- [Speaker] Cleveland Police released body camera footage of an officer involved fatal shooting this after the chief pleaded with the community to not conflate this incident with others, sparking outrage around the country.

Corona virus numbers in Ohio, continue to trend in the wrong direction with Summit and Cuyahoga County's among the top five for COVID-19 cases and lawmakers in Columbus seek to fix the unconstitutional school funding system, Ideas is next.

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- Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre, Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said a 25 year old man shot and killed Thursday night was a murder suspect who pulled a gun on a police officer during a chase and body camera footage was released showing the incident, the night before a federal drug enforcement agency undercover agent shot a 20 year old Cleveland man who he said brandished a gun.

In pandemic news Summit and Cuyahoga counties are among those with the highest COVID 19 cases this week as week as Ohio now has 200 cases per a hundred thousand residents, four times the threshold of 50 needed to lift pandemic health orders and the Ohio House of Representatives unveils its budget bill and folds in a school funding fix joining me to discuss these stories and more our idea stream health reporter Anna Huntsman, Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler and Sharon Broussard Project Manager for the Northeast Ohio Solutions Journalism Collaborative.

Let's get ready to round table.

Sharon when you have cases like this in Cleveland, in the midst of what we're seeing nationally, I suppose you can see why the police chief is immediately saying we need to look at facts here.

- Yeah, definitely, I can understand why he wants to do that.

I guess the kind of then puts into sharp relief police agencies that neglect to do that you know, that they're holding onto the video, for as long as possible, you know, raising suspicions.

This was perhaps an easy one.

You know, the guy had a gun he was terrorizing supposedly the neighborhood and that kind of thing.

But you know, it's on those harder cases that, you know, you really wanna see police be more proactive be more on top of their policies.

Be very clear to the public about what has happened or as clear as they can be.

So that way there's no sense, that, you know, once again the police are just trying to hide things from the public's view.

- It's interesting because I think no one expected body cam video to be released as quickly because it was Cleveland the city itself and the police department aren't generally quick to provide information even that which the media believes is public.

And in fact, there's a case with the CMHA Police where there was a shooting there.

Idea stream is still enjoined in a legal battle to get the tape from that incident.

Should it exist from both CMHA and the Cleveland police.

So while there is a sort of a push toward transparency here that isn't necessarily always the case in Cleveland, Sharon.

- Yeah, a lot of my, the reporters who worked for the outlets there were 20 of them.

You know, many of them do complain that just getting you know, public records that aren't necessarily that controversial as, you know, a police shooting or something like that.

It's just very difficult.

I'm hoping that that changes when Cleveland has elections and there are more people who are dedicated to making sure that the public could scrutinize the public's business.

- When we're looking at this case.

And we see that police were there to serve a warrant and that the person that they were after was someone who was charged with homicide and other crimes as well.

But that video is stark.

- Yeah, it's hard to watch.

And it's hard to even, just as you were laying this all out and talking about the other events it's obviously really hard to hear all of that.

It's heartbreaking, regardless of the situation.

And it's, you know, it's kind of the city is blaming the rise in gun violence for these cases and so many guns on the streets and you know, there's guns, guns, guns, and then, you know there's the public on the other side saying, well are the police, the judge, jury and executioner, you know, it's a very big discussion and I can totally understand, you know, I take Chief William's point about don't think about the other cases, every situation every circumstance is different, but at the same time like I was saying before when you hear about this almost every day, I mean it feels like this whole week has been inundated with the headlines about these cases.

I mean, it just, you really start to think about it and this clearly it's a problem on many sides, but again like we were talking about before the video is it's grueling, it's very stark.

- Karen, there was a fatal officer involved shooting in Columbus this week as well to raise some concerns.

This one involved a police and a shooting inside in an emergency room?

- Yeah, this was Mount Carmel facility in Westerville.

And apparently according to police, the timeline is that there was a man who was a man who was Manny Miles Jackson who was found, passed out in the car police learned to get an open warrant for domestic violence and a weapons charge.

They took him to the hospital, apparently during a search they found some bullets and there was an exchange of gunfire as the police report says.

And so now BCI is investigating but this comes after to high-profile police shootings in the last year or so with Andre Hill who the autopsy report was just put out on him showing that he was shot four times by a Columbus police officer and also Casey Goodson another person who was a victim of a police shooting.

And so all of these things together as Lisa's saying that this really starts to feel like it's adding up that it's a lot to take in all at once.

And so when this is happening, as the trial of Derek Shovan happens and then Dante Wright happens I mean, it just all feels very overwhelming.

I think for a lot of people.

- Here's an email actually I wanted to run too.

Cause it goes into a thought of a comment of a question that I was going to ask.

And this is from Rosa who says Chief Calvin Williams lied.

She claims about police beginning the chaos, downtown May 30th, 2020.

This was the protest of Black Lives Matter protest downtown.

She, he refuses to hold an officer responsible in Desmond Franklins death.

She continues, couldn't even fire Timothy Loehmann for the murder of 12 year old Tamir Rice which we all watched on heartbreaking dash cam video.

The Cleveland police are still under a consent decree for their biased behavior.

Why would we trust police leadership about these two recent shootings, Sharon?

- Yeah and that's the problem, I think for police departments all over the U.S I mean basically I think the intersection of all these various cases, I mean, you know one guy might've been an immersive psycho I don't know, we'll see.

But the other ones are just kind of such a lack of you know, the police don't trust the black guys that there's stopping the black guys don't trust the cops enough to, you know, immediately obey orders without trying to point out like, Oh, you know I got my hands up and you know, things like that.

So it, you know, it just shows that police departments really have to work on better relations with the public which is something we've been talking about for it just seems for generations.

But I mean, I think if we really want these steps to stop accumulating this is definitely got to be a part of the plan.

- Karen, I do, I did note that the body camera footage was being released in most places, many places police officers have body cameras.

They've got to run them at a certain time based on local policy or their state policy that concerns body cameras as well.

- Well, actually there was a report that came out the collaborative community police advisory board put out a report saying the more than 500 law enforcement agencies had responded to that.

And almost half of those are using body cameras and the governor in the, in his version of the budget.

And it's actually still in the house version of the budget had rose $10 million for police body cameras.

So there's really an effort to try to get body cameras into police departments and then of course there has to be some policy on how to use those when those will be turned off and that sort of thing.

But at least there is a statewide interest in getting policed, those, that kind of technology.

- Sharon?

- Yeah, but I still wanna say that there are despite the policies, there are still been too many high profile cases where the cops have not turned on their videos, even though they have them, the case of Andre Hill and Columbus coming out of his group coming out of a garage with a cell phone and they did not turn on their body cams.

And they had some kind of there's some 22nd or something back look.

So that way they could see what's going on.

But you know, you read about that way too often.

They have the cameras they should be in use.

- Summit and Cuyahoga are both in the top five counties for COVID-19 cases in Ohio this week, the spread of virus variants in the state continues to push hospitalizations higher and move us further from the benchmark to drop health orders.

- Anna yesterday, the governor highlighted the counties were spread his highest here.

He is talking about that.

- Majority of these high incidents counties are right along the Northern part.

So while we're seeing increase in cases in most counties in Ohio, where we're seeing the most of course is in the Northern part of the part of the state.

- So is he equating this with the high spread of variants coming from Michigan too?

Is that?

- Yeah, definitely.

So a big thing right now is that the variants are here and the most, the more contagious variant the B117 variant it originated in the UK.

That seems to be one of the leading causes of the spread right now.

And we see that in Michigan, which is the current, you know, hotspot of COVID-19 in the U.S and I've talked with experts about this and weeks ago they were already warning about this, you know, the spread in Michigan and how it could affect our spread here.

And experts were careful to say, you know it's not like the virus just walks over the border.

It's not exactly.

You can't always equate it that way.

But when you think about it up in the Northern counties near Michigan, they're seeing a lot of the spread or they're at the very top of this list.

And so a lot of residents there travel across the border a lot for work.

You know, it's very much a that's a common thing to do up there.

And so that could be driving the spread there.

But another reason is just general virus fatigue.

We're sick of this.

You know, people are maybe giving up on their precautions and a lot more people are getting vaccinated.

I don't know about you, Mike.

But when I got my first dose, I felt a little invincible myself.

You know, I was like, well, this is great.

I'm one more step, but you have to remember you're not fully protected by any means especially not when you consider these variants that in some cases can evade antibodies.

I mean, we think the vaccines are good but you're not fully protected.

You're not getting that 94 to 95 until two weeks after your second dose.

- Right, Karen, I know you're big on Twitter and I've been following the governor and he puts up the numbers about that they're rising and they're going in the wrong direction.

And I see these comments that are like, yeah, right.

So mass really work huh?

Those kinds of things.

It just, sometimes the dissonance is profound.

- Yeah and I mean, when you start talking about where it's spreading rapidly, I mean Franklin County here in Columbus, we went back to purple which is the highest level and the of the state tracking colors.

So yeah, it's still out there.

And I think that while the state has done what I think a lot of people would argue has been a really good job of getting vaccines out there to large groups of people with the vaccine clinics go.

Some of those have been interrupted a little bit by what happened with the J and J vaccine.

I mean, you still have about 35% of Ohioans who have at least the first shot but Anna's absolutely right that the immunity and the real effectiveness doesn't take effect until two weeks after the second shot, if you're doing the two shot Pfizer or Moderna but you know, the average of the cases remember when the governor set 50 cases per 100,000 people over two weeks, that was the point at which mass mandates were off all that stuff, we're now at 200 cases per 100,000 residents, which is what four times what the governor had originally said.

So while the goal has been to get to that 50 cases point that's not where the numbers are going.

And Dwayne is very well aware of the law that will take effect in June, unless it's challenged that would allow state lawmakers to go ahead and remove those mask orders and any other orders they disagree with.

And so if we haven't hit that 50 cases per 100,000 residents by then state lawmakers are gonna go ahead and do that most likely unless the laws appeal.

- And also I think the statistics have shown us that when people are fully vaccinated the chances of their getting very sick are low.

- Yes that is true.

- The chances of their getting COVID are low, we talked about these efficacy rates being in the 95 percentile, but yesterday, Doctor Bruce Vanderhoff, Karen was talking about how what we're looking at in terms of the number of people who are vaccinated coming in and actually having contracted COVID-19 is so low that the we're doing way better than this 95% efficacy.

- Yeah, absolutely 154 people have been fully vaccinated for at least two weeks have come down with COVID-19 in Ohio.

That is a tremendously low number.

When you start talking about the number of people who have been fully vaccinated I don't have that number up in front of me right yet but I mean, we've got 4.2 million Ohioans who have at least started the process.

So, you know, this is the it is still possible to get COVID, even if you've had the vaccine, because they are not perfect.

They're not a hundred percent effective.

And if you're not following all the other things that you're supposed to be doing, wearing a mask, social distancing, washing hands, all that stuff, then, you know, there is that risk.

And so for 154 people, which is incredibly low, I mean 2.8 million Ohioans have had both doses or have completed the vaccine process 154 out of 2.8 million.

So that's very very low, but it's still a possibility.

And that's the real concern in telling people to continue to wear a mask, continue to social distance continue to do all these things we've been doing all along.

And, you know, that's the against people who wanna talk about how the vaccines are not effective effective guys.

They knew somebody who got COVID after they had the vaccine, it does happen.

It's very rare though.

- I always say if Karen Kasler doesn't have an exact number give her 30 seconds and she'll find it, in the midst of your answer.

You found the 2.8 million.

Well, there was one big roadblock though this week and you guys talked about it.

You and Lisa Ryan talked about it extensively here on the sound of ideas, Wednesday the centers for disease control and prevention and the food and drug administration paused the use of the single dose Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.

Ohio also has paused the use, here's the governor.

- We are instructing providers who have jots and jots and vaccine to store those onto those until they receive further guidance.

- We're talking about six people.

This came after six people, all women who had blood clots within weeks of receiving the vaccine.

So this recommendation was let's pause it let's do some investigation.

But when we talked about that low number and a of the number of people who've been vaccinated in Ohio and who got it 154 out of 2.8 million what we're talking about here is six people.

Who've had these out of 7 million and a very large number of people that have had it so putting it in perspective it isn't one of those things where you're like we have a huge problem, but why would there be a recommendation from the FDA and the centers for disease control to pause this?

- Well, it's, you know, definitely a precautionary thing.

And I think the key here is that the six women who developed this rare blood clot they didn't have any risk factors that otherwise would make them like predisposed to be more likely to get a blood clot.

So they're really investigating to see, was it something, is there a causal link between this vaccine and them getting the blood clot.

So again they're just really trying to be overly protective here.

And we'll know, I think in less than 10 days now whether they'll recommend to continue pausing it or if we can start distributing it again.

- And Sharon what does this do I know that the Northeast Ohio Solutions Journalism Collaborative has worked on a number of stories about vaccine hesitancy particularly in minority communities.

Now we have, and I've heard before situations where folks in minority communities were leery of Johnson Johnson already because they assumed that the two shot was better.

And people who were getting the two shot were going to be the privileged and that they were gonna then say, here are the leftovers and here's the Johnson and Johnson, not necessarily true but that was a pervasive thought.

Now we see a problem with that vaccine.

What's that going to do to the hesitancy argument?

- Oh, I think for those who are already like on the fence or leaning toward not getting it it just puts more, you know, fuel into their pumps to say, oh, I'm not gonna get this.

So it's not good news, even though, you know, I think if our country, as a whole was more accepting of vaccines, against COVID in general, this would just kind of be a blip.

But because there are so many people who are still you know, squeamish about it all, anything that they can you know, load on to say, oh, well, okay these six people have gotten it and look what happened to them is not good.

But I think the transparency saying like, yeah there were six, these are their situations.

We're gonna take a look into it.

I think that helps a lot to build trust.

- And Karen, the Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Bruce Vanderhoff, who I mentioned earlier has often talked about the reporting system in place that tracks these vaccines.

In real time, he says this pause on Johnson and Johnson is an indication the system's working.

- Right and he talked to this week about how anybody who has cause for concern should see this pause as a good thing because it means that tracking is working.

It means that there is careful consideration going into play here at the federal level, as well as at the state level on whether these vaccines are safe.

And they are, I mean, when you start talking about six cases for 7 million vaccines, that's less than a one in a million chance of severe complications and a one in 7 million chance of death which those are pretty good odds for most people but of course there's a lot of concern and the mass vaccination clinics that we're starting and continuing on at colleges and universities and other places, many of them are continuing on now using Pfizer and Moderna about eight of them were canceled this week because they were specifically planning on having J and J and they are pausing that, but still the idea of trying to get through the message that yes this was being done over an abundance of caution and concern, and it's going to be safe.

I think that, you know there are two sides of that message, the message of, wow!

It's great that there's a lot of concern about this but also, hey, are these vaccines potentially dangerous and you know, the differences these are different kinds of vaccines.

I mean, Moderna and Pfizer are MRNA vaccines while J and J is a little bit different.

It's more like the AstraZeneca vaccine which is raising concern internationally, but it's still they've shown to be very effective with very few side effects.

So hopefully like Anna was saying we should have some sort of decision shortly from the FDA on whether it can come back out again.

And there will be a real effort, I think to try to convince people, no this is safe.

This one and done vaccine is a safe Avenue to pursue.

- Anna what's going on with Waldstein.

I know they're still doing the Pfizer the second shot Pfizer.

Cause my kids are scheduled this coming weekend to get their second shot.

So I know that's still being wrapped up but then the plan was two weeks of Johnson and Johnson.

That's on pause, did they come up with another plan yet?

- There are, I believe Dwayne said plans, A, B, C, and D in the works.

They're still figuring out the logistics.

And they actually, because this is a federal run site through FEMA.

They do have to come up with a plan by Wednesday to the federal government.

So things are in the works.

They're figuring out those logistics.

On the table is extending the clinic.

If Johnson and Johnson is back or excuse me if they have to do Pfizer and Moderna.

So a two dose shot, they would have to extend the clinic to account for those second doses.

So this would go from an eight week clinic to like a 12 week clinics.

So that's one of the options.

And if Johnson and Johnson is resumed perhaps they would just go ahead with it.

But we don't know those details quite yet.

- A substitute budget bill introduced earlier this week by the Ohio House Finance Committee incorporates a long awaited overhaul of the state school funding system which has been ruled unconstitutional four times.

The overhaul would increase spending on education by nearly $2 billion phased in over the next six years starting with 150 million in 2023 the second year of the two year budget.

Miss Karen, does this budget bill and the fair school funding plan supplant the longstanding effort to overhaul school funding that was an independent bill?

- No, this kind of folds it all in I mean the house bill last session that passed overwhelmingly that would have basically overhauled the school funding system.

It stalled in the Senate because of concerns about how to fund it because the estimate was that it would cost about $1.8 billion beyond what the state is already spending on public education to get it fully implemented.

And so now this is in the house budget where that $1.9 billion is folded in.

But what's interesting here is that it's really pushed off a lot to future state legislators and future budgets because this budget while it says there's a $1.8 billion commitment to doing this, there's only $150 million in the second year of the budget that starts that whole phase in.

And so that kind of makes it a little bit it's not fully implemented yet.

And so I think that's interesting something to watch also something to watch on this is where schools with a lot of economically disadvantaged kids where poor schools end up, whether they get the kind of funding that the studies say that they really need to get those economically disadvantaged students to the same level as their wealthier counterparts.

So this is really something to keep an eye on in terms of how it might potentially change when it goes over to the Senate and what the real effect of it's going to be.

- I know we'll dig into it deeper on the sound of ideas but essentially the unconstitutionality comes from the fact that we rely so heavily on property taxes.

This would take some of the pressure off of that and not just be as property tax reliant.

- Yeah, very simply put, and I'm telling you this is really overly simplified.

- Very simply.

- It takes it so that it's a 60% property tax values 40% household income and brings that together as a formula.

But there were a lot of other factors here as well.

And the question is boosting districts that have low property values and low incomes and really helping those districts move up while not dramatically hurting districts that have a lot more money and a lot more property values and income and it's, it's very complicated it always is.

- Ohio lawmakers are working on several bills that would increase the number of arrestable offenses at protests including blocking traffic penalties would be more severe.

If offenses are committed during a demonstration that becomes violent, Sharon supporters of this bill say there intended to protect first responders but opponents say the bills are aimed at preventing people from demonstrating.

This is interesting given all that we talked about earlier in the environment we're in.

- Yeah and I would say that, you know, if there was a major problem with protests and people burning down States all the time this would be a different issue, but I mean, 93% according to the story of protests are non-violent.

So you've been there's a conservative organization that just said like you know, this is a way of really cracking down on protest.

It's current laws are doing all that they can on that and there's really no need for additional laws on this topic.

- Okay these bills that at least some version of these bills that are being discussed right now had been proposed last session and nothing happened.

And a lot of it was a reaction to what we saw after the demonstrations over George Floyd, state house did sustain some damage but there are some real conflicting eons on what exactly happened with some of that damage.

But what was interesting this week is that there was a gentleman who broke into the state house this week and set off a fire extinguisher, broke a couple of windows.

He was found on the state house lawn later.

And he told police in an interview afterwards that he did this because he was looking for help for dealing with drug addiction.

And that's just, that's brings up a whole different area of why people might do something that may be seen one way but actually was for a different cause that they're trying to bring attention to.

And so I think these bills are going to get a lot of looks in terms of what they do with regard to free speech and people's ability to express themselves.

- And that's going to wrap up this week's show coming up Monday on the sound of ideas.

We'll bring you the fourth in a year long series of conversations convened by the United Way of Greater Cleveland and the Cleveland NAACP on the consent decree that Cleveland entered into with the U.S Department of Justice over Cleveland's violation of the U.S constitution.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks for watching and stay safe.

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