CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson remains hopeful that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley will honor his predecessor’s agreement to help Cleveland buy dash cameras for its police cars.
O’Malley last month asked the city to put delay its purchase because there was not enough money in his office’s discretionary accounts to honor an agreement by Timothy J. McGinty to reimburse Cleveland up to $500,000 for the cameras.
“If I were to honor my predecessor’s gift, it would be fiscally irresponsible, if not destructive, to the operation and integrity of this office,” O’Malley wrote in a Jan. 9 letter to Jackson’s office. “This I cannot and will not do.”
In an interview with cleveland.com Wednesday, Jackson said the city understand’s O’Malley’s request. The police department spent months searching for a camera model that would synchronize with the body cameras its officers wear, and is still in the midst of a pilot program to test which model is the right fit, Jackson said.
“Now once the pilot’s completed, then we’re going to have to have a discussion,” Jackson said, referring to he and O’Malley.
McGinty and Cleveland’s finance director Sharon Dumas signed the agreement on Dec. 27, four days before McGinty left office and two years after he first reached out to Cleveland and offered to help them pay for the cameras.
The $500,000 was supposed to come from the prosecutor’s Law Enforcement Trust Fund, which is fueled by criminal forfeitures and seizures throughout the year.
McGinty has long advocated for dash cams in police cars, arguing that they would save the city money by cutting down on complaints against police officers and help his office prosecute crimes with video evidence.
But the fund had about $360,000 at the end of 2016, not enough to cover the reimbursement, O’Malley told cleveland.com last month. Three other funds that the prosecutor’s office can use at its discretion had a total of about $400,000, so the reimbursement for the dash cams would amount to more than half of the office’s discretionary money, O’Malley said.
Those accounts are used to pay for travel of expert witnesses to testify in the thousands of cases that the office tries every year.
O’Malley also said McGinty had promised to pay several other agencies around the county for dash or body cameras, which would have amounted to nearly all of the discretionary money.
O’Malley questioned not just the amount of the agreements, but he also seemed to balk at the idea of a county agency paying a city to buy any law enforcement. He equated it to an outgoing mayor offering to pay for new squad cars for Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department.
He also pointed out the Cleveland’s residents just approved an income tax increase that is expected to pump more than $80 million into the city’s coffers.
“If we had $7 million, I might consider it in the spirit of cooperation,” O’Malley said. “But we don’t even have it to give.”
O’Malley has asked Ohio Auditor Dave Yost to audit the office’s books and said he may honor the agreement if his office can find the money.
But Jackson said Wednesday that he still hopes O’Malley does eventually honor the agreement.
“I would rather spend a half a million dollars of somebody else’s money than mine,” he said. “He asked me to do something, I did it, and at the appropriate time we’ll have a conversation.”
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