By Mark Puente
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project – Cleveland, a nonprofit news team focused on the Greater Cleveland area’s criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter.
A new report, from a federal monitor overseeing police reforms, is calling several Cleveland Division of Police practices “disturbing” and “alarming.” Among other findings, Cleveland hires officers who couldn’t pass background checks with other police forces.
The issues in the report mirror problems that surfaced in 2014 after an officer shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice. The department never investigated why that officer left a suburban force after a few months, Ideastream reported in 2014. A year later, the department was placed under a federal consent decree.
Lead monitor Hassan Aden wrote in the 75-page, semiannual report that the department still lacks in key foundational areas such as accountability, community engagement and building trust. He added that it still takes too long to investigate complaints against officers. The report is expected to be presented to senior U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr., who oversees the consent decree.
The new report shows the police department still must make changes that hold officers accountable when misconduct allegations surface.
“There are significant and critical areas of the Consent Decree that remain in noncompliance,” Aden wrote.
The consent decree agreed upon between the police department and the Department of Justice in 2015 did not assign guilt or liability. Instead, it created a blueprint to repair community relationships and overhaul how officers frequently used excessive force on residents.
The Marshall Project recently detailed how the city spent more than $60 million on reforms since it entered the consent decree in 2015. Residents and elected leaders questioned whether the money has improved the department’s relationship with the public.
Department practices that gained national attention years ago still linger.
In 2017, the city fired Officer Timothy Loehmann, who fatally shot Tamir Rice in 2014, for lying on his application about being unfit to serve. The officer did not disclose why he left the Independence Police Department, according to a Cleveland.com story.
The new report blasted the city for lacking “coordination and direction” when it comes to recruiting and hiring new officers. Monitors examined background reviews of new hires and said the “reviews could have been better” and found many cases to be “cursory.”
The department’s personnel hiring committee seemed to make hiring decisions “irrespective of the background investigations,” the report stated, calling it “disturbing.”
Monitors also found that veteran officers hired from other agencies should not have been hired because they had “significant background issues.”
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