Friday September 24, 2021
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Online Zoom Meeting
Dear Colleagues:
Greetings, and I hope that you and yours are healthy and safe – and can stay that way.
As part of being careful to stay safe, the “Friday Lunch,” a CWRU tradition since 1989, continues on Zoom. We work to present experts from campus and sometimes beyond to discuss important issues for the university, local community, nation or the international stage.
This Week’s Program
This week’s topic is both local and national.
The killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 caused the issue of excessive violence by police against minorities and especially African-Americans, which had been simmering for years, to boil over on a national scale. Yet it was already an issue in Cleveland, where a long history of events, such as a car chase ending with 137 shots fired into the vehicle of an unarmed couple in 2012, and the killing of Tamir Rice in 2013, led the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the Cleveland Department of Police and conclude CDP showed a pattern of violating citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights through excessive use of force. DOJ threatened litigation to force changes, and that led to negotiations and a Consent Decree, under the authority of Judge Solomon Oliver Jr., approved on May 26, 2015.
The decree required a long list of steps, including creation of a Community Police Commission, but one of the most necessary was to create a way of overseeing the decree’s implementation. So it created a Monitor for the decree (Hassan Aden, former Chief of Police in Greenville North Carolina and research director for the International Association of Chiefs of Police) and a Monitoring Team, “charged with overseeing implementation of the Consent Decree and helping the Court and City of Cleveland gauge whether the Decree’s requirements are taking hold in practice – in the real world and across Cleveland’s communities.”
How well has it worked? That is controversial, as shown by the fact that the November ballot in Cleveland will include an initiative to create a civilian oversight panel with the power to fire police officers. If it is not working well, nobody should be surprised. Excessive use of force by police is an old enough issue that there have been some excellent studies over the decades. In fact, I am teaching about police as part of my course on bureaucracy this semester and my problem was to choose among so many good sources. But the fact that the issue has been around for a very long time tells us also that it is very hard to solve.
Professor Ayesha Bell Hardaway is a former Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Cuyahoga County, a scholar of policing and the criminal justice system, and that led her to become a significant participant in the consent decree process. As Deputy Monitor on the Monitoring Team, she has been closely involved with oversight of the consent decree, but also has become a target and example of the political pressures surrounding efforts to improve police performance. I’m very much looking forward to learning about her experience and perspectives, and grateful to her for making time to share.
Signing In
This semester’s discussions will begin at 12:30 p.m., the usual time. The meeting will be set up as from Noon to 2:00 p.m., so people are not all signing in at the same time and to allow for the discussion to run a bit long. Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. Every Monday the same information will be posted on our website: fridaylunch.case.edu.
If you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. This week’s link for registration is:
https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tf-uppjgpEtCObE7o3RLGloDKq1KYBGZx
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Please e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about how the Zoom version of the Friday Lunch will work or any other suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.
Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Ayesha Bell Hardaway is an Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the Director of the Criminal Clinic in the Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic. As a member of the faculty, Hardaway has taught as a clinician in the areas of health law, civil litigation and criminal justice. Her research and scholarship interests include the intersection of race and the law, constitutional law, criminal law, policing and civil litigation.
Prior to joining the law school faculty, Hardaway practiced in the Litigation Department of Tucker Ellis LLP. Her six years at the firm were devoted to defending major electrical, automotive and pharmaceutical manufacturers during all phases of litigation as trial counsel and National Coordinating Counsel. Hardaway represented those clients in state and federal courts throughout the country.
Before her time at Tucker Ellis, Hardaway was an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney for Cuyahoga County and handled a variety of criminal matters, including juvenile delinquencies and general felonies. Hardaway serves as the Deputy Monitor on the Independent Monitoring Team appointed to evaluate police reforms implemented by the Cleveland Police Department under a federal consent decree.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
October 1: What’s Happening in the Labor Market? With Bruce Fallick, Ph.D., Senior Vice President for Research, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
October 8: A Conversation with Scott Cowen, Ph.D. President Emeritus and Distinguished University Chair, Tulane University, and Interim President of Case Western Reserve University. (October 1, 2020 – June 30, 2021)
October 15: Germany’s New Government – and Europe’s New Leadership? With Mark K. Cassell, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science, Kent State University.
October 22: The Biden Administration’s Immigration Policies. With Aleksandar Cuic, J.D., Director of the Immigration Clinic, Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center, CWRU School of Law.
October 29: Continuity and Change in the Opioid Epidemic. With Lee Hoffer, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Psychiatry.
November 5: Redeveloping Buckeye/Woodhill. With Taryn Gress, MSSA, Strategic Director, and Debbie Wilber, Assistant Director, National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities.
November 12: Can India Survive as a Secular Democracy? With Ananya DasGupta, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History.
November 19: Hospital Boom and Busts. With J.B. Silvers, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Finance and Professor of Banking and Finance.
December 3: President Biden’s Trade Policy: Continuity and Change. With Juscelino Colares, J.D., Schott-van den Eynden Professor of Business Law. |
