Cleveland police monitoring team says city delayed required public survey for years

Cleveland has gone eight years without conducting a community survey required under its federal police consent decree, with independent monitors saying city officials repeatedly asked them to delay the process.

The 2015 agreement between Cleveland and the U.S. Department of Justice requires the monitoring team, working with the city, to survey residents about their experiences with the Cleveland Division of Police every two years.

During a Wednesday hearing before Cleveland City Council’s Safety Committee, Monitor Christine Cole said the team had been prepared to conduct another survey but was asked to postpone it while the city conducted separate research.

“Multiple times, we were ready to go. And then the city asked us to postpone due to survey fatigue,” Cole said, according to Ideastream Public Media.

Cole said the city must approve the request for proposals because it is responsible for paying for the survey.

Councilmember Stephanie Howse-Jones questioned why the survey had not been completed, particularly after Cleveland and the Justice Department jointly sought to terminate the consent decree earlier this year.

“How are all these people saying, ‘We want to get out it?’ But we ain’t never ask the people their opinions,” Howse-Jones said. “This is unacceptable.”

Cole previously attributed the initial interruption to the COVID-19 pandemic and a mayoral election but acknowledged during a May council hearing that she could not explain the continued delays in 2022 and 2023.

Cleveland’s Police Accountability Team has partnered with Kent State University researchers on a separate effort to collect feedback from residents and officers.

Leigh Anderson, who leads the team, told council last week that researchers had attended 45 community events and received 355 completed surveys.

The city has not publicly released the results.

In a September memo provided to Ideastream, Anderson said the delay would allow the city to incorporate findings from its ongoing research into the required survey.

“The goal is not to postpone or avoid the required survey,” Anderson wrote.

A city spokesperson also told Signal Cleveland that the monitoring team should explain why the required survey had not been conducted since former Mayor Frank Jackson’s administration.

U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. extended Cleveland’s consent decree through October 2028 last month, acknowledging the department’s progress while finding that additional work remained necessary.

According to WKYC, the department had not completed a required annual assessment examining whether police activities, including arrests, traffic stops, use of force and misconduct complaints, were administered in a discriminatory manner.

The city and Justice Department filed a joint motion in February seeking to terminate the consent decree, arguing that Cleveland had made sufficient progress in reforming its police department.

Mayor Justin Bibb said at the time that the agreement was never intended to remain in place permanently.

The court rejected the request, and the Justice Department has appealed the decision.

During Wednesday’s hearing, the monitoring team also praised the department’s progress in several areas, including crisis intervention training and police disciplinary procedures.

Deputy Monitor Melody Stewart said Cleveland has made improvements at a pace not seen during the earlier years of the agreement, according to Signal Cleveland.

The 2018 community survey found that 62% of Cleveland residents rated the police department positively, up from 55% in 2016.

While 79% of white respondents rated Cleveland police positively, 49% of Black respondents gave the department a positive rating.

The survey also found that 44% of respondents rated the department positively on treating racial and ethnic groups equally, down from 57% in 2016.

The survey included 1,001 Cleveland adults and had a reported margin of sampling error of 3.1 percentage points.

Howse-Jones called for $100,000 to be added to the city’s next budget to fund a new survey.