Lawmakers, who violated Ohio’s constitution with gerrymandering, want to violate the U.S. version with Apple Air Tags: Today in Ohio

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Private investigators have testified at an Ohio House committee against proposals that would outlaw using tracking technology, like Apple Air Tags, to monitor another person without their permission. 

We’re talking about legislation that would allow licensed private investigators to use tracking technology in specific cases on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editorial board member Lisa Garvin, politics editor Rick Rouan and reporter Courtney Astolfi.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up here: https://joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.

Here’s what else we’re asking about today:

Why would private investigators be exempt from an anti-stalking bill that would prohibit the rest of us from tracking people with GPS devices, like Air Tags?

How much of our tax money has Ohio committed so far to vouchers for private schools and how high might that amount go when all the applications are processed?

Even with Ohio’s medical marijuana law, people in this state cannot smoke weed in the traditional sense. The proposal to legalize recreational marijuana on the ballot next month would change that. So, what does that mean for me, if I don’t want to be breathing in someone else’s marijuana smoke?

How far are we from a day when more people prefer marijuana to alcohol, and why the changing attitude?

When Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam unveiled their original rough draft of a lakefront plan a couple of years ago, it included an end to using the Shoreway to get to the West Side, pretty much. A lot of pushback in the intervening months made it seem that the commuting route would stay open. What does the latest lakefront plan incarnation say to people who care about the West Side commute?

What can be more Americana that high school football games, but this year, violence is impeding the tradition. What is going on, and what are the potential solutions?

This is not a problem yet in Northeast Ohio, but in the rest of the state, police departments are abusing a law that protects crime victims to hide the identities of police who shoot people. What is the Columbus Dispatch doing about the problem with that city’s police department, which may be one of the worst big city departments in the country these days?

Art critic Steve Litt offered some terrific perspective on the Cleveland Art Museum’s fighting back against a rogue New York prosecutor who has become a nationwide crusader for repatriating antiquities. What did he report?

Northeast Ohio has seen a mini-trend of golf courses being converted into parks. Two have been changing over for a decade now. How is it coming?

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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

Chris (00:01.466)

We weren’t here yesterday and I heard from some people asking why not. We did announce at the end Friday that we’re taking a day off because Laura and Layla had to learn how to do CPR. And I’m a little bit disconcerted because when they were performing it, they pretended they were performing it on me. And this comes after Layla asked the AI to write my obituary. So I’m not quite sure what’s going on subconsciously.

laura (00:16.75)

HAHA

Chris (00:24.942)

With Laura and Layla, I’m a little bit worried. It’s Today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. I’m Chris Quann. I’m here with Laura Johnston feeling a little bit under the weather and Courtney Astolfi, Lisa and Layla are still off. Lisa will be back tomorrow and Layla will be back Thursday.

courtney (00:27.625)

Heh.

laura (00:44.405)

I would like to point out we were trying to save you in this scenario. We were, you know, and it was, I think, started with the allergy, you know, issue. Call, check, care, yeah.

Chris (00:48.273)

Yeah, right.

Chris (00:54.542)

Okay. I appreciate your valiant efforts to save my life as a blow up doll. Let’s begin. Why would private investigators be exempt from an anti-stocking bill that would prohibit the rest of us and police really from tracking people with GPS devices without a court order? We’re talking about things like air tags. Laura, I don’t get why anybody would be specially exempt here.

laura (01:21.573)

Yeah, this came as a shock to me and I think to Jake Zuckerman, the reporter who found the story was like, wait, what? What are we using air tags for? So private investigators testified last week at an Ohio House committee. They testified against these proposals that would outlaw using tracking technology to monitor another person without their permission. And this is amid national reports of people using the air tags. Those are devices marketed to track luggage or car keys as tools of theft or stalking.

So bipartisan lawmakers, both the House and the Senate, have introduced bills to criminalize the act of using the technology without consent. And because the current law is really vague as whether this meets the legal definition of stalking. The Senate has actually passed its AirTag bill, so the House is considering two very similar versions. But the licensed PIs, and I actually did not realize you needed a license to be a PI, says that they wanna be able to use them so they can investigate

All sorts of things like locating a fugitive from justice, finding lost or stolen property, investigating workers’ compensation claims. They did say they wouldn’t use this with a cheating spouse, so I guess there’s some line here, but this was all new to me.

Chris (02:33.23)

Although the law says that if you do use it with a spouse, you have to remove it within five days of filing divorce papers. Yeah, I mean, yeah, look, I just, there is a constitutional amendment against unreasonable search and seizure. The police cannot put a tracking device on your car unless a judge finds probable cause that you’re doing something wrong and they need to track you to get the evidence.

laura (02:41.173)

I thought they were adding that. I guess like, yeah, it’s crazy the detail here.

Chris (03:03.142)

How in the world do you give anybody else a spectrum of exemption? If you’re going to give it to PIs, why not give it to journalists? I would love to put some tracking devices on Matt Huffman’s car, or see where he’s going every night and who he’s meeting with.

laura (03:10.383)

Oh

courtney (03:11.08)

hehe

laura (03:16.593)

Yeah, and the weird thing is what came up here is that some school districts were saying they could use air tags to investigate the residency of students because they might not actually live in the district. And it said some Northeast Ohio schools have hired PIs. We don’t know. We didn’t talk to any school districts that actually said, yes, we hired a PI who put a tracker on a car. And the issue is obviously this is an issue with the parents, not with the kids. So…

It’s not like they’re trying to put them in backpacks or anything, but it does raise some really interesting ethical questions.

Chris (03:43.856)

Yeah.

Chris (03:48.314)

It’s cheating. It’s 100% cheating. You’re not allowed to do it. That’s why police, you know, we’ve got all these rules for how police are allowed to do criminal investigations because of the Constitution. Ohio is about to violate the Constitution. You can’t do it. You want to prove that a parent is not living in the district? There are all sorts of normal tools to do that. If you want to use a tracker, go.

Get a judge’s order, work with the police, say I think a crime’s going on here, here’s my evidence. You go before a judge and if a judge says, okay, yeah, there’s enough there, you can track the car. But you can’t just start willy-nilly giving exemptions to the U.S. Constitution. If this didn’t violate the Constitution, police would be able to do it anytime they wanted. This is bad. The people in the state house are out of their minds with the things they’re passing these days. This is an automatic card no, you can’t do it, period.

This will get challenged in court. It’s going to be very ugly. And the brain trust behind this just don’t get it. There’s a, there’s a constitution at play here.

laura (04:50.333)

And they keep trying to put these caveats on, like Tom Patton, he’s a sponsor of the bill. He’s saying that if you need to use a device in a car, then so be it. But he wants to put the amendment on that deals with the unfaithful spouse’s car. I mean, they’re saying you need guardrails. To me, if you’re thinking of this many different scenarios with guardrails, maybe it’s a bad idea in the first place.

Chris (05:12.666)

Look, it’s illegal. I mean, look, we already know that, that these guys don’t care about the Ohio constitution, this is the U S constitution. So there’ll be a U S Supreme court ruling ultimately, if they get down this route. This is a violation of the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. They should not be trying to make it allowable. I’m amazed that we’re having this conversation.

laura (05:38.736)

I’m sorry.

Chris (05:39.386)

I’d love to hear from people in the audience to see if we offer a rocker here or is this a true violation of what the federal constitution is. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. How much of our tax money has Ohio committed so far to vouchers for private schools? And how high might that amount go when all the applications are processed? Courtney Laura Hancock did a jaw dropper of a story. These are big numbers.

courtney (06:05.59)

Big numbers you know right now we’re looking at two hundred and forty million dollars in spending on choice scholarships and that number could more than double in the coming weeks so we’re talking about a big chunk of ohio’s tax money here and this spending all goes back to that choice scholarship program in a move from the general assembly in june that expanded that program big time.

The state house expanded not only the value of the private school vouchers for Ohio folks, but also income eligibility requirements. And that amounts to lots more handouts for families who are more well off than the families who had been served in the original iterations of this program. So what we’re looking at number wise is a full voucher for kids going kindergarten through eighth grade went from nearly 5,500 to nearly 6,200 and for high school attendance.

that went from 7,500 to 8,400. Every family in Ohio is now eligible, but you do get less money at certain income brackets. But the change here we’ve seen as a result of this, this program getting expanded is just the amount of families who’ve applied for vouchers so far has just exploded.

Chris (07:18.162)

This is really a very under the radar abandonment by the state of Ohio of public schools. It used to be where the public in general supported public schools, but I don’t think most people realize the huge amount that’s being used here. This is tax dollars that are paying for private schools, not accountable to the public, not held to any of the same standards as public schools. It’s really…

you know, to help religious schools and all sorts of other things. But without any vote of the people, without any real decision making by the general public, the whole support of public schools has eroded away.

courtney (08:01.442)

Let’s talk about the scale of the change here, because you bring up very important points. And so as of mid-October, the state had approved over 41,000 students for Ed Choice scholarships. And that corresponds to that $240 million we said at the top. But this is going to go up from here. That’s because the state’s working through another 46,000 applications. And

And that would translate to well over 340 million for just this academic year alone. And so this year we’re looking at a potential of 80 some thousand vouchers to Ohio families. Last year that figure was 24,000. So it just leaps and bounds going in this direction now. And it seems like it’s only up from here, right?

Chris (08:49.862)

Well, if you put a question before the voters asking if they’re okay with that, spending that amount of public tax money on, on private schools that are not accountable, I don’t believe they’d say yes. This is the gerrymandered legislature really pretty much changing the whole way we educate children and there’s not accountability. They don’t hold them to the same standards that we hold public schools to. I.

It’s a stunning number. We’re going to do some more looking and check to see where we stand per capita and things, because just Ohio may be a national leader in kind of eroding support for public schools to, to privatize education. And how dangerous is that when the public no longer can demand accountability of its educators. Check out her story. It’s on cleveland.com and you’re listening to Today in Ohio.

Even with Ohio’s medical marijuana law, people in this state cannot smoke weed in the traditional sense. They can vape it. The proposal to legalize recreational marijuana on the ballot next month, in two weeks, would change that. So what does that mean for me if I don’t want to be breathing in someone else’s marijuana smoke, Clara?

laura (10:05.925)

Well, it depends where you are. The thing is, private property owners do have the power to prohibit smoking on their premises, just like you can say you can’t smoke cigarettes. But the campaigns on each side of the issue are disputing how strong the proposal is in granting the private property owners the power to prohibit vaping, edibles, and other forms of the drug on their premises. One thing is, it’s going to be really hard to know if somebody is using edibles on your property. So, Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman wants to change some parts of it.

of this law. Remember, this is not a constitutional amendment. So the legislature can go change it if they want, which is very different from issue one with the abortion amendment. But right now, issue two says that public places cannot be required to accommodate an individual’s use of adult cannabis, but nor can they be prohibited from accommodating it. And that means establishments like restaurants or theaters are going to have to come up with their own rules.

Chris (11:03.07)

Yeah, it throws me as you’re not allowed to smoke in a restaurant. You’re not allowed to smoke in public places I would think that the same rules would apply to marijuana that if I go into a restaurant The people at the next table can’t be smoking marijuana. I mean No, I mean it’s just that would seem a complete violation of people’s rights Hoffman has to be careful depending on how big this wins by it looks pretty certain to win you start changing the

laura (11:18.261)

This isn’t the 80s anymore!

Chris (11:32.678)

the full thrust of this law, people are going to get angry. You don’t mess with the voters once they weigh in, but because it’s an initiated statute, because it doesn’t go through all the hearings that the legislative bodies have, it has some problems and it does seem like they’re going to have to tune it up. They’re so power mad down there that if they start to mess with it, I could see them starting to neutralize it and then they’re going to have a revolt on their hands. I mean, for

people to go to the polls to vote for something and then have these guys who have no clue what Ohio thinks, messing with it could be very dangerous. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Courtney, how far are we from a day when more people prefer marijuana to alcohol and why the changing attitude? You’re kind of in the bridge generation. The boomers like me are a bunch of boosers and really young people like marijuana, you’re in the middle, right?

courtney (12:24.366)

Yeah, I mean, and that was my experience kind of growing up, going to college, it was around it was accepted. I’d say a lot of folks my generation I know, continue and do use marijuana and prefer it over alcohol. So this strikes a chord with me, it lines up with what I’ve observed as I’ve, you know, grown up in recent years. But, you know, these poll results we looked at kind of put some numbers behind that sense and that anecdotal thinking.

Most Americans now believe weed is less harmful than booze. And this comes from a Gallup poll conducted over the summer involving, you know, around a thousand Americans. And the numbers shake out this way. About 58% of adults in America believe marijuana is harmful, but way more, 80% believe alcohol was harmful. So we see this disparity here, but like you said, it’s even more for younger folks and in fact, the Gallup poll found that.

The percentage of young people who think moderate drinking is bad for your health went up significantly since 2018. So it’s not just whether you’re accepting marijuana or not, it’s you see it as the better alternative than maybe watching what your parents did, which was have a lot of drinks at night or, you know, it does seem to be a generational thing.

Chris (13:41.562)

Well, let’s face it, right? Marijuana is an herb. It’s a plant. Alcohol is a solvent. It dissolves varnish and things. So the studies have made very clear that there is absolutely no benefit to alcohol and it harms you in many ways and increases cancer risks. They don’t have anything quite like that with marijuana. That as we’ve discussed before, if marijuana is grown in a place where it can absorb toxins, it does that.

So if you smoke it, you can easily damage your lungs with those toxins. Although there is an argument that if it’s grown in purity without those toxins, it actually doesn’t present that danger. I do think it’s pretty clear. The science is clear of the two. Alcohol is far worse for your health. I’m just surprised people have figured that out. You know, usually the science is ignored and people do stupid things.

but the younger generation really seems to get it that alcohol is truly bad for your health.

courtney (14:40.414)

You know, this goes back to a saying I’m sure we’ve all heard some version of, but it’s like the worst thing that happens when you drink is maybe you drive, maybe you beat someone up or get angry and get into a fight. The worst thing that’s going to happen when you get high is you’re going to sit on the couch and eat too many Cheetos. You know, and it does seem, you know, we talked to some researchers here as we were looking through these poll numbers and trying to tease out the disparity.

Chris (14:58.002)

Yeah.

courtney (15:07.802)

the generational disparities here between the two substances. And we talked to Carol Boyd, she’s the founding director of the Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking and Health at the University of Michigan. And she really points to it’s kind of like a self feeding loop as marijuana is legalized, more people are exposed to it. About half of Americans live in states with recreational marijuana, the acceptance just increases. So she really pointed out how exposure to marijuana among folks.

kind of changes the game on how people feel about it, because they see that the effects may not be as bad as what they’ve seen from excessive drinking perhaps.

laura (15:46.237)

I recently saw an ad pop up on my Facebook that had like a glass of wine on one side and a glass full of marijuana gummies on the other. And it was like mommy’s wine time or something is like so that’s so 90s. And it was like, it was just like this twist, right? Because I feel like they’ve been marketing wine to moms for a long time.

Chris (16:08.31)

It’ll be interesting to see if alcohol sales finally go down. We have not seen that in the pandemic. They went way up and we haven’t seen those taxes fall. We haven’t seen the usage drop. But if this trend continues and the people who favor alcohol age up and die out, you’ll see there’ll have to be a turnaround in that. And then Ohio will be glad it’s getting the taxes for marijuana.

laura (16:31.089)

except they’ll try to have to figure out how to get those taxes to pay for our stadiums.

Chris (16:35.31)

Yeah, the new syntax. You know, listening to Today in Ohio, when Brown’s owners, Dee and Jimmy Haslam unveiled their original rough draft of a lakefront plant a couple of years ago, it included an end to using the shoreway for all intents and purposes as a commuter road to the West side. A lot of pushback in the intervening months made it seem that the commuting route would stay open. Laura, what is the latest lakefront plan incarnations say to people who care about that West side commute?

courtney (16:36.379)

Hehehehe

laura (17:04.693)

That’s because the Haslums live on the east side, right? They don’t live on the west side? There’s not a lot of details here. And they’re not talking about getting rid of the shoreway. You’d still be able to access it. You’d be able to cross the lake. But we don’t have a lot of details of what happens here, other than turning into a lower speed boulevard and removing the elevated section of the highway that ramps up across the north end of the warehouse district to connect with the Main Avenue Bridge over the Cuyahoga River.

Chris (17:07.838)

the

laura (17:33.829)

They’re working with ODOT and Osborne Engineering on this $5 million traffic feasibility study that’s supposed to wrap up late this year or early in 2024. But we don’t, we’re seeing all the really pretty pictures, the renderings of the beach with the kayaks and all the trees and the land bridge. And I don’t see a lot of detail on the high.

Chris (17:52.986)

You’re being too kind. This latest version pretty much sticks it to the commuters. It would cut off the access they have now and make them have to drive a maze to get on to the shoreway heading west. And you get the feeling that Cleveland doesn’t care. That Cleveland’s saying, you know what, stick it west side commuters. Oh yeah, but here’s the problem. Those westsiders live in towns with mayors who have strong voices and there are members of Congress.

laura (18:09.449)

because I kind of said that.

Chris (18:20.498)

that represent those Westsiders that will hear their complaints. I remember when Jane Campbell did her lakefront plan, they were going to turn the Westside shoreway into this beautiful low speed, uh, boulevard, you know, it was going to be very walkable and all sorts of things. And people raised holly how, cause it was going to destroy the commute. So what they settled with is such a loser of an idea. It’s like a low speed highway. It doesn’t.

laura (18:43.689)

I know, it’s so hard to drive the speed limit on that road.

Chris (18:46.806)

It’s idiotic what they ended up with, but it was because of the power of the West Side politics. They couldn’t do it, and that’s going to happen to Justin Bibb. If he doesn’t work with the West Side, if their attitude is, stick it, we don’t care, it’s going to fail. They need federal dollars to do this, and the West Side members of Congress will represent their constituents as they don’t give it to them unless they put some care into this.

But Sherwin Williams is building this palace of a headquarters downtown. They have West side employees that want.

laura (19:16.37)

That’s true.

laura (19:20.625)

and their CEO lives on the West Side.

Chris (19:24.154)

They want to get home at the end of the day and they don’t want extra aggravation doing it I just I was stunned to see this back. I thought that there was going to be an accommodation made to the West Side community It’s all pretty. Yeah, it’s all lots of recreation It’s all great But you can’t ignore the fact that there are a lot of people heading to the West Side Who don’t want to get stuck in a maze downtown. I it was a stunner

laura (19:48.681)

I wonder if the change in the way that people work and the more hybrid offices is going to change that from what happened, you know, when they did it the first time. Yeah.

Chris (19:59.594)

Okay, but you should talk to them. I mean the problem is they’re saying oh we’ve had lots of public participation They should have a big gigantic meeting about the commute Let’s hear from everybody about what they want if you don’t it’s gonna blow up just the keys history repeats itself I remember the Cleveland Lakefront plan like it was yesterday their vision. This is Chris Ronay and he was a city planner their vision for what that should be

and what they ended up with because of the opposition. I mean, what they have is the dumbest thing. It’s the worst of all possible worlds. It’s a highway where you can’t drive that slow. So it’s just.

laura (20:37.981)

So let me quote from Steve Leth’s story here, because you’re right, westbound traffic would jog south from a T-shaped intersection at West 3rd Street to access the Main Avenue Bridge ramp, a block south at Summit Avenue. I can’t even picture what that is, and I’ve driven that many times. And then he says, the details were not fully explained. And then he has, talking about suburban commuters traditionally object to anything.

Chris (20:51.077)

Right.

laura (21:02.685)

Keshia Chambers, assistant director in the mayor’s office said that commuting time is not the city’s primary concern. As an East side resident, Courtney loves it.

Chris (21:08.512)

Yeah, okay, but-

courtney (21:09.531)

I kinda love that as a Clevelander though. I’m here for it. Hey, there’s…

Chris (21:12.006)

Yeah, you’re an Eastsider like me. Now you can’t though, Courtney, because they do have power. That was proven last time. And all you have to do is go back and look at what happened last time. The people on the West side will stop this up. Look, you’re supposed to collaborate. You’re supposed to talk. Steve’s story is all going on and on about how the public participated. There has not been a public discussion of this and there should be, or else it’s going to, they won’t get the money. It’ll get blocked.

courtney (21:19.689)

Yeah.

laura (21:39.773)

Especially when the whole point of the lakefront plan is to connect, right? We’re talking about the Gold Coast and Lakewood and all of these lakefront paths. It’s not going to be very good if you can’t access one to the other. And so all these cities do need to be talking.

Chris (21:53.786)

You’re listening to Today in Ohio. What could be more Americana than high school football games? But this year violence is getting in the way of that tradition. Courtney, what’s going on and are there potential solutions here?

courtney (22:06.666)

Yeah, so, so we’re kind of seeing this all over the place in Northeast Ohio, this football season, which is coming to a close now, but so far this year, like you said, this issue has reared its head. You know, the city of Euclid stands as, as one big example here, Euclid High. They had issues with games a few weeks ago. Their homecoming game was moved to Brunswick, parade was scrapped. You know, we’ve seen issues with Shaker Highty earlier in the, in the football season.

You know, issues there prompted administrators to ban spectators and bans from a home game against Maple Heights. And, you know, going back to Euclid, punches were thrown at a few early Euclid games. The school had canceled at one point classes because of social media threats. Around that same time, I know there were concerns in Euclid around some shootings in the general high school area. And you’re just seeing this effect blossom. Where schools are having to react.

to instances of violence, concerns about future violence, and they’re having to ban spectators or move games elsewhere, throwing off some formative experience for kids. We talked to one Euclid High player who’s a senior, and he said when we got the news that their homecoming game was affected, everyone just kinda dropped their heads, and we’re gutted by that.

Chris (23:29.242)

I don’t get it. Bob Paulson is a columnist who writes for us about once a month, former mayor of Solon, kind of a centrist conservative. And he sent it out to me saying, you know, when this became an issue some years ago, we moved the games to early in the morning because the bad guys sleep in. And I, that seems like an easier thing to try. Why not play these games at nine o’clock in the morning? I mean, you’re, you’re much less likely to have people running around with guns. Then.

Somebody was quoted in the story saying, oh, they’ll come anyway. And it’s like, based on what? What do you, you know, have you even tried this? And then the other one was, well, you know, the players would have to get up awfully early to travel. It’s like, okay, but you know, they’re athletes. They can do it. I’m surprised they’re not trying that solution that has worked in a previous age.

courtney (24:17.342)

Yeah, I mean, that does seem like an easy, an easy answer there. And we do have a local example of that, you know, at least being employed. CMSDs, Senate League, for example, they play their games on Friday afternoons. And that’s, you know, part of a response to this program, but you know, the officials and the experts we talked to for the story said, there’s not a super quick policy decision that solves these problems, especially when you’re talking about if you do want to keep it on Friday nights.

You know, hiring a bunch of police officers is one thing, but you’re still going to have a crowd of thousands of people there. Even if you have, you know, two dozen cops, it’s not going to, you know, take care of everything. But like you said, the, the daytime thing seems like an obvious solution to me. I was on swim team. We competed in the morning all the time. It was normal.

Chris (25:06.062)

Right, right. They do it all the time. And if Solon, instead of canceling its game with Euclid out of fear, if they had played at 9 o’clock in the morning, it probably would have been fine. But I don’t know. It seems like we’re not really looking for the good solution and throwing up our hands. It’s sad that we have to talk about this. It’s sad that there are kids trying to have the basic high school experience and there are so many guns in the hands of so many bad guys that they cannot.

courtney (25:36.49)

And like you said, this is a national problem. This is America. You know, it’s a gun problem. We talked to a data science in Florida who said this isn’t limited to our area. Of course, there have been 34 shootings in American middle and high school sporting events just since August.

laura (25:54.948)

Oh God.

Chris (25:56.318)

All right, you’re listening to Today in Ohio. This is not a problem yet in Northeast Ohio, but in the rest of the state, police departments are abusing a law that protects crime victims to hide the identities of officers who shoot people. It’s automatic public record that the police who are paid by the public, if they do an action like that, their names are public, but some departments are playing games. So what is the Columbus Dispatch doing about the problem with-

their city’s police department, which I gotta say may be one of the worst city departments in the country these days and it really needs to be under a consent decree.

laura (26:32.161)

The Columbus dispatch is suing the city of Columbus over this police department. Because this is mind bogglingly ridiculous. Columbus police are using this law that is meant to protect crime victims to instead protect the police officers who shoot people. This is Marcy’s law, which is a constitutional amendment written to protect the rights of crime victims. It was approved by voters statewide in 2017 and then altered by state legislation this year. I believe that’s what…

gave the Columbus Division of Police, they say the officers who shoot and kill people are victims whose identities are protected.

Chris (27:09.566)

They’re saying they’re the victims of the people they shoot, that the people they shoot did something to them so they’re a crime victim. It’s just ridiculous and there’s precedent that even says they can’t do it. This department is just out of control. They’re violent with people, everything they do. I cannot believe the Justice Department hasn’t gone in there and sued them like they did in Cleveland.

laura (27:12.688)

Right.

laura (27:31.037)

I mean, the dispatch is quoting Sharon Kennedy. Like, can we point that out? She had a concurring opinion and a past decision where she said, Marcy Law creates the rights of, creates rights that victims of crimes may wield against the government. It does not grant the government rights against the people or itself. When you have Sharon Kennedy saying it that clearly, I don’t really understand what the argument is.

The Columbus City Attorney’s Office is saying, this is really confusing and we welcome the opportunity for the court to issue further guidance to law enforcement agencies.

Chris (28:04.522)

And this is not about journalists fighting Marcy’s law because they exempt crime victims names. So I mean, a lot of journalists didn’t like that. But as we’ve said previously, victims sometimes feel like they’re victimized twice. They’re no fault of their own. They’re robbed or carjacked or whatever. And then their names are publicized and they don’t like that. And you got to feel for them. I mean, it’s horrible to be a crime victim and then have the world know about it makes it worse. So Marcy’s law.

laura (28:08.354)

No! No.

Chris (28:33.038)

was driven by good motives, but police like the Columbus police, which like I said, are terrible police, they’re abusing this law and good for the Columbus dispatch to go after them. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. We’re going to end a little early. We’ve got a couple of questions left. We’ll get to them tomorrow. Thanks, Courtney. Thanks, Laura. Thanks everybody that listens. Come back Wednesday for another discussion of the news.

laura (28:34.549)

Mm-hmm.