Cleveland City Council is getting closer to increasing criminal penalties for threatening healthcare workers, following spirited discussions about how or whether the law could address the problem.
The Cleveland Clinic asked the council to consider the legislation last fall in response to rising workplace violence. Hospital leaders worried staff were not reporting incidents, which were growing more common, and they needed the city’s support to discourage and punish threats.
Under current city law, threatening another person’s physical safety — called “menacing” — is a fourth degree misdemeanor. Legislation currently under consideration would raise that to a first degree misdemeanor and add a mandatory three-day jail sentence if the person menaced was a healthcare worker.
But the legislation has taken months to work its way through the committee, as council members asked hospitals for more data. Some also raised concerns about the potential for the law to criminalize patients.
On Wednesday, council’s safety committee finally voted five to one to pass it out of committee. City Council plans to vote on the bill at its meeting June 1, according to a council spokesperson.
The committee edited the law to require hospitals to offer de-escalation and crisis intervention training to their healthcare workers, in order for menacing to be charged as a first degree misdemeanor. (The city’s three major hospitals systems — Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and MetroHealth — say they already provide this training.) Council members also called leaders from each hospital up to the committee table to ask how their institutions are investing in safety and supporting their employees.
Hospital leaders largely said that they are undertaking efforts to improve workplace safety by offering victim advocacy programs, improved reporting processes and counseling services after an incident.
“As a registered nurse now for 27 years, my duty has always been to serve patients first and report incidents against myself last. That is why this is a nationwide crisis,” said Jason Pirtz, chief operating officer at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, at the meeting. “We are here locally to ask for support.”
The legislation also protects healthcare workers outside of hospital settings, like paramedics and emergency medical technicians. The Cleveland Association of Rescue Employees, which represents EMS workers, supports the legislation, saying violent incidents against their staff have risen.
Council Member Stephanie Howse-Jones was the sole vote against the legislation at the safety committee. She had proposed adding language into the bill that would require police and hospital systems to complete a “trauma-informed care checklist” before a person can be charged with menacing. That would include documenting whether the perpetrator understood their surroundings or had any indicators of an acute behavioral health crisis.
Her proposal didn’t make it into the final bill. Howse-Jones said one of the reasons she didn’t support the legislation was because it didn’t account for how residents’ behavior might be disrupted by traumatic incidents they’re experiencing at the hospital.
“When people are in an active state of trauma, there is something called emotional deregulation, which means they are not able to necessarily control what they do,” Howse-Jones said in the meeting. “Where else do you go when you are experiencing trauma? … If you can’t even get help in a hospital system, people are just doomed.”
Another request from Howse-Jones did make it in the bill, though. She had hoped to add language requiring the City of Cleveland to track annually incidents and charges of the menacing of healthcare workers, which committee members voted in favor of.
Hospitals see hundreds of workplace violence events, but few people are charged
Earlier this year, Council Member Mike Polensek asked the three major hospital systems to provide data on how many workplace violence incidents they see and how many are charged.
Each hospital tracks the data differently. But all the hospitals are seeing far more cases reported than end up being prosecuted, Council Member Richard Starr said during the meeting.
“Healthcare workers deserve accountability from offenders, but they also deserve accountability from the systems that employ them,” Starr said.
University Hospitals reported between approximately 460 to 600 violent incidents a year between 2023 and 2025 and thousands more calls for threatening behavior. In that same time period, the hospital police filed 10 menacing reports, which represent incidents that met the legal threshold for potential charges. Two were referred for prosecution.
The Cleveland Clinic reported around 400 calls annually to police for workplace violence events at their main campus between 2023 and 2025. Meanwhile, the hospital presented 50 cases to prosecutors across the three years.
MetroHealth employees experienced 240 workplace violence incidents, threats or assaults between 2023 and 2025. Assault charges were filed in 85 cases, and menacing or stalking charges were filed in 11, according to data the hospital shared.
The hospitals said that they don’t track cases in which employees submit police reports to non-hospital police departments or to the prosecutor’s office directly. University Hospitals wrote in a statement to council members that the cases that weren’t referred for prosecution were hindered primarily because of insufficient evidence or the victim declining to pursue charges. At Cleveland Clinic, not all events reported through the hospital’s safety system meet the legal standards required for charges to be considered, the hospital wrote in a statement to council members.
Council members urge hospitals to support healthcare workers
Council members urged the hospital systems to support employees, particularly by allowing victims pursuing charges paid time off to deal with the criminal justice system.
Some healthcare workers have told council members: “That’s one of the reasons why the numbers are so low — because we have to use our personal time or our sick time to file a complaint,” Polensek said. “And we do not get the support from the institutions.”
Each hospital shared details about their support services.
At University Hospitals, caregivers impacted by workplace violence get up to three scheduled shifts off to support recovery and participation in the legal process, the hospital wrote.
MetroHealth gives employees three shifts off after a workplace violence incident, without cutting into other time off they accrued.
The Cleveland Clinic has a victim advocate program that provides emotional support and accompanies victims to court proceedings. The hospital wrote that it allows employees to adjust work schedules for court-related proceedings, and if doing so is not possible, they can use paid time off. If absence is required due to a subpoena, the time away is paid, the hospital wrote.
