David Hammons has investigated hundreds of complaints of police misconduct during more than a decade at Cleveland’s Office of Professional Standards.
But one case has stuck with him.
In 2022, he took his investigation into Cleveland Vice Detective Jeffrey Yasenchack to the civilian board that recommends police discipline to the city’s public safety director.
“He had a long history of issues with constitutional policing,” Hammons said in an interview with Ideastream Public Media. “The department knew or should have known that this was a detective that had gone awry.”
In the case presented to the Civilian Police Review Board, Yasenchack was accused of a long list of policy violations — improper stop, improper strip search, improper arrest, excessive force, retaliation and untruthfulness. The CPRB found Yasenchack guilty of every one of the charges.
Before voting on the final violation — ethics and untruthfulness — CPRB member Roz Quarto laid out a brief summary of the reasons for recommending the highest level of discipline to the city’s public safety director who metes out discipline to police officers.
Yasenchack faced termination nine months before he was eligible for his pension.
“I move that we recommend a Group 3 violation, Jesus, for so many things,” Quarto said. “But in this one, I guess, false reports, false statements, untruthfulness, intentionally omitting or concealing information relating to misconduct. I could add in gross neglect of duty. I could put them all in there.”
But despite the seriousness of the violations, there would not be any discipline.
After 11 months of procedural delays, Yasenchack retired with a pension before former Public Safety Director Karrie Howard held a disciplinary hearing.
After Yasenchack retired, Hammons made a last-ditch effort to bring discipline against the detective’s supervisors. In 2023, Hammons asked to again appear before the police review board. At the last minute, his boss Administrator Marcus Perez, who had recently taken over at OPS, took his presentation off the agenda at the instruction of the city’s law department, he said.
Neither Yasenchack nor his supervisors received discipline in the case Hammons investigated.
This is an example of a pattern of behavior that has undermined the work of OPS investigators and the independence of the office tasked with looking into public reports of police misconduct, Hammons said.
“The Office of Professional Standards and the Civilian Police Review Board and the Human Resources Department are not independent investigative agencies,” he said. “They are not independent.”
Critics say Perez’s management style has driven experienced investigators to quit, and the loss of expertise has hobbled the office’s ability to investigate often complicated, high-stakes allegations of misconduct and defend the findings.
Since Perez took over OPS, nearly the entire staff has turned over, records show.
Some current employees say the turnover in the office is due to a refusal by former employees to adapt to a new management style and a push by Perez to implement needed policies and procedures that have improved their effectiveness.
Perez would not comment on criticisms by Hammons and other former employees. But said he is simply trying to move the office forward and fix the issues that plagued it before his arrival.
“People are going to write what they want. People are going to hear what they want,” Perez said. “The only thing I can tell you is through action, through role modeling and through standing and delivering and being held accountable — that is what people are going to get from me.”
Attempts to reach Yasenchack were unsuccessful.
The current status is “quite challenging”
The problems at OPS predate Perez.
Federal authorities told the city to address the dysfunction in the office to increase public trust in police in 2015.
That's when the city entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to overhaul the police department after DOJ investigators concluded there was reasonable cause to believe police engaged in a pattern of using unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
But progress at OPS has proved elusive.
Last May, Richard Rosenthal, the member of the police monitoring team who is tasked with reviewing OPS as part of the consent decree, appeared in federal court to provide an update.
“I’ve been working in this area for 20 years and have run three different oversight agencies,” he told the judge, “and I can tell you that the current status of the [Office of Professional Standards] and [police review board] is quite challenging.”
OPS is the investigative agency for the CPRB, which is tasked with scrutinizing every civilian complaint of police misconduct and recommending discipline or clearing officers.
The continuing dysfunction at OPS hinders its ability to address citizen complaints against police, according to former investigators and written reports and court appearances from the monitor overseeing the decree.
Cleveland’s charter requires OPS conduct a “full and complete investigation” of every civilian complaint against a police officer. In its 2014 investigation of the Cleveland Division of Police, the DOJ found that OPS was failing to live up to that standard.
“CDP’s complaint process has little legitimacy in a City that would benefit greatly from an effective system for addressing the community’s concerns regarding its police force,” the report’s authors wrote.
That 2014 investigation led to the consent decree, which went into effect in 2015. It includes a section on reforming OPS, including requirements that investigations are thorough, completed within a reasonable amount of time and the results are shared with the complainant.
Nearly ten years later, the office has done very little to meet the requirements of the consent decree, according to the decree's monitor.
Perez said he's trying to implement changes required by the consent decree, expanding public awareness of the office and improving its ability to clear a backlog of complaints.
It’s unclear whether much has changed in the last year-and-a-half under Perez. The link on the city’s website where OPS annual reports can be found leads back to the city’s home page. The office has not filed its annual report for 2023, several months after the deadline.
It’s also unclear whether the office is improving its performance because, for much of the first half of 2024, the city limited OPS’s access to police records, slowing down its work considerably, according to the monitor’s 15th Semiannual Report, published in September.
“There was no adaptation at all”
Perez is not without supporters among the employees at OPS’s office in Downtown Cleveland.
There have been positive changes to the way the office runs since Perez’s arrival, said Joseph Szymanski, who started as a temporary hire when the office was managed by a city assistant law director.
The investigative reports have been made more concise and easily readable under Perez, he said.
Perez added a peer review process where an investigator sits down with other investigators to go over their findings and take feedback before a review is done by the senior investigator and Perez.
“My first year coming in, I mainly just remained to myself. But it was just difficult,” Szymanski said. “There were really no policies in place and procedures. And it was just difficult for me to be here.”
Szymanski said before Perez arrived he just tried to “keep his head down.”
He attributes the high turnover to a failure to accept the new boss’s way of doing things.
“There was no adaptation at all,” he said.
Before coming to OPS, Szymanski worked for a company that investigates workers' compensation, HR and insurance claims on behalf of employers. He frequently accompanies Perez to represent OPS at consent decree hearings in federal court or at Cleveland's Community Police Commission.
“I’m here for the citizen and also for the officer, for making a greater impact,” Szymanski said. “One day I want to lead the office, and hopefully I get the opportunity to and just make a difference. I don’t want to complicate anything.”
“I sadly knew OPS was in trouble”
Julie Delaney started investigating citizen complaints against Cleveland police after her cousin was killed by a police officer.
She had worked at OPS for more than five years when she learned she’d be getting a new boss. She said she was hopeful a new leader would make the office more effective.
For more than a year after her last boss left in 2021, OPS had been run mostly by a series of attorneys from Cleveland’s law department.
Some investigators felt that undermined the office's independence. The city attorneys running the investigations into officer misconduct worked for the same office that would represent police officers in potential future lawsuits.
Delaney said in her resignation letter that Perez struck a combative tone with staff right off the bat.
Multiple current and former OPS employees say during one of his first staff meetings Perez told everyone who wasn’t planning to do what he said to update their resumes.
“I sadly knew OPS was in trouble,” Delaney wrote in her resignation letter four months later. “Marcus Perez has subjected ALL OPS staff to his aggressive demeanor, threats and intimidation.”
The result has been a mass exodus, some staffers say.
Since Perez took over, at least seven out of the 10 budgeted inspectors have left the office, and at least four members of the support staff have quit, records show. Only two full-time investigators from before Perez’s time remain.
Perez declined to comment on any of the allegations from former or current employees, saying it could threaten his legal representation from the city.
In an interview with HR, Perez said he’d had “tough conversations” with some employees and attributed the complaints to a backlash against his attempts to create “policies and procedures” in the office, records show.
In his year and a half as OPS administrator, Perez has been the subject of at least three complaints and one lawsuit related to his management. There have been investigations by the city’s Human Resources and Law departments, according to records obtained by Ideastream Public Media.
The city has not responded to requests for records related to all HR investigations into Perez.
Two months after that early staff meeting, records show Delaney filed an HR complaint against Perez. Five months later, the city found that her claims were unsubstantiated. By then, Delaney, who declined to be interviewed for this story, had already resigned.
In another complaint filed by a former general manager, the city’s HR department did not issue a decision. Instead, the department opted to present information gathered from multiple employee interviews to CPRB, the review board of nine civilians appointed by the mayor.
Some employees said Perez had engaged in troubling behaviors, according to the report. Others said they weren’t aware of any of it. CPRB unanimously voted to keep Perez on as administrator in a closed-door session in 2023.
The outcome of the third complaint, alleging age discrimination, is unclear.
David Hammons, who is Black, was the longest-serving investigator at OPS when Perez arrived. In August, he filed a lawsuit against Perez and the city alleging racial discrimination after he said he was passed over for a promotion.
That lawsuit was dismissed in October on procedural grounds.
Hammons also said he filed an equal employment opportunity claim with the city that he alleges was never investigated.
Hammons resigned from OPS in 2023 and said none of the city departments tasked with responding to employee concerns were doing their jobs.
“They are independent in name only,” Hammons said in an interview. “And it is evidenced by their inability to move on their own without the permission, authority and imprimatur of the law department.”
Stakes are now higher for OPS investigations
In 2021, voters approved Issue 24 which expanded CPRB and OPS’s powers and granted CPRB the authority to overrule discipline decisions by the director of public safety.
CPRB hasn’t yet used its increased authority. When decisions from the public safety director come back to the board, the board makes a final determination to either accept the decision or overrule it.
Board members based that final decision, in part, on the information presented by OPS investigators.
At a CPRB meeting in October, board chair Billy Sharp expressed apprehension about this new power.
“We are at the point now, we have the authority to end an officer’s career,” Sharp said. “That makes me very nervous — just want to state that for the record.”
As board members eye their new powers, more turnover may be coming to OPS.
Perez himself could soon be leaving.
He is a finalist for another job within the city — police inspector general — which reviews police policies and procedures on behalf of the public safety director.
He is one of four finalists interviewed by the Community Police Commission in September for that position.
