Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration and the Community Police Commission recently escalated their long-simmering conflict over control of police oversight — this time in an exchange of pointed legal letters. 

The latest battle over the commission’s authority came on the heels of Bibb’s February announcement that the city was ready to end a decade of federal monitoring under a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice. 

The commission moved to oppose Bibb’s plan. Its leaders authorized outside attorneys to file a brief in federal court arguing that ending oversight too soon could undermine police accountability. A judge rejected the filing, but the legal fight didn’t stop there.

Soon after, Cleveland Law Director Mark Griffin sent a letter accusing the commission’s law firm of acting without proper authority and warning that the city could seek disciplinary action. The firm fired back, calling the letter “a blatant attempt to silence the commission.” 

Commission leaders say the ongoing disputes with the city reflect a pattern of the administration trying to sidestep its authority. This latest confrontation raises questions about how the Bibb administration views the commission’s independence even as it argues in court that the commission is one of the reasons the city is ready to remove the training wheels of federal oversight.

‘Do we want to fight over this too?’

The Community Police Commission’s responsibilities and powers are spelled out in a 3,270-word section added to the city’s charter when voters passed Issue 24 in 2021.

Cleveland’s Issue 24
Issue 24 was a ballot initiative that voters approved in 2021 to shift more power to civilian oversight of the Cleveland Division of Police. It changed the city charter to give the Community Police Commission final say on police policy, training and discipline. It also gave independence to the Office of Professional Standards, which investigates residents’ complaints against officers, and the Civilian Police Review Board, which decides whether those complaints require discipline.

As a candidate, Bibb supported Issue 24. Now, in his second term, he has said he’d like to revisit it (but hasn’t elaborated). His administration and the commission have clashed over access to records, making hires and removing members, the city possibly circumventing the commission’s disciplinary review power and even drone use. 

Because it’s in the charter, the commission is part of the city and therefore represented by the city’s Law Department. But the commission is also supposed to have a level of independence, which is why the charter grants it the power to decide “in its discretion” that the Law Department has a conflict of interest and to hire private attorneys on the city’s dime.

That has happened twice. The first time was in 2023, when Bibb rejected the commissioners’ choice for executive director. The commission consulted an attorney who concluded that the mayor does have that power.

The second time was in August 2025. The commissioners voted unanimously to hire an attorney to assist with a longstanding frustration: access to city records that the commissioners say they need to review police discipline cases, one of their most important duties. The Law Department reviews records requests and approves their release, so the commissioners decided this was a conflict.

The Law Department denied that there was a conflict but said that the commission could pay for an attorney from its own budget, not the Law Department’s, said Co-Chair John Adams in an interview in March. After a lot of back and forth with the city over approving a contract, Adams signed a letter of engagement with the the law firm Flannery Georgalis in November. The co-chairs decided they would pay the firm out of the commission’s own budget if necessary.

“It was like, do we want to fight over this too?” Adams said.

About six months later, the fight came anyway.

‘A troubling disregard for rules’

The commission was not informed in advance that Bibb intended to seek an end to the consent decree. (Neither was the Civilian Police Review Board, according to Chair Brandon Brown.)

Soon after the announcement, Adams and fellow co-chair Sharena Zayed authorized Executive Director Shalenah Williams to ask their law firm, Flannery Georgalis, to draft an amicus brief to submit to the federal judge who oversees the consent decree. An amicus — also called a “friend of the court” brief — is a way for interested parties who are not part of a legal proceeding to submit arguments for a judge to consider. 

The brief argued that “early termination of the Consent Decree will adversely affect the Commission and its mandate.”

Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. refused to accept the brief, in part because it would “place the court in the highly unusual position of managing adversarial briefings between the City and one of its own entities.”

But that wasn’t the end of it.

A week later, city Law Director Mark Griffin sent Flannery Georgalis a four-page letter accusing it of “a troubling disregard for rules governing attorneys and public entities.”

He insisted that the law firm “was not, and is not, lawfully authorized to act as legal counsel” for the commission (emphasis in original). He twice called the commission “subordinate” to the city. He acknowledged that the commission can hire private attorneys “but only in extremely limited circumstances, which include a declared conflict of interest by the [commission] and formal involvement with the City Law Department.”

Griffin demanded “immediate corrective action,” including that the firm admit to misrepresenting itself to the court and to cease working with the commission. Failure “may necessitate referrals to appropriate disciplinary authorities,” he concluded.

Ten days later, Flannery Georgalis fired back with its own letter denying Griffin’s allegations, refuting his arguments and calling his letter “a blatant attempt to silence the Commission and prevent it from functioning effectively.”

The firm’s letter laid out the history of the commission’s frustrations with the city over access to records, including the time that the federal court intervened. Over 11 pages, with more than 30 pages of attachments that include email threads, the letter described what it called a “pattern of deliberate noncompliance” from 2019 to the present.

The firm said that its authority to represent the commission comes from the August 2025 vote about the Law Department’s conflict of interest in the records access dispute. It called this commission power “incontestable.” The firm also said it was referring Griffin’s letter to the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association.

‘Why make threats?’

“I was struck by the city’s threat to seek sanctions against the lawyers” for the commission, said Jonathan Entin, a law and political science professor at Case Western Reserve University who reviewed the two letters at Signal Cleveland’s request. “That is extraordinary.”

Lawyers routinely refute each other’s arguments, Entin said, but by threatening to seek sanctions, “the city seems to be trying to discourage those lawyers (and others) from crossing it in the future. … I’m really surprised at the city’s hard-nosed move.”

Subodh Chandra, a former Cleveland law director, current civil rights attorney and author of the Issue 24 amendment, called the letter “shameful” and accused Griffin of “making unethical threats of disciplinary grievances for civil and political gain.”

“Simply put, why doesn’t the law director’s letter offer to help the commission and the law firm it chose do things correctly, if there are indeed errors?” Chandra said. “Why make threats?”

Commission ‘was trying to do something extraordinarily incorrect’

“I used strong language because it is an important issue,” Griffin wrote in response to questions from Signal Cleveland. He declined to say whether the city would follow through on referring to Flannery Georgalis for discipline.

“The city supports transparency, open meetings and robust debate,” he said. “What it cannot support is one arm of the city suing or briefing against another as though they were separate governments. … The city is committed to working [disagreements] out in good faith so long as any partners are willing to come to the table.”

He also noted that Judge Oliver rejected the commission’s amicus without even waiting for the city to oppose it. The commission, Griffin said, “was trying to do something extraordinarily incorrect and the judge was not having it.”

Griffin also said the commission never submitted a contract for outside legal representation specific to the August 2025 vote on access to records. And even if it did, a contract “cannot exceed the scope of the authorization.” 

Adams said he submitted the letter of engagement to Griffin in November and asked what else was needed to get a contract approved but did not get a reply.

The commission and Flannery Georgalis contend that the August 2025 vote applies to the amicus brief too.

A vote after the fact

The commission still has not discussed the amicus brief or the letters in public. Since it was filed, they’ve met about it twice in executive sessions — meaning in private, away from the audience and streaming video camera. State open meetings law allows some exceptions to public discussion, including “pending or imminent court action,” but the commission has not stated explicitly which exemption applied.

After the second such meeting, three weeks after the brief was filed, members voted to adopt the co-chairs’ and executive director’s directive to Flannery Georgalis to file it as the commission’s official position. The vote was six in favor, one against with one abstention. (Four commissioners were absent.) There was no public discussion before the vote.

“There were commissioners who felt that the full commission needed to have a say in it, even though [the co-chairs] have the authority under the charter to act as spokespeople,” Adams said of the vote. 

As of Monday afternoon, there had been no further communication from the city since the letter to Flannery Georgalis, Adams said. Meanwhile, the commission is still waiting for the city to turn over 10 sets of records requested this year, he said.