August 22, 2025 • 54 mins
Hosts Rabbi and Uni are joined by Judge Mona' Scott of Cleveland Housing Court is introduced as a role model, sharing her Atlanta roots, legal education at Cleveland Marshall, and journey to the bench. She highlights her commitment to fairness, community service, and adapting during the pandemic by moving court online and addressing the digital divide.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is w O v U Studios Board.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
We're in the process of selecting a new CEO and
we're down to two last candidates. We will probably Thursday
make some decisions on Thursday who to present to the board.
Then Thursday, the Black Ohio Black Women's Political Action Committee
(00:30):
had a meet and greet. You showed up there, you know,
and man, it was fantastic. We had a good time there.
We met many of the candidates. And then on Saturday,
she had her annual jazz festival and listen. We had
about six seven hundred people there on the grounds on
Saturday with the three different bands Camp CAMPI Russell came by.
(00:56):
I said, the Browns, but he's from the Calves and
he said he'd heard about it, and he said he'd
be making his business to come back next year. I
think she's going to try to have Carlos Jones next year.
And then I ended up having to preach at a
picnic out at Huntington Beach Park. Builders of Faith Church
(01:20):
had their annual picnic. Our church did also, but I
was asked to do a little speaking and man, we
were out there and just as we left, a young
man was drowned. I mean it. It was tragic and
they had to empty the park. But you know, but
other than that, we had a great week. We're in
(01:42):
process of developing the global ministry called the Ecclesiastical Council,
and you know, I have my strategic plan for the
African American community and I think we may be getting
about about five million dollar of the twenty five that
we need to get that started. And so we just
(02:05):
had a wonderful week and a wonderful weekend. Very busy,
very active, and I'm looking forward. You know, we have
one of the most unique and different, dynamic judges on
the bench and the Housing Court, and we're going to
have her on the show this morning. I really I
(02:29):
have observed her over the years, even before she came judge,
I watched her. She's a woman of class, distinction, integrity,
very very very outstanding woman in our community that our
young women need to model, used as a model, and
so I'm grateful that she has consented to come and
(02:51):
be here with us this morning. I'm talking about none
other than Judge Monette Scott. But before we get to Judge,
what about you, Ni, How was your weekend?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
It was interesting, but it was smooth. I spent it working.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Oh yeah, I'm excited to get into it with our
lovely guest this morning, because she is all those things
and more that you described this morning. So I'm super
excited and grateful to have you in our presence. I'm
super excited to have this conversation with you. But Rabbi,
please probably introduce our guest this.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, this is this is our illustrious, honorable judge when
they Scott of the Housing Court of Cleveland a judge.
You know, we we've observed you over the years, and
we we understand that being a judge is a very
difficult job. You're you're you're elected to do a job,
(03:49):
a thankless job, and a job you're damned if you
do and you're damned if you don't. Absolutely uh, And
many people don't understand that. Very often you want to
follow the spirit of the law, but sometimes you have
to follow the law, okay, And you know, tell the
(04:10):
folks about yourself. Who are you, where do you come from,
how long have you been around, where were you educated,
et cetera.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Thank you, Reverend Rabbi. Rabbi, first of all, I am
money Scott. I am originally from Atlanta, Georgia. I moved
up to seven girl yes, yes, member of the Body
of Christ Christian Church out of College Park, Georgia. My
(04:39):
mom was a minister there, my sister and brother in
law minister's there still. And so I came to Cleveland,
Ohio August first of nineteen ninety eight to attend Cleveland
Marshall College of Law, which is now Cleveland State University
College of Law. And I haven't left. So I started
(05:02):
up here. I you know, I I have to start
off by saying, you know, I was thinking about how
this journey started, and I started something on my Facebook page.
I just remember, you know, developing a relationship with God
when I was probably about eight years old, just you know,
(05:23):
looking up to this guy and just asking questions and
m stating what I wanted to do in life. And
this is probably a little bit after my parents' divorce.
We relocated from middle class to low income and I
was not happy in the environment that I was in,
and so I, you know, it was just like I
went out of this environment was starting to see things
(05:47):
being down unfairly, not because of race, because I'm in
College Park, Georgia, but just because of class and socioeconomic status.
And so I remember in third grade doing the report
of what do you want to be when you grow up?
And I was talking to the librarian because we spent
a lot of time in the library because we didn't
have computers, so we couldn't do a Google research, and
(06:11):
so we I was like, I want to be something
that deals with fairness, that teaches you how to treat
everybody equal and fair. And she was like, well, what
about a referee in sports? And I was like, no,
I don't want to do that, and so she gave
me some options and she said, well, what about a judge?
Speaker 5 (06:28):
And I said, well, what is a judge?
Speaker 4 (06:30):
And so that's how I started my research project in
third grade. And in third grade I knew I wanted
to be a judge. Lived my life that way. Got
an undergraduate undergraduate degree from Florida State University, came up
here and received my jd from again Cleveland Marshall College
of Law. My first job here was a law clerk
(06:52):
with Force Fields and Associates, so I got to work
for and meet the infamous mister George Forbes. I was
hired by now Judge Cassandra Kya Williams and her bailiff,
Pastor Anthony Parker.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Esquire.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
And then I was a law clerk for Shaker Heights,
the City of Shaker Heights, and then I became a
law clerk for the City of Cleveland. I became a
prosecutor for the City of Cleveland. I became a prosecutor
for Kyahoga County. Served all units except for grand jury
and major trial, although I second chair major Trials. Had
(07:30):
a lot of jury experience, have a l several about
eight or arguments before the Eighth District Court of Appeals.
And I also became the fair house and administrator for
the City of Cleveland. So my life has been one
dedicated to public service. I became judge. You know, I
had been praying. I don't make any big moves until
(07:51):
I pray. And so when I finally got the word
after sitting still for a minute, you know, God gave
me permission to run for judge. And then it was
my eyes were on the seats of General Division. I
had no interest in Housing Court whatsoever, and you know,
just staying in prayer and journaling my journey. You know,
(08:13):
I was instructed to run for Housing Court, which I
didn't want to do. So I kind of have this
going back and forth with God in prayer, and finally
my sisters and talked me into it, and so I
ran the first time in twenty seventeen. I had about
(08:34):
three months to run. I filed on the very last
date because I had to leave my job with the
City of Cleveland, and from June I believe it was
mid June to November. I you know, dedicated of you know,
running and just letting people know who I am. I
ended up losing by about three hundred and eighty six votes.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
It was two additional people.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
It was the incuminent O'Leary and the person that was
running against for that seat. And that was an exciting
year because that was twenty seventeen. The mayor was running,
all of city council was running. It was about four
additional people running for general division, and then there was
Housing Court. And that was an abnormal year because many
(09:18):
people had passed, many judges had passed, so it vacated
a lot of seats and I believe at that time,
I believe Judge Mays might have went over to the
Court of Appeal, so that vacated a seat. Judge Wade
passed that vacated a seat, and a couple of other
things happened, but.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
I lost.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
I was devastated. I was I'm just being transparent. I
wasn't happy with God. I was depressed, sad because you know,
I was like, you promised me this seat. So I'm unemployed,
I don't have the judge ship. What am I to do?
And I remember my dad coming to get me, so
he can, you know, just let me sleep and do whatever.
(10:07):
And I went home for about I think about two weeks,
three weeks, and then I came back. Still wasn't happy,
Still was trying to find my way, and then I
wasn't even sure I was gonna run in twenty nineteen. Again,
I just didn't know if I had it in me,
if I just wanted to relocate back home. My son
was a senior in high school, so he wasn't a
(10:28):
senior high school. I think he was a sophomore at
the time. So I was trying to make some decisions.
Finally decided to run again. It takes a lot, so
kudos to all those that run for office and don't
win the first time, but get back up and try again.
Twenty nineteen, it ended up being a very different run.
(10:49):
It was a weird year because it was only myself
running against the incominent and then also I believe Jedge
Cassidy and Judge Patent are running and that was it.
It was nobody else running. It was nothing really on
the ballot. So it was a quiet year, as I
call it. But again I dedicated meeting people one on one,
(11:09):
getting to know people and letting them know who I was,
and being you know, about my passions and desires of
what I wanted to do if I was offered the
opportunity to be on the bench, and some of those
things were to bring the court back out to the community.
I was very cognitive of PTO people not having PTO
(11:31):
paid time off to come to court. So one of
the things I wanted to do was have evening court
to give people an option to be heard, because that's
important when you're dealing with housing, especially when you're dealing
with evictions. And that was a desire. So fast forward.
I ended up winning in twenty nineteen by about four
(11:53):
thousand plus votes. Wow, and then you know, the journey began.
And it wasn't until the pandemic hits when I finally
understood why God, God wanted me to run for that seat.
Because the amount of time that we were given by
the Ohio Supreme Court to turn the court around to
(12:14):
a virtual court to make sure people can possibly you know,
a tend court in a safe, sanitary condition. You know,
it was already festering in my mind of how I
wanted to turn this court around to make it more
accessible for evening. So it was fairly easy for me
(12:36):
to put a virtual policy in place for virtual hearings.
You know, I sat and I thought, you know, what
would be something good to do?
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Like Zoom?
Speaker 4 (12:47):
And I thought Zoom was the best because just like
an iPhone versus an Android, people believe iPhones are more
user friendly. Zoom was more user friendly than WebEx. I
knew about the digital divide as a fair house and administrator.
Knew a lot of people in Cleveland do not have
access to Wi Fi and Internet, and so all of
those things are playing in my head because the people
(13:08):
that are most vulnerable, our marginalized citizens, are the ones
that won't have access. So not only did we have
a virtual policy rollout, the Zoom rollout, we went about
having virtual things on Facebook Live to teach people how
to do it. The city announced that there was twelve
million dollars in rental assistance, so they didn't know how
(13:29):
to get people connected to that. I, of course everything
runs through Housing Court when it comes to housing. So
I decided to call chn and the Legal Aid Society
of Cleveland to the table for us to have virtual
roundtable discussions, to just come together because this is the
first time no one had a blueprint. And I say
(13:52):
Legal Aid Society of Cleveland because on July of twenty twenty,
the right to counsel took effect, so that came into play.
Doing the pandemic what they thought it was gonna look like,
which are like public defenders that are in the court
room waiting to talk to indigent criminal defendants. Legal Aid
(14:15):
thought that they would be there in the courtroom ready
to talk to tenants that showed up for court.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
Well, we were totally virtual.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
So we had to come up with a way to
issue summons to put people on notice that Legal Aid
right to counsel was available. They also did door knocks
and delivered some printouts about what is right to counsel
and then CHNU they decided to kind of prioritize those
(14:45):
that were in eviction court. So it was a a
quick turnaround, a re scrapping of what housing court is,
what housing court does. At the same time, fighting through
a pandemic. I think a lot of people forget cause,
you know, the United States of a need USA. They
forgot about the pandemic. They forgot about the impact they
(15:05):
had on people's housing, people's work, people's health, and the
loss of loved ones. That includes staff and having to
battle those issues with staff. While we're not only having
roundtables with how to make things work in housing court,
we're also sitting around as administrative judges trying to keep
staff safe, keep the building sanitized, trying to understand what
(15:30):
it is. And so we're going on what COVID nineteen is,
the impact of it the justice center and us all
being crowded in that space, but still having to go
to work because although there was a stay at home
order for thirty days put out by the governor, the
courts are first responders, so the court could never close
(15:52):
the Ohio Supreme Court doesn't you have authority to close
the court. So we were still working, we were still
showing up and by we talking about me and my
team of staff and while we were working, we were
also meeting trying to figure out how is this going
to look and how is it going to play out.
(16:13):
So I have enjoyed being on Housing Court. It is
a work of passion because it's never about me. It's
really about the community, connecting them with resources, but making
them also educating them about what the law says.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
I'm glad you said that. So first of all, break
down the Housing Court the judge, then what magistrates, tenants
and right tennants rights, and so break break it down
for us.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
So Cleveland Housing Court has a staff of fifty five
people when we're at capacity. The unfortunate part is we
don't really have a lot of space in there. We
if you've ever visited Cleveland Municipal Court, the Housing Division,
we all of our workers work on the thirteenth floor.
(17:05):
So we have our Housing Court specialists we're which are
also our mediators and also our probation officers or community
service officers. They work in the back of the thirteenth floor.
They're they're in an outward area, open office, open floor plan.
(17:26):
We do have magistrates and so some of the things
I've had to do was increase the magistrates. So I care,
you know, ask for new positions to be added for
Housing Court specialists, for magistrates, and also for the deputy bailiffs,
which are our security that are out there doing the
(17:46):
evictions but also making sure the court is has security.
There's also an administrative level, so Court Administrator that does
a lot of the work for the court, the administrative
stuff like the budget, also dealing with all of the staff,
so they're like the chief operator of the court. We
(18:09):
when I took over Housing Court, they did not have
a dedicated HR which I thought that that was desperately needed,
so I created a position a legislator for a positions,
so we have a Deputy Court Administrator, Human Resource director,
it's the office of one, and then we have a
(18:29):
finance officer was also added to Housing Court. So at
full capacity we're budgeted for think about fifty five people,
and it is different levels. It's the Housing Court specialists,
it's the magistrates, and it is the deputy bailiffs and
then also the administrative staff of personal bailiff, executive assistant,
(18:52):
schedulers and things like that.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
What is the court's relationship with the tenants tenants to
landlords rights?
Speaker 5 (18:59):
I think so.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
We're always the adjudicator of law. I try to tell
people when I go out into the community because Coals
and Court gets blamed for everything good or bad. The
good things we always want to embrace, but the bad things,
it's not really our responsibility. And so I take time
to educate people to say that there's two case loads
(19:23):
that we deal with. We deal with evictions and we
deal with criminal code violations. And so the evictions we
adhere to the higher revised code dealing with forced entry detainers,
and then also what we call second cause damages, so
that's for back rent, but there's also including their stealing
(19:45):
enough eviction records. People can file for bankruptcy when they're
dealing with eviction and the eviction process. And also small claims,
but a lot of those give forward to the General
Division Small Claims portion. And there's the criminal docket that
deals with code enforcement of all of Cleveland's housing, building,
(20:08):
fire zoning, and health codes. And so those cases laying
on my docket, which I mainly deal with those cases,
while my seven I believe seven up to eight magistrates
deal with the evictions and the civil docket.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Okay, let's let's uh really, let's let's take a break
right now.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I wasn't going to take a break. Today is special.
We have a lovely guest in the studio.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I agree with you, but we need to take a
palls for the calls.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Oh oh, I didn't want to. Did not want to.
In fact, I have a question what made you when
you re ran again? Why housing? Why didn't you go
to a different division like you initially wanted to, Because
you've never wanted to go to housing, as you mentioned.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Right, So it's a it's a it was about being obedient.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
And then you know when I took that pause because
I thought, I so part of it was. Originally I
didn't want to do it cause I kept saying housing
court is just not a hot thing. M And I
had been a prosecutor, so I knew what that role
specifically looked like.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
I mean, I had worked with.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Judge Pianca as the Fair Housing Administrator, went out to
some of his landlord trainings to educate people about fair
housing laws, fair housing rights, the dues and don't so
that you don't get in trouble. And I had also
been a prosecutor, which was heavy in the community, going
out talking about the cases, educating people about what a
prosecutor does, so I wasn't familiar. It was more so
(21:47):
like I wasn't really familiar with housing court. But when
I look at my overall career path and I had
spent a year and a half being a code nuh
a Cayoho County prosecutor for the Treasure Office, I'm sorry
for the Prosecutor's office. With dealing with tax foreclosure, that
(22:07):
was just another level of dealing with housing and dealing
with the housing stock and just understanding. I also was
a board member of Harvard Community Service Center with the
Rabbi's lovely wife, MSUs Ghoston, who I loved dearly, And
so when I became a fair Housing ministry I also
learned about CDBG funds, how that looks, community development, how
(22:30):
that looks, and how that impacts housing, what resources there were.
And then also as Fairhousing administry, I also knew about
red lining. I learned more about red lining. It's a
lot of things that led me up to it. So
when I ran and when I finally won, it was
a breath of fresh air because I thought, I can
(22:52):
do things. When I take this bench, I can make
a difference. I can still be very active in the community,
which really, realistically, being a judge for general Division would
really limit that. And so it's really really when the pandemic,
I was on the bench two and a half months,
(23:13):
trying to learn the role of a judge, balancing it
as an administrative judge, as an active judge on a
bench with dockets, trying to organize a court that was
a little chaotic. When I took over, I'm really about
streamlining and processes and making things make sense, and so,
you know, and then how can I introduce my branding
(23:35):
of Housing Court Cleveland Housing Court, to the community. The
pandemic hit and it just kind of shut everything down,
and I believe that's when I had an Aha moment
that I was supposed to be there at this time
because housing was so foundational and fundamental during a pandemic,
and so I instantly knew, especially when that thirty days
(23:57):
stay at home order came out by you know, Governor DeWine.
That shut down everything in Cleveland. If everybody can remember,
for thirty days solid people weren't going to work, people
weren't going to you know, they weren't getting money, and
we started having landlord's call with concerns about how they're
(24:18):
gonna get rent, how they're gonna be able to pay
their mortgage. The moratorium and all that came later, but
you know, at that point we also had to stay
everything in the court. We couldn't keep functioning. We had
to kind of shut everything down. We got attack grant
because no one had equipment to do virtual hearings.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
No one had.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Laptops and VPNs and these little things that are necessary
to have a successful rollout. The Ohio Supreme Court started
with a sixty five thousand dollar budget.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
We instantly went to work. We created written.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Policies of how this is gonna look. We jotted down
what equipment we were gonna use with my then top
it that I kind of poached from the from the county.
But we started a plan and we kept working, and
that plan was used by the other court General Division,
and I think it was also shared with Common Pleas.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
But what is.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
The average budget for housing court? Initially, because that sounds.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
A little low, So the budget for the first three
years we had to pretty much use the budget that
was set by my predecessor, And because they didn't know
how that looked, and because it was shut down, everything
was going on with this pandemic. I think our budget
was about three million, and I'm trying to go out. No.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
If you notice that face, I made miss good because
because like I said, that's all a little low. That's
why I asked for Yes, we don't go anywhere. This
is book Club Tuesday on our voices.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Today.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
We're gonna take a little break because I I don't
want to ride out being up later and everybody.
Speaker 5 (26:05):
Be right back with the.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Judge got welcome back, welcome back, welcome back to our voice.
Is today book Club Tuesday right here on w o VU,
Cleveland's urban alternative. And if you are just tuning in,
we have Judgement Nate Scott live in the studio with
me being UNI and the ride by.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
And when we went to break finally we left off
on budget and you know, you inherited it.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Quite interesting the office, quite interesting. Interesting time. You had
COVID going on, You had a very little budget going on,
and you had that for the next three years. What
helped you overcome besides these tech grats and things of
that nature that you got.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
So the tech grant, how we end up going out
for another one. They gave that to all the courts
to kind of bring them up technology wise. There's like
five hundred and twenty nine courts in the state of Ohio.
That is I think our eighty eight county common Pleas courts.
(27:10):
I think we have twelve Court of Appeals, one Ohio
Supreme Court, but a lot of the other courts are
municipal and also mayor's courts. So it's about five hundred
and twenty nine courts give or take in the state
of Ohio. So it was just fortitude, just learning, learning
(27:32):
a lot, learning a lot about people. I always say
I inherited an old, older court, and that's not about age,
but about the people that had worked there. It was
people that had been working for the court twenty twenty
five years. We had a lot of retirements that happened
(27:57):
with the court, and then it was a lot of
full I mean, it's a lot of poaching.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
I can't I did it myself, so and people did
it to the court.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
So right, right, You always target people that work in
high volume that can multitask, because what does that look like.
It was a lot of growth for me on just understanding,
you know, when you are bringing people into the court
to interviewing skills to seeing if something works for either
(28:31):
person and either person being able to say, you know,
this may not be my calling to work in here.
Because Housing court is a very different court. It is
a very high volume, fast pace.
Speaker 5 (28:46):
We go five days a week. We go hard five
days a week.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
And if people have ever worked in court to come
from General or somewhere else, not saying that they're not
very busy, but typically on a Friday, there's not a
lot going on in the Justice center extuff for a
housing court, we usually have about three three dockets going yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Not everyone has the bandwidth and that's okay to say, right.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
And it's learned on my behalf and then also on
people that come and interview with the court. So I
try to make sure now being on the bench five
and a half years, that the perception of working for
this court versus the reality of working for this court
has to match. It has to match, because people will
(29:34):
perceive that I could do this, but they don't really
understand if you're coming from a kind of even keel
environment that when we're saying we're moving about three hundred,
two hundred and fifty to three hundred civil cases through
the court per week, that's the volume we're talking about
(29:57):
when we're saying, you know we have.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
I think we have.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
I can't remember about two thousand or twenty six hundred
criminal cases on the docket, But then I'm the only
judge that's dealing with that.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Is that criminal trespass or criminal code.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
Violation, So they're all code violations, minor misdemeanors and misdemeanors
we just have too. So the minor mistermeanors are a
ticket that you could pay, a wavable offense, and the
m ones misdemeanors in the first degree are where there's
a failure to comply with the notice of violations. So
they get those violation notices from the inspectors and they
(30:41):
have oh so many days to make the repairs. They
can always appeal and ask for an additional ninety days,
which is usually granted. But it's what people do when
they get the violation notice. They don't either respond or
they don't know what to do, or they make the
repairs and don't know that they should call the inspector.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Outter they make the repairs.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
But the thing that I educate a lot of people
about because when I go out into the community and
I ask them if someone stole your car, who would
you call? And people will say I would call the police,
right And I say this, if you're living next to
a vacant property or dilapidated property with dumping, who.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
Would you call?
Speaker 4 (31:25):
And time and time again people say, I'll call Housing Court.
We are a court, so we are only supposed to
listen to parties and make a ruling on what the
law say is. We're not a reporting agency, so I
tell them that's not who you call. You call the inspectors,
and then the people that bring the case to us
we can go out. We can't create cases. I can't
(31:48):
bring cases to anybody's attention. They have to go through
the inspectors. And the inspectors are housing courts police. They're
our Cleveland police officers. That we do have tickets written
by Cleveland police officers for parking on the grass and
you know, dumping in all of that, because they do
(32:09):
have permission to write those tickets, but they take those
to the code enforcement prosecutors, and those are a different
set of prosecutors.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
That's what I wanted to Okay, so you're not a prosecutor.
Now what you do is sit and adjudicate the law,
make a decision based on the law, all right, and
then that has can be the letter of the law,
and sometimes sometimes you can use the spirit of the law,
(32:39):
but most times you're elected to uphold the letter of
the law. Am I right in my assumption?
Speaker 5 (32:46):
Yes? Okay, yes, So very often.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
People will come in feeling that because they look like you,
all right, that they ought to automatically get the spirit
of the law, or because they don't look like you,
then they feel they ought to get the spirit of
the law. Am I correct in my assumption.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
I've been told that, whether they say it to me
while we're on record, because I don't talk to people
that have cases before me. But when people are not
happy how the court ruled, it's usually because how dare she?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
You know?
Speaker 5 (33:26):
She I voted for her.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
She looks just like me, and I don't understand why
she ruled the way she did. I'm not the only
just that experienced that, but I've been told that. It's
never been presented to me while they're right there, although
some people do come in and name drop, and I'm
not understanding why they're name dropping about.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
Who they know in the community.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Because one thing everybody who knows me no is I'm
very consistent, and I'm consistent for just so that I
don't inject any of my biases or my leniency based
on who you are or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
I try.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I do the same thing with everybody that comes. Whether
you are individual or whether you're a LLC, you can
pretty much gauge how I'm going to rule on this case.
But I do want to say the difference between the
two is that an individual is looking at jail time
versus a LLC, where LLC is not a person, so
(34:35):
you can't put them in jail. So the only thing
that can happen with a LLC, a landlord, business, property
manager owner is that you can give them fines and
put them on community control. An individual who has property
in their own name, you can give them finds. It's
(34:56):
one hundred and eighty days per count, but the maximums
eighteen months in jail and then there are fines and
five years of community control. So that's the distinguishing between
the two. But the cases are bought by the prosecutors,
they assigned assistant a lot of directors. They're not located
(35:16):
in the Justice center, they're located in City Hall. They're
right up under the Law of Director. The General Division
Prosecutors is also but they're in the Justice Center on
the eighth floor. So the Code Enforcement prosecutors kind of
do dual roles. They work in the capacity of a
(35:36):
prosecutor and then they also work in the capacity of
an assistant Law of Director.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Beauty, I'm curious to know how residents first affected your
office and your court and what other things that you
have incorporated, because after you know that first three years
have passed, because like you said, five and a half
years now, so I I wanna know now that you
have gotten past the period of getting past what your
(36:04):
predecesor had laid for f before you, what you have
been able to t do more and create within your
court and office.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
So what I've done is I cause I came and
watched the court a couple of times before I w
after I won, and before I send it to the bench,
and because of my experience as a prosecutor for the
city and for the county, kind of know how a
court should look. So when I would go it would
(36:35):
be a mixture of cases being heard MM, so there
could be an arrangement mixed in with a sentencing mixed
in with a status update, or the status update is
you know they're on probation or community control. And they
can also be a mixture of UH a pre trial
and a a request for a continuance. That was very
(36:57):
confusing to me when I'm looking at the court was packed.
There's a lot of activity, a lot of talking going on,
and if I have an arrayment that takes like no
more than ten minutes, I'm waiting to be arraigned while
listening to a sentence that can take forty five minutes.
So one of the things that I knew I was
(37:19):
gonna do was just streamline these how this looks, so
we would have a day for arrangments only. We would
have pre trial days court order pre trials, that is
so that they can hurry up and do discovery and
then move forward with the case so they don't slow
the docket down. That was also a learned behavior because
(37:42):
there would be a continuous continuation of continue requests for
continuance for pre trial. Some cases I started finding out
due to the Ohio Supreme Court Center as a report
saying these cases are over age, and then we look
and say, why are these cases over age well and
doing pre trials for a year with the prosecutors, and
(38:05):
so it was also kind of changing people's mindset about
how Housing Court is rent and telling.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
People this is your job.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
This is not the role of the court and just
staff everybody just saying no, we're not supposed to do that.
That's a conflict of interest with the court. So me
bringing the court in compliance but also making sure everybody
do their role. That the Housing Court is not the
just jury and executioner that you know, this court is
(38:38):
not going to tell people they shouldn't go to jury trial.
I'm here five days a week. If a person wants
a bench trial or a jewelry trial, that's what I
was elected to do, is sit there and adjudicate, you know,
and giving them their due process right. So we streamlined
a lot of processes. We redefine job descriptions. We re
(39:02):
certified everybody and made sure everybody was certified. We reproposed
how being a community control officer housing specialist looks. You know,
you have to tell us what's going on with this property.
We want to make sure they're moving towards compliance and
getting off the docket and not recitivating at the same time,
(39:22):
you want to make sure they're we're connecting them with
resources and also keeping them on target to cut the grass,
to board up the properties. With residents first, I knew
the code enforcement prosecutors were interested in updating languages. I
did not know they were doing a complete overhaul of
(39:45):
building a housing code and laws and how that looks.
I found out probably when everybody else did, when they
were going through the process of city council.
Speaker 5 (39:55):
Council members asked me did I want to be heard
at a hearing?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
And I was about what and they was like the
new residence first laws And I'm like, I don't know
what you guys are talking about.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
That's very interesting.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Yeah, they did not include me, And then I'm kind
of happy that they didn't, because there are some people
who don't care the fact that I'm on the bench
that thought I had some parts of dealing with residence first.
I had no parts, no inputs or anything. Some of
the things that I kind of reviewed were that search warrants,
(40:31):
where I was just like, I don't think you guys,
you can't circumvent me as a judge for search warrants.
It can't be an administrative search warrant. There's no such
thing as a judge has to always sign off on those,
and you know some of.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
It, some enemies come into compliance, it's okay.
Speaker 5 (40:50):
Yeah, I was about to say it's okay. I probably probably,
but it's not because I don't like you. I don't
like you.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
I do the whole thing, and it's really not the
cause financial distress on LC or individual and it is
just to get them in compliance.
Speaker 5 (41:09):
By the time they get to my bench. Believe me
when I.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
Say that violation notice that was first issued, it's about
two years old on average, two to three years old.
So by the time you get to me and you're
ready to do a change of plea, rarely do we
see that that violation notice is closed out. It's still open.
So you not only had three years to get in compliance.
(41:35):
Just going off of cases, you've had a year of
pre trials. That's not the case now because i've really,
like I said, streamlined that process. But you had a
year pre trials to get property and compliance. And it
is It's interesting how everybody is upset when they come
into the court, but these are people that's just been
(41:56):
kind of not paying attention or not desiring or not
doing what they're supposed to do as landlord owners, investors,
or just do the bare minimum. And that is a
lot of el sees, whether it's local or out of
state or out of country. I see it play out
(42:18):
on my bench all the time.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I want to go back to the Ohio Revised Code
and your relationship as a judge, would you go a
little deeper uppel that another another layer off of that please?
Speaker 5 (42:35):
For so, can you clarify that for me, because you.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Have to go by to some degree criminal law all right,
although you're not a criminal court except for criminal code violations,
but you're bound by the Ohio Revised Code to make
certain adjudications.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Yes, it's the Ohio revis Code governs the bench. Cleveland
Codify Ordinances, which is the municipal laws, governs the bench.
Also the Ohio Rules of Superintendent governs the bench. And
so when it's it's a whole bunch of things. It's
anything from criminal procedure to sentencing, the rules of criminal
(43:24):
procedure which is exchange of discovery, to filing motions to
dismiss versus filing motions for leimity, to requesting jury trials,
requesting a bench trial to sentencing orders and what that
looks like and how we can contry. And it also
includes the court's local rules. So if the Ohio Revised
(43:48):
Code is quiet as to how that process can look,
then we as a court have we can create local
rules to street to clarify.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
How that should look.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
So all the courts have it. The Quarter Common please,
Court of Appeals have local rules. Everybody has it to
kind of clarify what a process should look like and
how the court should move. It kind of dictates. So
let's talk about sentencing. The Higher Revised Code says, say,
if you're an LLC.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
Under the.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Community Control statue, which is probation. Again, if you're LLC,
the maxima five per count is five thousand dollars the
court could impose and up to five years of probation.
If you're an individual and you take a plea, you're
looking at a one thousand dollars maximum fine of one
(44:47):
thousand dollars per count, one hundred and eighty days in
jail per count, and up to no more than eighteen
months and up to five years of probation. So those
are the options that I can do. But then how
do so? Could I just charge them a fine and
(45:10):
not worry about the violation notice being closed. That's an
option that my phone, that's an option. I apologize. My
phone is forever on silence, and for some odd reason
it is not on silence today because I took it
(45:32):
out the case. Uh So the option is five thousand,
you know, can I can I find them? Can I
put them on community control for five years and just
let them sit on the docket until they fall off?
Speaker 5 (45:46):
That was happening, so I had to clean up that
a little bit.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
Or could I construct something to make sure they get
on track and not recidivate or come back with new
cases and new violation notices. So I opted for that
because I feel like if we bring in all of
your properties, So if you're one person and you're in
there for one property only, you just have that one case,
(46:12):
but you own fifteen additional properties because YOU'RELLC is a landlord,
I have the right under my local rules to bring
all your properties in so as sentencing, and I usually
do that because if you have this open violation that's
two years old and you have fifteen properties, I can
(46:32):
pretty much guarantee you that those other fifteen properties are
just not being taken care of you're not adhering to
there could be violation notice permits that you never closed out.
But some of the things, the biggest things are that
they don't have rental registration and the properties are occupied,
and they don't have the lead safe certifications on the
(46:54):
properties occupied. Ninety to ninety five percent of my criminal
cases or by LLC's and organizations nonprofit included. The rest
is kind of well, I'm gonna say ninety The rest
is broken down as in possibly eight percent or seven percent,
(47:16):
I would say, is by individual investors that haven't put
their name in the LLC that owns two or more properties,
and then there are ones that are residents that live
in their property. That's about one percent. They go into
our diversion program, which is we call it selective intervention prevention.
(47:37):
They're usually seniors mostly, and so we put them in
that one. If they complete the repairs and everything, the
case is automatically sealed against them. One of the things
I don't think people realize is that if you're individual
with these properties, it is something that ends up on
(47:57):
your record as a convict for failure to comply.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
It does.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
It's failure to comply to a notice of violation, but
it only says failure to comply, so failure to comply
to police order, failure to comply to a lot of
different things. So you know, once individuals finish on my docket,
I usually encourage them, after six months of us terminating
(48:23):
the community control to get the record sealed, to remind
them and their attorneys. You know, after this, you know,
after your six months its required by the Hire Revised Code,
you're more than welcome to petition a court for a
sealing of the record or exponement and we will usually
take care of that, but you know it's really up
to them to remember.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
So well, you have a few moments left.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
I just want to know your priorities moving forward, and
if you could just say those in like I.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Don't know four minutes.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
So my priorities is still to educate everyone. We've started
things like tea talk and to make them better advocates
for their community, for their street clubs, for houses that
sit next to them.
Speaker 5 (49:08):
The more you educate, the more they share.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
And so we tell them the process, we kind of
assist them, and by we it's my housing Court specialists
who are the face of housing court that are dedicated
individual with great customer service skills.
Speaker 5 (49:24):
I like to say especially my Chief.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
Carl Cannenberg, which a lot of people know, my Housing
Court Chief, yes, and also my deputy Chief Antonio McMullan.
They are really dedicated to people and wanted to help them.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
So I remember I had I had a little issue
I had to visit and they were very kind at
like went out their way. So you are absolutely right.
Shout out to the team. Y'all are dope.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
You know I hate I My theory is treat people
how you want to be treated. I hate people getting
bounced around them not knowing. I'm a heavy bl leaving
and communicating, communicating what I can communicate, because I had
to also teach people about what a judge can do
and what a judge can't do. And these are not
(50:12):
just things we make up. These are we are bound
by judicial codes of conduct. So I've had talk with
a lot of the City council members and again remember
I said I had to kind of break some habits.
They all now know that I do not discuss cases
that could appear before me or that are before me
(50:33):
on the bench. I don't discuss it with anybody because
it is a violation of my judicial codes of conduct,
and a lot of people don't know because it's behind
the scenes what goes on. We have a disciplinary council
where I can get reprimanded, I can get some face suspension,
loss of my license, and I'm not sacrificing that for anybody.
(50:55):
So when I say I'm consistent and I have rules
that I adhere to be like that my whole life.
I don't play outside, I don't color outside. I don't
necessarily know who I'm dealing with. And I'm just also
a respector. I'm not a respector of man. I'm really
a respector of God and laws and I that gives
(51:17):
me consistency. So no one can say, well, she did
this to me, because mostly people will say that's odd
because she never does that. You know, my goal is
not to cause people financial distress, including LC's. I don't
want them to go back and increase rent because they
now have to bring these properties up to code. You know,
(51:40):
I can find up to I've had fines up to
one point four million.
Speaker 5 (51:44):
In all of those. I never start with fines. I
never start with anything. I stay.
Speaker 4 (51:50):
When I say stay, I can charge you up to
fifty thousand dollars. I'm gonna stay that. I can put
you in jail up to eighteen months. I'm going to
stay that as long as you follow the orders of
the court. And so I kind of want to talk
about briefly what that looks like. By specialists have a
(52:11):
saying that you pretty much have to work to get
jail time. In my core, I have had hundreds of
individuals and I have placed ten in jail, and that
is due to just not doing anything anything the court not.
(52:31):
If you don't have the money and you're waiting on resources,
you gotta go get the resources. You gotta fill in applications,
you gotta You can do things like cut the grass.
You can do things like remove trash. You can do
things like make sure there's no dumping. These are things
that only cost effort. You can do things like communicate
to your assigned housing specialists, probation officer.
Speaker 5 (52:55):
This is probation, This is real life. This is not
a play court.
Speaker 4 (52:59):
And you know, sometimes we have to go to the
level of court to place people in jail because they're defiant.
They not doing anything, They not gonna do anything, and
it leaves you no option or it leaves me no
option as a judge.
Speaker 5 (53:15):
That's one of the penalties I can and can apply.
Speaker 4 (53:18):
But you know I tell everybody also because I don't
talk about cases, I do do thorough journal entries. So
you can always read our journal entries and follow along
of what's going on with these cases.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
Always note, well, you know, I'm glad you have come
and shared with us, and I hope you will come back.
And I'm done for the day. We can look forward
to this afternoon with Sandra Morgan from East Cleveland. Will
be with us all right, And I will leave you
folk by saying I will drink from my part of
(53:53):
the river, and no one shall keep me from it.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
And each day provides its own gifts. So remember the
opia eyes look brown and becon.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
To one another. You've been listening to butt Clap Tuesday
with UNI and Arrival. I thank you again so.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Much to the Electricus Judge one Nat Scott for joining
us this morning.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
I appreciate your time, your energy and all that you
have shared with us.
Speaker 5 (54:13):
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
This is WOVU Studios
This is w O v U Studios Board.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
We're in the process of selecting a new CEO and
we're down to two last candidates. We will probably Thursday
make some decisions on Thursday who to present to the board.
Then Thursday, the Black Ohio Black Women's Political Action Committee
(00:30):
had a meet and greet. You showed up there, you know,
and man, it was fantastic. We had a good time there.
We met many of the candidates. And then on Saturday,
she had her annual jazz festival and listen. We had
about six seven hundred people there on the grounds on
Saturday with the three different bands Camp CAMPI Russell came by.
(00:56):
I said, the Browns, but he's from the Calves and
he said he'd heard about it, and he said he'd
be making his business to come back next year. I
think she's going to try to have Carlos Jones next year.
And then I ended up having to preach at a
picnic out at Huntington Beach Park. Builders of Faith Church
(01:20):
had their annual picnic. Our church did also, but I
was asked to do a little speaking and man, we
were out there and just as we left, a young
man was drowned. I mean it. It was tragic and
they had to empty the park. But you know, but
other than that, we had a great week. We're in
(01:42):
process of developing the global ministry called the Ecclesiastical Council,
and you know, I have my strategic plan for the
African American community and I think we may be getting
about about five million dollar of the twenty five that
we need to get that started. And so we just
(02:05):
had a wonderful week and a wonderful weekend. Very busy,
very active, and I'm looking forward. You know, we have
one of the most unique and different, dynamic judges on
the bench and the Housing Court, and we're going to
have her on the show this morning. I really I
(02:29):
have observed her over the years, even before she came judge,
I watched her. She's a woman of class, distinction, integrity,
very very very outstanding woman in our community that our
young women need to model, used as a model, and
so I'm grateful that she has consented to come and
(02:51):
be here with us this morning. I'm talking about none
other than Judge Monette Scott. But before we get to Judge,
what about you, Ni, How was your weekend?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
It was interesting, but it was smooth. I spent it working.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Oh yeah, I'm excited to get into it with our
lovely guest this morning, because she is all those things
and more that you described this morning. So I'm super
excited and grateful to have you in our presence. I'm
super excited to have this conversation with you. But Rabbi,
please probably introduce our guest this.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, this is this is our illustrious, honorable judge when
they Scott of the Housing Court of Cleveland a judge.
You know, we we've observed you over the years, and
we we understand that being a judge is a very
difficult job. You're you're you're elected to do a job,
(03:49):
a thankless job, and a job you're damned if you
do and you're damned if you don't. Absolutely uh, And
many people don't understand that. Very often you want to
follow the spirit of the law, but sometimes you have
to follow the law, okay, And you know, tell the
(04:10):
folks about yourself. Who are you, where do you come from,
how long have you been around, where were you educated,
et cetera.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Thank you, Reverend Rabbi. Rabbi, first of all, I am
money Scott. I am originally from Atlanta, Georgia. I moved
up to seven girl yes, yes, member of the Body
of Christ Christian Church out of College Park, Georgia. My
(04:39):
mom was a minister there, my sister and brother in
law minister's there still. And so I came to Cleveland,
Ohio August first of nineteen ninety eight to attend Cleveland
Marshall College of Law, which is now Cleveland State University
College of Law. And I haven't left. So I started
(05:02):
up here. I you know, I I have to start
off by saying, you know, I was thinking about how
this journey started, and I started something on my Facebook page.
I just remember, you know, developing a relationship with God
when I was probably about eight years old, just you know,
(05:23):
looking up to this guy and just asking questions and
m stating what I wanted to do in life. And
this is probably a little bit after my parents' divorce.
We relocated from middle class to low income and I
was not happy in the environment that I was in,
and so I, you know, it was just like I
went out of this environment was starting to see things
(05:47):
being down unfairly, not because of race, because I'm in
College Park, Georgia, but just because of class and socioeconomic status.
And so I remember in third grade doing the report
of what do you want to be when you grow up?
And I was talking to the librarian because we spent
a lot of time in the library because we didn't
have computers, so we couldn't do a Google research, and
(06:11):
so we I was like, I want to be something
that deals with fairness, that teaches you how to treat
everybody equal and fair. And she was like, well, what
about a referee in sports? And I was like, no,
I don't want to do that, and so she gave
me some options and she said, well, what about a judge?
Speaker 5 (06:28):
And I said, well, what is a judge?
Speaker 4 (06:30):
And so that's how I started my research project in
third grade. And in third grade I knew I wanted
to be a judge. Lived my life that way. Got
an undergraduate undergraduate degree from Florida State University, came up
here and received my jd from again Cleveland Marshall College
of Law. My first job here was a law clerk
(06:52):
with Force Fields and Associates, so I got to work
for and meet the infamous mister George Forbes. I was
hired by now Judge Cassandra Kya Williams and her bailiff,
Pastor Anthony Parker.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Esquire.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
And then I was a law clerk for Shaker Heights,
the City of Shaker Heights, and then I became a
law clerk for the City of Cleveland. I became a
prosecutor for the City of Cleveland. I became a prosecutor
for Kyahoga County. Served all units except for grand jury
and major trial, although I second chair major Trials. Had
(07:30):
a lot of jury experience, have a l several about
eight or arguments before the Eighth District Court of Appeals.
And I also became the fair house and administrator for
the City of Cleveland. So my life has been one
dedicated to public service. I became judge. You know, I
had been praying. I don't make any big moves until
(07:51):
I pray. And so when I finally got the word
after sitting still for a minute, you know, God gave
me permission to run for judge. And then it was
my eyes were on the seats of General Division. I
had no interest in Housing Court whatsoever, and you know,
just staying in prayer and journaling my journey. You know,
(08:13):
I was instructed to run for Housing Court, which I
didn't want to do. So I kind of have this
going back and forth with God in prayer, and finally
my sisters and talked me into it, and so I
ran the first time in twenty seventeen. I had about
(08:34):
three months to run. I filed on the very last
date because I had to leave my job with the
City of Cleveland, and from June I believe it was
mid June to November. I you know, dedicated of you know,
running and just letting people know who I am. I
ended up losing by about three hundred and eighty six votes.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
It was two additional people.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
It was the incuminent O'Leary and the person that was
running against for that seat. And that was an exciting
year because that was twenty seventeen. The mayor was running,
all of city council was running. It was about four
additional people running for general division, and then there was
Housing Court. And that was an abnormal year because many
(09:18):
people had passed, many judges had passed, so it vacated
a lot of seats and I believe at that time,
I believe Judge Mays might have went over to the
Court of Appeal, so that vacated a seat. Judge Wade
passed that vacated a seat, and a couple of other
things happened, but.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
I lost.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
I was devastated. I was I'm just being transparent. I
wasn't happy with God. I was depressed, sad because you know,
I was like, you promised me this seat. So I'm unemployed,
I don't have the judge ship. What am I to do?
And I remember my dad coming to get me, so
he can, you know, just let me sleep and do whatever.
(10:07):
And I went home for about I think about two weeks,
three weeks, and then I came back. Still wasn't happy,
Still was trying to find my way, and then I
wasn't even sure I was gonna run in twenty nineteen. Again,
I just didn't know if I had it in me,
if I just wanted to relocate back home. My son
was a senior in high school, so he wasn't a
(10:28):
senior high school. I think he was a sophomore at
the time. So I was trying to make some decisions.
Finally decided to run again. It takes a lot, so
kudos to all those that run for office and don't
win the first time, but get back up and try again.
Twenty nineteen, it ended up being a very different run.
(10:49):
It was a weird year because it was only myself
running against the incominent and then also I believe Jedge
Cassidy and Judge Patent are running and that was it.
It was nobody else running. It was nothing really on
the ballot. So it was a quiet year, as I
call it. But again I dedicated meeting people one on one,
(11:09):
getting to know people and letting them know who I was,
and being you know, about my passions and desires of
what I wanted to do if I was offered the
opportunity to be on the bench, and some of those
things were to bring the court back out to the community.
I was very cognitive of PTO people not having PTO
(11:31):
paid time off to come to court. So one of
the things I wanted to do was have evening court
to give people an option to be heard, because that's
important when you're dealing with housing, especially when you're dealing
with evictions. And that was a desire. So fast forward.
I ended up winning in twenty nineteen by about four
(11:53):
thousand plus votes. Wow, and then you know, the journey began.
And it wasn't until the pandemic hits when I finally
understood why God, God wanted me to run for that seat.
Because the amount of time that we were given by
the Ohio Supreme Court to turn the court around to
(12:14):
a virtual court to make sure people can possibly you know,
a tend court in a safe, sanitary condition. You know,
it was already festering in my mind of how I
wanted to turn this court around to make it more
accessible for evening. So it was fairly easy for me
(12:36):
to put a virtual policy in place for virtual hearings.
You know, I sat and I thought, you know, what
would be something good to do?
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Like Zoom?
Speaker 4 (12:47):
And I thought Zoom was the best because just like
an iPhone versus an Android, people believe iPhones are more
user friendly. Zoom was more user friendly than WebEx. I
knew about the digital divide as a fair house and administrator.
Knew a lot of people in Cleveland do not have
access to Wi Fi and Internet, and so all of
those things are playing in my head because the people
(13:08):
that are most vulnerable, our marginalized citizens, are the ones
that won't have access. So not only did we have
a virtual policy rollout, the Zoom rollout, we went about
having virtual things on Facebook Live to teach people how
to do it. The city announced that there was twelve
million dollars in rental assistance, so they didn't know how
(13:29):
to get people connected to that. I, of course everything
runs through Housing Court when it comes to housing. So
I decided to call chn and the Legal Aid Society
of Cleveland to the table for us to have virtual
roundtable discussions, to just come together because this is the
first time no one had a blueprint. And I say
(13:52):
Legal Aid Society of Cleveland because on July of twenty twenty,
the right to counsel took effect, so that came into play.
Doing the pandemic what they thought it was gonna look like,
which are like public defenders that are in the court
room waiting to talk to indigent criminal defendants. Legal Aid
(14:15):
thought that they would be there in the courtroom ready
to talk to tenants that showed up for court.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
Well, we were totally virtual.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
So we had to come up with a way to
issue summons to put people on notice that Legal Aid
right to counsel was available. They also did door knocks
and delivered some printouts about what is right to counsel
and then CHNU they decided to kind of prioritize those
(14:45):
that were in eviction court. So it was a a
quick turnaround, a re scrapping of what housing court is,
what housing court does. At the same time, fighting through
a pandemic. I think a lot of people forget cause,
you know, the United States of a need USA. They
forgot about the pandemic. They forgot about the impact they
(15:05):
had on people's housing, people's work, people's health, and the
loss of loved ones. That includes staff and having to
battle those issues with staff. While we're not only having
roundtables with how to make things work in housing court,
we're also sitting around as administrative judges trying to keep
staff safe, keep the building sanitized, trying to understand what
(15:30):
it is. And so we're going on what COVID nineteen is,
the impact of it the justice center and us all
being crowded in that space, but still having to go
to work because although there was a stay at home
order for thirty days put out by the governor, the
courts are first responders, so the court could never close
(15:52):
the Ohio Supreme Court doesn't you have authority to close
the court. So we were still working, we were still
showing up and by we talking about me and my
team of staff and while we were working, we were
also meeting trying to figure out how is this going
to look and how is it going to play out.
(16:13):
So I have enjoyed being on Housing Court. It is
a work of passion because it's never about me. It's
really about the community, connecting them with resources, but making
them also educating them about what the law says.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
I'm glad you said that. So first of all, break
down the Housing Court the judge, then what magistrates, tenants
and right tennants rights, and so break break it down
for us.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
So Cleveland Housing Court has a staff of fifty five
people when we're at capacity. The unfortunate part is we
don't really have a lot of space in there. We
if you've ever visited Cleveland Municipal Court, the Housing Division,
we all of our workers work on the thirteenth floor.
(17:05):
So we have our Housing Court specialists we're which are
also our mediators and also our probation officers or community
service officers. They work in the back of the thirteenth floor.
They're they're in an outward area, open office, open floor plan.
(17:26):
We do have magistrates and so some of the things
I've had to do was increase the magistrates. So I care,
you know, ask for new positions to be added for
Housing Court specialists, for magistrates, and also for the deputy bailiffs,
which are our security that are out there doing the
(17:46):
evictions but also making sure the court is has security.
There's also an administrative level, so Court Administrator that does
a lot of the work for the court, the administrative
stuff like the budget, also dealing with all of the staff,
so they're like the chief operator of the court. We
(18:09):
when I took over Housing Court, they did not have
a dedicated HR which I thought that that was desperately needed,
so I created a position a legislator for a positions,
so we have a Deputy Court Administrator, Human Resource director,
it's the office of one, and then we have a
(18:29):
finance officer was also added to Housing Court. So at
full capacity we're budgeted for think about fifty five people,
and it is different levels. It's the Housing Court specialists,
it's the magistrates, and it is the deputy bailiffs and
then also the administrative staff of personal bailiff, executive assistant,
(18:52):
schedulers and things like that.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
What is the court's relationship with the tenants tenants to
landlords rights?
Speaker 5 (18:59):
I think so.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
We're always the adjudicator of law. I try to tell
people when I go out into the community because Coals
and Court gets blamed for everything good or bad. The
good things we always want to embrace, but the bad things,
it's not really our responsibility. And so I take time
to educate people to say that there's two case loads
(19:23):
that we deal with. We deal with evictions and we
deal with criminal code violations. And so the evictions we
adhere to the higher revised code dealing with forced entry detainers,
and then also what we call second cause damages, so
that's for back rent, but there's also including their stealing
(19:45):
enough eviction records. People can file for bankruptcy when they're
dealing with eviction and the eviction process. And also small claims,
but a lot of those give forward to the General
Division Small Claims portion. And there's the criminal docket that
deals with code enforcement of all of Cleveland's housing, building,
(20:08):
fire zoning, and health codes. And so those cases laying
on my docket, which I mainly deal with those cases,
while my seven I believe seven up to eight magistrates
deal with the evictions and the civil docket.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Okay, let's let's uh really, let's let's take a break
right now.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I wasn't going to take a break. Today is special.
We have a lovely guest in the studio.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I agree with you, but we need to take a
palls for the calls.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Oh oh, I didn't want to. Did not want to.
In fact, I have a question what made you when
you re ran again? Why housing? Why didn't you go
to a different division like you initially wanted to, Because
you've never wanted to go to housing, as you mentioned.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Right, So it's a it's a it was about being obedient.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
And then you know when I took that pause because
I thought, I so part of it was. Originally I
didn't want to do it cause I kept saying housing
court is just not a hot thing. M And I
had been a prosecutor, so I knew what that role
specifically looked like.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
I mean, I had worked with.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Judge Pianca as the Fair Housing Administrator, went out to
some of his landlord trainings to educate people about fair
housing laws, fair housing rights, the dues and don't so
that you don't get in trouble. And I had also
been a prosecutor, which was heavy in the community, going
out talking about the cases, educating people about what a
prosecutor does, so I wasn't familiar. It was more so
(21:47):
like I wasn't really familiar with housing court. But when
I look at my overall career path and I had
spent a year and a half being a code nuh
a Cayoho County prosecutor for the Treasure Office, I'm sorry
for the Prosecutor's office. With dealing with tax foreclosure, that
(22:07):
was just another level of dealing with housing and dealing
with the housing stock and just understanding. I also was
a board member of Harvard Community Service Center with the
Rabbi's lovely wife, MSUs Ghoston, who I loved dearly, And
so when I became a fair Housing ministry I also
learned about CDBG funds, how that looks, community development, how
(22:30):
that looks, and how that impacts housing, what resources there were.
And then also as Fairhousing administry, I also knew about
red lining. I learned more about red lining. It's a
lot of things that led me up to it. So
when I ran and when I finally won, it was
a breath of fresh air because I thought, I can
(22:52):
do things. When I take this bench, I can make
a difference. I can still be very active in the community,
which really, realistically, being a judge for general Division would
really limit that. And so it's really really when the pandemic,
I was on the bench two and a half months,
(23:13):
trying to learn the role of a judge, balancing it
as an administrative judge, as an active judge on a
bench with dockets, trying to organize a court that was
a little chaotic. When I took over, I'm really about
streamlining and processes and making things make sense, and so,
you know, and then how can I introduce my branding
(23:35):
of Housing Court Cleveland Housing Court, to the community. The
pandemic hit and it just kind of shut everything down,
and I believe that's when I had an Aha moment
that I was supposed to be there at this time
because housing was so foundational and fundamental during a pandemic,
and so I instantly knew, especially when that thirty days
(23:57):
stay at home order came out by you know, Governor DeWine.
That shut down everything in Cleveland. If everybody can remember,
for thirty days solid people weren't going to work, people
weren't going to you know, they weren't getting money, and
we started having landlord's call with concerns about how they're
(24:18):
gonna get rent, how they're gonna be able to pay
their mortgage. The moratorium and all that came later, but
you know, at that point we also had to stay
everything in the court. We couldn't keep functioning. We had
to kind of shut everything down. We got attack grant
because no one had equipment to do virtual hearings.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
No one had.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Laptops and VPNs and these little things that are necessary
to have a successful rollout. The Ohio Supreme Court started
with a sixty five thousand dollar budget.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
We instantly went to work. We created written.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Policies of how this is gonna look. We jotted down
what equipment we were gonna use with my then top
it that I kind of poached from the from the county.
But we started a plan and we kept working, and
that plan was used by the other court General Division,
and I think it was also shared with Common Pleas.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
But what is.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
The average budget for housing court? Initially, because that sounds.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
A little low, So the budget for the first three
years we had to pretty much use the budget that
was set by my predecessor, And because they didn't know
how that looked, and because it was shut down, everything
was going on with this pandemic. I think our budget
was about three million, and I'm trying to go out. No.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
If you notice that face, I made miss good because
because like I said, that's all a little low. That's
why I asked for Yes, we don't go anywhere. This
is book Club Tuesday on our voices.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Today.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
We're gonna take a little break because I I don't
want to ride out being up later and everybody.
Speaker 5 (26:05):
Be right back with the.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Judge got welcome back, welcome back, welcome back to our voice.
Is today book Club Tuesday right here on w o VU,
Cleveland's urban alternative. And if you are just tuning in,
we have Judgement Nate Scott live in the studio with
me being UNI and the ride by.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
And when we went to break finally we left off
on budget and you know, you inherited it.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Quite interesting the office, quite interesting. Interesting time. You had
COVID going on, You had a very little budget going on,
and you had that for the next three years. What
helped you overcome besides these tech grats and things of
that nature that you got.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
So the tech grant, how we end up going out
for another one. They gave that to all the courts
to kind of bring them up technology wise. There's like
five hundred and twenty nine courts in the state of Ohio.
That is I think our eighty eight county common Pleas courts.
(27:10):
I think we have twelve Court of Appeals, one Ohio
Supreme Court, but a lot of the other courts are
municipal and also mayor's courts. So it's about five hundred
and twenty nine courts give or take in the state
of Ohio. So it was just fortitude, just learning, learning
(27:32):
a lot, learning a lot about people. I always say
I inherited an old, older court, and that's not about age,
but about the people that had worked there. It was
people that had been working for the court twenty twenty
five years. We had a lot of retirements that happened
(27:57):
with the court, and then it was a lot of
full I mean, it's a lot of poaching.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
I can't I did it myself, so and people did
it to the court.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
So right, right, You always target people that work in
high volume that can multitask, because what does that look like.
It was a lot of growth for me on just understanding,
you know, when you are bringing people into the court
to interviewing skills to seeing if something works for either
(28:31):
person and either person being able to say, you know,
this may not be my calling to work in here.
Because Housing court is a very different court. It is
a very high volume, fast pace.
Speaker 5 (28:46):
We go five days a week. We go hard five
days a week.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
And if people have ever worked in court to come
from General or somewhere else, not saying that they're not
very busy, but typically on a Friday, there's not a
lot going on in the Justice center extuff for a
housing court, we usually have about three three dockets going yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Not everyone has the bandwidth and that's okay to say, right.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
And it's learned on my behalf and then also on
people that come and interview with the court. So I
try to make sure now being on the bench five
and a half years, that the perception of working for
this court versus the reality of working for this court
has to match. It has to match, because people will
(29:34):
perceive that I could do this, but they don't really
understand if you're coming from a kind of even keel
environment that when we're saying we're moving about three hundred,
two hundred and fifty to three hundred civil cases through
the court per week, that's the volume we're talking about
(29:57):
when we're saying, you know we have.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
I think we have.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
I can't remember about two thousand or twenty six hundred
criminal cases on the docket, But then I'm the only
judge that's dealing with that.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Is that criminal trespass or criminal code.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
Violation, So they're all code violations, minor misdemeanors and misdemeanors
we just have too. So the minor mistermeanors are a
ticket that you could pay, a wavable offense, and the
m ones misdemeanors in the first degree are where there's
a failure to comply with the notice of violations. So
they get those violation notices from the inspectors and they
(30:41):
have oh so many days to make the repairs. They
can always appeal and ask for an additional ninety days,
which is usually granted. But it's what people do when
they get the violation notice. They don't either respond or
they don't know what to do, or they make the
repairs and don't know that they should call the inspector.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Outter they make the repairs.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
But the thing that I educate a lot of people
about because when I go out into the community and
I ask them if someone stole your car, who would
you call? And people will say I would call the police,
right And I say this, if you're living next to
a vacant property or dilapidated property with dumping, who.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
Would you call?
Speaker 4 (31:25):
And time and time again people say, I'll call Housing Court.
We are a court, so we are only supposed to
listen to parties and make a ruling on what the
law say is. We're not a reporting agency, so I
tell them that's not who you call. You call the inspectors,
and then the people that bring the case to us
we can go out. We can't create cases. I can't
(31:48):
bring cases to anybody's attention. They have to go through
the inspectors. And the inspectors are housing courts police. They're
our Cleveland police officers. That we do have tickets written
by Cleveland police officers for parking on the grass and
you know, dumping in all of that, because they do
(32:09):
have permission to write those tickets, but they take those
to the code enforcement prosecutors, and those are a different
set of prosecutors.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
That's what I wanted to Okay, so you're not a prosecutor.
Now what you do is sit and adjudicate the law,
make a decision based on the law, all right, and
then that has can be the letter of the law,
and sometimes sometimes you can use the spirit of the law,
(32:39):
but most times you're elected to uphold the letter of
the law. Am I right in my assumption?
Speaker 5 (32:46):
Yes? Okay, yes, So very often.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
People will come in feeling that because they look like you,
all right, that they ought to automatically get the spirit
of the law, or because they don't look like you,
then they feel they ought to get the spirit of
the law. Am I correct in my assumption.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
I've been told that, whether they say it to me
while we're on record, because I don't talk to people
that have cases before me. But when people are not
happy how the court ruled, it's usually because how dare she?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
You know?
Speaker 5 (33:26):
She I voted for her.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
She looks just like me, and I don't understand why
she ruled the way she did. I'm not the only
just that experienced that, but I've been told that. It's
never been presented to me while they're right there, although
some people do come in and name drop, and I'm
not understanding why they're name dropping about.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
Who they know in the community.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Because one thing everybody who knows me no is I'm
very consistent, and I'm consistent for just so that I
don't inject any of my biases or my leniency based
on who you are or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
I try.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I do the same thing with everybody that comes. Whether
you are individual or whether you're a LLC, you can
pretty much gauge how I'm going to rule on this case.
But I do want to say the difference between the
two is that an individual is looking at jail time
versus a LLC, where LLC is not a person, so
(34:35):
you can't put them in jail. So the only thing
that can happen with a LLC, a landlord, business, property
manager owner is that you can give them fines and
put them on community control. An individual who has property
in their own name, you can give them finds. It's
(34:56):
one hundred and eighty days per count, but the maximums
eighteen months in jail and then there are fines and
five years of community control. So that's the distinguishing between
the two. But the cases are bought by the prosecutors,
they assigned assistant a lot of directors. They're not located
(35:16):
in the Justice center, they're located in City Hall. They're
right up under the Law of Director. The General Division
Prosecutors is also but they're in the Justice Center on
the eighth floor. So the Code Enforcement prosecutors kind of
do dual roles. They work in the capacity of a
(35:36):
prosecutor and then they also work in the capacity of
an assistant Law of Director.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Beauty, I'm curious to know how residents first affected your
office and your court and what other things that you
have incorporated, because after you know that first three years
have passed, because like you said, five and a half
years now, so I I wanna know now that you
have gotten past the period of getting past what your
(36:04):
predecesor had laid for f before you, what you have
been able to t do more and create within your
court and office.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
So what I've done is I cause I came and
watched the court a couple of times before I w
after I won, and before I send it to the bench,
and because of my experience as a prosecutor for the
city and for the county, kind of know how a
court should look. So when I would go it would
(36:35):
be a mixture of cases being heard MM, so there
could be an arrangement mixed in with a sentencing mixed
in with a status update, or the status update is
you know they're on probation or community control. And they
can also be a mixture of UH a pre trial
and a a request for a continuance. That was very
(36:57):
confusing to me when I'm looking at the court was packed.
There's a lot of activity, a lot of talking going on,
and if I have an arrayment that takes like no
more than ten minutes, I'm waiting to be arraigned while
listening to a sentence that can take forty five minutes.
So one of the things that I knew I was
(37:19):
gonna do was just streamline these how this looks, so
we would have a day for arrangments only. We would
have pre trial days court order pre trials, that is
so that they can hurry up and do discovery and
then move forward with the case so they don't slow
the docket down. That was also a learned behavior because
(37:42):
there would be a continuous continuation of continue requests for
continuance for pre trial. Some cases I started finding out
due to the Ohio Supreme Court Center as a report
saying these cases are over age, and then we look
and say, why are these cases over age well and
doing pre trials for a year with the prosecutors, and
(38:05):
so it was also kind of changing people's mindset about
how Housing Court is rent and telling.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
People this is your job.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
This is not the role of the court and just
staff everybody just saying no, we're not supposed to do that.
That's a conflict of interest with the court. So me
bringing the court in compliance but also making sure everybody
do their role. That the Housing Court is not the
just jury and executioner that you know, this court is
(38:38):
not going to tell people they shouldn't go to jury trial.
I'm here five days a week. If a person wants
a bench trial or a jewelry trial, that's what I
was elected to do, is sit there and adjudicate, you know,
and giving them their due process right. So we streamlined
a lot of processes. We redefine job descriptions. We re
(39:02):
certified everybody and made sure everybody was certified. We reproposed
how being a community control officer housing specialist looks. You know,
you have to tell us what's going on with this property.
We want to make sure they're moving towards compliance and
getting off the docket and not recitivating at the same time,
(39:22):
you want to make sure they're we're connecting them with
resources and also keeping them on target to cut the grass,
to board up the properties. With residents first, I knew
the code enforcement prosecutors were interested in updating languages. I
did not know they were doing a complete overhaul of
(39:45):
building a housing code and laws and how that looks.
I found out probably when everybody else did, when they
were going through the process of city council.
Speaker 5 (39:55):
Council members asked me did I want to be heard
at a hearing?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
And I was about what and they was like the
new residence first laws And I'm like, I don't know
what you guys are talking about.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
That's very interesting.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Yeah, they did not include me, And then I'm kind
of happy that they didn't, because there are some people
who don't care the fact that I'm on the bench
that thought I had some parts of dealing with residence first.
I had no parts, no inputs or anything. Some of
the things that I kind of reviewed were that search warrants,
(40:31):
where I was just like, I don't think you guys,
you can't circumvent me as a judge for search warrants.
It can't be an administrative search warrant. There's no such
thing as a judge has to always sign off on those,
and you know some of.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
It, some enemies come into compliance, it's okay.
Speaker 5 (40:50):
Yeah, I was about to say it's okay. I probably probably,
but it's not because I don't like you. I don't
like you.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
I do the whole thing, and it's really not the
cause financial distress on LC or individual and it is
just to get them in compliance.
Speaker 5 (41:09):
By the time they get to my bench. Believe me
when I.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
Say that violation notice that was first issued, it's about
two years old on average, two to three years old.
So by the time you get to me and you're
ready to do a change of plea, rarely do we
see that that violation notice is closed out. It's still open.
So you not only had three years to get in compliance.
(41:35):
Just going off of cases, you've had a year of
pre trials. That's not the case now because i've really,
like I said, streamlined that process. But you had a
year pre trials to get property and compliance. And it
is It's interesting how everybody is upset when they come
into the court, but these are people that's just been
(41:56):
kind of not paying attention or not desiring or not
doing what they're supposed to do as landlord owners, investors,
or just do the bare minimum. And that is a
lot of el sees, whether it's local or out of
state or out of country. I see it play out
(42:18):
on my bench all the time.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I want to go back to the Ohio Revised Code
and your relationship as a judge, would you go a
little deeper uppel that another another layer off of that please?
Speaker 5 (42:35):
For so, can you clarify that for me, because you.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Have to go by to some degree criminal law all right,
although you're not a criminal court except for criminal code violations,
but you're bound by the Ohio Revised Code to make
certain adjudications.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Yes, it's the Ohio revis Code governs the bench. Cleveland
Codify Ordinances, which is the municipal laws, governs the bench.
Also the Ohio Rules of Superintendent governs the bench. And
so when it's it's a whole bunch of things. It's
anything from criminal procedure to sentencing, the rules of criminal
(43:24):
procedure which is exchange of discovery, to filing motions to
dismiss versus filing motions for leimity, to requesting jury trials,
requesting a bench trial to sentencing orders and what that
looks like and how we can contry. And it also
includes the court's local rules. So if the Ohio Revised
(43:48):
Code is quiet as to how that process can look,
then we as a court have we can create local
rules to street to clarify.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
How that should look.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
So all the courts have it. The Quarter Common please,
Court of Appeals have local rules. Everybody has it to
kind of clarify what a process should look like and
how the court should move. It kind of dictates. So
let's talk about sentencing. The Higher Revised Code says, say,
if you're an LLC.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
Under the.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Community Control statue, which is probation. Again, if you're LLC,
the maxima five per count is five thousand dollars the
court could impose and up to five years of probation.
If you're an individual and you take a plea, you're
looking at a one thousand dollars maximum fine of one
(44:47):
thousand dollars per count, one hundred and eighty days in
jail per count, and up to no more than eighteen
months and up to five years of probation. So those
are the options that I can do. But then how
do so? Could I just charge them a fine and
(45:10):
not worry about the violation notice being closed. That's an
option that my phone, that's an option. I apologize. My
phone is forever on silence, and for some odd reason
it is not on silence today because I took it
(45:32):
out the case. Uh So the option is five thousand,
you know, can I can I find them? Can I
put them on community control for five years and just
let them sit on the docket until they fall off?
Speaker 5 (45:46):
That was happening, so I had to clean up that
a little bit.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
Or could I construct something to make sure they get
on track and not recidivate or come back with new
cases and new violation notices. So I opted for that
because I feel like if we bring in all of
your properties, So if you're one person and you're in
there for one property only, you just have that one case,
(46:12):
but you own fifteen additional properties because YOU'RELLC is a landlord,
I have the right under my local rules to bring
all your properties in so as sentencing, and I usually
do that because if you have this open violation that's
two years old and you have fifteen properties, I can
(46:32):
pretty much guarantee you that those other fifteen properties are
just not being taken care of you're not adhering to
there could be violation notice permits that you never closed out.
But some of the things, the biggest things are that
they don't have rental registration and the properties are occupied,
and they don't have the lead safe certifications on the
(46:54):
properties occupied. Ninety to ninety five percent of my criminal
cases or by LLC's and organizations nonprofit included. The rest
is kind of well, I'm gonna say ninety The rest
is broken down as in possibly eight percent or seven percent,
(47:16):
I would say, is by individual investors that haven't put
their name in the LLC that owns two or more properties,
and then there are ones that are residents that live
in their property. That's about one percent. They go into
our diversion program, which is we call it selective intervention prevention.
(47:37):
They're usually seniors mostly, and so we put them in
that one. If they complete the repairs and everything, the
case is automatically sealed against them. One of the things
I don't think people realize is that if you're individual
with these properties, it is something that ends up on
(47:57):
your record as a convict for failure to comply.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
It does.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
It's failure to comply to a notice of violation, but
it only says failure to comply, so failure to comply
to police order, failure to comply to a lot of
different things. So you know, once individuals finish on my docket,
I usually encourage them, after six months of us terminating
(48:23):
the community control to get the record sealed, to remind
them and their attorneys. You know, after this, you know,
after your six months its required by the Hire Revised Code,
you're more than welcome to petition a court for a
sealing of the record or exponement and we will usually
take care of that, but you know it's really up
to them to remember.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
So well, you have a few moments left.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
I just want to know your priorities moving forward, and
if you could just say those in like I.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Don't know four minutes.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
So my priorities is still to educate everyone. We've started
things like tea talk and to make them better advocates
for their community, for their street clubs, for houses that
sit next to them.
Speaker 5 (49:08):
The more you educate, the more they share.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
And so we tell them the process, we kind of
assist them, and by we it's my housing Court specialists
who are the face of housing court that are dedicated
individual with great customer service skills.
Speaker 5 (49:24):
I like to say especially my Chief.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
Carl Cannenberg, which a lot of people know, my Housing
Court Chief, yes, and also my deputy Chief Antonio McMullan.
They are really dedicated to people and wanted to help them.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
So I remember I had I had a little issue
I had to visit and they were very kind at
like went out their way. So you are absolutely right.
Shout out to the team. Y'all are dope.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
You know I hate I My theory is treat people
how you want to be treated. I hate people getting
bounced around them not knowing. I'm a heavy bl leaving
and communicating, communicating what I can communicate, because I had
to also teach people about what a judge can do
and what a judge can't do. And these are not
(50:12):
just things we make up. These are we are bound
by judicial codes of conduct. So I've had talk with
a lot of the City council members and again remember
I said I had to kind of break some habits.
They all now know that I do not discuss cases
that could appear before me or that are before me
(50:33):
on the bench. I don't discuss it with anybody because
it is a violation of my judicial codes of conduct,
and a lot of people don't know because it's behind
the scenes what goes on. We have a disciplinary council
where I can get reprimanded, I can get some face suspension,
loss of my license, and I'm not sacrificing that for anybody.
(50:55):
So when I say I'm consistent and I have rules
that I adhere to be like that my whole life.
I don't play outside, I don't color outside. I don't
necessarily know who I'm dealing with. And I'm just also
a respector. I'm not a respector of man. I'm really
a respector of God and laws and I that gives
(51:17):
me consistency. So no one can say, well, she did
this to me, because mostly people will say that's odd
because she never does that. You know, my goal is
not to cause people financial distress, including LC's. I don't
want them to go back and increase rent because they
now have to bring these properties up to code. You know,
(51:40):
I can find up to I've had fines up to
one point four million.
Speaker 5 (51:44):
In all of those. I never start with fines. I
never start with anything. I stay.
Speaker 4 (51:50):
When I say stay, I can charge you up to
fifty thousand dollars. I'm gonna stay that. I can put
you in jail up to eighteen months. I'm going to
stay that as long as you follow the orders of
the court. And so I kind of want to talk
about briefly what that looks like. By specialists have a
(52:11):
saying that you pretty much have to work to get
jail time. In my core, I have had hundreds of
individuals and I have placed ten in jail, and that
is due to just not doing anything anything the court not.
(52:31):
If you don't have the money and you're waiting on resources,
you gotta go get the resources. You gotta fill in applications,
you gotta You can do things like cut the grass.
You can do things like remove trash. You can do
things like make sure there's no dumping. These are things
that only cost effort. You can do things like communicate
to your assigned housing specialists, probation officer.
Speaker 5 (52:55):
This is probation, This is real life. This is not
a play court.
Speaker 4 (52:59):
And you know, sometimes we have to go to the
level of court to place people in jail because they're defiant.
They not doing anything, They not gonna do anything, and
it leaves you no option or it leaves me no
option as a judge.
Speaker 5 (53:15):
That's one of the penalties I can and can apply.
Speaker 4 (53:18):
But you know I tell everybody also because I don't
talk about cases, I do do thorough journal entries. So
you can always read our journal entries and follow along
of what's going on with these cases.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
Always note, well, you know, I'm glad you have come
and shared with us, and I hope you will come back.
And I'm done for the day. We can look forward
to this afternoon with Sandra Morgan from East Cleveland. Will
be with us all right, And I will leave you
folk by saying I will drink from my part of
(53:53):
the river, and no one shall keep me from it.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
And each day provides its own gifts. So remember the
opia eyes look brown and becon.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
To one another. You've been listening to butt Clap Tuesday
with UNI and Arrival. I thank you again so.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
Much to the Electricus Judge one Nat Scott for joining
us this morning.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
I appreciate your time, your energy and all that you
have shared with us.
Speaker 5 (54:13):
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
This is WOVU Studios
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