CUYAHOGA COUNTY, Ohio — The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Downtown Safety Patrol is no longer dedicated to Cleveland city streets.
However, Sheriff Harold Pretel wants to add more deputies to patrol county-wide.
Pretel discussed his vision for what’s now called the Community Support Unit during a budget hearing at the county council.
"You can see they’ve been quite active this year, this is just to the end of August,” Pretel said.
His presentation revealed 114 guns seized, 106 warrant arrests and nearly a thousand traffic tickets.
But some council members say the budget may not allow for the expansion.
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Pretel confirmed to News 5 that the patrol is no longer a dedicated unit for downtown Cleveland.
Earlier this year, Council Member Sunny Simon was among several council members calling to disband the patrol.
"We can’t be a para police force in the City of Cleveland. We can not substitute their police force, so this is what I look for, an entire county support system,” Simon said.
Last month, the Downtown Safety Patrol got a name change.
The announcement came when the county introduced a new, more restrictive chase policy.
Deputies can now only chase for felonies like shootings.
But the change came months after the community and grieving families demanded it.
Right now, the specialized unit has 10 deputies and one sergeant.
Pretel wants to expand it to 12 deputies and two sergeants with two units over seven days.
“That would be ideal. That way, we don’t have gaps in coverage. Let me be clear, those deputies have already been doing this in other communities; they have not been exclusively in the city of Cleveland."
Pretel says the focus is to cover all requests from other mayors and police chiefs.
Simon says the countywide unit is more of what council had in mind, but has reservations with overtime concerns about funding two units.
"I just hope that somehow we can staff it properly with our budget as it is, and I’m not 100% hopeful we’ll be able to do that.”
