Cleveland police cadets will head to Columbus on Monday for the Ohio State Highway Patrol Training Academy. Today, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Carolyn Friedland lifted a temporary restraining order blocking the move. WKSU’s Kevin Niedermier reports.
Friedland says the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, which requested the injunction, failed to show that holding the four-month training program in Columbus would cause irreparable harm to the recruits. The union argued that spending that much time away from family would be a serious burden for many of them.
Friedland said the city did prove that not taking advantage of the free Highway Patrol training would cause harm to the public.
“As host of the 2016 Republican National Convention and as mandated by the Department of Justice consent decree, Cleveland has inherited serious security obligations. Granting injunctive relief would stagnate Cleveland’s ability to satisfy these additional security obligations and would therefore not be in the public’s interest.”
If the training was not moved to Columbus, the Cleveland Police Department would have needed to re-establish its academy which officials say would have delayed the start of training until February. It would have also cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.