Carolyn Friedland
Cuyahoga County Judge Carolyn Friedland on Friday allowed the city to move training of 50 police cadets to the Ohio State Highway Patrol Training Academy in Columbus.
(Cory Shaffer, cleveland.com)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A judge on Friday lifted an order preventing the city from moving the training of 50 police cadets to a Columbus-based academy over objections by a police union.
Cuyahoga County Judge Carolyn Friedland said the police union challenging the move did not show a legal basis for their challenge and did not show that any irreparable harm would come from moving 16 weeks of training to the Ohio State Highway Patrol Training Academy in Columbus.
A city spokesman said after the hearing that the cadets will be officially hired Tuesday, and will report to Columbus on Thursday.
The Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association sued to prevent the move in September. After months of legal procedures, they renewed a request for the restraining order on Dec. 3. Friedland granted the move, halting the training.
The training was originally scheduled to start Dec. 9.
In her ruling, Friedland said that delaying the training any longer would "stagnate" Cleveland's ability to prepare its existing police officers for when the city hosts the Republican National Convention next summer and meet enhanced in-service training requirements mandated by a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice.
City officials applauded the decision.
"This is the right decision and I am pleased that Judge Carolyn Friedland ruled in our favor," Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said in an emailed statement. "This partnership will result in excellent training for our cadets."
Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said he was pleased with Friedland's decision to allow the training to move forward.
"The judge looked at the law and made a legal decision based on the law, and we were on the right side of that," Williams said.
Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Steve Loomis said he accepts the decision, and that the union will not appeal.
"We need to move forward now, and get these kids in the academy," Loomis said.
Under the agreement, cadets would receive 16 weeks of basic training in Columbus before coming back to Cleveland for an additional four to eight weeks of city-specific training.
In two days of testimony before Friday's ruling, lawyers for the city and the union focused largely on the repercussions of Friedland's ultimate decision.
If she didn't allow the training to move forward, the Ohio Department of Public Safety would lose the federal grant that allowed the Highway Patrol to provide the training for free, the city argued. The city would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the training to be done at the Cleveland Police Academy, the city said. That training would not begin until February, the city argued.
The union argued that if the training did go forward, the cadets would be "ripped from their families" for 16 weeks, and that four to eight weeks would be insufficient to cover Cleveland-specific policies and procedures.
Friedland did not address the specific training of either academy, but said "the inconvenience of undergoing training in Columbus rather than Cleveland" was not enough for her to block the training.