EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio — An expert on police recruitment and hiring believes the East Cleveland Police Department has “serious” hiring issues after News 5 Investigators found one-in-four officers whose personnel files were reviewed had red flags prior to their hiring by East Cleveland.
The discovery follows the criminal indictments of 18 current and past East Cleveland police officers in the last year for a variety of crimes.
View coverage from the day county prosecutors announced indictments against 11 East Cleveland officers for various instances of misconduct:
“Whenever you have previous employment problems, those are red flags that indicate that person should not be hired,” said Patrick Oliver, Director of the Criminal Justice Program at Cedarville University and a former Cleveland Police Chief under Mayor Michael White.
A review of personnel files of 43 past and current East Cleveland police, including the 18 now facing criminal charges, uncovered 11 of those officers had either resigned while facing termination or been fired from other police departments before they were hired by East Cleveland.
That included:
- A former Mentor police officer who was fired after investigators found he purchased alcohol for his underage girlfriends and their friends, neglected his duty, and showed a “propensity to lie to protect himself.”
- A former Bratenahl police officer accused of removing pertinent documents from a case file and hiding those documents in the shredder bin, as well as conducting an improper traffic stop, and fabricating probable cause.
- And an ex-RTA officer who was fired, and then allowed to resign, after an investigation found she failed to follow her supervisor’s instructions when she threw potential evidence in a trash can.
“Police agencies largely hire their problems,” said Oliver. “In other words, they hire people that they knew or should have known were not suitable for police service.”
News 5 Investigators asked Oliver if he would have felt comfortable having the officers in his department.
“The ones who had previous employment problems, I would not have hired them,” said Oliver.
So how did it happen?
Despite repeated attempts to talk with Mayor Brandon King and Police Chief Brian Gerhard, neither city official agreed to an interview about the findings.
Outside East Cleveland City Hall, Gerhard again refused to explain how the department continued hiring officers with troubled work histories.
King drove right past a reporter and waved to the camera, but would not stop and answer questions.
Longtime resident Pecolia Standberry said the findings are the latest in a long line of frustrations with the city she’s watched deteriorate since moving there 56 years ago.
“People of East Cleveland, we deserve better than this!” said Standberry. “And they’re going to hire them anyway?” Something in that wash ain’t clean!”
The 84-year-old said she prays things will turn around in her city.
“Sometimes I just lay in the bed at night and the tears [start] rolling,” said Standberry. “Why can’t our city be beautiful like other cities, and we just enjoy life?”
She’s not alone.
The discovery of officers’ past problems disappointed longtime East Cleveland activist Art McKoy.
“There’s this premise…maybe they didn’t work out with another department, and maybe we can come out here and give them another chance,” said McKoy. “Many times, it didn’t work out that way.”
In fact, police with previous red flags in their files are now among those criminally charged.
Take the case of Officer Brian Stoll. He was hired by East Cleveland police despite an Erie County Sheriff’s sergeant labeling Stoll “a liability to the office based on his job performance.”
Stoll is now charged with assaulting two different victims while working for East Cleveland. According to court records, those alleged assaults occurred about two years after Stoll resigned from Erie County.
There's also Laurice Mans. Prosecutors said Mans repeatedly punched a man with a broken pelvis in April 2022 while working for East Cleveland Police.
Records show less than a year before that, Mans was fired from the Village of West Lafayette for gross misconduct and insubordination, and was accused of creating violence in the workplace, including verbally threatening the mayor and a police sergeant.
McKoy said hiring officers with problems in their pasts is especially dangerous in East Cleveland, citing what he called a long-standing culture of corruption inside the department.
“Don’t hire other people’s — excuse my word — I hate using the word 'trash,'” said McKoy. “Don’t hire other people’s problems and bring them to us, and they become our problems.”
Hiring officers with troubled pasts is something Oliver called “very unfortunate.”
“From verbal warning to deadly force, that’s how much discretion an American peace officer has,” said Oliver. “No one in any job in our society has that much discretion. Hiring decisions need to be made well.”
News 5 Investigators asked Oliver if he believed hiring decisions were made well in East Cleveland, based on the information he reviewed.
“There are a number of hiring decisions that were not made well,” said Oliver.
Sixteen of the 18 indicted officers pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.
Trials in those cases are scheduled to begin later this month.
On Monday, two of the officers pleaded guilty to multiple robbery charges and theft in office for stealing from individuals while on duty, the county prosecutor announced.
