Cleveland has hired a former food bank leader to chart a new course for a trio of City Hall departments, including one aimed at reducing youth violence. 

Tiffany Scruggs will start her job in Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration Feb. 23. Her job is titled Executive in Residence – Community Services. 

The hiring comes at a time of transition for City Hall’s Office of Prevention, Intervention and Opportunity, which former Mayor Frank Jackson created to attend to issues of violence among Cleveland teens and young adults

At the start of the year, Chief of Youth and Family Success Sonya Pryor-Jones — who previously oversaw the office — stepped down from her job. Sherry J. Ulery is now the office’s interim director. 

Scruggs will also oversee the Department of Aging and the Community Relations Board. The heads of those departments will report to her, the city said. Her charge is to advise the mayor on “structure, strategy, and performance systems that promote equitable outcomes and improve service delivery to residents,” according to her job description. 

Reading between the lines of job-description-ese, it sounds like more change could be in store for those parts of City Hall. 

Scruggs has held several leadership roles at the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. At City Hall, she’ll also work alongside such departments as parks, public health and safety. 

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Use-of-force grades for Cleveland police

Cleveland police received good marks from the team monitoring the city’s consent decree — the 10-plus-year-old agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to reform police policies, training and practices. 

The monitors reviewed 272 low- and medium-level uses of force from 2023 and 2024. These are types of force such as joint manipulation, firearm points, tasers and pepper spray. 

Officers used “necessary, proportional and objectively reasonable” force in 97% of the cases examined, the monitoring team wrote in a court filing. In 2% of cases, the force wasn’t deemed necessary or proportional. 

The total number of all uses of force is on the rise after dropping during the COVID-19 pandemic. Police used force 334 times in 2024, up from a low of 195 in 2021. That brings the numbers back up to pre-pandemic levels. The number of de-escalations is steadily rising, too. 

Two other numbers of note: Police pointed their guns 178 times in 2024 and fired them on four occasions.  

The monitoring team wrote that Cleveland had improved its performance on 74 provisions of the consent decree related to using force. The team downgraded the city in four categories that were “administrative in nature.”

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Na zdravje for Voinovich

George Voinovich, who earned a reputation as a pragmatic and moderate Republican during his long political career, would likely seem out of place in today’s Trump-era GOP. 

But the former Cleveland mayor, Ohio governor and U.S. Senator will always have a place in the Slovenian National Home and Slovenian Museum and Archives, which is honoring him this month with a new exhibition. (It’s been nearly 10 years since Voinovich, who proudly talked about his Slovenian and Serbian roots during his public life, died at the age of 79.)

The exhibition, featuring personal artifacts, photos, archival materials, and stories curated by his alma mater Ohio University, opens Feb 12. To draw attention to it, Global Cleveland and other groups are hosting a panel discussion that evening at 6 p.m. at the Slovenian National Home. The panelists include Consul General Republic of Slovenia Suzana Češarek; former Plain Dealer Publisher Alex Machaskee; Cleveland Council Member Michael Polensek; Rev. E. Theophilus Caviness of the Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church; and Voinovich’s granddaughter, Faith Voinovich. 

The event, “Together We Can Do It! George Voinovich and the Work of Government,” coincides with the start of the Cleveland Kurentovanje festival, a Mardi Gras-like celebration rooted in Slovene folklore that carries the goal of chasing away winter. Signal Cleveland documented the festival last year and can attest to the fact that it’s the most fun you’ll have freezing your bells off. 

— Mark Naymik