On Monday, the interim executive director of the civilian organization tasked with overseeing police discipline in Cleveland sued the city, the mayor and several of the commissioners he works for alleging discrimination.
The current interim Executive Director of Cleveland's Community Police Commission, Jason Goodrick, said he is the victim of discrimination based on his gender and race — and claimed commissioners said as much in a closed-door meeting last year (2023) when they were considering making him the permanent leader of the commission.
Goodrick is a white man.
Now commissioners named in that suit are pushing back and pointing to the public record as evidence that Goodrick was not named permanent executive director and not given a $40,000-a-year raise because of concerns about his performance and because he agreed to a lower salary.
“It’s just more of Jason being Jason,” Jan Ridgeway, one of the commissioners named in the suit, said of Goodrick’s claims. “The public will read that and either they’ll choose to believe that or the people who know me, know my work, know my integrity, will know he’s lying.”
Goodrick declined to comment for this story.
The lawsuit landed as the current commission, created by referendum in 2021 as a wave of support for police accountability swept the country, is in disarray. Three commissioners resigned in the past week, leaving Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb nine positions to fill on a two-year-old commission that has yet to review a case.
Cleveland has struggled for decades to create lasting police reform in the city.
From the 1984 creation of the Office of Professional Standards to investigate civilian complaints against the police, through the nearly 10-year-old federal oversight of the police department under the current consent decree, city officials and residents have struggled to find a system of accountability that garners public trust.
This week’s lawsuit, along with the resignations and two years of fighting among commission members, raises questions about whether the CPC, created by the 2021 passage of Issue 24, will succeed.
The mayor’s office did not have a comment on Goodrick’s allegations. City leaders are reviewing the lawsuit, according to a spokesperson.
Goodrick's allegations
Goodrick is seeking back pay for the difference in salary between the interim executive director pay and what he would earn if he was permanently appointed to the executive director position, about $40,000, along with damages for emotional distress, according to the suit filed in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas.
“Under Goodrick, the Commission has grown from a fledgling organization into an independent police oversight agency,” the complaint reads. “Goodrick has further earned the public trust with support from organizations such as Black Lives Matter – Cleveland and [the group that helped create the commission through a ballot referendum in 2021] Citizens for a Safer Cleveland.”
The suit alleges that, during the commission’s first formal meeting, on Jan. 25, 2023, commissioners went into executive session and: “Shockingly, Commissioner [Alana] Garrett-Ferguson asserted that because Goddrick was a ‘white man’ and an ‘abuser of Black women’ he was unfit for the role of Executive Director.”
It is unclear how Goodrick learned what was said during the confidential executive session.
After the session, the commission voted to name Goodrick interim executive director and create a hiring committee to search for an assistant director.
Six months later, the commissioners voted 7 to 5 to make Goodrick’s interim post permanent, but the mayor’s office declined to appoint Goodrick and instead recommended the commission launch an open search.
According to his lawsuit, Bibb rejected the commission’s 7 to 5 vote to nominate him as executive director (the charter gives the commission authority to nominate a director and Bibb the appointment authority) because of Goodrick’s race and gender.
Goodrick continues to serve as interim executive director.
In the lawsuit, Goodrick alleges the city should have increased his salary from the $90,000 he earned running the previous commission to the $130,000 in the CPC’s current budget.
Video of the meeting where Goodrick was named interim executive director, contains audio of him telling commissioners that he’d be willing to serve as interim executive director at the lower salary.
Commissioners' response
Garrett-Ferguson denies she made any comments about Goodrick’s race.
“My comments had to do with starting a thorough review of his background and the work he had done during his time there,” Garrett-Ferguson said in an interview after the suit was filed. “I said, ‘Do we have any performance reviews or anything like that?’”
In a recording of the June 14, 2023, meeting, where five of the six commissioners named in the suit – Cait Kennedy was absent — voted against Goodrick becoming executive director, Ridgeway explains her vote against Goodrick was because she did not like the hiring process. She said she was concerned the commission skipped over the search and dissolved the hiring committee without completing any work.
“It was about making telephone calls to commissioners to back a vote,” Ridgeway said at the time, “in a way that was not publicly transparent, and I thought was unethical.”
In Bibb’s rejection of Goodrick’s nomination, dated July 20, 2023, the mayor pointed to ongoing issues at the commission and the need for a transparent, thorough search for an executive director.
“I intend to appoint a best-in-class Executive Director who will follow through on residents’ clear desire for the CPC to work cooperatively and support constitutional policing in our community,” Bibb said. “To that end, I commend the Commission for having established a hiring sub-committee and committing to a transparent and community-involved recruitment process.”
More than a year after the letter, the commission has yet to create and post a job description for the executive director position.
How did we get here?
All of Goodrick’s complaints started with that closed-door executive session, where an earlier investigation into his leadership was brought up, according to the lawsuit.
In 2017, the city hired Goodrick as executive director of the original Community Police Commission, which was created by the 2015 police consent decree.
The previous version of the CPC was purely advisory – it made recommendations on policy changes to the Cleveland Division of Police and held public meetings.
One year into his term, three former employees of the commission filed complaints with the city and eventually a lawsuit against Goodrick. They alleged sexual harassment, retaliation and workplace violence. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed at the request of the plaintiffs.
An investigation by the city found that Goodrick had not violated the law or city policy in his treatment of the three employees.
“Once in executive session and outside of public scrutiny, Commissioner Garrett-Ferguson presented the unsubstantiated 2018 allegations against Goodrick,” the lawsuit states. “Based on Commissioner Garret-Ferguson’s accusations and because Goodrick is a Caucasian man” five of the commissioners named in the suit voted against Goodrick’s nomination as executive director during a June 14, 2023, meeting.
Other commissioners have confirmed that Goodrick’s race and gender were brought up by unnamed commissioners during the executive session and sent a letter to the city raising the issue.
Garrett-Ferguson defends bringing up the 2018 investigation during that session.
“We definitely needed to be aware of it,” Garrett-Ferguson said. “We have to think about the gender and power dynamics that come into play during policing.”
But, she added, her opposition to Goodrick becoming executive director was based on job performance.
“It just didn’t seem like with this new version of the commission that his skill set and his work history matched the new commission,” Garrett-Ferguson said.
The state of the commission and what’s at stake
In the past week, the city announced it is opening applications for all six of the two-year term positions. Also, three commissioners serving four-year terms – Ridgeway, Alana Garrett-Ferguson and Charles Donaldson, Jr. – announced they will resign early, leaving Bibb with 9 positions to fill.
The CPC has ultimate authority over police discipline, policies, training and recruitment. But it’s struggled to fully assert that authority in the nearly two years since new commissioners were sworn in.
There are 13 commissioners on the board, six were appointed with two-year terms and seven have four-year terms. The mayor nominates 10 of the 13 spots on the commission, and council approves his nominees and makes the three other nominations.
All three of the commissioners leaving early made their decisions before Goodrick filed his lawsuit. According to Ridgeway, it’s the endless fighting among commissioners that is driving her away.
“‘I just feel like I could do so much more for the community other than fight every meeting,” Ridgeway said. “Every time a police officer is shot or killed, the community becomes much more empathetic toward the police. And when they watch our meetings, and they see all the infighting, they question why we exist.”
The case is assigned to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Kevin Kelley, a former Cleveland City Council president, who ran for mayor three years ago as an opponent of the commission.
