CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland and the U.S. Department of Justice unveiled widespread reforms Tuesday meant to transform a police department that too often used excessive force and failed to conduct thorough internal investigations into a national model for big-city police.
The 105-page settlement avoids a potential lawsuit by the Justice Department after its investigators concluded a nearly two-year investigation in December and found Cleveland police too often used excessive force, failed to thoroughly investigate itself and had suffered from an erosion of community trust.
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The 105-page settlement with the Department of Justice
Report on two-year investigation
The agreement goes beyond correcting the Justice Department’s complaints and includes extensive data collection meant to curtail racial profiling. The Justice Department and the city reached the agreement after five months of negotiations, with input from rank-and-file police, union officials and citizen groups.
A federal judge must approve the agreement before it officially takes effect. Once approved, the Justice Department and the city will hire an independent monitor to oversee the implementation of reforms.
Northeast Ohio Media Group was briefed on the reforms Monday. Here are some significant reforms included in the settlement.
Use of Force
While the Justice Department credited Cleveland police for already implementing some changes, the consent decree mandates sweeping changes to how officers use force, and how those confrontations are documented and reviewed by supervisors.
The agreement forbids the use of force as retaliation or during verbal confrontations. Hitting people in the head with guns, a practice uncovered in the December report, is now prohibited.
The city has agreed to change its policy to require officers to use de-escalation tactics when possible to avoid using force. If officers do use force, they will be required to provide basic medical care until medics arrive.
The reforms also expand officers’ responsibilities to document each type of force used or witnessed. A newly created Force Investigation Team will investigate each use of force, and computer software will track officers’ uses of force and complaints about excessive force.
Accountability
Justice Department investigators described Cleveland’s process for investigating uses of force and civilian complaints against officers as “broken.” The consent decree strengthens some aspects of the system that were already in place and creates additional layers to hold officers accountable.
The department’s internal investigation unit will move under a new Bureau of Integrity Control, which will be headed by a civilian who is not a former or current police officer and will handle both criminal and administrative investigations.
The Office of Professional Standards will continue to probe civilian complaints, but its investigators will be retrained and will produce an annual report that analyzes trends in complaints. It also will be required to reach out to those who file complaints, and the police chief will order officers who witness complaints to comply with investigators.
The Civilian Police Review Board, which rules on OPS investigations, will now disclose rulings at regularly scheduled public meetings.
Community policing
The city has 90 days to establish the Community Police Commission, a 13-member panel representing law enforcement, Cleveland neighborhoods, and leaders of civil rights, religious, business and philanthropic organizations.
Three seats will be dedicated to the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, the Cleveland lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, and the Black Shield, an organization representing black officers.
The group will meet regularly, review police procedures and make policy recommendations to the chief that reflect the needs of people in Cleveland’s neighborhoods.
Further, the agreement creates groups specific to each of the department’s five police districts to work with officers to identify problems within specific neighborhoods and locations. The groups are expected to craft long-term solutions to address the source of crime in those areas, a practice known as community and problem-oriented policing.
Bias-free policing
The Justice Department said the way Cleveland police stop and search people might be a problem, but stopped short of saying police conduct a disproportionate number of searches and seizures on minorities.
Even so, the city agreed to new requirements that ban officers from stopping someone without being able to specifically say why they found the person suspicious. Officers also are barred from using force against someone whom they didn’t have probable cause to stop in the first place.
The city also agreed to develop a reporting system that tracks every stop, search and seizure, as well as whether an arrest was made or not. The city will collect and analyze the data.
Further, officers will be required to undergo training on implicit bias and cultural diversity training.
Mental Health
The Justice Department in December harshly criticized Cleveland police for mistreating and being unequipped to deal with the city’s mentally ill residents in crisis.
Cleveland has 180 days to build a Mental Health Response Advisory Committee that brings together police officers, social workers, psychologists and mental health experts that will regularly meet to scrutinize the department’s treatment of mentally ill residents.
The police chief will designate a crisis intervention coordinator, at the rank of captain or above, and all the department’s officers will get 8 hours of training on dealing with mentally ill people. New recruits will get 16 hours. And officers who volunteer to be specialists will get 40 hours of training and will be deployed to make sure the city is covered.
Training and equipment
Justice Department investigators found police officers in Cleveland were undertrained and not adequately equipped to carry out their daily duties.
The decree increases the scope and membership of the department’s Training Review Committee, which will develop a comprehensive plan that requires new recruits to undergo at least 960 hours of training, and current officers to get 40 hours of in-service training every year.
Further, the city will come up with a plan to equip every patrol car with computers that can provide real-time transcription of 911 calls.
The department will also be required to double down on efforts to recruit culturally diverse officers, and the department will check the personnel files of every recruit.
Officer Intervention Program
The Justice Department found lacking the system Cleveland used to identify officers before they began a pattern of troubling behavior.
The department will begin using computer software that tracks an exhaustive list of actions: use of force, injuring to people in custody, chasing suspects and failing to record an incident on the officer’s body camera. The department also will track disciplinary actions, civilian complaints or lawsuits and criminal proceedings.
Once an officer reaches a certain threshold, the department will conduct an automatic review, and provide the officer with counseling.