In an order filed Thursday in federal court, the judge overseeing the Cleveland police consent decree, Solomon Oliver, made clear that the city has a ways to go before its police department will be released from the seven-year-old agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.
In the order, Oliver extended the contract of the monitor who evaluates the city’s progress on police reforms by two years, until October of 2024. In a statement from Mayor Justin Bibb's spokesperson, Marie Zickefoose, the administration said it will seek to move on the next step in the consent decree, known as the sustainability phase.
The city is currently in the assessment phase, where the monitor evaluates whether policies and training are taking hold in the department. A recent assessment of the city's use-of-force incidents found that the department was largely following new policies. But an assessment of recruiting and hiring practices was more critical. The monitor is still planning to conduct assessments of the department's community engagement efforts, adherence to new search and seizure policies and officer misconduct investigations, among others.
It's unclear if the city is seeking to skip past those assessments. In the sustainability phase, the monitor would conduct significantly less oversight of the department.
The city entered into the federal consent decree in 2015 after a U.S. Justice Department investigation found a pattern of excessive force by Cleveland police.
Just last month, the city argued in federal court that it had achieved the goals of the consent decree. Law Director Mark Griffin told the court the city has met big-picture benchmarks and only had procedural details left to work out.
The city claimed to have decreased officer use-of-force incidents, improved officer accountability and established effective crisis intervention training for officers to use when responding to people in a mental health crisis.
A progress report issued by the monitor prior to the hearing, and arguments made by the monitor and Department of Justice at the hearing, contradicted those claims. Oliver said then that the city still had work to do and, with his order Thursday, indicated they’ll be under federal oversight for at least the next two years.
“It is clear that, while the city has made substantial progress, it has not yet achieved substantial and effective compliance at this time,” Oliver wrote in the order.
Community Police Commission co-chair Lew Katz agreed with the court’s decision that the city is not finished with the consent decree. He said the city had pressed for a quick end to the agreement recently by relying on the widespread belief that Mayor Justin Bibb was supportive of police reform.
“Now show it’ is basically what the monitor’s report said,” Katz said.
The commission also released a report Thursday, based on the monitor’s status update, that found the city still has to complete more than half of the 300-plus requirements in the consent decree.
According to that report, the city has only completed about 31% of the community policing requirements in the consent decree and 37% of the search and seizure reforms. The area where the police department had made the most progress, crisis intervention, still was only two-thirds complete.
The report also found progress of just a little more than 1% of the consent decree’s requirements since Mayor Justin Bibb took office in January.
“I’m not sure [the Bibb administration] has put enough effort in in their first 9 months in office,” Katz said.
