CLEVELAND — The city of Cleveland on Wednesday fired back at a scathing report released this week by the Cleveland Police Monitoring Team charged with overseeing the implementation of the city's police consent decree.
The 14th semiannual report begins by applauding the men and women in uniform and the police union for demonstrating a "willingness to work together towards achieving progress." However, Lead Monitor Karl Racine then launched into harsh criticism of city leadership, declaring that the reporting period was marked by "little progress" that was akin to "running in place."
The Cleveland consent decree is a federal court-sanctioned agreement struck in 2015 between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice that requires police reforms, following a federal investigation that found a "pattern and practice" of officers using excessive force and violating the rights of residents. The investigation was launched after a Cleveland police chase in 2012 ended with the deaths of two unarmed people in a hail of 137 bullets fired by officers.
This week's report scolded the city's law department for limiting access to data involving public safety issues, including officers' use of force as well as search and seizure. Racine wrote that the failure to provide access from April 2023 to December 2023 resulted in delays that cost the city and its taxpayers "time, money, and progress in fulfilling the Consent Decree's mandate that it police in a constitutional manner."
Read the full report below:
Last month, U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. ordered the city to give the Monitoring Team and the DOJ access to public safety data.
"[I] would say that we feel blindsided," Dr. Leigh Anderson, executive director of Mayor Justin Bibb's Police Accountability Team, told 3News Investigates in reaction to the report. "Because in terms of little progress being made? We have been meeting with the Monitor weekly.
"The negative rhetoric is not going to push us to the point where we need to be. That's not going to bring together the community with the city, with the Monitoring Team, with the Department of Justice, and so we need to change that."
The Monitoring Team determined that the city was partially compliant in 101 required benchmarks, operationally or generally compliant in 126 benchmarks, and noncompliant in 39 areas. Noncompliance is equal to a failing grade.
Those areas include transparency and oversight, specifically the city's inability to hire an inspector general. The city also received noncompliance marks for a required annual assessment and report of all activities, including use of force, arrests, motor vehicles and investigatory stops, and misconduct complaints alleging discrimination.
City Hall did acknowledge pausing access to public safety data due to its law department's concerns about whether it was allowed under state law. It later determined the concerns were unfounded, but Anderson attributed the delay to the Monitoring Team's failure to promptly access the data when it was made available.
"I'm saying that we're ready to start these assessments since access has been restored, since we were directed by the judge," she said. "And we have yet to receive an official notification of when the assessments will start."
City of Cleveland spokesperson Tyler Sinclair also issued a statement regarding the Monitoring Team's report:
"The monitor negatively suggests the City's performance as being 'static' — yet, ironically enough in his last semiannual report in October, he acknowledged that 'progress is rarely linear.'
"We strongly disagree with the assessment. We have dozens upon dozens of employees across various City departments who are working every single day to build on the substantial progress we have already made and bring us closer to full compliance.
"It's apparent that the Monitoring team is leaning on the data access issue that was initiated by their federal counterparts and state officials to justify their ratings for this reporting period. This is not only disappointing, but is also patently false. They allege this was an 'unwarranted delay' and that the City started 'rolling back… [their] data access in April 2023.' Neither could be further from the truth. As you'll notice in the attached email, the City made our intentions VERY clear in that we wanted to provide them with unredacted access to all records and tried to resolve this issue with the Monitoring team by requesting that we jointly approach the court. Unfortunately, the Monitoring team never responded to our request and let this issue drag out for months. Again, as indicated in the attached, the City paused access the same day we sent that email on December 29, with only 2 days left in the reporting period this latest semiannual report was based on — which seemingly renders their argument invalid. It's disappointing they would resort to dishonest information to justify their rationale.
"The turnover within the Monitoring Team is also a frustrating component that the City has been dealing with for multiple reporting periods. Numerous individuals have left and others have been brought on, which requires significant onboarding to learn the inner workings of the City and Division of Police — all of which further contributes to the exact delays they have mentioned. Our residents deserve consistency and accountability within the Monitoring team, which are the same standards that the City is held to.
"We look forward to the upcoming assessments and hope our progress will be accurately reflected in the next report."