Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther announced late last week that the city is suspending its use of Flock automatic license plate readers while investigating an officer’s potential misuse of the cameras.
A USA Today investigation found that an officer searched for a single vehicle’s location more than 200 times using the city’s cameras.
Will we get to see Ohio's governor candidates Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy debate? The short answer is no. We will discuss why.
After the death of a 20-year-old Springfield resident and Haitian migrant, many people are once again questioning ICE tactics. Pierre Damas Bel died last week by apparent suicide.
All of these topics and more are coming up on a special Tuesday edition of the Reporter Roundtable.
Guests:
- George Shillcock, WOSU news reporter
- Marty Schladen, reporter, Ohio Capital Journal
- Andrew Tobias, state government and politics reporter, Signal Ohio
- Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter, Cleveland.com
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to a special Tuesday edition of the All Sides Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we catch up on the political news of last week and preview the week ahead. I'm your host Amy Juravich. Democratic candidate for governor Amy Acton was rushed by an armed man at a weekend campaign event. No one was seriously hurt. Acton wasn't injured, but a few people were knocked down during the incident. Acton, who is a doctor, provided medical aid at the scene. And she also went on to campaign the next day. We will have more updates on this event when our State House reporters join us in a few minutes.
But first, we're going to cover some updates regarding the Flock license plate reading cameras in the city of Columbus. Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther announced late last week that the city is suspending its use of Flock automatic license plate reader cameras while investigating an officer's potential misuse of the cameras. The city also began covering the cameras late Friday afternoon. A USA Today investigation found that one officer searched for a single vehicle's location more than 200 times using the city's cameras. So joining us now with an update on the citys flock cameras is WOSU news reporter George Shilcock. Welcome back George.
George Shillcock: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: So let's start with why the mayor is suspending the use of the cameras. I mean, people have been talking about this, calling for this action for months now, so why now?
Shillcock: So it really traces back to the fact that they were alerted of this misconduct by this database that USA Today published where you can literally look up your license plate and see if you've been tracked before. But it also, you're able to look at and see by police department, individual officers and how many times they searched for maybe a single license plate, maybe multiple uses of it, and what it. Pointed out was they flagged a specific officer, his name is Officer Melvin Telis, saying that he searched, like you said, over 270 times for the location of a single license plate. And reporters start asking about this at the dispatch, and eventually the city decided, yes, we're going to investigate this. We're placing Telis on leave, and we're also going to suspend use of the flock cameras for now.
Juravich: Now, the public has been calling for the suspension of the flock cameras for months now. There's been a lot of debate about it. I mean, an hours long city council meeting on it. Why did this one incident make the mayor make that move?
Shillcock: It may have been, we don't know for sure, but it may have because they didn't find any misuse before. If you've been listening in on this, the mayor, the police chief, a lot of the police community have been huge defenders of flock cameras. And you know, this isn't happening in a vacuum. A lot of other cities use flock cameras and there's been misuse spotted at other police departments, but not here in Columbus until now. It wasn't spotted until now.
Juravich: Now I called them flock automatic license plate reading cameras because I'm trying to explain rather than just use the word flock, explain what they are. But I mean, they record, so in theory they're supposed to record just cars, is that right? But do they record more than the car?
Shillcock: It's a camera. So how it's been explained to me by the Columbus Division of Police and by our other reporter, Katie Genius, who follows us super closely is that these cameras, they take photos of every single car that passes. And of course, it's not just a car that's being taken. There's not a car in the photo. There is a lot more else in the photo. But what it does is it captures the license plate, but it also captures the characteristics of a car. So that when a police officer. Wants to search for a suspect or something, they can search by license plate. They can search saying, hey, I want to find a red Toyota truck that drove in this area around this time, and the software within the Flock camera's database is able to then help them find that and narrow down that search.
Juravich: And it's video and photos, is that right?
Shillcock: That's a great question. I believe it's just photos from how it's been explained to me.
Juravich: Okay, so, and then, but when it takes the photo, I mean, more than just the car is in the picture, right? Because you'll see people around and that kind of thing, right.
Shillcock: Correct, yes, and there's even been some, there's been some upgrades to the technology as well. I believe they're rolling out a feature that can even track Bluetooth signals from within the cars that they're spotting.
Juravich: So the police like these cameras, as you said. They've helped solve crimes. Do the police want to get them back up and running? Do they want to investigate this one officer and then say, you know, everything's fine?
Shillcock: So, the mayor announced the suspension at a press conference late last week, and from what he said, you know, they're still defending and pretty ardent supporters of this technology, the police chief especially. It sounds like they want to investigate this, put in safeguards, and then maybe even reactivate it. That is, if they're allowed to do so, because we have a city council that's increasingly sounding like they don't want to use flock anymore.
Juravich: Yeah, so prior to this Friday announcement, that the cameras were being, well, I think it was a Thursday announcement that the camera was being suspended, but Columbus City Council had been working on some legislation to regulate the cameras. The mayor's office had announced some changes. Is that all kind of on hold because the cameras are not on right now?
Shillcock: I wouldn't say so. I think we have this pending decision coming up at the end of this year where the contract to work with Flock, because it's a private company that they're contracting with, that's up for renewal. And I think you can see the mood of city council is changing toward getting rid of Flock. And that may be what they're moving toward is eventually just not renewing the contract, or they can even be ending it sooner. We don't really know yet.
Juravich: Yeah. And would there are other companies that do this. So do you think that there would just or now we have a sour taste in our mouth for all of these kinds of things.
Shillcock: It kind of depends. Flock is the one we keep seeing in the news because for numerous reasons, I think it's the most widespread. They really sought out this government grant program to work with a lot of different police departments around the country. But you're right, this isn't the only company. For example, there's one called Axon. I know Axon really well from public records requests where we get a body camera from police. They have body cameras. That's what they're most well known for. I believe they do dash cameras as well, but then they also do automatic license plate readers. So it could be like some police departments have been switching to that citing The concerns around flock citing comments that the CEO made about people being against flock being domestic terrorists There's been a lot of controversy around this company and some are just shutting down this altogether or they're switching companies and just getting different cameras
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News and we are talking about the city of Columbus suspending the use of flock license plate reading cameras, at least for now. And we're talking with WOSU News reporter George Shilcock. So late in the day on Friday, you found that the city was also covering up the cameras and you basically raced out of the newsroom because you were like, I got to see this. Why do they have to cover them?
Shillcock: So it's almost symbolic in a sense because you know if they if they ask the company to stop using them if they're not using them Anymore, that's one thing but these are of course cameras owned by a private company So I feel like covering them up is like an extra step being like hey This is so they're being used by anybody just in case so they can't get
Juravich: So they can't guarantee a flock will turn them off if they ask them to or something?
Shillcock: That's unknown. I don't know the inner workings of this private company, but that may be a worry of them because when you look back at when they were auditing the data, they found that other police departments were using their data. Immigration Customs Enforcement was using their data. So this is kind of maybe just an extra step. Other cities like Dayton also did this, they bagged up their cameras. The one that I first found, I went kind of straight down the The first one I spotted was at the corner of the Fifth Avenue and North High Street in the short north. Both cameras looking both south and north were both bagged up. I drove home and saw one on the south side at Whittier and Parsons Avenue too. So I feel like they're just kind of taking that extra step just to be careful.
Juravich: Okay, so they put like little black bags on top of the cameras
Shillcock: Yeah, it's like almost trash bag
Juravich: Well, because the cameras are small, what's bigger is the solar panel that runs the camera. Because I looked at your photo and it's small, they just need a little bag to cover it.
Shillcock: Yeah, like I can probably hold it in my hand like it's a chunky camera, but I could probably hold it in one hand. Yeah, but the sole-
Juravich: Yeah, but the solar panels are the big part like you you notice you wouldn't notice the camera you notice the solar panel first, right? Right.
Shillcock: Exactly. Yes.
Juravich: Okay, so this the internal audit that was conducted by Columbus police earlier this year didn't flag any potential misuse So how did USA Today figure it out, but the city's own audit didn't?
Shillcock: So I asked this question. I was just like, hey, how why did a newspaper find this out? You guys didn't when you guys did this whole audit earlier this year and what I was told was that the essentially they when they first did this audit they they put out a mass amount of information of these like 15,000 searches that were done by Columbus police by their partner agencies and they sort of analyzed that primarily looking for two things they really wanted to spot if Immigration and customs enforcement or other agencies were using it to track immigrants. They were also looking if anyone was tracking like reproductive care, like tracking people who got an abortion. And that was how they explained to me was like, hey, we weren't looking for this at first. And this internal tool that Flock developed to audit, the other thing they told me was this only started this year and the data only went back so far. This officer who searched the location of a single vehicle 200 times. That happened primarily in 2024, but over the course of about a year.
Juravich: Okay, yeah, didn't it, I read somewhere that it was like as soon as the city's cameras were up and running, this officer began searching, right?
Shillcock: And I want to be clear, they did determine that this had nothing to do with an investigation of any sort, but they're still trying to figure out this officer's motive, like who is he tracking, right? We don't really know who this person was, that he was looking up so many times.
Juravich: Right. Okay. And so you're saying basically the city's audit did 2025, but then maybe they didn't catch him because he did most of this in 2024.
Shillcock: That's that's at least how they kind of explained it to me
Juravich: Okay, so you mentioned that the city's contract with Flock expires in December, but do you think we're going to make it till December here? I mean, it's early September.
Shillcock: That's a great question. Before recently, we really had two city council members speaking up and saying like, we need to end the contract with Flock. I don't support this. That was Lourdes Barroso de Padilla and Melissa Green. More recently, we've had a lot more others like City Council President Shannon Harden step up expressing their concerns and saying, maybe we shouldn't work with this company anymore.
Juravich: Okay.
Shillcock: So it could happen sooner, but they could just wait it out till the end of the year.
Juravich: And, but the police, I mean, what are they saying about the, that the cameras are being suspended, you know, based on this one, one police officer who's a bad actor, but then all the other outcry. I mean they want to use the cameras. They, they, they say that they saw they, they help solve crimes.
Shillcock: Right. Yeah. So police chief Elaine Bryant, before she gave us the full details of this officer, she went on a tangent being like, hey, we're all about building trust in the community. The trust was obviously broken here, but she framed it as we want to build back up trust. And we saw kind of the first step toward, I guess, their strategy on Friday, late Friday, they released a list of new safeguards that the mayor was calling for primarily to sort of restrict the use of lock and provide more oversight over it. Some of those were like kind of stuff that really shouldn't have been allowed anyway, like not allowing this for personal use, like this officer, but now not allowing immigration searches, not allowing reproductive care searches, having a seven day limit for retention of the data. Like, unless this is being used in a investigation, they need to wipe all the data now. Because before that, it's being stored. Like all this data is being retained for a pretty long time.
Juravich: And it just seemed like we did another show on Flock and we talked with another reporter from the Washington Post and it just seems logical that maybe to do a search, it has to be associated with an active case or a warrant and that wasn't the case, right? That was not the case. Okay. And so that's one of the changes. And that's the changes that they're talking about is like to be able to do search, you need to have a warrant or something like that. Is that correct? Yeah, is that correct, all right. Well, I guess we are going to see what happens. Is that where we're at?
Shillcock: Yep, it's kind of a wait and see thing.
Juravich: Well, we've been talking about recent updates to the city of Columbus and their suspension of the use of flock license plate reading cameras in the city, and they've suspended it, at least for now. We have been talking with WOSU news reporter George Hillcock. Thanks for joining us, George. Thanks, Amy. And coming up, we're going to talk about the governor's race from a weekend incident at the acting campaign event to a challenge to two debates. That's when the reporter roundtable from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to a special Tuesday edition of the All Sides Weekly Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we talk all things Ohio politics. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Joining me on the Roundtable this week, we have Marty Schladen, reporter for the Ohio Capitol Journal. Welcome back, Marty.
Marty Schladen: Good morning, Amy.
Juravich: Andrew Tobias, state government and politics reporter at Signal Ohio. Welcome back, Andrew.
Andrew Tobias: I would normally say happy Monday, but happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday.
Juravich: Happy Tuesday. Thanks for joining us on a Tuesday. I know it feels weird and Laura Hancock politics and policy reporter at Cleveland.com. Thanks for being here Laura.
Laura Hancock: Thank you.
Juravich: All right, so an armed assailant charged toward a Democratic candidate for governor Amy Acton on Sunday during a campaign stop at the Canfield Fair. He knocked down and injured several people before he was stopped by troopers. This is according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol. The sheriff's office in that county said that he had weapons with him, but they were not brandished and they were never removed from their holsters. So, uh, Andrew, what has reaction been like following this Sunday incident? I mean, this, this person basically charging the candidate for governor. What do you make of that?
Tobias: Yeah, I know immediately on Sunday, I heard from people who were concerned, it's just kind of like the basic facts of the case of an armed person, you know, rushing a political candidate, people being hurt and stuff like that. I think definitely we are, just everybody who is involved with politics or who involved with covering politics has heightened concerns about those kinds of things, given some of the incidents that we've seen in the rising political violence in America that has happened over the last, you now, it's been a drum beat. Last five years or so. But yeah, the reaction was, you know, across the political spectrum, people saying they were happy that Acton was unharmed, that they, you know, denounced the idea of there being political violence saying this is unacceptable. And it's kind of as you know we'll see how the investigation unfolds. But I've also been at events where people kind of like rush the stage and want to make a point In this case, it just happened to be. Somebody who was armed. And so you just never want to make light of how something might get out of control or something like that. But we've also just kind of, you know, I've seen stuff like that, so it's, we still don't know a lot about the details here. I understand that the person who was arrested is supposed to be in court today, so perhaps we'll learn more. But back to your question, though, there's definitely concern about this. You know, people were pleased that it wasn't worse.
Juravich: Yeah. And Marty, there's been a step up in security. I'm not sure that every political candidate always got security, but I know that Amy Acton and Vivek Ramaswami have security. Also, if I'm mistaken, I think their family members might have security, so is that just the day and age we live in?
Schladen: I think it is. I think there's, like Andrew said, there's been an uptick in these things, but we've certainly had these experiences before, you know, in the 60s and the 70s. We had a number of assassinations. George Wallace got shot in 1972. And it all goes against what we have politics for, which is to resolve disputes, pick leaders peacefully. So it's like upends the whole system and it's really a shame that these, you know very high high profile candidates have to have security and it begs the question too about you know other people, state lawmakers, people like that you know should they have security as well and how do we even do that?
Juravich: And Laura, Governor DeWine released a statement saying that violence or the threat of violence at political or public events is always unacceptable. Did we hear anything from the Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign?
Hancock: He sent out a message very, very fast after it happened. Didn't name Acton, but just said that candidates should be free to express their opinions and express their speech without being worried about being safe.
Juravich: Okay, but he didn't mention act in my name. That's interesting. Okay. Yeah, it's still at the still like bitter campaign fight after all, I guess.
Tobias: Just to be fair to him, I happened to see this when I was preparing for this, but reporters asking about this at an unrelated event and he said that he's glad that he wasn't hurt. And Ramaswami has been pretty outspoken about this. He is somebody who has himself received a lot of threats, including at his home and having like white powder mailed to him and stuff like that. So Ramasvami said that this is something that has been a major theme of his campaign to kind of denounce political violence. He was friends with Charlie Kirk, who of course was assassinated. And sell. You know, Ramaswamy has some personal experience with this and you know, that's what he said.
Hancock: And Acton has two, though, because, I mean, she had people when she was health department director at her house, like right outside her yard with anti-Semitic, like, signs they were holding. And, yeah, there was just a lot of that kind of stuff referring to her during the pandemic.
Juravich: So if the event made Acton nervous at all, it did not seem that way. She was back at another campaign stop the next day. She spent Labor Day morning campaigning at a parade on Cleveland's East Side. And she also provided medical care to two women who collapsed during the parade. So it seems like, Marty, Amy Acton has been a busy doctor and a busy political candidate recently.
Schladen: Yeah, she has. She's out on the hustings and, you know, and that's impressive that she stopped to help people. She didn't, she's not a candidate and not a doctor. It sounds like she in that instance was a doctor first.
Juravich: Yeah, at the actual incident, Andrew, the two people who were knocked over by the man who charged the stage, she stayed and helped them, right? Is that what I read?
Tobias: That is what local media reported.
Juravich: Yeah, and so then at the parade, I think people collapsed maybe because it was hot, so she's just doctoring left and right here.
Tobias: Yeah, and my one of my colleagues was there at the parade and he kind of juxtaposed her appearance with the same event last year, the Labor Day Parade in Cleveland is a big deal in local politics. And last year is basically her and an aid kind of marching down the street. This time she was surrounded by people. There were, you know, people lining the streets wanting to talk to her take pictures with her and stuff like that. So she was received pretty enthusiastically at this event.
Juravich: You're listening to a special Tuesday edition of the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. We are talking with Andrew Tobias of Signal Ohio, Laura Hancock from Cleveland.com, and Marty Schladen from the Ohio Capital Journal. I want to pivot to one more governor campaign issue that came up last week. Debates. Vivek Ramaswami challenged Amy Acton to two debates, and Acton says she won't debate someone who is spreading lies about her and her family. Marty, were you surprised that Ramaswami issued this debate challenge? Because prior to last Thursday, I thought debates were, I mean, I just assumed debates were off the table for both candidates, so.
Schladen: I'm just speculating, but I'm wondering whether Ramaswami has some internal polling or something that shows that he needs to make up some ground and he could try to do that in a debate. I was also, I guess, as a person who can stand for democracy, I was disappointed to see that Acton is not going to debate. That's part of how voters make their decisions, and it's this process that plays out in public. And so I think that may turn out to be a problem for her.
Juravich: Yeah. Laura, what do you think? I mean, is that going to be a problem? Are you allowed to say no to a debate?
Hancock: I just wanted to say the fact that it was CNN that was doing, proposing the debate, I think is probably what piqued Ramaswamy because it was an opportunity to sort of get.
Juravich: To be national. Yeah.
Hancock: Right. And it also just underscores how important this race is that you've got national interest. I was surprised that Acton said no. I think Rameswamy is a lawyer, right? So he's more confrontational and maybe she just felt like she couldn't get it or you know word in as
Juravich: I think he was on the debate team in college is what I've read. Is that right Andrew, right?
Tobias: He's definitely the debate club type.
Juravich: Yeah
Hancock: And like he could, but it would be an opportunity to ask him, well, why did you move your business to Texas? Why is Ohio not good enough to drive through? Why do you have to fly everywhere? But I mean, it would have been a chance. Also, it could have just been a change for her to just ignore whatever games he would do on stage to try to get under her skin and just try to be again that calm presence that kind of guided Ohio through the beginning of the pandemic. Um, and just to display that she could do that again. Um, so I, I'm really surprised. I know some of it was like, they say that Ramaswamy was shaming her for the sexual abuse that she says that she suffered when she did suffer when she was a kid, so.
Juravich: Yeah. Yeah. Um, Andrew, what do you, like Acton, basically the statement from her campaign says she won't debate someone who's spreading lies about her and her family. So basically saying that all the ads, maybe not even that Rama Swamy's campaign is doing, but that the packs are doing that Acton says have lies in them. He's, he's approving, you know, with the, I approve this message at the end.
Tobias: Yeah, so through the course of the campaign, there's been reporting about police being called to Acton's home a couple of times. And it's been it's many of these ads. But some of these police reports have been posted and reported by, you know, internet figures, I guess. And so like, there has been personal information that's appeared in these police reports. And So it's just kind of, you know, they involve Acton at the time underage children. So they underscores like the personal. Nature of how this campaign has played out. I just I've gathered that actin just didn't really want to do this and You know marty said earlier about maybe you know, this is a thing that when campaigns are losing they push for debates I mean, I think that rama swami You know one of his campaign planks is to try to promote civic discussion. I think it honestly is part of his you know values system to try and do something like this, but I have talked to democrats too who see the polls being really flat and speculate that Rama Swami kind of like basically like, why is he making such a big deal out of this? And they're saying maybe he thinks he needs a way to shake up the race. But ultimately, it's been a trend where you have candidates not want to do this. Ultimately, with voters, they're watched by relatively few people. And so I think it's just something that if a politician wants to make the calculation that this isn't worth my trouble, I don't have to do it. And there's really not much of a penalty they pay for it other and kind of like getting.
Juravich: You know like batted on the wrist by people like us talking about it. Yeah Well did did Dewine debate four years ago when he was running for governor?
Tobias: He did not and Democrats made a big deal out of that at that time.
Juravich: See, I didn't even remember, so.
Tobias: They were counting the days since it had been since he denied, you know, he declined to debate I mean, it's just a it's a thing and it's so you know You get called out but for looking like a hypocrite by taking the opposite position four years later But that's you know that's the game that they play
Juravich: Well, and Marty DeWine did just fine without a debate.
Schladen: He did just fine. I'm certain that his calculation was, I'm so far ahead. I don't need to do this. There's nothing but downsides for me in doing it. And so he just took a pass. And DeWine's been a political cat for a long time.
Juravich: Does anyone think Acton will change your mind?
Tobias: I don't, I mean, why would she? Okay.
Juravich: So, do you think that we will see a debate in the other big race, the US Senate race? Thoughts on that?
Tobias: So I asked Sherrod Brown about this and he gave kind of a noncommittal response. He said, I assume that we will. He said I debated in most of my campaigns. I'm like, well, Senator Brown two years ago, the most there is that you didn't debate in your most recent campaign.
Juravich: That's what I was just going to ask, so he and Bernie Marino did not debate.
Tobias: Yeah, and that was, you know, Sherrod and his people blame Marino, Marino's people blame, I kind of feel like there was kind of, you-
Juravich: They couldn't agree on terms? Is that what happened? I have a vague memory of that. More or less. OK.
Tobias: Or less. I think if you want to make something like that happen, you make it happen. So but in this case, you know, it's the elections getting really close. We're after Labor Day here and there still hasn't been anything scheduled. Whereas we've seen you know these things are starting to get put together in other states. So it's hard to say. But you know it's not looking great at spoke at this moment.
Juravich: Well, Marty, what is the strategy, not just Governor's race, but Senate race, just in general, to debate or not to debate? Because you were basically saying that maybe Ramaswami is feeling a little bit behind, so a debate would help him. So what's the debate, debate or debate or no debate?
Schladen: Well, I think it probably as much as anything else depends on the candidate, you know, you've got somebody who's really good on their feet, really good debater, don't have to worry about some major gaffe, then it makes the risk, the possibility for downside is a lot smaller. So I think you got to start there. But then, yeah, I think it has to do with if you think you're so comfortably ahead. Strategically, maybe you don't want to debate just because it could be a bad soundbite or something like that. But I'm just going to say it again, I mean, I think voters lose. I think there should be more public access to these people, not less.
Juravich: And Laura, do you feel like what happened with Joe Biden in his debate has spoiled debates for people now? They feel, well, I don't know, not for us people, well, maybe us, because we care, but the candidates now, whenever someone asks them to debate, they all think like, oh, it can go horribly wrong.
Hancock: I also think about John Fetterman, the senator, when he did a debate and oh man, it showed how he had had a stroke and it just kind of showed like how he hadn't fully recovered. So yeah, but I don't know, I feel like Biden was sort of an anomaly. I just feel like you've seen this trend in the last, I don t know, decade, decade and a half of moving away from debates, which I'm on your side, Marty. I think that Um, having moderators who've like, you know, usually they're like journalists who have super researched the issues and are like asking questions. I just think that's, you know, trying to get these people on the record is just so important.
Juravich: Yeah, I mean, Andrew, what do you think? What's your thoughts on the to debate or not to debate debate?
Tobias: You know, I would never argue as somebody who's in the information business that voters should have less information about the candidates, just from like a tactical standpoint, though. I mean, Brahmaswamy is somebody who his performance when he's running for president in the debates helped him kind of break out. He emerged from that race being the figure that he is. He's now the Republican governor nominee in one of the biggest states in America. So it's not like it's all downside. There's upside where, you know, just looking at it from the candidate's perspective that You can say stuff, you can put it on social media. It's a way for voters to engage with your race, become interested in you as a candidate. We get to see these people on their toes responding to things in real time, not just giving teleprompter speech or what have you. But there's, we're talking too, there's downside risks and the president, Joe Biden, in 2024 is gonna be in the history books is the worst debate performance in American political history, I mean, at least so far. So there's definitely. There's more to lose than there is to gain from a purely tactical standpoint, but at the same time, like, these people have to be thinking about, they're running for an office, they're trying to, it's a job interview, you know, with the public. And so I think engaging with things like this, I think shows respect for that fact.
Juravich: You're listening to a special Tuesday edition of the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. There's one more topic I want to pivot to before we take a break. And after the death of a 20-year-old Springfield resident and Haitian migrant, many are once again questioning ICE tactics. Pierre de Maas-Bell died by apparent suicide after walking into traffic on Interstate 70. His family said this happened after he was bullied by classmates at Wright State University for wearing an ankle monitor. There's been a lot of reaction to this. Marty, what have you heard from an official response? What have elected officials in Ohio been saying about this?
Schladen: Well, Governor Mike DeWine, who's been a big defender of the Haitian population in Springfield, very often against members of his own party, has come out and deplored this. I don't know that he's spoken about the proximate cause, which I didn't really process until I heard about this story, you know, but you fit it with the angle monitor. Well, people who are charged with crimes get it. You know, get fitted with ankle monitors. And that's not what somebody who holds TPS is, you know? Came legally, sounds like bullying was also an issue in this instance, but I mean, it's just terrible.
Juravich: So I read a story in the Springfield News-Sun about ICE's statements regarding this, and it said, quote, any attempt to blame ICE for the death of Pierre de Maas Bell are false. And an ICE spokesperson went on to say that no one is required to stay in the United States illegally and wear a GPS monitor. Illegal aliens have a lawful voluntary option. They can self-deport. So the newspaper goes on to say that there are conflicting reports about Bell's exact immigration status and when the ankle monitor was placed on him in late July. So I mean, this is just another example of people questioning ICE tactics about the ankle monitor. And then that was the response.
Hancock: So, during Trump 1.0, his first presidency, he started using these ankle monitors. Biden was trying to decrease the use of them in favor of an app where you check in and they can see where you are. But Biden didn't totally get rid of all ankle monitors when Trump, in June, in early 2025, There were around 17,000 immigrants with ankle monitors. By this summer, it increased to 54,000. Now, there are people at the ICE detention center in Westerville who say that these ankle monitors are only going to Haitians, that other immigrants are not getting them, such as people from Brazil and other countries, that this group of people, these Haitians have just been kind of demonized by the Republican Party. So yeah, I think you're seeing this. And also just kind of to note The contract, the ankle monitoring program is being held by the geo group, which is like a private prison. It used to be called CoreCivic. So there are for-profit companies profiting off of this.
Schladen: Geo Group also is operating a private prison that holds a lot of immigration detainees in Northeastern Ohio. They're making tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars off of all this.
Juravich: Andrew, I'm not sure if you've done any reporting on this story, but I mean, is there anything Ohio lawmakers can do to change ICE tactics, to do anything about whether the ankle monitors are given out or not.
Tobias: I mean, this is basically a federal issue. So I, that's not to say it's not possible for the state to do something if they really wanted to. But yeah, I've not heard anything about there being, you know, policy changes that are being proposed in response to this. Political candidates like Amy Acton, it's like don't wanna go on a tangent about all of what she said about this. But she was asked about, you know would you encourage local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration officials? And that's the kind of question really is on the local level, like do you, You know in your local communities The police have the option of assisting with this stuff if they have, you know, requests for mice and stuff like that. But yeah, ultimately it, you know, it comes to these actual monitors and stuff. It is a federal issue.
Juravich: Yeah, so but hasn't she said that they that as governor she would follow federal I mean has she said both things. I yeah, you're smiling. I don't know. I feel like she said
Tobias: So that it's kind of a different direction, but I would say she said something kind of in the middle of we expect That federal law enforcement will behave professionally, but we also you know, we'll cooperate with federal immigration You know officials and other stuff and so yeah, she's I think she did run into some issues Um because she said that was kind of ambiguous and there was you know people ran with it
Juravich: And Marty, I mean, this case is an extreme case with what happened to Pierre and he, the story that I read in the Springfield News Sun interviewed a member of his family who said that he had gone to the ICE office in Cincinnati and the one in Westerville asking for the ankle monitor to be removed because he's a soccer player and he can't play soccer with this ankle monitor on. I don't even know how to, like, it's just, you know, it's sad and I don't even know what question I'm asking.
Schladen: Well, but here's a point about that. You know, here he is. He went to get the thing put on. He went a couple of times to try to get it taken off. The guy was showing up when I said you needed to show up at a place. So that begs the question, why does he need an ankle monitor? And he's a 20-year-old kid. There's just nothing to feel good about about this.
Juravich: Okay, well before you did you want to add something? Oh, yeah
Hancock: So yeah, a 2021 study from the law school at Yeshiva University in New York found that 90% of immigrants had physical problems with ankle monitors, including swelling and wounds. That does not sound fun. 88% said obviously that the device is harm to their mental health, not a surprise there. And 12% reported having suicidal thoughts. So
Juravich: Well, before we take the break, I will add, if you or someone you know is in crisis, or if you're thinking about hurting yourself, you can call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. You're listening to a special Tuesday edition of the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News, and coming up, we're gonna get an update on absentee ballots in Ohio, and what's being said about them around the country too. That's when the Reporter Round Table from all sides continues on 897 N PR News.
You're listening to a special Tuesday edition of the All Sides Weekly Reporter Roundtable. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Still with us, we have Andrew Tobias, state government and politics reporter at Signal Ohio, Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at cleveland.com and Marty Sladen, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. Absentee ballots are not in the mail, but the application to apply for one has arrived in mailboxes. And Andrew, you wrote that Ohio's forms are hitting mailboxes amid President Trump's push to change mail-in voting. So I guess I have to ask you, like, where things stand with absentee ballots in Ohio versus what the president is saying.
Tobias: So when I talked with election officials and voter rights advocates about this issue They basically say the short version and we can expand on it If you want is that the stuff that President Trump is trying to do with the Postal Service is currently in the courts the US Supreme Court issued a ruling on this that Gave the Trump administration permission to continue preparing to implement these policies, but they have not yet been approved So as things stand right now Mail voting in Ohio works the same as it always has. Ohio, for about 14 years now, has sent absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in the state. If you get one of these forms in the mail, if you fill them out, if you return them to your local board of election, you will receive an absenteeing ballot in October.
Juravich: Okay. And so everyone who is a registered voter is getting them in their mailboxes basically last week or this week is the way this works. And if you request the absentee ballot, when would it get mailed to you? What's the date that they go out?
Tobias: I think it's October 6th, but basically the day that early in-person voting begins, which Ohio has about a month of early in person voting that is offered at something like 22 days when you exclude the weekends and stuff like that. That is when the ballots go out. And then of course, there's going to be transit time in the mail. And then once you receive it, you can fill it out. You can either mail it back to your county board of election or you can bring it yourself to the county and either bring it inside the office or every county board of election also has a ballot drop box outside. But yeah, you could also, there are uncertain instances, you can have a close relative return it for you too, but you will not actually get one of these if people might be sending this in, like wondering when am I gonna get my ballot back and you're not gonna get it until early voting begins next month.
Juravich: Now, if everything that the Trump administration is trying to do to stop mail-in voting, whether or not they work with the US Postal Service or do like what the courts say and all of that, is October 6th the deadline? Like if ballots are starting to go out, what have you heard from your voting experts? Can the Trump Administration do anything after that?
Tobias: So this is just really into a like legal morass territory because some of these rules that the Trump administration is, they're not just proposing them, they basically implemented them, although that's still being challenged in the courts, but they called for certain things to happen within 90 days before the election and we're past that point. So they're still doing it. And generally speaking too, this is like nerdy, but in these kinds of court cases, there's a lot of precedents about courts giving. A wide berth to not making election changes very close to the election. And so often you'll see courts defer making a decision on stuff like this because they don't wanna confuse voters. But ultimately, yeah, like back to your original question about the deadline. I mean, there's a state law that says the absentee ballots go out the day that early voting begins. And as of now, we are operating under state law and assuming that nothing is changing, which I know is hard to say because of all these questions we have.
Juravich: Well, if I request an absentee ballot, can I feel secure if I mail it in, say, on October, I don't know, 15th, can feel secure that my vote will count?
Tobias: So the changes the federal government is making, if they are implemented, which is a big if, or have more to do with agreeing to send the blank ballot out. There's a process that it describes checking it against a voter list the federal governments compiling and stuff like that. So, I mean, there's just like lots of like, what if kind of questions that can be layered into this. When I talked with voting rights advocates, they said, if you have any concerns about all of this stuff, one option that you would have is just to vote early in person, You could go to your county elections board. Go do it. You actually it's very much like voting in person on election day. So that's an option that people have. But if you want to vote by mail, they recommend that people get their applications in early and that they return their ballots early, too. So, again, these are questions that we didn't really have before. And so it's fair. People have these concerns. And of course, as a reporter here, I can't say that the Supreme Court is definitely going to stop this from happening. And there won't be any, you know, like extra. Election processes that are, you know, put into place in the middle of the election. You know, there's just so many questions about this. But ultimately, like I said, if you ask voting advocates about this, they say if you want to vote by mail, do it as quickly as possible. If you have questions about this, just consider voting in person instead. Marty
Schladen: Just a couple of quick points. First of all, my understanding is, I'm not a lawyer, but the Constitution is pretty clear that states run elections. And what the feds are trying to say is, well, if you want to use the postal service, you know, you're going to have to do this. But there was a whistleblower in the postal services, there was story about this last week. Apparently, inside USPS, they are nowhere near ready to implement this themselves. Um, so. It would my understanding is it would cause a lot of chaos and I would be a little surprised if the courts let this go Forward, you know and violate the principle the Andrew Andrew talked about messing with an election, you Know this late in the game
Juravich: Or did you have something to add too?
Hancock: Um, the president, he says that there's a lot of fraud by vote by mail. However, just a little reminder, he is registered to vote in Florida and he voted by mail this time and he voted by Mail in 2020.
Juravich: Hmm wonder if what he'll do for the November election everyone's pun
Schladen: I'm pretty sure he'll just vote by mail again. And Laura made a wonderful point and just to add to that too, all of these claims of voter fraud on any sort of significant scale are completely unsubstantiated.
Juravich: Is there anything else you'd like to add about absentee voting? Do we just need to keep an eye on the Supreme Court right now?
Tobias: Yeah, I mean, for sure. But I would just say generally that I remember in 2020, there were concerns during the pandemic about mail delays, including, you know, what is what role might the Trump administration play and how these are handled and stuff like that. And as these kinds of questions have stacked up, fewer and fewer people vote by mail, but over, you know, 1.5 million people voted by mail in November 2024. A lot of people rely on it, including college students, older voters, people in rural areas, where driving to your polling place involves a 30 minute drive, so it is a thing that people rely on, but I'll just say as a reporter, I've seen over time that fewer people are doing it, as these people like Donald Trump have been questioning the process.
Juravich: You're listening to a special Tuesday edition of the Reporter Roundtable. And with us in the studio, we have Andrew Tobias from Signal Ohio, Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at cleveland.com and Marty Schleiden from the Ohio Capital Journal. Laura, you wrote about something that I had not heard a lot about. Recently, Ohio State University settled with the federal government over professors undisclosed affiliation with China. And they settled for not a small amount. It was $2.1 million. So can you tell us what the professor did and why Ohio State decided to settle?
Hancock: The Professor Shum, he was an earth sciences professor. He started receiving grants from NASA and National Science Foundation in 2014. He had always been very honest on his CV, which is still listed online, and in his disclosures to the university that he had been an adjunct, had some research affiliates with Chinese like research in universities, however. He was also part of the 1000 Talents Plan, and this is a program that the Chinese government does where they recruit a lot of mostly citizens all over the world to help provide intellectual property and national security information. And I think a lot it is occurring in the United States, I'm sure like other Western countries like, you know, Sweden or whatever, but. A lot of it is America. I read the New York Times and I all the time am seeing these stories. And so he did not disclose that he was a member of the Thousand Talents Plan. And then at some point OSU in 2019, somehow, you know, they started questioning him, got a tip, who knows, but they questioned him and he admitted it. And then they didn't tell the federal government right away. This is where I think OSU got in trouble. They, um... Start an investigation and they didn't tell the federal government until 2023. And so they had to repay the federal money.
Juravich: Okay. So, but the school said, I mean, in your story, it said the school did not officially admit any wrongdoing in the settlement. Is that right? Is that right? Yeah.
Hancock: I mean that's typical settlement language. Yeah.
Juravich: Yeah. So OSU says they suspended his privileges, halted his spending of grant money once OSU investigated Shum's inappropriate foreign affiliations. And then the university spokesperson said he no longer works for Ohio State. So is this one of those instances where OSU settled just to make it go away?
Hancock: I mean, probably because it's the whole litigation thing. If you continue fighting, it gets more expensive. And maybe OSU felt that because the federal government in the settlement maintains that they do have enough information to prove their case.
Juravich: Okay.
Hancock: And so maybe who knows what OSU was thinking, but yeah, they settled it.
Juravich: Well, we have a few minutes left and Marty, you wrote a story about an interesting podcast. It's from a group called the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and the podcast is called The Data Centers Are Coming. And since we can't go a week on the report around table without talking about data centers, I wanted to know, what did you learn from the podcast that you didn't already know?
Schladen: A lot, actually. I often do this with technology and it's foolish, but I don't want to clutter my head with it too much, but obviously data centers have now charged into the center of all of our consciousness. And so I listened to Danny's podcast and then I did a lot of research on top of that. And there are so many aspects to this. Most of them are disturbing, you know, there's not just the energy questions. There's this giant tech bubble that's been inflated and I, you know, and I talk to people who are a lot more serious than me. They don't see how open AI is going to be able to keep itself funded. They, none of this stuff is profitable yet. Even there's been a trillion dollars pushed into it. But the biggest thing that, that Danny talked about in his podcast that struck me is, yeah, where does this end up? There's all this talk about. People losing their jobs to AI. But Danny also asked, what about the jobs that are left? Is it all gonna be like, we all work for Amazon, you know, you're driving around in your delivery truck and they've got all these biometrics on you, or you're going around the factory floor with a GPS thing, you know. The question is, are you working for the machine or is the machine working for you? And that's a really interesting question.
Juravich: And the podcast was more of a national look. I think it focused a lot on Virginia, not Ohio. So were you finding some similarities though between Virginia and Ohio?
Schladen: Very much so. And Danny Kane is based here in Columbus. Oh, okay. Yeah, so he went all over the country. I think that what they have in West Virginia is more mature. There are in that- Virginia and Virginia, not West Virginia. And Virginia. Although West Virginia, they passed a law that basically took any agency away from local government. They said West Virginia's open for business. And this is exactly what people are now rebelling against. It's this idea that, oh, a data center's going in across the street from me, and I never had a chance to say one thing about it. But yeah, so the data center corridor in Virginia, it's outside the D.C. Metro area. There are like 300 data centers there, and people have been dealing this for a while while we've all been kind of blissfully ignorant. But I know that this has just been this political shockwave. And Republicans now are particularly scrambling to try to get on the right side of the voters on this issue. I don't know if you saw this. Bernie Marino on Thursday, Senator Bernie Marina, Ohio Republican on Thursday proposed to completely wipe out data center subsidies going forward. That's.
Juravich: We're going to have to end it there, but we'll talk about that another time. Marty Schladen, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. Thanks for joining us.
Schladen: Thanks, Amy!
Juravich: And Andrew Tobias, state government and politics reporter at Signal Ohio. Thank you, Andrew. Thanks for having me. And Laura Hancock, politics and policy reporter at Cleveland.com. Thanks, Laura. Thank you. This has been a special Tuesday edition of the Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich.
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