I’m sure you’ve heard or read about the PERF Use of Force Report that was released on May 6th by the Mayor’s office and I wanted to shed some light on the report and City Council’s responsibilities moving forward. The PERF Report was approved by Council at the Administration’s request as an RFP in response to the seven fatal and seven nonfatal police shootings. After a competitive selection process the city awarded the contract to the Police Executive Research Forum to evaluate and make recommendations on police use of force policies.
The report contains 58 recommendations with 56 going toward the City and 2 for the Citizens Police Oversight Board. On the city’s side, 40 of these are revisions or additions to procedures that are currently in place. 7 more will cover training accountability and transparency issues, and the city has provided a public facing dashboard showing progress on all of these steps. Here’s link to the dashboard https://cms2.revize.com/revize/akronoh/departments/public_safety/use_of_force_review.php
We certainly need to look at how we train our officers, especially with 40% of our police force having 6 years or less experience. And here’s some interesting facts; of the 125,524 calls for service for Akron Police in 2025, only 280 resulted in a use of force incident. That’s less than 1/4 of a 1% of all calls where Akron Police responded. The report shows that Akron actually over-reports these incidents because if multiple officers arrive on the scene they each report the incident too. In Monday’s Public Safety overview of the PERF, APD Deputy Chief Miller said the report basically states that Akron does not have use of force problem, we have a perception of a use of force problem.
What was really surprising to me is that only a few of these changes will go through City Council. As most are procedural and policy changes, they will be handled by the Administration. Take a look at the link provided above, there’s a lot of information here, and you can read the whole report too. The changes are set to be phased in over the next two years. I’m hopeful they will have a positive impact on Akron’s Police and the public’s perception of them too.