Akron City Council fails to name police oversight board members by deadline. Now what?

In an often out-of-order and racially charged public display of dysfunction, eight members of Akron City Council voted again and again Monday evening until the clock struck midnight.

According to a city charter amendment approved by 62% of voters in November, Monday was the deadline to seat Akron's new Citizens' Police Oversight Board.

Six times in the five-hour meeting that began at 7 p.m., the eight members hoped for one colleague to join them in adopting City Council's list of six candidates. And six times, they failed to sway the four holdouts.

Council members also decided to hold off on approving the mayor's list of three nominees to round out the nine-member panel, resulting in a police review board with no members.

"At this time, we have done all we can do," President Margo Sommerville said two minutes after midnight, having pushed one last time for another failed vote. "We have come to the end of the road. I'm disheartened that we're at this moment and we're at this place, but this is our reality."

"We can't get to nine," Sommerville said, turning to apologize to Imokhai Okolo, one of the six names on the slate.

Four council members said they could not support Okolo for various reasons.

Ward 2 Councilman Phil Lombardo said he's never supported the police reform in Issue 10, which expands the capacity of the city's police auditor and moves that role under the direction of a new citizens' police review board. The board, when assembled, would have the power to give non-binding recommendations to City Council, the mayor and the police chief on matters of officer discipline and police procedure.

Lombardo told the Beacon Journal that Akron police officers have advised him to reject Okolo as a candidate for the board.

Ward 9 Councilman Mike Freeman cited a social media post Okolo made not long after Akron officers shot and killed Jayland Walker in June. In the post, Okolo shared a private conversation with a local prosecutor who disagreed with his perspective on the tragedy.

"This is why pigs get off," Okolo posted.

Okolo said he made the post in anger but that it does not define who he is, his career as a lawyer or his overall views of police. He explained to a reporter Monday evening that his intention with the post was to show people evidence of how prosecutors can be biased in favor of police.

But the post was too big an issue for Lombardo, Freeman and Ward 6 Councilman Brad McKitrick, who also said he's spoken to police officers. McKitrick also cited public records that showed Okolo was registered to vote at his parents' home in Ward 8 while living in Ward 3. In a practice often used by college students, the secretary of state allows Ohio residents to use a permanent address when living temporarily elsewhere.

At-Large Councilman Jeff Fusco told the Beacon Journal that, even before he knew about the social media post, he had promised some on council and in the community that he would not support Okolo.

Secret recording of At-Large Councilman Jeff Fusco played at Akron City Council

Okolo reveled that detail Monday evening when, during his allotted three minutes for public comment, he played a surreptitiously recorded call with Fusco. On the recording, which "shocked and surprised" Fusco, the veteran councilman praised Okolo's experience and credentials, which he said other council members might like to know, but that he had promised unnamed people that he would not support Okolo on the board at this time.

"Whenever I make a commitment to someone, I stick to that commitment," Fusco said on the recording, which Okolo played back from his phone into a microphone used during the public comment period.

Fusco would not tell council or the public during the debate specifically who had his confidence. When asked directly by a reporter, Fusco acknowledged that he made the promise to Clay Cozart, the head of Akron police union, among others.

Cozart has not responded to a message seeking comment on his contact with Fusco or whether the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 7 lobbied anyone else on Akron City Council.

What happens next was immediately unclear.

Law Director Eve Belfance told several inquiring council members that the new charter amendment prescribes no penalty for missing the deadline.

And, so, council members went to bed wondering what consequences they would awake to Tuesday morning, perhaps the lawsuit citizens threatened in outbursts from the gallery in council chambers.

Contentious City Council meeting continues past midnight

The passage of Issue 10 on the November ballot required the mayor and City Council to appoint nine members to the new police review board by Monday. The day did not start off so well.

In the middle of council's Public Safety Committee meeting and at the recommendation of the Akron Law Department, the list of six candidates was swapped out for one that had previously been endorsed by the holdouts on council. The city law department, headed by a director appointed by the mayor, offered the alternative slate as a way to avoid the possibility of missing an important deadline.

The amended list included a previously considered candidate who is currently a police officer outside of Akron. Public Safety Chair Donnie Kammer, whose absence from the evening meeting has yet to be explained, introduced the amendment.

Okolo, a 27-year-old Black attorney, was not the amended list.

Before the evening meeting, Sommerville called the police officer, who lives in her ward. Sommerville said the officer agreed "100%" that a young Black man should serve on the board. (Two other Black men have been nominated, one by the mayor and the other by council, but neither fits the 18-35 age range called for in the charter amendment.)

After speaking with Sommerville, the police officer withdrew her name from consideration, forcing council that evening to vote on a list reintroduced by Sommerville — a list with Okolo's name on it.

The long and contentious evening meeting, like the afternoon meeting that set up the showdown, was filled with finger snaps from the gallery as attendees gave support for Okolo and council members who backed his candidacy. As the first rounds of voting failed, council members asked if they only needed eight votes for a supermajority since Kammer's absence left them with 12 members present.

Marathon session sees councilman doze off, two trips for pizza

The clerk of council and the law director went into a backroom for nearly an hour during one of two recesses. The public, which still numbered 40 by midnight, wasn't going anywhere. A councilman dozed off, prompting his camera to be turned off. One attendee made two trips to pick up pizzas, which the public and some on council walked around eating during the break, ignoring the no food and drink signs.

When they reconvened, the law department said nine votes were needed. Members of the public filled the awkward moments of silence by shouting questions and accusations at council members, who stared blankly at times.

It was a five-hour meeting of acrimonious dysfunction like none had ever witnessed, members said.

Groundwork for the discord had been laid hours earlier.

Rev. John Beaty escorted out of council committee meeting during tense debate

Opposition to Okolo prevailed in a 3-2 afternoon committee vote that advanced the doomed list of candidates with the police officer's name on it. That earlier debate was punctuated when the Rev. John Beaty, a white pastor who’s called for the eight police officers who shot Jayland Walker to be fired and prosecuted, was escorted out by security after repeatedly demanding to speak.

Council members that afternoon demanded that Okolo be allowed to speak. Kammer cast the deciding 3-2 vote to eventually let the Jones Day attorney speak. He gave Okolo a minute to address the concerns by some on council.

Okolo, instead, barely stopped talking long enough to breath in the next three minutes before Kammer told him his time was up. The young attorney, offended that his career had been boiled down to a single angry social media post, insisted that he was qualified and could be objective.

Throughout the day, backers of Issue 10, members of The Freedom BLOC and social activists rallied to support Okolo. They spoke about how few elected leaders would remain in office if judged by a single social media post in their past and how Black men must work harder than their white peers to achieve as much.

The episode was labeled an "overt" act of racism by members of the public and, with increasing sharpness, by council members who criticized their all-white male colleagues who voted six times against Okolo.

"Today was a good reminder of what my grandmother always said," Okolo began his three-minute public comment during the evening meeting. "She told us: 'You have to be exceptional. You have to work twice as hard to hopefully get just as much, and then it probably won't be enough."

Freedom BLOC leader the Rev. Ray Greene, speaking literally of how the Ku Klux Klan dominated Akron politics 100 years ago and figuratively about the contemporary treatment of Black men like himself and now Okolo, put it more bluntly: "Anytime a Black man stands on his own two feet in this city, we get lynched and castrated in public square."

Council member calls move 'racist' lawmaking

The charter amendment behind Issue 10 requires that nine of the 13 city lawmakers approve council’s list — a higher bar than the simple majority needed to approve the mayor’s picks.

Condemnation from council members varied in tone with some criticizing the charter amendment, others calling the last-minute name swap “embarrassing” and At-large Councilwoman LInda Omobien characterizing the killing of Walker as murder.

Ward 4 Councilman Russ Neal went as far as calling the move to replace Okolo another example of “racist” lawmaking.

Ward 8 Councilman Shammas Malik said, “This is institutional racism.”

How council got to this moment

Since introducing Okolo's name Feb. 6 in the slate of six candidates, council had all month to amend the list. But members only debated Okolo once, at the end of the evening meeting last week, before Monday — the final day to act.

Okolo lives in Ward 3. He mistakenly put Ward 5 on his application to serve on the police review board. When that error was discovered during the screening process in January, council scrambled to interview someone else from Ward 5.

Kammer, who served with Sommerville, McKitrick and Omobien on the screening committee, originally supported Okolo as a "very intelligent" young man with "a very impressive background." But he thought the new Ward 5 pick would replace Okolo. But Okolo remained on the original list council introduced at the beginning of February, essentially replacing the police officer who would later remove herself from consideration.

Sommerville said she stood, and continues to stand, behind Okolo and the other five candidates on the original list. She called losing Okolo a missed opportunity to bring an important perspective to the advisory role of the new police review board, which must be diverse in not only race, age and gender but thought, she said.

“To be very succinct about this," said Ward 1 Councilwoman Nancy Holland, "this is an individual who is qualified by any available metric, including that he holds a view and a range of experiences and an identity in this community that makes his voice not only relevant but deeply, deeply significant to the task at hand.”

Opponents of Imokhai Okolo air concerns

During the afternoon meeting Monday, Lombardo offered the first point of opposition to Okolo.

“I just don’t think we should come close to saying anything negative about our safety forces,” Lombardo said, referencing Okolo’s previous statement on Facebook.

Lombardo said he didn’t favor Issue 10 but — “since the voters have spoken” — he would support the mayor’s appointments.

“I also feel that people are trying to make this something that it is not,” said McKitrick. “Initially we did have a group of people who were agreed upon until some issues were brought forth … especially the comments made on social media.”

McKitrick drew council’s attention to a candidate voted off the Columbus police review board in December for using anti-police rhetoric on social media.

“I don’t want that to happen here where we may have to remove somebody,” said McKitrick.

Time's up to vote on Akron Citizens' Police Oversight Board

Malik argued that council should vote on the original list instead of accepting the new list as an amendment.

Omobien also called for a vote on the list with Okolo’s name.

Her colleagues, she said, should “state for the record why we are voting against this young man. And secondly, instead of bringing in a second piece, I think we need to go back to the drawing board and interview other candidates. We do not have a young Black man represented in that age range, which is so critical to this board. When you think about all the killings that have happened at the hands of the police across these United States of America, and even in our own community, the ones that are impacted the most are young Black men.”

But Fusco said there was no time to go back to the drawing board.

“As long as we’re arguing, we’re not moving forward,” said Ward 10 Councilwoman Sharon Connor, who told her colleagues that, if not Okolo now, there would be an opportunity for a young Black man to serve in two years when the first staggered terms of the police review board are up for reappointment.

“This is not arguing. This is what debate is about,” said Neal. “And we better flesh out just the racist practices within our legislative body. I’m going to say it just like that.”

“Today is the deadline,” said Fusco.

The veteran member of City Council said substitutes are “brought in all the time … Oftentimes they’re brought in right before a council meeting.”

“Procedurally that’s the way it goes,” Fusco said. “And you can smile all you want, Mr. Malik, but the thing of it is: This is the way business is done.”

“The comment was made that this is the way business is done,” Malik later said in response. “And I want to put my finger on it. That is precisely the problem here. The reality is that we have to be willing to do business differently. The point was also made that the first piece of legislation does not have nine votes. The way that we find that out is by voting on it … that’s how this works."

Fusco said he was impressed by Okolo’s background. Kammer said he supported Okolo on the original list prior to the Facebook post surfacing.

“To not have a young Black man at the seat at this table to have this conversation is truly a slap in the face to me and the rest of my community,” Okolo told council. “What do you want us to do? You ask us to be a part of the solution, and we want to be a part of that solution. When you say no, you slam a door in our face.”

Imokhai Okolo's statement to Akron City Council

Below is the full transcript of Okolo’s three-minute speech.

"I think my background, my professional background, my educational background, all that shows that I have the ability to be objective, right? I have done this very thing that you're asking this committee and this council, this citizens’ review board to do. I've done it before, right?

"And I've shown that I can be objective, right? I've worked alongside law enforcement at so many capacities ever since I was in high school. Right? And I have shown that objectivity, every step of the way. There's no situation in which …

"I don't hate all police officers. I don't think all police officers are bad. I don't have this sort of bias that's not going to allow me to be able to see things objectively and clearly. I have the ability to do that, right, I'm an attorney. That's half the battle. Right?

"And why folks can't see that, why folks don't see that, to me — I'm very confused. One social media post does not define who I am as an individual. I am 27 years old, and I have gone through high school in this district. I have gone to college. I obtained a law degree. It is not a lack of humility, but I am truly, truly an exceptional applicant, right?

"I'd ask anyone, even my age, who are in my group to show a resume that is that much better than my own, that don't show the same qualifications that I have. You're asking young people to come into the city, to grow and learn in this city and to be able to give back to the city, and now you're not allowing the opportunity to do that.

"I can show you countless mentors that I've had across the city at the University of Akron, at Firestone high school, at The House of Lord. All these individuals have reached out to me, so happy that I'm on here, and they can tell you and express to you that, yes, I might have different views than their own, I might have different views than you all, but I can be objective.

"This sort of passion I have, this love I have for the city, is needed at this table. To not have a young Black man at the seat at this table to have this conversation is truly a slap in the face to me and the rest of my community. What do you want us to do? You ask us to be a part of the solution, and we want to be a part of that solution. Then you say no, you slam a door in our face.

"And you say one social media post defines you, one social media post says that you're not allowed to be in this room anymore. But that doesn't make any sense. I mean, I'm asking you, what am I supposed to do? What are people my age range supposed to do? I look at the institution of policing differently because I was born in 1995. Right? In the eighth grade I saw Trayvon Martin get gunned down in the middle of the street. And since then, I have been seeing Black men across this country in this very city be gunned down by police. And then you wonder why someone may have a different opinion of your own (on) policing, right?

"Jayland Walker was my age. We are the same exact age. It could have been me, right? And I can look at the situation objectively and … give you a result that is objective and is rooted in truth. I come here today to speak truth to power. This is absolutely absurd, absolutely absurd."

Reach reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron City Council fails to pick police oversight board by deadline