Ibrahim Alim had been living in his car for about four months before he got the call on May 30: a plea for help from a close friend who’d been shot. 

“Bro, come get me. I’m hit. I’m hit,” the friend said through the phone.  

Alim sped to his friend’s location in the Union-Miles neighborhood and found him bleeding from his upper leg. Alim put the man in the backseat and tried to give him instructions on how to tie a tourniquet while racing to Cleveland Clinic’s emergency room on its main campus. He drove as fast as he could, trying not to jostle his friend.  

“I feel like it was a real responsibility, you know what I mean?” Alim said. “It’s my brother, it’s my friend.”

The two arrived at the hospital. The injured friend was rushed inside. 

His friend survived, but Alim’s life was upended. While he was parked outside the emergency room doors, a Cleveland Clinic police officer grabbed the keys from the car’s ignition and demanded Alim’s identification. Within seconds, Alim was handcuffed. He was detained in a cruiser for about half an hour, and police towed the car he drove. 

Alim didn’t know it at the time, but the Cleveland Clinic’s police department has a policy for officers to detain people who arrive at the emergency room with gunshot wound victims. 

To Alim, it felt unfair and hurtful. Like punishment for a life-saving good deed. He was focused on his friend’s survival – not on whether he would be treated like a suspect. 

But he also wasn’t shocked. 

“I’m a Black American man,” he said. “And this is what goes on.”

A policy of detention   

The incident surfaced a long-standing tension between Cleveland’s largest and most celebrated medical institution and the city’s Black community, which bears the brunt of the city’s gun violence but also can be wary of police mistreatment. 

It spilled into the public eye by way of social media. State Rep. Darnell Brewer happened to be at the Cleveland Clinic that day visiting his mom. Brewer, whose district sits blocks from the hospital’s main campus, saw officers detain Alim and tried to step in to calm him. In a video he posted the next day, Brewer said he thought Alim’s rights were violated by officers and called what he witnessed “police brutality.” 

The Cleveland Clinic defended its actions with Alim as an effort to keep patients, visitors and staff safe – and it explained the broad policy of detention as a way to protect the public from further violence. 

“Generally, gunshots indicate a crime has occurred,” wrote Angela Kiska, the Cleveland Clinic’s executive director of public and media relations, about the protocol. “Without knowing the circumstances and the potential involvement of firearms, officers detain those involved to investigate if the vehicle or other parties might be connected to the shooting.”

In essence, the Clinic’s policy treats any person – a friend, family member or Good Samaritan –  who brings a gunshot wound victim to the hospital as though they could be involved in a crime. 

The Clinic’s approach differs from Cleveland’s two highest-level trauma hospitals, MetroHealth and University Hospitals. Both routinely treat shooting victims but said they don’t have policies that direct officers to detain anyone who brings a gunshot wound victim for treatment. Instead, officers decide whether to detain a person on a case-by-case basis. 

That’s an important distinction. Legal experts told Signal Cleveland that the Clinic’s blanket policy of detention might infringe on the constitutional rights of people who bring the wounded to the hospital — and that act alone isn’t enough to treat a person as a suspect and detain them, like Alim was.

Those life-or-death circumstances are common in Cleveland, where gun violence was declared a public health crisis this year. Young, Black males are the most likely to die as a result. When their lives hang in the balance, sometimes friends and family are confronted with choices: Drive their loved one to the hospital to get medical treatment? Wait the excruciating extra minutes for an ambulance? Drop the victim at the hospital, then speed away? 

People like Alim and Brewer worry the Clinic’s stance will keep people away from the hospital altogether, costing even more Black lives. 

The Cleveland Clinic said it would not participate in an interview because the investigation into the shooting of Alim’s friend is ongoing. But in an email, Clinic spokesperson Angela Smith wrote that its policies are not meant to discourage people from bringing gunshot wound victims to the hospital but to “ensure our emergency departments remain safe during high-risk events, patients get immediate care, and law enforcement can do their job without risking patient safety or public trust.” The hospital’s police department, she added, follows constitutional standards.

From rescue driver to detained in 23 seconds

Alim arrived at the front doors of the Cleveland Clinic emergency room around 7:30 p.m. He pulled into the circle drive on Cedar Avenue, got out of the car and yelled for help, he said. Medical providers ran outside and grabbed his friend. Signal Cleveland is not naming the friend because he is the victim of an unsolved crime. 

Alim remained parked and was calling his friend’s dad when a Cleveland Clinic police officer approached him, according to body camera video of the incident reviewed by Signal Cleveland. 

Officer Kelsey Pregi asked Alim if he was the driver, and he said yes. She reached into the open front door of the car and grabbed the keys out of the ignition. 

“He wasn’t shot in my car, ma’am,” Alim said, walking toward Pregi. “Can you give me keys?”

“No,” Pregi said. “No. I need your ID right now.”

Another police officer, Erik Rypinski, arrived seconds later. 

“Why is y’all coming at me?” Alim asked. 

At that point, Rypinski pushed Alim against his silver sedan and attempted to gain control of his hands. Twenty-three seconds had elapsed since Pregi first approached Alim. 

“What is y’all doing?” Alim asked, as one of the officers told him to relax. “Y’all is tripping, man.”

Alim tensed up, officers later wrote, and the situation escalated. In reports written after the incident, some officers said Alim pushed himself off the car, causing him and three officers who had been holding him to fall to the ground. Others wrote that police took Alim to the ground.

From there, more officers arrived, helping to put Alim in handcuffs and forcing him into a police cruiser. Rypinski later wrote in a report that Alim “did not comply” and “remained uncooperative” throughout the process. 

Police patted Alim down for weapons. They found none. They did find his wallet and ID and discovered that Shaker Heights had issued a warrant for Alim. He had failed to appear at a court hearing about a minor traffic violation.  

The following images were taken from the body camera footage of multiple officers who were present when Ibrahim Alim was detained on May 30.

Alim was terrified, he later said. Officers didn’t give him enough time to respond before they put their hands on him, he said. And his mind was focused on his bleeding friend inside. At one point, while in the cruiser, Alim called out to ask if his friend was OK.  

“In times like this, when you know you didn’t do nothing wrong and you know that you aren’t criminal … it almost makes you feel like somebody’s trying to kidnap you and just take you,” Alim said. 

During the altercation, Alim screamed that someone had touched him inappropriately by putting a finger into his anus. He also told Signal Cleveland an officer grabbed his testicles. He said he felt violated.

(In a report after the incident, an officer noted that Alim’s own hands were behind him and two officers had their knees pressed near his rear end, either of which could explain what Alim experienced, the officer wrote. Alim said he would know the difference between an officer’s knee or his own hands versus an officer’s hands.) 

Brewer, who lives nearby, was walking into the Cleveland Clinic when Alim showed up. He approached the altercation and urged Alim to stay calm while the police put him in the cruiser. Brewer told a Cleveland Clinic police corporal on-scene that he was trying to be “just another Black face to say, ‘calm down.’”

As Brewer walked toward the tangle of officers, Rypinski yelled at him to back off. 

“We don’t need you!” Rypinski said. Brewer put up his hands and stepped away. Rypinski later wrote in a police report that he had to use a stronger and louder tone of voice due to the incident not being under control, the number of officers on-scene and the level of overall noise and commotion.  

Brewer was alarmed by the entire incident: both the officer’s aggression towards him and the way police treated Alim.

“We know, as African American men, when a group of white officers throw us to the ground, it’s kind of traumatizing, especially when you just brought someone to the hospital,” Brewer said in the video.  

In an emailed comment, Smith, a Clinic spokesperson, wrote that the department’s Civilian Review Board — which reviews complaints against Cleveland Clinic police officers — analyzed the incident after Brewer expressed his concerns. The board reviewed Rypinski’s interactions with both Alim and Brewer and determined he acted in line with protocol.    

Smith also added that both white and Black officers responded to the altercation with Alim.

Signal Cleveland attempted to contact Officers Pregi and Rypinski for comment but did not hear back.

Cleveland Clinic officers detail different reasons for detaining Alim

During the incident and in written police reports afterwards, officers gave a number of reasons for why they detained Alim and the car he drove: he didn’t provide identification, he arrived with a gunshot victim, it was protocol to “detain parties and properties” that might be involved in a crime.  

Officer Rypinski can be heard on the video telling his colleagues about the moment he decided to detain Alim. He said that the incident started with Alim walking away from Officer Pregi as she asked for his identification. 

“He says, ‘I don’t need to identify myself,’” Rypinski stated. “ … Thought he was going to run away, so I said, ‘We need to identify you.’ Then he turned around, and he’s like, ‘I’m not going to identify myself.’ Alright sir, so you’re going to go in handcuffs. So you’re detained.”

The footage shows that Alim never refused to identify himself. 

After the incident, Rypinski’s report repeatedly referenced the Cleveland Clinic Police Department’s gunshot wound policy. He wrote that he tried to inform Alim of “our need to detain all parties and properties that might be potentially involved.” He also asserted the policy requires people arriving with gunshot victims to identify themselves. 

(The policy does not explicitly state that.)

While Alim sat handcuffed in the police cruiser, another officer assured Alim that this was a “normal” process that’s done “with everybody.”  

“It’s not like we’re doing it to you only,” the officer said.

The following images were taken from the body camera footage of multiple officers who were present when Ibrahim Alim was detained on May 30.

When asked to clarify the reason Alim was detained, a Clinic spokesperson wrote that dropping off a gunshot wound victim at the emergency department was enough reason to treat him as a potential criminal suspect who could be questioned and detained.

The Cleveland Clinic’s gunshot wound policy stands out in the city. MetroHealth and University Hospitals treat many of the city’s gunshot victims. But spokespeople for MetroHealth and University Hospitals said that they do not have specific policies for their police forces to detain individuals who come to the emergency department with a gunshot wound victim.

There are other safety protocols in place. At University Hospitals’ emergency room, when there are safety concerns after a shooting, the hospital will dispatch extra officers and limit the entrance of people associated with the shooting victim, according to Mike Tobin, a spokesperson for UH. If University Hospitals police were to detain someone, it would typically be at the request of another police department, Tobin added.  

“It takes a lot of work to get arrested at a hospital,” Tobin said. “Basically, they’re just trying to keep people safe.” 

Smith, the spokesperson for the Cleveland Clinic, wrote in an email that “not all health systems have the security resources to establish robust safety standards or policies.” 

Gunshot wound protocol raises legal, constitutional questions 

The Cleveland Clinic Police Department’s gunshot wound procedure lays out steps police should take when victims arrive at the emergency department, like securing evidence or requesting more staff. One responsibility is to detain “any person and vehicle accompanying the victim.”  

Signal Cleveland shared the protocol with three criminal law experts. Each had concerns about whether the procedure, as written, infringes on the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. The amendment limits how and when police can detain, or briefly stop, people and their property without allowing them to leave, the Supreme Court has ruled. 

To legally detain a person and their vehicle, police must reasonably suspect they are involved in criminal activity, said Jonathan Witmer-Rich, co-director of Cleveland State University’s Criminal Justice Center. Police officers have to assess each individual on a case-by-case basis, he added, looking for specific facts that show the person is involved in criminal activity.

But the Cleveland Clinic Police Department’s gunshot wound policy does not mention the standard of reasonable suspicion. As written, Witmer-Rich said it very likely violates the Fourth Amendment.

“The problem here is that this is a blanket policy,” Witmer-Rich said. “… And so a blanket policy that has you seize the car and the person every single time, I think, is not legitimate from a Fourth Amendment perspective.” 

Other criminal law experts shared similar critiques. Ji Seon Song is an assistant professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, who researches policing in hospitals. An across-the-board policy for detention, she said, raises “significant constitutional concerns.” 

Requiring detention of everybody who accompanies a gunshot victim — and the seizure of their vehicle — is “an unreasonable act in and of itself,” said Ayesha Bell Hardaway, a professor of law and the director of the Social Justice Institute at Case Western Reserve University. The Fourth Amendment specifically prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures.

Public health experts also point out that criminal activity, like assault or homicide, is not at the root of every gunshot wound. Shootings can be accidental or self-inflicted. In the U.S., the number one cause of gun death is suicide, followed by murder. The primary reason for non-fatal firearm injuries was unintentional shootings, one study looking at U.S. data between 2009 and 2017 found.  

“Just because somebody has a gunshot wound … doesn’t necessarily equal to [a] public safety threat,” said Sara Jacoby, an associate professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the intersection of trauma victims, health care and law enforcement. 

In Northeast Ohio, about two in three gunshot victims who showed up at trauma hospitals were victims of assault, a review of 2024 data by the Northern Ohio Trauma System found. About one in five were accidental shootings, and about 7% were self-inflicted. 

The data does not include gunshot victims who arrive at the Cleveland Clinic’s main campus — the emergency department Alim visited — because it’s not one of the hospitals preferred for treating trauma. The Clinic has seen a rise in “violence-related incidents” involving individuals seeking care in its emergency rooms, Smith wrote in an email. That led the police department to establish a lockdown procedure in 2020 to respond to security threats. 

As a part of that plan, the Clinic created the more-specific gunshot wound policy. It’s guided by national standards that require hospitals to manage threats from people entering with patients and maintain a safe setting for healthcare, Smith wrote in an email. All of the Cleveland Clinic Police Department’s policies are also consistent with best practices recommended by the national Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), she wrote.  

Detaining people who accompany gun violence victims is “pretty standard protocol” for hospital police departments, said Dan Yaross, president of the International Association of Healthcare Safety and Security, which represents law enforcement and security officers at health care facilities. 

Yaross said the policy is understandable from a security standpoint. And, he argued that arriving at a hospital with a gunshot victim is in itself enough to trigger reasonable suspicion of involvement in a crime — and therefore a legal detention. 

“They’re a police department,” Yaross said. “… One of the expectations is to investigate. You can’t investigate if you let the vehicle just leave.” 

After Signal Cleveland raised potential constitutional concerns about the department’s gunshot wound policy, the hospital shared a separate police policy for “field interviews.” That policy explicitly requires reasonable suspicion in order for officers to briefly detain a person who might be involved in a crime.

When asked what the officers’ reasonable suspicion was in Alim’s case, the Cleveland Clinic wrote: “He was dropping off a gunshot victim at the emergency department.”

Witmer-Rich was skeptical of this reasoning and said the two Clinic policies seemed to be somewhat inconsistent with each other. Regardless, he said he does not believe appearing at a hospital with a gunshot victim is enough to warrant reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in a crime. 

“I don’t think that’s supportable,” he said. “I think that’s an incorrect judgment.”   

What the policy means for public health 

A lingering issue for Alim and Brewer, the state representative, is whether the Cleveland Clinic Police protocol deters family members, bystanders or friends from driving gunshot wound victims to the hospital. 

Many community members are already hesitant to stick around after dropping a crime victim off at the hospital, Alim said. The Cleveland Clinic’s policy intensifies the fear that rescuing an injured friend might mean a tangle with law enforcement, he said. 

Academic research directly addressing whether such policies fray trust is slim. Two experts — Jacoby and Dr. Katherine Hoops, the director of clinical programs and practice at the John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions — who have studied law enforcement in hospitals said they were not aware of relevant research. 

That’s in part because the intersection between policing and hospitals is “under-studied,” Hoops said. 

What some research does examine is how police involvement in health care can erode the relationship between patients and providers. One small study from the University of California, Berkeley asked emergency room doctors in northern California about the presence of law enforcement in hospitals. Physicians said police increased feelings of safety, but there were simultaneous concerns that they deterred the public from seeking medical care. Another study, by Jacoby, looked at how Black patients perceived their interactions with police while in trauma care. Patients often found it difficult to distinguish between questions being asked for health care versus for law enforcement, Jacoby said.

Hoops said emergency rooms should have a healthy balance between policing and health care.  

“We understand that law enforcement needs to conduct investigations in the interest of public safety after someone has been harmed in our community,” Hoops said. At the same time, she said, health systems should write policies that affirm patients’ constitutional rights while they’re in the hospital.    

For state Rep. Brewer, an academic study isn’t necessary to prove whether the Cleveland Clinic Police protocol is a deterrent to seeking medical care — because he himself is now nervous to go to the hospital. 

“With this policy,” Brewer said, “even though I don’t have a criminal background, I’ll be very concerned about transporting a friend or family member to the hospital, specifically Cleveland Clinic, if I’m now going to be detained the way this young man [Alim] was detained.”

How it ends for Alim

For Alim, the night at Cleveland Clinic ended, somehow, even worse than it began.  

Video footage shows Alim remained handcuffed in the cruiser for about 27 minutes. The Cleveland Police Department eventually removed him from the car for an interview about the shooting. 

The police kept him for a while – what Alim remembers as several hours. They released him later that night.

The department did decide to tow the car Alim drove to its impound lot. It needed to be processed for evidence like fingerprints or blood, said Sergeant Freddy Diaz, a spokesperson for the Cleveland Police Department. Even though the victim didn’t get shot in the vehicle, it still needed to be investigated since the victim was inside it, Diaz said. 

Alim said a Cleveland Police detective gave him a different reason. 

“He told me like, pretty much, we’re towing your car because we feel like you’re not cooperating,” Alim said. 

Diaz did not respond to that allegation. The case is still open, so the department is limited in what it can share, he wrote in an email.

Alim said the officer allowed him to grab some bags of clothes he had stored in the trunk. Alim asked the police to keep him updated on the car’s whereabouts. And for a few nights, he stayed at a friend’s home.

For two months after that, Alim floated: nights downtown, nights spent at friends’ homes, nights hanging around the casino to find a place to sleep. For most of them, he stayed in a car parked in a field next to his friend’s home – the friend who had been shot. 

Without a car he could drive, Alim struggled to get to his former job at a scrapyard. He was still distraught by the incident, which made work difficult, he said. But he kept plugging away at a fledgling business to detail cars and, by late July, got another job at a grocery store.

All the while, Alim had been making call after call to the impound lot in hopes of getting the car back. Each time, he was asked for its title and the registration. Alim didn’t have those: the car was a loaner he’d fixed up from his relative who owned the scrapyard, he said.  

In late July, he finally got answers. After Signal Cleveland inquired about the car, an officer on the shooting case told Alim that it had been “junked” – or, as a police spokesperson put it, “destroyed” in compliance with police policy because the vehicle wasn’t claimed by its legal owner.  

The news was another blow in a situation that had already challenged his mental and emotional health. In early August, Alim checked himself into a residential treatment center, hoping to get assistance with his mental health, sobriety and housing. He felt he was reaching a point of desperation, willing to do whatever it took to afford reliable housing and food — even if it was criminal.  

“That’s why I said, ‘OK, let me identify that. Because it’s not what I want to do,” Alim said in late July, right before entering treatment “… Let me go seek the help that I’m looking for right now.”

After finishing treatment, Alim got his commercial driver’s license reinstated and landed a job as a truck driver. It offered solid wages and a reliable place to sleep each night. 

The incident at the Cleveland Clinic de-stabilized him, he said. Now, he feels his life is back on track. Even so, he said, if another friend were to be shot, he would drive them to the hospital all over again. 

“Trying to stay true to myself, I would,” Alim said. “But I also would second-guess sticking around.”

Visual presentation by Michael Indriolo and copy editing by Mary Ellen Huesken.