As Cleveland moves to end more than a decade of federal court oversight of the police, it is also taking a closer look at the city’s local police watchdogs.
If court oversight ends, a constellation of local agencies — made up of city employees and citizen boards — will bear the brunt of the responsibility for monitoring the police. But Mayor Justin Bibb has said the layers of oversight have led to “confusion” and “red tape.”
Cleveland and the U.S. Department of Justice are using the global consulting firm Jensen Hughes to help the city’s oversight bodies streamline their work, Chief Ethics Office Delanté Thomas said.
The firm started its work March 16, he said. It is being paid through the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services office. Thomas shared the news Wednesday at a federal court hearing on the city’s 2015 consent decree, the deal with the Justice Department to reform the police force.
Several groups oversee the police in Cleveland. The 13-member Community Police Commission approves policies and has the final say on officer discipline. The Office of Professional Standards and Civilian Police Review Board hear citizen complaints about police. Cleveland also maintains a public safety inspector general.
In its move to end the consent decree, Cleveland argues that police have made strides in reforming how they use force, conduct searches and respond to mental health crises. Bibb has said he would ask the monitoring team to remain for at least a year post-decree.
The city’s police watchdogs aren’t yet in a position to provide the oversight they need to, said Tammy Hooper, a member of the team monitoring Cleveland’s consent decree. Jensen Hughes will help, she said.
The firm will map out the powers and workflows of the city’s oversight bodies, she said. Jensen Hughes will make recommendations for improvement in a report due at the end of August, she said.
Hooper spoke during Wednesday’s court hearing, which focused on the latest monitoring team report on Cleveland’s consent decree progress.
Bibb backed 2021 police reform plan that created additional oversight
As a mayoral candidate in 2021, Bibb backed a ballot issue that gave new powers to the CPC and CPRB. But in late 2023 he said he was open to amending the charter changes he campaigned on.
Last October, he told Signal Cleveland he wanted the regulatory groups to “work more seamlessly.”
“Right now, we almost have too many internally at City Hall and externally with the CPC, and sometimes that creates a lot of conflict, a lot of confusion and almost too much red tape, which undermines the core mission of what they were enacted to do,” he said at the time.
So far, Bibb has not laid out a specific proposal for streamlining that work.
Jensen Hughes covers a wide range of risk management work, from fire safety to police oversight. It is also helping Cleveland police with community-oriented problem solving. The firm monitors court-overseen police reforms in Bakersfield and Vallejo, California, and was hired by the city of Loveland, Colorado, to investigate police there.