Civil Rights

Ohioans Speak Out in Focus Group Project: They Want More Accountability, Less Infighting

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Just months before Election Day, voters of all stripes in Ohio are at the same time both worried and hopeful. They’re not sure who to trust in the media and government. They’re concerned about economic security for themselves and fellow Americans. They aren’t sure how the election will go down during a pandemic. They want honest leaders to come up with more fixes to serious problems.

But at the same time, they are hopeful that the protests are opening eyes to systemic racism, the need for reform and the next generation of leadership.

Civil Rights

Sidebar: What You Need to Know to Vote This Year

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How to register to vote: You can register online here: https://olvr.ohiosos.gov/ You can also download an application, print it, and mail it to your county board of elections. When to register to vote: To vote in the Nov. 3 election, your application must be received by mail, or delivered to the board of elections office, or online no later than Monday, Oct. 5. Boards of elections are open Oct.

Administrative Foreclosures

Ohio Supreme Court Green Lights Fast-Track Process That Gives Homes to Developers But Fails to Compensate Owners and Taxpayers

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In 2019, Taxpayers lost at least $11.25 million, While Homeowners and Banks lost up to $77 Million, But Title to Revamped Houses Remains Sound

This article provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism. Please join our free mailing list as this helps us provide more public service reporting.     The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that an unusual foreclosure process that can result in people’s homes being sold without compensation for their equity should remain legal in the Buckeye State. However, in a recently released opinion the state justices couldn’t agree on the reasoning behind it. 

Justice Judith French authored the lead opinion, joined by Justices Michael Donnelly and Robert Hendrickson. (Justice Robert A. Hendrickson, of the Twelfth District Court of Appeals, replaced Justice Melody Stewart.) They declined to comment on the constitutional issues presented by the case involving what are called “administrative foreclosures,” saying that they would not stop the process because the law governing these procedures was not “patently and unambiguously” unconstitutional. 

Not to be confused with expedited foreclosures, administrative foreclosures send abandoned properties to a county’s board of revision, a committee that usually considers home values for property owners wanting to contest their taxes.

Slideshow: Protest Art

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This slideshow is a sample of art drawn on buildings in Columbus' Short North district. To read Eye on Ohio's previous articles on police stops:

Investigation: Blacks, black neighborhoods most likely to be traffic stop targets in Ohio’s 3 biggest cities

Sidebar: Beleaguered Cincinnati agency probing stop complaints rarely faults cops

Sidebar: Can an officer's perception of you alter your ticket? Biracial man's 'white' tickets dismissed, 'black' tickets sustained

Civil Rights

Ohio hospitals remain mum on changes to local bed and ventilator counts; uncertainty affects local patients

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The Ohio Department of Health gets daily updates on the total number of beds and ventilators that could be available for COVID-19 patients at hospitals throughout the state. But so far the agency hasn’t provided any hospital-by-hospital breakdown, and the agencies that collect capacity information on their behalf have also declined to release their assessments. The result: Ohioans don’t know how many beds and ventilators are available where they live. Timely and meaningful knowledge could benefit Ohioans from a health perspective, while also helping them understand the range of public policy issues surrounding the crisis. 

The availability of resources to care for COVID-19 patients could mean life or death for thousands of Ohioans. “It’s what keeps me awake at night,” said Ohio Department of Health (ODH) director of health Amy Acton, MD, MPH of her fear of running out of beds, ventilators and personal protective equipment.

Civil Rights

Eye on Ohio Launches Project to Combat Misinformation and Disinformation on the Internet

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Shana Black, Eye on Ohio's First Draft Fellow. On Thursday, a Cleveland man tweeted a picture saying that that local residents had taken to the streets to end COVID-19. The internet launched a vitriolic response, condemning the city for further spreading the disease. But no one, in fact, had marched. The tweet came from a satire account that had posted an old picture of a Cleveland Cavalier championship victory.

Cincinnati

Sidebar: Beleaguered Cincinnati agency probing stop complaints rarely faults cops

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Reporters from the nonprofit newsroom Eye on Ohio, The Cincinnati Enquirer and researchers from Stanford University’s Big Local News program examined police stops to assess how the three largest communities in Ohio use public safety resources and to identify possible bias in policing. Cincinnati, like all cities, has an imperfect policing record. 

The landmark Collaborative Agreement aimed to improve police-community relations in the city amid rising tensions between police and black citizens. It has been touted as a national model of collaboration among police, city agencies and the community. 

But a months-long traffic stop analysis has raised new questions about the ongoing effectiveness of the agreement, finding a racial disparity in traffic stops made by Cincinnati police officers. The findings, along with similar ones in Cleveland and Columbus, are being published alongside new information detailing delays and understaffing at the independent agency charged with investigating accusations of police bias. 

Certain police actions, such as pulling over a driver or issuing a ticket, are more likely to occur in predominantly black neighborhoods in Ohio’s three largest cities than in white ones. And black drivers are also much more likely to be pulled over than whites, according to a review of 315,281 stops from 2009-2017 in Cincinnati, 128,157 in Columbus from 2012 through 2016, and 47,079 in Cleveland in 2016 and 2017. 

But the analysis also found that some disparities were likely the result of police practices versus outright discrimination.  

Reporters compared police stops in census block groups that were at least 75% white and compared them to ones that were at least 75% African American.

Local Government

Down But Not Out in East Cleveland

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Three years after its failed bid at a merger with Cleveland, the poorest city in the state of Ohio ventures a comeback

EAST CLEVELAND — After dropping off a “wet one” (a man high on PCP) at University Hospitals Emergency Room, the ambulance pulled northeast onto Euclid Avenue near Cleveland’s border with East Cleveland. The mirror-finish of The Museum of Contemporary Art reflected trees in full summer bloom as the two East Cleveland firefighters made their way back to their engine house. They cruised by fast-casual restaurants in gleaming new buildings and the Case Western Reserve University Bookstore and the Cleveland Institute of Art building named for George Gund — the mid-20th-century Cleveland banker and philanthropist — before barreling under the concrete and wrought iron railroad bridge that separates Cleveland’s booming University Circle neighborhood from the broken-down streets of East Cleveland. “The scenery sure does change,” said Kyle Soca, the rookie piloting the squad, as the bridge shrank in the rearview mirror and the sidewalks became populated with boarded up storefronts and crumbling apartment buildings. State Sen. Kenny Yuko, who represents both sides of the bridge in the Ohio legislature, stated it more bluntly.