Jacob Johnson was there the night that family members called Cleveland police to assist them with his aunt, Tanisha Anderson, who was in the throes of a mental health crisis. The call resulted in a struggle between a handcuffed Anderson and two officers, and, a few hours later, she was dead. She was 37.
That was almost 10 years ago. On Thursday, Johnson spoke at a press conference in support of a proposed city law named after her.
Tanisha’s Law “will mean that no other family will have to endure what we’ve endured, not just that night but having to go through life without her,” Johnson said. She was a “beautiful spirit who was gone too soon in a way that was unjust.”
Cleveland City Council Members Stephanie Howse-Jones, Rebecca Maurer and Charles Slife introduced the law Monday. At the press conference at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law, Howse-Jones said it’s intended to build on the progress Cleveland has already made in responding to emergency calls about people in a mental health crisis.
The law would create a Department of Community Crisis Response to oversee the efforts.
Members of Case’s Student Legislative Initiative of Cleveland (SLIC) helped write the bill with input from Tanisha’s uncle, Michael Anderson, after he contacted Howse-Jones about it in 2022.
When Anderson died in 2014, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner ruled her death a homicide. But after a second autopsy during the three-year investigation into the officers’ conduct, a different coroner blamed Anderson’s partially blocked arteries. A grand jury declined to charge the officers.
Her family sued the city, and the case was settled in 2017 for $2.25 million. The following year, the officers were disciplined — one was suspended for 10 days, the other received a written warning.
Tanisha’s Law would create a new city department
The Cleveland Division of Police started training officers in crisis response in 2020, partly in response to Anderson’s death. New officers receive eight hours of training in the academy. Officers with three years’ experience can take a week-long course to become a Specialized Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) officer. In 2022, the department started requiring field training officers — who help train new officers — to complete the weeklong training too.
Crisis response generally takes two forms: co-response, in which mental health professionals accompany police officers on calls; and care response, which does not involve officers.
Tanisha’s Law addresses both. If passed, it would establish a new Department of Community Crisis Response to work with the Departments of Public Safety, Public Health, Aging and Community Relations “to administer and oversee the various forms of crisis response in the City.”
The director of Community Crisis Response would oversee the mental health professionals who work with police officers in the co-response program that the city launched in 2020 with grant funding. In November 2023, Cleveland City Council allocated $5 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds to double the number of teams in the pilot program from five to 10.
The director would also launch an “unarmed crisis response team” that officers can call to a scene when a person is in crisis and does not present a harm to themselves or others. The unarmed team would be able to request to respond directly to calls that match that description.
The Community Crisis Response Department would also adopt and revise guidelines for responding to crisis calls, gather data for regular reports on progress and maintain an online dashboard for both sharing and collecting information.
At the press conference, Howse-Jones emphasized that there is still a lot of work to do before scheduling the bill for a vote. She said that, over the next few months, she, Maurer and Slife would meet with stakeholders and seek community input. But they see the position of Community Crisis Response director — who would report to the mayor — as providing a “champion with real authority” to keep building on the momentum.
Mayor Justin Bibb has said that care response “can go a long way to solving violent crime in our city.”
Among the important details to be determined: staffing levels for care response, whether the city would hire the mental health professionals or contract with an organization, and the total cost to the city. Maurer also said that the work will have to be coordinated with the city’s consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice.
