Cleveland City Council approved seven of Mayor Justin Bibb’s nine nominees to the Community Police Commission at its meeting Monday, leaving two positions on the commission open. With a majority now seated, the 13-member commission can resume meetings for the first time since November.
Two of Bibb’s nominees, Maura Garin and Imoh Umosen, did not receive a vote during Monday’s meeting.
Council members expressed concerns about Garin based on social media posts criticizing police.
“It would be difficult for me to support one of the nominees, Ms. Garin, based on her social media, which is rather inflammatory,” said Ward 17 Councilmember Charles Slife.
Following the vote, council left open the possibility that Garin would be confirmed and did not say why Umosen’s nomination was not voted on.
“Council has questions about the suitability of two nominees,” said Joan Mazzolini, a council spokesperson. “While they work to gain clarity on a few questions, they chose to hold their nominations.”
The seven confirmed members will all serve four-year terms. Shandra Moreira-Benito and Sharena Zayed already served two-year terms on the commission and were reappointed Monday.
The five new commissioners are:
- Sheila Mason, a retired chief of police from the Village of Woodmere and a member of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executive’s Greater Cleveland chapter.
- Tera Coleman, an attorney with the Cleveland law firm Baker & Hostetler.
- Maya Kincaid, a former development manager for the ACLU of Ohio who has also worked in the banking and hospitality industries.
- Michael Nelson, a former Cleveland Municipal Court judge and former president of the Cleveland NAACP board of directors.
- Untaya Miller, a student success specialist at Cuyahoga Community College.
They will join the four members of the commission who are halfway through their four-year terms: John Adams, Piet van Lier, James Chura and Audrianna Rodriguez.
Bibb’s office said it will work with council to fill the two remaining seats.
“We just learned about the two nominees that were not confirmed during [Monday’s] meeting,” said Tyler Sinclair, a city spokesperson. “We’ll continue to engage in dialogue with council as we work with them to fill the remaining vacancies.”
The mayor’s office is optimistic that Umosen will be confirmed now that questions about whether he is a Cleveland resident have been answered, said Sinclair, leaving one seat that will need to be filled.
City Council President pushes for nominee from Cleveland's Black officer association
From early in the process, council signaled it would not wave all Bibb’s nominees through to confirmation. During a Jan. 6, meeting of council’s committee chairpersons, Council President Blaine Griffin said the mayor’s office should consult with council before sending nominees.
“We need to say, ‘Hey, we think we should be able to have a couple of these slots and here’s a couple of people we’d like to see,” said Griffin.
At that meeting, Griffin said he wanted a nominee from the Black Shield Police Association, which represents Black officers in the Cleveland Division of Police, on the commission.
The charter amendment that created the CPC gives the mayor authority to nominate and council to confirm. It also allocates spots on the commission for “no more than three representatives of police associations, including racial-or-ethnic-minority police-labor associations, or these associations' successors recognized by the City.”
Outside of those three seats, no current police officer or anyone who has served within the past five years is allowed.
Retired Cleveland police Captain James Chura, who is currently halfway through his term, was put forward by the Fraternal Order of Police, the supervising officers’ union, two years ago. Another of the three open seats went to Mason, from the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.
Neither the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association nor the Hispanic Police Officers’ Association submitted nominees to the mayor, according to Delante Spencer Thomas, the city's chief ethics officer.
During a Jan. 29, council meeting, Griffin doubled down on having a nominee from Black Shield.
“I truly believe that Black Shield is being marginalized all the way down the line,” said Griffin. “And this is only the latest in a lot of steps where Black Shield has been marginalized. And I do not think that that's fair.”
In recent years, Black Shield has been excluded from the highest-stakes disciplinary hearings in front of the public safety director, where officers face lengthy suspensions or termination. Representatives from the patrol officers’ and supervisors’ unions are allowed in the room to advocate for the officer. Black Shield representatives had, until recently, also been able to attend.
Black Shield selected retired Cleveland Police Sgt. Richard Jackson as its recommended nominee to the CPC, but the mayor's office declined to nominate him. During a Jan. 29, council meeting Spencer Thomas was asked why.
“The mayor ultimately made nominations looking broadly at where the commission has been and ultimately where we'd like to see the commission go in terms of completing the work,” said Spencer Thomas. “This was certainly not a personal issue with Mr. Jackson, other than looking at the array of candidates, looking at the diversity of candidates, looking at a number of different factors.”
Council met again on Feb. 10, to consider the last of the nine nominees. During that meeting, Jackson was called to the table to answer questions, though he had not been nominated by the mayor.
Early on, Griffin indicated that Jackson was unlikely to make it onto the commission.
“I want to make sure I find out the right way to ask this because I want to respect privacy and everything else,” Griffin said. “Is there any reason that any past discipline or other issues that you might have had when you were an officer of the police department that would possibly preclude your recommendation moving forward on this commission?”
Jackson, who previously served on the commission before the passage of Issue 24, answered “No.”
Griffin did not provide any details on the discipline or other issues he was referring to. A council spokesperson declined to elaborate when asked to provide context for the question.
“He’s not a nominee at this time, so whatever objections were raised (if any), are not pertinent to the process,” said Mazzolini, the council spokesperson.
Divide between Black Shield and mayor's office over who should be nominated to CPC
At the council meeting later that night, Griffin offered more details on his plans moving forward, by asking Mister Jackson, a current Cleveland police officer and president of Black Shield, to select a different candidate and send that nomination to the mayor's office.
Griffin urged Mister Jackson, who is not related to Richard Jackson, and the members of Black Shield to meet with the city safety director and Spencer Thomas from the mayor's office to "get some clarity" on how to move forward with a nominee from Black Shield who is acceptable to both the city leadership and the organization.
“We do strongly believe that Black Shield should have a seat at that table for the police commission,” Griffin said.
Richard Jackson believes the opposition to his appointment is coming from police leadership and is based on his knowledge of the commission and readiness to start working immediately.
He regularly attends meetings of the new, more powerful CPC and was a lead drafter of a recently approved overhaul of the department’s discipline policy, which created a Fairness and Consistency Committee to review discipline decisions within the department and more clearly defined which types of misconduct should lead to termination.
“My understanding is that someone from the Cleveland Division of Police is pushing the law department to say that I should not be selected, and of course to the mayor, that I should not be selected,” said Jackson in an interview with Ideastream Public Media. “If it’s true that one or more members of the command staff have had a say over the selection of me as a member, that would not be right. Once they’ve done it with one, you can expect they will not stop as we go forward with this process.”
The mayor’s office did not respond to a question about whether the opposition is coming from police leadership.
The charter amendment that created the commission lays out the types of officer misconduct that should prevent a law enforcement association member from taking a seat on the commission: violations of people’s civil rights that could or have resulted in lawsuits and truthfulness or integrity issues.
Richard Jackson told council he has neither of those in his history. He does have discipline from his 30 years with the department, but according to him, that discipline was largely the result of his outspokenness about instances of racism within the department.
“It is the selective application of the rules within the Division of Police that has been the problem, remains the problem, and it is one of the things that the CPC would tackle and hopefully do away with or at least bring it to light, so it is not so prevalent,” said Richard Jackson.
Richard Jackson said, as far as he knows, he remains the Black Shield choice for the commission.
