Has any Ohio citizen-led amendment worked this hard, overcome so many hurdles, and faced such disingenuous opposition from their own state government to get its constitutional amendment in front of voters?
“No,” Cynthia Brown said bluntly to the Free Press. Brown is the energy and leadership behind the Ohio Coalition To End Qualified Immunity.
Wen it comes to changing the policy which shields Ohio law enforcement from civil litigation after violating the civil rights of those they’ve sworn to protect, the Ohio Coalition To End Qualified Immunity (OCTEQI) always knew the challenge would be daunting. Afterall, they were up against the GOP-besieged executive offices of the Ohio Statehouse, which rejected their amendment nine times, making them re-start the process from the beginning each and every time.
The most insincere undemocratic obstructionist being the Trump-pandering Attorney General David Yost who denied the OCTEQI’s amendment from moving forward on the flimsiest and laughable of arguments. Several of his rejections were based on the amendment’s summarized ballot language, that he declared to be misleading or confusing. Ballot language that was written by seasoned lawyers working for the OCTEQI. A lower court order had declared Yost was demanding an absurd level of “hyper-correctness.”
Qualified immunity protects government workers from civil lawsuits even when they clearly violate someone’s constitutional rights. It is often cited as the reason police are rarely punished for shooting civilians, especially after officers claimed, “I feared for my life.” Over 700 Ohio families have lost a loved one since the turn of the century to police violence.
But on Tuesday, April 22, the US Supreme Court rejected Yost’s appeal. Besides the nation’s highest court, Ohio’s major media has finally taken notice of how significant and consequential the OCTEQI’s amendment is, stating, “Three conservative justices – John Roberts, the chief justice, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch – joined the court’s three liberals voting to allow a lower court ruling ordering Yost to certify the amendment to take effect.”
Yost approved the amendment’s summary language soon after the SCOTUS ruling. The amendment now moves to the Ohio Ballot Board, which will determine if it deals with a single subject. Once this is decided, the OCTEQI can begin collecting the 400,000-plus signatures needed to place “Protecting Ohioans’ Constitutional Rights” amendment on a statewide ballot.
“Ohio’s move to transform US policing forever could set a national precedent. Ohio potentially could be the first state to do so by popular vote,” said Brown.
Brown of Columbus and her family have a deep and painful connection to this proposed amendment. Her leadership is driven by the death of her 30-year-old nephew Kareem Ali Nadir Jones (pictured above with his children). In 2017 he was approached and questioned by Columbus police for no good reason as he walked in a back alley to his home. Police did not attempt to de-escalate the situation, and instead demanded he go to the ground (for no good reason). Then suddenly, they shot him in the back. Jones indeed had a gun in his possession, but would police shoot and kill a white man with a gun clearly under his belt and not in his hands?
Between 2013 and 2016, Columbus police shot and killed 24 people, 20 of them Black. At the time, Columbus was number one in the nation for police killings of African Americans per capita. Taxpayer money to settle police brutality lawsuits nationwide has gone past $1 billion over the previous two decades. Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, and New York City have completely banned police officers from using qualified immunity as a defense in state court.
The OCTEQI is not “anti-police,” says Brown. “We are against police killings of unarmed innocent people, the lies and the cover-up. Our mission is to replace qualified immunity with professional liability insurance. This will weed out the bad officers. No one is going to insure an officer with a lengthy complaint record.”
To be clear, ending qualified immunity in Ohio will also affect teachers and youth workers. But what the Free Press and others know is that no teacher or youth worker has ever killed one of their students or clients. Another concern is, who has funded the OCTEQI? Both liberal and conservative institutions. However, this is what the Free Press also knows: the only way to change the behavior of police is through changing policy.
“They will continue to act with impunity unless we remove that immunity,” says Brown.
The case of Cynthia Brown vs. Dave Yost also highlighted the broader challenges faced by grassroots organizations seeking to effect change through ballot initiatives. The repeated rejections by the Attorney General have underscored the difficulties of navigating the legal and bureaucratic hurdles that can impede such efforts, and changes by the General Assembly could be in the making.
“I found it perplexing that such a significant step towards accountability and equal rights for all citizens was met with such resistance. While I respect the legal processes involved, it is crucial to prioritize the needs and rights of the people of Ohio,” Brown said.
