Cleveland Police stop and search Black people at a higher rate than any other demographic, according to data released Wednesday by the Cleveland Division of Police.
Under paragraphs 160 through 165 of the consent decree, the police department agreed to collect information on every investigatory stop, also known as a Terry stop, and limit the circumstances when these types of stops are allowed. Investigatory stops occur when police stop civilians based on a suspicion of involvement in criminal activity.
In 2022, officers completed a total of 16,463 stop forms, 996 were investigatory stops. Of those investigatory stops, 62% were of Black people and 26% were of white people. According to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Cleveland is 46% Black and 34% white.
But that higher rate does not translate to a significantly higher likelihood of discovering criminal activity, the data show. Less than a third, 28%, of the Black men who were subjected to a Terry stop were arrested compared to 25% of the white men.
The division released the data in its first search and seizure report based on stop forms from both investigatory stops and traffic stops, which occur after a traffic violation. The consent decree does not mention traffic stops in its section on search and seizure.
At a press conference Wednesday morning, Cleveland officials described the findings in the report before releasing a copy to reporters. Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb defended the department and described race as a “complicated, nuanced topic.”
“We are always going to focus on constitutionally appropriate policing while at the same time meeting the demands of our residents that they want to see aggressive law enforcement,” Bibb said. “They want to see traffic enforcement to keep our streets safe and secure. And that command, that demand and mandate for me is not going to change.”
City officials said they plan to send the data to an outside group to analyze and provide feedback. The Department of Justice and the monitoring team overseeing the consent decree are also planning to conduct an assessment of search and seizure in the coming months.
The consent decree requires officers to include a description of the reasons for each investigatory stop that does not factor in race, gender, age, ethnicity or nation of origin “unless such information is part of an actual and credible description of a specific suspect in an investigation that includes other identifying factors” and does not include “‘canned’ or conclusory language without supporting detail in documents or reports.”
The most common reason for investigatory stops in the report was “individual matched description,” which was listed as the reason for about one out of five Terry stops. “Drugs,” “alcohol” and “warrants” were also commonly listed. It’s unclear the level of detail included in the officers’ reports justifying the stops, but the consent decree requires “specific and individualized descriptive language” in every report and supervisors have to sign off on stop forms within 24 hours.
The report also indicates that police use of force is more likely during an investigatory stop compared to traffic stops. In the more than 15,000 traffic stops documented, just 10 resulted in a use of force and only one was a Level 3, which could the use of deadly force or hospitalization. In the 996 investigatory stops, there were 22 uses of force, four of those were Level 3.
It's unclear whether these disparities are an improvement after nine years under the consent decree, according to the head of the city’s Police Accountability Team, Leigh Anderson.
“We're going to move forward to research think tanks that look at this type of information and tell us, Is there profiling? Is there not profiling? What are the successes? What are the officers doing right? Where can we use more assistance, more training? Is it a policy? Is it bad actors? Is this systemic?” Anderson said.
