Michael Anderson’s expectations were low when he showed up at City Hall Thursday. It had been more than a decade since his niece Tanisha died, at age 37, following a struggle with Cleveland police officers during a mental health crisis. And it had been more than a year since legislation named for her, that would change the way the city responds to those emergency calls, was introduced.

Now, it was getting its first hearing by Cleveland City Council’s Safety Committee.

Anderson attended but figured it was at best another step up the hill. His hope sank further, he said later, as city officials insisted that they support the goals of what’s been dubbed Tanisha’s Law but oppose key provisions and called for yet more study of crisis calls.

After more than two hours of often circuitous discussion and blunt expressions of frustration from council members, committee chair and Council Member Michael Polensek offered Anderson a chance to speak. He sat at the long table with council members and city officials and looked at each of them as he recapped what his family has been through since 2014, including years of investigations that a state official called an unprecedented “legal mess” and that did not result in charges for the officers.

“I bring this up because I want people to remember how she passed,” Anderson said: naked below the waist, handcuffed and pinned down on concrete on a frigid November night while her family watched helplessly.

“And then she began reciting the Lord’s prayer, asking God to extend some grace and mercy towards the officers who were holding her down,” Anderson said in a calm, measured voice. “So I’m here to ask city hall and the lawmakers to extend some mercy and grace towards her, because until then, in my mind and in my heart, she is still laying there where she died.”

After Anderson left the table, Polensek turned his attention to the city officials sitting across from him. Council, he said, would listen to the administration’s suggestions but the question of whether to vote on the bill had been decided.

“The train’s leaving the station,” Polesenk said. “We’re going to take action. So, you can either get on board or you get run over. That’s how it works around here.”

He predicted that the bill will pass early next year.

Moments later, Anderson shed a few tears as other supporters of Tanisha’s Law, smiling broadly, shook his hand and patted his shoulders. Council Member Stephanie Howse-Jones, one of the sponsors to the bill, embraced him.

“I thought it was just going to be discussion and more meetings,” Anderson told Signal Cleveland. But now, he said smiling, “It’s gonna happen.”

‘The goal posts keep shifting’

Crisis response generally takes two forms: co-response, in which mental health professionals accompany police officers on calls; and care response, which does not involve officers.

Tanisha’s Law addresses both. If passed, it would establish a new Department of Community Crisis Response to “administer and oversee the various forms of crisis response in the City.”

Cleveland has seven co-response teams working across the city, according to testimony at the safety committee meeting. The city recently got high marks for its progress in crisis response from the team monitoring Cleveland’s progress under the 2015 consent decree.

The Bibb administration wants to expand care response beyond the pilot program now operating in two ZIP codes, the officials said at the meeting. But the administration opposes the plan to do this through a new city department, saying in a recent memo to council that it’s “structurally unnecessary and creates duplicative bureaucracy.”

The council members who sponsored Tanisha’s Law — Howse-Jones, Rebecca Maurer and Charles Slife — say that a new department is necessary to ensure the work continues even if a future mayor does not share Bibb’s commitment to it. But they are open to the idea of creating a new crisis response division within an existing department like Public Health, Community Relations or PIYO (Prevention, Intervention and Youth Opportunity).

A Bibb spokesperson did not respond directly to Signal Cleveland’s question about supporting a new division, but confirmed that the administration would like to expand care response through “an existing non-law enforcement department” or a third-party service provider like the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) Board of Cuyahoga County (which is overseeing the pilot program).

“The Administration is 100% in support of care response programs when only mental health professionals are needed,” the spokesperson said.

At the meeting, the administration officials said they want time to conduct an analysis of emergency calls “to determine the scope of need” and “provide clearer insight into how this should be structured.”

Some council members found that argument especially frustrating. Howse-Jones said that federal grant money to pay for the analysis has been available since January 2024. Maurer said that the administration raised this concern for the first time in November, after months of meetings and emails.

“The goal posts keep shifting,” Maurer said. “That is what creates this sense of maybe we’re not actually as much on the same page as we keep saying.”

‘It is so frustrating working in this space’

Thursday’s meeting capped a couple months of growing pressure on council to act on the bill, behind the scenes and in council chambers. Anderson and others, including members of the National Association of Social Workers, appealed to council during its public comment periods in recent weeks.

Anderson described the toll Tanisha’s death took on her mother, who died in 2021.

“She stopped talking,” he said. “She stopped eating. Slowly but surely, she left us. I never knew something could get inside of your soul and rip it to threads. But I promised her that I would be standing here one day.”

Near the end of the Nov. 17 full council meeting, Howse-Jones rose to vent a year’s worth of pent-up anger.

“It is so frustrating working in this space,” she said, her voice rising. “Every day I am fighting with somebody [over] something goofy to center underserved people. … I’m frustrated because every day I am here I have to justify my existence and the value of our people. And I am tired.

“But I am grateful” for the chance to serve, she added, “and I am more resolved than ever to make sure we change these rules for the people who deserve it. And I promise you, I will not be silent.”

The Safety Committee meeting was the last council meeting scheduled for the year. Council will reconvene in January.