On Monday, a federal judge will get his first official look at the plan to overhaul the Cleveland Police Department. But WKSU’s M.L. Schultze reports some of the details came out in his courtroom today.
The plan sets an aggressive timeline for the first year of reforms aimed at patterns of poor training, overuse of force and other problems that led to the Justice Department and city agreeing to reforms last spring. Matthew Barge, the monitor overseeing the agreement for federal Judge Solomon Oliver, says – while ambitious – the plan is realistic.
“As of the end of the year, there will be a new use of force policy and all officers will be trained on it and that marks a sea change in Cleveland and a new day in Cleveland with respect to use of force. And those are the kinds of milestones and deliverables that are in the plan so it will be clear to people in Cleveland what they can expect.”
Some of the issues left for the second year of the five-year plan include monitoring data to spot patterns of problems among police officers and setting more guidance for how and when to make traffic stops.
