CLEVELAND — Almost eight years after Cleveland police into a federal consent decree, "there remains significant work to be done," according to a new report by the federal monitor overseeing reforms.
The report noted "demonstrable progress" in key areas, including officers' use of force.
Cleveland still fails to investigate allegations of officer misconduct in a timely manner and root out bad cops, which raises concerns about whether some reforms are working, according to the Twelfth Semiannual Report released Thursday.
Cleveland entered into a Consent Decree with the U.S. Department of Justice in May 2015 after a federal investigation uncovered a pattern or practice of excessive force by the city's police officers.
Use of Force
The city's use of force is on a downward trajectory. The report said officers "increasingly" use de-escalation and force that is appropriate and legal.
The report praised the city for creating data tools to track uses of force and for using the data to help guide policies and practices.
Total use of force arrests declined by 37% from 2018 to 2022, and while arrests involving uses of force declined from 2.8% to 2.1% in 2020, that number went back up to 2.8% in 2022, according to data presented by Cleveland Police at a semiannual consent decree hearing held Thursday afternoon at the federal courthouse in Cleveland.
The city blamed the spike in uses of force in 2022 on the rash of vehicle thefts in the city.
Accountability
Despite progress on policies and training, the report blasted Cleveland for failing to investigate and hold officers accountable for bad behavior in a timely manner.
Among several examples, the report said Cleveland once again has a backlog of civilian complaints, even after hiring an independent contractor to clear complaints.
The report said the Office of Professional Standards, which investigates the complaints, had a backlog of 170 cases at the end of the most recent reporting period. 40 cases were open for more than a year. It also took OPS more than 2.5 years to complete its investigation into an officer-involved shooting that occurred in April 2020, according to the report.
Both city representatives and officials with the Department of Justice agreed that staffing issues at the OPS are a major contributor to the backlog. Without a full-time administrator, there has been a "significant leadership vacuum" in that office for over a year, the DOJ said, and the General Manager position, essentially the office's second-in-command, has been vacant for two years.
"Given that leadership issue, compliance status has slipped significantly," a DOJ representative said during the hearing Thursday. "Some cases are over a year old; that is just not acceptable."
The semiannual report also said two internal complaints alleging harassment and bias have languished in human resources for more than two years, the Internal Affairs and Case Preparation Unit remain understaffed, and the city has failed to make progress towards hiring an Inspector General for more than two years.
Discipline
After investigations are completed, the report said Cleveland police have improved how officers are disciplined, noting the city more consistently follows the Disciplinary Matrix.
The report said Chief Wayne Drummond's decision-making is generally "reasonable and consistent with the intent of the Division's most recently updated Disciplinary Matrix."
However, the report expressed concern "a number of cases were not appropriately handled." The report also said the monitoring team identified a number of cases where the Director of Public Safety "declined to terminate officers who engaged in integrity-related misconduct."
Community problem-oriented policing
In spite of Cleveland Police reaching at least partial compliance in seven of the eight requirements of the consent decree in regard to community and problem-oriented policing, it was a major topic of discussion during the Thursday hearing.
Commander Mark Maguth with the CPD's Bureau of Support Services highlighted technology the department developed to create a dashboard to track the department's goals in terms of officers engaging the community on the ground level.
However, the DOJ and the monitoring team made sure to point out that community engagement and problem-oriented policing are not one and the same. By emphasizing only that officers engage with the community, they are missing the purpose of the engagement, said Richard Myers, a retired police chief and member of the monitoring team.
Myers said problem-oriented policing is about "more than just handing out business cards," and he likened it to a relationship the police force needs to develop with the community through mutual trust and respect.
The data showed that while over 600 community problem-oriented policing (CPOP) forms were filed in the new data collection system, half of the problems were identified by police, and only 13% came from community leaders. Myers said there is a significant opportunity to transform the department into one that fully engages in collaborative problem-solving with residents.
Transparency and oversight
At the Thursday hearing, a data analyst for Cleveland Police discussed some of the strides the department has made in tracking new metrics but also pointed out some of the challenges with trying to assure the quality of data, police division uses different platforms that often cannot communicate with each other.
That has led to significant work on cleaning the data on the backend, and has also resulted in CPD staff sometimes having to enter the same data into three or four different systems, which can sometimes lead to data redundancy errors.
The data analyst said that they are nearing completion on several data dashboards and reports for internal dissemination, and he hopes they will be able to share some of these reports with the public soon as well.
What's next?
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb has taken steps to bring the city into compliance with the Consent Decree. Bibb created a Police Accountability Team and hired Dr. Leigh Anderson as its executive director last year. Anderson previously worked on consent decrees in Oakland, California and Ferguson, Missouri.
Cleveland is currently scheduled to remain under federal oversight until the end of 2024, followed by a 2-year probationary period.
Judge Solomon Oliver, Jr., who oversaw Thursday's consent decree hearing, acknowledged the progress the department has seen, and praised the collaborative spirit of the hearing, noting that Cleveland Police the DOJ and the monitoring team seem to be moving together towards compliance, and not just for the sake of compliance.
"We want a police force second to none. Our citizens deserve that. That’s what we’ve been working on all these years, and will continue to work on," Oliver said.
RELATED: Cleveland Police to remain under consent decree for 2 more years
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The city has spent more than $60 million on reforms since it entered in the consent decree in 2015. It costs $6 to $11 million per year to administer the decree, according to the Community Police Commission's website.
During an interview earlier this month, Anderson said Cleveland is suffering from "consent decree fatigue" after years of oversight. She said will work to interest residents, police, and city officials in reforms and that the expense is worth it.
"If we don't get it right now, we're going to be very sorry much later," she said.
RELATED: Have Clevelanders lost interest in police reforms?
As the Cleveland Division of Police nears its eighth year under federal oversight, “consent decree fatigue” is hampering the city’s efforts to keep residents interested in the required reforms.
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