Another deadly chase that ended in a crash killing an innocent driver.

Has raised questions about the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's downtown safety patrol.

The plan to remove the Gorge Dam and restore the Cuyahoga River is moving ahead.

An activist filed a lawsuit challenging Ohio's proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration that the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Ideas is next.

Hello, and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

A woman was killed sitting in her car at an intersection last weekend when a car being chased by a Cuyahoga County sheriff's deputies crashed into her.

It's the second such crash resulting in deaths since March.

And it's raising new questions about the Chase policy.

The downtown patrol and the sheriff's hiring practices.

Contaminated sediment will be removed from behind the Gorge Dam and the Cuyahoga River, a major step in the effort to remove the dam, improving the river's health.

Activists have filed a federal lawsuit challenging a new state requirement that people provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Governor Mike DeWine wants to.

Botanical herb kratom, known as gas station heroin, declared an illegal drug.

Joining me for the roundtable from Ideas and Public Media Education reporter Connor Morris and health reporter Taylor Wisner.

And in Columbus Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler, let's get ready to round table.

The death of an innocent bystander.

And another high speed chase by Cuyahoga County sheriff's deputies on downtown safety patrol is raising questions about chase policy and about the vetting process for deputies.

37 year old Charlotte Elder was killed.

She was the mother of two.

The Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office informed us, had formed the Safety patrol in 2023 to help Cleveland address downtown crime in the last five months.

Two crashes during chases by the Downtown Patrol have resulted in three deaths, two of them involving people who were not involved in those chases.

New reporting from the Marshall Project, Cleveland, now available on our website at Idea stream.org.

Also calls into question the hiring practices at the Sheriff's department.

A deputy involved in both crashes admitted to lying during his background check and keeping details off his application.

Taylor, let's start with the Chase.

It began as a traffic stop over the weekend.

Yeah, at around 115 in the morning on Sunday, deputies say they spotted a 24 year old Jamon Whitaker, the second driving without his headlights on.

They say it appeared erratic, that he may have been drunk.

So when they try and tried to pull him over around East 13th and Saint Clair, he fled.

At that point.

Deputy Casey Loudermilk, he's the same officer from a deadly March crash.

He led the pursuit.

Speeds hit, you know, 80 to 100mph in the chase.

Went through Cleveland.

Minutes later, Whitaker slammed into Charlie Elder's car at Superior and Addison Road.

An elder, later died at the hospital.

The chase was within policy in Cuyahoga County.

Conner.

The, the policy allows pursuit even for minor violations.

But there are limits.

Yeah.

So essentially, you need to get, supervisory approval before you can continue.

And that's what happened in this case.

From the reporting that we've seen, that decision has gone away.

Public safety risks essentially the seriousness of the suspected crime, the road and the weather conditions, apparently.

So there's a, supervisor is evaluating these things, along with the officer and then the supervisors giving them the okay to, to basically pursue or not pursue.

And that Chase policy has changed over time.

We had some reporting from Matt Richman at Idea Stream.

How has it changed?

Yeah.

So, since taking office, the, the county sheriff, to herald, how do you pronounce his last name?

Frederick Patel.

Patel?

Basically updating the policy, easing of restrictions on the use, actually, of, dangerous tactic.

It's, pretty precision immobilization technique or pursuit intervention technique.

There's a couple of different here.

They call it a pit.

Yeah, yeah.

Couple of different, ways to that.

You can define it there, but kind of pulling next to another vehicle using the front bumper and kind of pushing on the rear corner and trying to kind of get them off of the road, essentially.

So they're allowed to do that.

That didn't happen in this case, as far as I know.

I don't know the details about how this I, I'm not entirely sure.

Yeah.

But he has apparently eased the restrictions on, chases.

And that's something that I think a lot of people in the county level, county council as well, are asking questions about in the national conversation surrounding policing that we've seen over the last five years.

There have been questions raised about chases in particular.

Taylor.

What are those questions?

What are people talking about nationally about pursuit, especially in a case where lights are off or there's some other what appears to be a minor traffic infraction?

Yeah.

I mean, there's a question of sort of the risk to benefit.

National data shows more than half of the people killed in police pursuits are not the suspects.

They're passengers in the vehicle.

Are bystanders wrong place, wrong time.

So there's a question also of whether officers are preventing, you know, a public safety threat, you know, from the the traffic violations or if, you know, they're they're causing more of a public safety issue when these chases, you know, can escalate to 100mph and can sometimes and in tragedy.

So there's those factors.

There's also just timing, you know, there are possibilities for officers to arrest, you know, the suspect at a later point.

So there's a question of can we do this safely at another time?

Instead of escalating the situation.

And then, of course, you know, these situations can, give rise to lawsuits.

So that's another question of do you want to risk, you know, the financial repercussions of and bringing on, you know, a lawsuit if, you know, these, these, cases escalate, I can see you as a police officer.

You want to catch the bad guy?

Guy did something wrong, and he's trying to run away from you.

All right, well, we're going to go catch him.

And that's kind of, that's understandable.

But the question is, how does that impact the surrounding public?

Got a note from Steven who sends, an email to us.

You can as well, by the way.

So I at idea stream.org, he says these days we have the resources to do what's called digital pursuit, especially in cases where we know who we're following.

The chase just isn't worth the risk.

It may actually end up being cheaper and easier to apprehend later.

So, for example, if you have the license number, I mean obviously the fake license or something else, but essentially you can go knock on their door at another time and not put the public at risk, which is what his point was.

And something that you were bringing up earlier.

Yeah.

In Loudermilk case, Casey Loudermilk, who you mentioned Taylor, he's the deputy that was involved in the accident, the Chase and, deadly crash in March, as well as the one this past weekend, the story from the Marshall Project.

Connor says that he admitted to lying on his job application and that he, had lied during the vetting process there, too, during the, the, interview process.

Yeah.

So, essentially in his personnel file, he denied having already accepted a job as an officer with the Cleveland Clinic during the sheriff's department hiring process.

He also didn't list on his application that the Ohio State Highway Patrol and Highland Heights police had disqualified him for, failing a polygraph and even the physical agility test.

And that's according to his personnel file at the Marshall Project, and had gotten so and he was still hired even though that.

And we see that because we have, the Marshall project requested his personnel file, they quote experts and Cuyahoga County Council President Dale Miller saying that dishonesty on an application should disqualify an applicant.

Yeah.

And Miller has been, even in the case of the March pursuit that had killed somebody and the suspect, had also raised concerns that about do we need to be doing this?

He's also raised concerns more broadly about this downtown, safety confab that the sheriff's department, participates in.

And he said, do we even need to be spending county resources on this?

And he's raised serious questions about the use of the these pursuit tactics as well.

Yeah.

Their issue is that it's costing the county more than $1 million a year.

And really, it's the city of Cleveland's job.

I think the county executive, though, is saying we're part of that, too.

We're part of Cuyahoga County.

This is the seat of Cuyahoga County, and we should be helping to keep it safe.

Then you can spring off of that.

Whether or not the way that it's being done is keeping people safe.

Yeah, that the county executive said dismantling the Downtown Safety Patrol would risk public safety and undo meaningful progress that's been done to, really build trust and maintain stability across the county.

It was pretty direct quote from him.

They're from recent article.

A federal lawsuit challenges the state's new requirement that anyone registering to vote at a Bureau of Motor Vehicles location could be required to prove their citizenship.

So let's talk through what it is.

If I go into the DMV and I want to register to vote, they can demand to see proof of my citizenship.

Yeah.

Because first of all, non-citizens cannot vote in U.S. elections, presidential elections, that sort of thing.

And they also can't vote in Ohio elections because of a constitutional amendment the voters approved in 2020 do so.

You have to prove your citizenship.

So when you are registering to vote, you're supposed to prove your citizenship through passport, birth certificate, whatever.

And this lawsuit says that that violates the national motor voter law, which is what has been known as.

And there's some concern about how this requirement would affect people who don't have easy access to those citizenship documents.

For instance, people who have moved around a lot, older people who may have not, you know, their documents are very old.

They may not have been able to get them updated or even find them younger people who've moved and left them with their parents, women.

And this has been a problem even with real ID, if you went through, change of name because of a change in marital status, that could be a problem as well.

So they're concerned about the effect that that might have on people who are trying to register to vote.

Also in the suit, they're claiming that it applies only to somebody that goes to the BMV for voter registration.

Secretary of state's office pushed back on that interpretation, though, and said it applies to everybody, right?

Yeah.

The lawsuit had claimed that this is something that you would only deal with if you went in person to the DMV and that if you, registered online, you could just provide a sworn statement saying, yes, I'm a citizen.

And the attorney or the secretary of state's office wrote back to me saying, that's not true.

We check when you provide that sworn statement against the database that the Bureau of Motor Vehicles has.

And if it does not come up that you are a citizen, then you are listed as ineligible and you cannot register to vote that way.

So we've heard the Secretary of State say, that voting is secure and safe in Ohio, that voter integrity is high, that they do a great job.

But then we continue to hear about steps that need to be taken, such as we need and we need to make sure that people are actually citizens.

Is there evidence that we have a widespread problem of people going to the BMV, registering to vote and not being citizens?

No.

There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Ohio or nationwide.

For instance, there are more than 8.2 million registered voters in Ohio.

And you might remember a year ago last August, there was the announcement that 597 suspected cases of voter fraud were referred for prosecution, and that went back to 2008.

And that set off a dispute between Secretary State Frank LaRosa and county prosecutors, who said most of those 597 cases were too weak to prosecute.

So right before the election last year, there was an indictment of six people for voter fraud, suspected voter fraud, again, going back to like 2008.

So we're talking about very, very small numbers of people who are suspected of voter fraud compared to the 8.2 million registered voters in Ohio.

So, I mean, Republicans and those who have pushed for these bills have said, hey, any time we have anybody who is fraudulently registering or voting when they shouldn't be, that's a problem.

True.

But it's not a widespread problem.

The long sought removal of the Gorge Dam in the Cuyahoga River got a boost this week, when governor Mike DeWine and other officials announced a plan to remove nearly 1,000,000yd of sediment from behind the dam.

Conner, this is a big deal.

It sounds like.

Okay, so they're they're gouging out some old sand.

Big deal.

But you can't remove the dam unless you do that first.

And then we're talking about almost 1,000,000yd.

This is a huge project.

Yeah.

When you say sediment removal, it's like whatever.

But yeah, $130 million.

This has been, one of the officials there said there have been like two false starts in the last like five decades.

So they've been trying to do this for a long time, cobbled together a bunch of different, funding sources federal, local, state, and some interesting details.

So all that sediment, it'll be about 11 football fields worth, stacked 10 to 12ft tall.

And then also an interesting quote from DeWine.

He said that, he hopes to, once he's no longer governor, to come back and, you know, watch them blow up the dam that's going to be in 2032.

DeWine will be 85 years old.

I tell you what, I'm sure that he'll not only go, but he'll probably walk from Greene County right here.

Exactly.

Yes.

So the idea of removing the dam, we've heard this, throughout the country that removal of these dams is good for waterways.

We heard the mayor of Cuyahoga Falls just, built a boolean about what could be the possibilities once this dam is gone.

Yes, he was saying that, this would be the best opportunity for whitewater rafting this side of the Mississippi, basically.

And he was saying, we're going to build hotels.

We're going to build, you know, recreation, kind of like opportunities.

So it was really exciting for them.

It's exciting for Akron, too.

The gorge, the dam is technically in Akron.

All of the sediment, though, is in Cuyahoga Falls.

So they're removing all of that really nice clean waterway.

And it's going to be great for the entire river because it's going to be contiguous.

You can, you know, go all the way through the length of it.

There have been about six dams.

This is the sixth dam that needs to be removed on the Cuyahoga.

And what's interesting to me is you call it the city, Cuyahoga Falls.

And you're like, why are they calling it that?

Well, because there was this, this big waterfall that this dam has blocked.

Will that waterfall return?

It was built right over it.

Yeah.

The mayor says yes.

It's going to be, you know, Rapids that people can go over is is his was his statement.

There is has been some question about what it's going to look like when they do remove the dam.

So we're not entirely sure.

But it was that was the namesake for Cuyahoga Falls.

And the mayor said nobody alive today is even seen the falls that our city is named for.

So and so this will all be done by next month.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

In the next two days, actually, you know, the sediment removal will begin in the next couple of weeks, and then it should be done over the next couple of years, and then the dam should be removed, hopefully.

And emphasis on hopefully, by again, 2032.

Ohio will become the first state to require k-through-12 public schools to adopt policies on artificial intelligence.

Something required in the latest state budget bill.

I would think every school has got to have a policy or soon will, but Ohio kind of leading the way in requiring it.

Yeah.

And a lot of schools do.

I mean, we've heard from the Department of Education workforce that employers are saying that AI is very important in job environments.

And you've got colleges and universities, Ohio State being one of them.

That is saying every student who comes through our doors has to have some experience in dealing with artificial intelligence.

So now the state put into the budget that there would be this requirement, that there would be a model policy from the Department of Education and Workforce done by the end of this year, and then individual school districts have to come up with their own policy by July 1st of next year, kind of like they did with the cell phone policy last time around, where there was a lot of policy from the state, and then individual districts had to come up with their own.

But, this does not require schools to teach AI.

It just says, we've got to have some guardrails in place for how I should be used and what kids should know about it.

So what kind of policies are we talking about when we say AI.

Is it like how students can use it to do their term paper or how, teachers are using it to form lesson plans.

What what policies are we talking about.

Yes, all of that.

How privacy, how to protect privacy.

How to use data, how to use AI ethically.

How to make sure that you are following the rules because there are a lot of challenges with dealing with AI, which we are seeing over and over again.

And you're also seeing just like when the internet really first started and you saw a lot of students going to say Wikipedia to write papers and sort of thing.

Now you see the same kind of thing happening with ChatGPT and that and AI is wrong a lot.

I did some research earlier this week and found I was looking at different states and found that I got it wrong, unlike half the states that I was looking at in terms of what I was looking for.

So it's stuff like that that you AI is a tool, but it's not the answer.

It's not the way that you do these things.

And this is kind of what the policy is intended to bring out, is that all of these things I should be a tool for, not the way that it's performed, the way that a task is performed.

Right.

If it takes in the, the transcript of this show, for example, it would probably have in your bio that you bench press the state budget, which is not actually true.

Right.

Hey, I could but I mean, it's it's the idea of how do you site it, how do you use it?

How can teachers and students use it?

So having those things established at a K through 12 level, so that when you go on to whatever you're going on to after high school, you've already built that skill into what you're doing.

And that's, I think, part of the reason why this has been put into the budget and required for schools to do.

And and again, it is kind of surprising that Ohio was the first state to require this, but it will not be the last, I wouldn't think.

Governor Mike DeWine has ordered the Ohio Pharmacy Board to categorize the botanical herb kratom.

The plant and any synthetic product made from it.

An illegal drug.

kratom, is a botanical herb from Asia, sometimes referred to as gas station heroin, because I guess you can buy it there.

The federal government has already moved toward classifying kratom as an opiate, Karen, but the governor is saying, let's let's just flat out call this an illegal drug and put it on the roster.

Yeah.

And I'm not sure I hear it pronounced either kratom or kratom.

We were on a call this week with the Ohio Department of Health, and, Bruce Vanderhoff, the director of the Ohio Department of Health, did agree with the pronunciation of kratom.

But I've heard it the other way to.

But it's still it doesn't have whatever you call it.

It is a potentially dangerous and fairly unregulated substance.

And so DeWine asked you to called for some changes in regulation on Delta eight, which is another one of these kind of derivatives here.

He wants this to happen as well.

He wants the Ohio Pharmacy Board to basically ban it because it's it's there are some serious concerns about its safety.

And, what was it the other thing you talked about it didn't they call that diet weed?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

These are my colleague Sarah Donaldson has been following this pretty carefully.

And there are some parallels between Delta eight and kratom in terms of how they are being sold.

They're often being sold in similar locations, and there really aren't any regulations around these things.

And it's the synthetic kratom that's really a concern here, because that is that there are some very serious questions about the safety of that.

And, you know, there are people who are really devoted to this, this herb, whatever the supplement, whatever you want to call it.

But there have been, according to the Ohio Department of Health, more than 200 unintentional overdose deaths between 2019 and 2024 from that synthetic kratom.

And so that's the real concern here.

I think when you start talking about this stuff being unregulated, kids can get Ahold of it.

Anybody can get it.

There are still those, though, who want to keep it legalized.

Yes.

And even the American Kratom Association has said we need to put some rules in place so that they aren't there.

These bans don't come forward because that quite often is the reaction is just ban it entirely.

And the Kratom Association says, hey, there are safe ways to sell it.

You just need to put regulations in place.

And so what we've seen in Ohio, though, that even Delta eight, which again, DeWine has called for regulation on that for several years, the bills that would regulate that have not gone anywhere.

And so I think he calling on the pharmacy board is is kind of like, a Hail Mary in a way of let's, let's do something about this, because he's he and others are very concerned.

The new host of the Daily Sound of Ideas program on KSU is Stephanie Haney.

She starts September 2nd.

sound of ideas, except for this ten year dark hole in which I was the host, was known as a convener of community, a forum that offers a depth to provide space for all issues to be discussed, feedback delivered.

How will you approach your role in that?

I hope to approach it and hope people feel comfortable in this, in in bringing their ideas and thoughts as really just a mediator of people bringing ideas and conversations and facts to the table and hopefully creating a space where people can can learn more, their perspective can be broadened and also they have the opportunity to broaden someone else's perspective.

So I really do hope to continue that incredible legacy and be a conduit for the important conversations that need to happen in Northeast Ohio.

I saw a social media post where we were talking about the new role, and come join me on Tuesday at 9:00 in the morning.

And you asked for feedback from the community about what the show should be covering, where you should be, what are you hoping to hear?

I am just hoping to hear a lot.

I'm hoping to get a lot of responses from people.

I really do want this to be a forum where people are getting able to to talk about the things that are important to them and learning about things that maybe they didn't know about before, because maybe someone shared an obscure perspective that hadn't been on someone's radar before.

And I'll tell you this we were down in canton yesterday.

This post will come out on social media later today, I think, or this weekend.

And getting out into the community and actually talking with people too, about the things that they want to hear, something that's really important to me.

So I'm hoping to do a lot of that.

You know, what's beautiful about this show is it reaches 22 counties.

So I want to get out there to all of those counties and experience those things and see the things that are important to everyone.

That's a part of the Sound of Ideas family.

So you talked to people in canton yesterday and you were saying, hey, this isn't the show.

If you don't know it, join it.

If you do know it, what should we be talking about?

What kind of things did you hear from people?

Well, a lot of people in canton are very interested in what's going on with the Hall of Fame Village.

I don't think anyone will be surprised to hear that.

No, I was just at the water park there the other day.

Oh, you were raising one young.

You must have that exclusive VIP access.

Yeah.

So a lot of that.

A lot of people speaking about general ideas as well that will relate to everyone.

There are some conversations about crimes and conversations about child protective services, resource is for parents that are single and working.

So parenting was a big conversation as well.

Yesterday.

I really kind of ran the gamut.

That's what really is what's cool about this show, because it covers everything.

So and I became interested when I was hosting it in everything because, oh, that's something there's got to be somebody that really cares about this.

And there almost always is.

It can go from health care to politics to the really wonky stuff.

What is your bag?

Are you like, are you like a policy nerd or obviously legal stuff?

But like for you, what is the the perfect topic for a show to dig into or a theme?

Well, honestly, the more obscure the better.

I am a naturally curious person and I want to be surprised.

I want to be educated.

That's why I love working in journalism.

You're constantly learning something new.

I do not take for granted the opportunity that I have to get to speak to an expert and ask a question that people are googling, you know, that access is just incredible.

But obviously legal analysis is something that I feel really comfortable with.

I really like explaining topics that are complicated and kind of breaking it down.

There is a law dictionary.

You know, people speak differently in the legal world, right, for a reason.

But I also am, really passionate about health and wellness and mental health, too.

So all of that, but really everything I remember once, on a show, there was a technical topic and I said, you know, if only I was a rocket scientist, there would be somebody like that could answer it.

The next call was Joe from Fairview Park, a rocket scientist at NASA, who had the answer.

So that's kind of one of the cool things about this show is not only do you have experts that are on the air, but the people who are listening in their own ways, and a million different ways are experts.

And if they join the show, you suddenly get this amazing transformation about how you can deliver this information to people.

Absolutely.

It is the most beautiful opportunity for a brain trust here in Northeast Ohio.

And the people here in Northeast Ohio, they know their stuff.

They're great.

I'm really excited to connect with more people here.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 89 seven KSU.

We're off for the Labor Day holiday, and we'll air NPR specials at 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., and be sure to join The Sound of Ideas on Tuesday at 9 a.m. with our new host, Stephanie Haney.

She'll lead a conversation marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, and the effort to care for all of our vets whenever and wherever they served.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.