Residents at budget town hall ask why Akron needs so many police officers

Akron residents had a chance Wednesday night to talk to Mayor Shammas Malik about their questions and suggestions surrounding the city's $815 million operating budget, specifically regarding why the administration is invested in the highest level of police staffing in 20 years.

The budget calls for 488 uniformed officers in Akron's police force.

The city's proposed operating budget includes $60.2 million in salaries, wages and benefits for the police department. Akron spent about $57.3 million in 2023 on police staffing.

"In terms of the staffing," Malik said, "while crime stats are down generally, gun violence has been up and murders have been up," as are felonious assaults involving firearms.

He said his administration's prioritization of police staffing is a long-term violence prevention and intervention tactic meant to protect children from picking up guns when they're older.

In order to avoid spending more money than necessary, Malik said his administration intends to be thoughtful about how it prioritizes resources inside the police department.

At the beginning of two-hour meeting at Firestone Community Learning Center, Malik and Finance Director Steve Fricker directed an in-depth dive into the budget and the budgeting process before turning attendees loose on members of the administration.

"This is an opportunity to live out our goals of civic engagement and transparency, talking about our 2024 budget," Malik said.

Sitting alongside residents at each of the tables in the cafeteria were city staff ready to engage in small group discussions, gathering feedback and asking questions after Fricker and Malik's presentation.

Representatives from the finance department and the mayor circulated through the room, ready to answer questions that other staff couldn't.

For roughly 40 minutes, each table talked amongst themselves before returning as a whole to a moderated conversation with the mayor, who addressed some of the topics raised during the small group conversations.

People spoke about homelessness prevention, leadership turnover at Akron Public Schools, how to tell if DEI initiatives are working and how they thought a participatory budgeting process would work. They also suggested putting hard copies of the budget at each library so it’s in every ward.

Conversational through line: police department staffing

The question of why the budget for staffing the police department is so high despite Akron's falling crime rates came up during most of the break-out discussions.

At Youth Opportunity Strategist Denico Buckley-Knight's table, resident Rachel Wilson countered an assertion Malik made during a livestreamed version of the budget presentation aired earlier in the day and repeated at the meeting.

He said that the increase in police staffing would allow officers to get to know residents by giving them time to have front porch conversations with them instead of always racing from one call to the next.

"There's not an extreme need for police," Wilson said. "There's not an extreme demand. Calls keep going down, and the people of Akron want different help than police force.

"I'm very disappointed, personally, by the blatant prioritization of police. I understand the fire and the paramedics, those are very important people. But the police force is not what it should be and does not do what it should [do], and having more police force doesn't actually give them the extra time to sit on people's front porch for five minutes because the people of Akron don't trust the police to do that or listen to them."

Wilson said the budget should instead prioritize things that citizens need — measures preventing homelessness and crime like living wages, housing, financial assistance for utility payment, education and job security, for example.

Director of Planning Kyle Julien, Director of Economic Development Suzie Graham Moore and Policy and Grants Strategist Emma Lieberth Osborn said similar concerns were raised at their tables.

"I understand we're not going to police our way out of our gun violence issues," said Malik. "We have to have police to address the issues that we have, but that's why we are investing in these new approaches — community-based violence intervention, things like credible messengers who can go to people who are involved in violence, or who are maybe likely to be involved in violence, and say, 'Here's where this life leads;' people doing hospital-based violence intervention to prevent retaliation when shootings happen.

"We understand that we cannot police our way out of issues that stem from upstream issues with people who have not learned how to deal with conflict and there's ready access to guns."

Contact reporter Derek Kreider at DKreider@Gannett.com or 330-541-9413

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Residents ask why the 2024 budget has such a heavy police investment