the total number of certified agencies only accounts for slightly over half of all of Ohio’s departments.
“More than 400 agencies in the state have not chosen to pursue certification showing that they meet these minimum standards,” said Gov. DeWine. “Regardless of why these agencies are not certified, I’m calling on them to begin working on this process.”
Gov. DeWine directed the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Office of Criminal Justice Services, which oversees the certification process, to reach out to every agency that is not certified in these standards and assist them in moving toward certification.
Collaborative standards also exist for community engagement, body cameras, bias-free policing, employee misconduct, telecommunicators, and law enforcement pursuits.
The 2020 Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board report, which lists the certification status of all law enforcement agencies in the state, is available online.