Cleveland Municipal Court Administrative Judge Michelle Earley explains the court’s pretrial release program.
Cleveland Municipal Court Administrative Judge Michelle Earley explains the court’s pretrial release program. Credit: YouTube

Covered by Documenter Kellie Morris

Pretrial monitoring: Cleveland Municipal Court Presiding Judge Michelle Earley walked Cleveland City Council members through a program created to reduce the number of people held in jail while charges are pending. Earley said the court assesses whether people are eligible to remain in the community and be monitored by court case managers and GPS ankle devices. The committee approved the use of a $425,000 state grant to hire three additional staff members to help the current 15 employees.

TikTok debate: Council members debated an emergency resolution that urged Cleveland to ban the use of social media platforms TikTok and WeChat, which are owned by Chinese companies, on city-owned devices. Some members expressed concerns about data mining and facial recognition. Council Members Jenny Spencer, Rebecca Maurer and Stephanie Howse said the language of the resolution could be offensive to Asian communities living in the United States. Spencer said that some city departments use WeChat for outreach to the Asian community. 

Council later passed the resolution after language was amended to replace the wording “Chinese-owned” to specify platforms owned or located in “the People’s Republic of China.”

Read more from Documenter Kellie Morris

Cleveland Documenters pays and trains people to cover public meetings where government officials discuss important issues and decide how to spend taxpayer money.