Overview:
Community members said they have heightened concerns about drone use based on recent arrests and deportations of protesters.
Cleveland’s Community Police Commission has approved a policy that gives the department wide authority to use drones to monitor disasters, hostage situations, fleeing suspects and the execution of search warrants.
The policy prohibits the use of drones to provide surveillance of public demonstrations, individual people or large gatherings, except in narrow circumstances, similar to when police would be able to do a search without a warrant.
Because the city is currently under a consent decree, officials from the U.S. Department of Justice will now review the policy before it goes into effect to make sure it isn’t written in a way that could violate people’s constitutional rights.
This is the second time the commission, which has final say over police policies, has approved a drone policy for the department. Commissioners first voted to approve a policy in November that made Cleveland the only big city in Ohio to restrict police from using drones for “surveillance of individuals or groups within large gatherings or for crowd control.” City officials pushed back against those restrictions at the time. Some community members thought the policy didn’t go far enough to protect privacy.
The Cleveland Division of Police created a first draft of the policy, handing it over to the commission in October of last year. The commission was under pressure from several city council members to approve a policy swiftly so the department could use drones during “street takeovers” and during police chases. The city has owned 10 drones for more than a year, but the drones have been largely grounded as the police department and commission worked to finalize the policy – called a general police order – detailing how and when the drones can be used.
New policy refines when drones can be used during large events, protests
In January, Justice Department officials and members of the consent decree monitoring team gave the commission feedback on the policy, according to Commissioner Piet van Lier. A member of the consent decree monitoring team said her review showed the policy was more stringent than most model policies created by professional policing organizations.
But by then, the commission was down to just four members, due to expiring terms, and could not vote on an updated policy.
During hearings to vet new commissioners in January and February, Safety Committee Chair Michael Polensek and other council members said they were frustrated with the delays and disappointed that the first policy approved by the commission would not have allowed police to use drones to monitor protests and crowds. The council members peppered commission candidates with questions about the drone policy.
Meanwhile, van Lier said remaining commissioners continued to gather input — from the department, community members and experts — in anticipation of revisiting the drone policy.
During a commission meeting Wednesday evening, former commissioner Teri Wang criticized the policy approval process and argued that loopholes remained that could lead to unconstitutional use of the technology, including warrantless surveillance of protesters and individuals.
Later, the meeting was briefly cleared when Wang began shouting, which disrupted the discussion. Wang’s research, as well as other comments submitted to commissioners, were taken into consideration when reworking and clarifying the policy, van Lier said.
Recent arrests and deportations heighten concerns about using drones at protests
Multiple community members told commissioners before that vote that recent events, including arrests, student visa revocations and deportations of people who participated in legally protected protests, heightened their concerns about police capturing drone footage of protests by pro-Palestinian or pro-labor protesters, particularly if more police departments are cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, referred to as ICE.
“I don’t think it’s wild fear mongering to consider how personal identifying information, gathering with this kind of crowd surveillance could result in our community members being unlawfully detained” and taken out of state or the country, said Yêń Manzey, of Garfield Heights.
Ed McDonald, a Cleveland resident who uses drones in the city to document the conditions of abandoned properties, said drones, can increase safety when people flee the police or if officers are searching for a missing person or need to serve a warrant inside a home or building. “I think there’s room for some compromise on this topic,” he said.
Commissioner Audrianna Rodriguez cast a “no” vote. Rodriguez said she had concerns that an onerous chain-of-command approval process to use the drones in certain situations could cause dangerous delays.
Drone use at previous demonstration wouldn’t be allowed under new policy
Commissioner Shandra Moreira-Benito pointed out that under the current policy, the department likely would not have been able to use a drone as it did during a November protest at Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne’s home in the Edgewater neighborhood. That day, Cleveland police responded to noise complaints about residents protesting the county’s investment in Israel bonds gathered at the executive’s Lake Avenue residence. (The initial drone policy had been approved by the commission days earlier but had not yet been reviewed by federal officials. Later, Police Chief Dorothy Todd agreed to ground the drones until the policy review process was complete.)
Benito said that a low-level violation such as a noise complaint would not meet the new standard to use the drone under the policy. The standard under the new policy requires evidence of a crime or “exigent circumstances,” or emergency situation, similar to what would be required for police to do a search without a warrant.
“There are people in the community, and probably on this commission, who would like to see some of the strictness loosened. And there are people in the community who would like to see it be more restrictive,” Moreira-Benito said of the policy. “I just want to recognize that we are trying to thread that needle.”
Signal Cleveland’s Frank W. Lewis contributed to this story.
