CLEVELAND — New demands Tuesday for the Cuyahoga County sheriff to put the brakes on deputy chases.
After months of reporting by the News 5 Investigators on the chases, crashes and controversial shootings involving the Downtown Safety Patrol, Black Lives Matter Cleveland sent an open letter to both the Cuyahoga County Executive and the Mayor of Cleveland.
They’re demanding that sheriff’s deputies stop chasing in Cleveland unless responding to a violent felony or imminent threat.
They also want to require remedial chase training and respond publicly to reporting by News 5 Investigators about discretionary traffic stops that disproportionately impact Black residents.
News 5 Investigators take you inside a deputy traffic stop.
Today, the county council public safety committee discussed revising the sheriff’s chase policy.
“Into a policy that would only allow chases for felonies for offenses OVI’s but never minor misdemeanors alone never,” Council Member Sunny Simon said.
The move comes after two women were killed this year.
Tamya Westmoreland and Sharday Elder were innocent bystanders during chases five months apart.
The same deputy was behind the wheel in both cases.
Last Tuesday, the families of the two women stood outside the county administration building holding signs with pictures of their loved ones and demanded accountability.
“We are suffering without her,” Elder’s sister, Cearria Elder, said.
The families and their attorney, Stanley Jackson, are calling for deputy chases to be suspended and the safety patrol disbanded.
“To see the ill-advised chases and I’m going to call it criminal. The criminal pursuit that the officer had in his heart when he was pursuing these two individuals over traffic violations,” Stanley Jackson said.
The deadly chases brought County Council member Meredith Turner to tears during an interview about the patrol’s traffic stops.
“We need to look at the infractions. We need to look at our efforts if we are actually helping or if we’re causing more harm,” Turner said.
But in a surprise move, safety patrol deputy James Decredico talked during last Tuesday’s county council meeting.
He was in plain clothes, and council members didn’t know who he was at the time.
Decredico is the K9 handler who stopped and searched a man for nearly an hour after a minor traffic violation in October 2023.
“We’re in this situation because of Cleveland Police, due to the restrictive policies, quite frankly, that breeds more criminals, which in turn pours over from Cleveland into all the suburbs,” Decredico said.
Decredico called a proposal to withhold funds and change policy a form of bullying, suggesting council was corrupt if it limited the safety patrol.
“This shows a deception and slight of hand from the charter to the county residents and the voters of misuse of power. Then you all are no different than the corruption that was replaced in 2009,” Decredico said.
Again, we’ve tried for many months to talk with Sheriff Pretel about all of this.
Today, he continued to dodge our questions. We asked about calls for a moratorium on chases. The sheriff said moratorium is a strong word and wouldn’t further discuss it at that time.
The sheriff did say he would set up an interview with News 5 Investigators, and we will hold him to that.
