The Cleveland Municipal Court is working with the city’s NAACP branch, the Ohio American Civil Liberties Union, the National Lawyers Guild and various other groups to develop an expedited process for the arrest and release of protesters at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Thousands of people are expected to descend on the city to demostrate the presumed nomination of Donald Trump and his offensive policy initiatives ― such as banning Muslims from entering the country and his proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Some are also protesting the recent deaths of black men at the hands of police.
To prepare for potentially mass arrests, the court has set up a system that can process up to 1,000 people each day.
“A lot of the courts are not conducting their regular business but they will have people on call to process protesters or other people who might get arrested,” Mike Brickner, the senior policy director for ACLU Ohio, told HuffPost. “Hopefully we won’t run into that issue of there being people in jail for a long period of time.”
Fifteen dockets will run daily in three courtrooms hosting five dockets each at various times throughout the day, according to Ed Ferenc, the court’s public information officer. The court plans to start proceedings at 8:30 a.m. and continue them until 6:00 p.m. or later if it’s necessary. Court staffers will also work two 10-hour shifts with the later one running until 1:00 a.m. (in case something happens early in the evening that needs to be processed).
The court is anticipating the time span from protesters being arrested to when they appear in court will be four to six hours. They would get on the next available docket sometime after that, Ferenc said.
“Once we get them, we’ll process them,” he said. “We have quite a system set up to process them ― but we can’t do anything until they get here.”
Against this backdrop, Cuyahoga County is also dealing with a troubling bail problem where scores of poor defendants charged with nonviolent crimes sit in jail for an average of 135 days because they can’t afford to post bail.
If someone were to be charged with a felony, processing could take longer and there’s a possibility that they would be slapped with one of these high bail amounts regardless of their ability to pay it. While the ACLU, NAACP and the municipal court don’t think this will be an issue during the GOP convention, a few groups are keeping an eye on it.
“The bail bond issue is really related to the felony court. There’s an entirely separate protocol that will be related to any mass arrests involving the RNC,” Michael Nelson, the president of Cleveland’s NAACP, told HuffPost. “The RNC people arrested won’t be an issue of money it’ll be an issue of timeliness.”
For some lesser charges, prosecutors are going to see how many people they can plead no contest or guilty, Ferenc said.
“The prosecutors will be there and they’ll try to figure out what the appropriate charge is and if they can settle it in there,” he said.
Cash bails should only be assigned if someone is a danger to the community or if there’s a major reason to believe that they will not show up for the court hearing, Brickner said.
“If there’s no evidence of that, then really most individuals are going to be best suited to be released on their own recognizance and not to pay any kind of cash bail,” he said.
The bail issue is something the ACLU will be focused on since a similar concern arose following the acquittal in May 2015 of Michael Brelo, a Cleveland police officer who, following a 2012 high-speed chase, fired 137 shots into a car, killing a black man and woman.
At least 71 people were arrested after confrontations with police during the protests that broke out in the aftermath of the verdict. Some of them were taken to a local high school because there was no room in the local jail. (This time, the city of Cleveland paid the Cuyahoga County Jail $250,000 to secure 200 extra rooms.) Others were held for over 36 hours and four alleged in an ACLU lawsuit that they were kept incarcerated because officials didn’t want them back out protesting.
“Those were things we were concerned were going to repeat themselves and be even worse because we’ll have a lot more people in Cleveland for the RNC,” Brickner said.
The groups’ plans were inspired by the Brelo verdict protester arrests and seeming use of the court system to block First Amendment rights.
“In our last experience, neither the city or Cleveland ― including the police department ― were really prepared to address that,” Nelson said. “We hope that the lessons learned from that experience will assist them in being respectful of the civil liberties of protesters.”
Nelson said this protocol does not consider suburban courts, which the groups are concerned about since there may be protests in areas where delegates are housed.
“The only one that seems to even thought about a protocol is Rocky River, a suburb of Cleveland,” he said.
Typically people should be processed within 24 hours but, at times, people can sit in jail for up to 72 hours before being charged.
“If you’re arrested in the evening, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be arraigned or get bail the next morning,” Brickner said.
“People who are being arrested are not there for violent offenses, they’re there because they were out exercising their First Amendment right,” Brickner continued. “So many of them don’t need to be incarcerated at all and can be treated with a simple ticket rather than being arrested.”
The National Lawyers Guild is working with public defense attorneys to ensure people will get out as soon as possible. The ACLU is making sure public defenders are on call. And all of the groups have been working with the city to ensure judges are on call as well. The NAACP will be providing pro-bono legal services to people who feel their rights were violated ― especially those protesting restrictions on immigration, or other issues that impact minorities and women.