When Cleveland officials on Wednesday go before the federal judge monitoring the city’s efforts to reform its police department, they’ll likely highlight the good marks received in the latest progress report. 

Released Tuesday by the team monitoring the 2015 consent decree — the deal with the U.S. Justice Department to overhaul police practices and policies — the report says the city is making strides. 

But the report also points to unfinished work that could stand in the way of the city and Justice Department’s joint request to be released from oversight. 

Last month, U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver said he was surprised by the city’s attempt to end the decree and did not rule on it. Oliver did not include the motion to terminate the decree on Wednesday’s agenda. Instead, the hearing will focus on the report and several specific areas of the consent decree. 

Tuesday’s report shows the city has made progress in changing how officers use force and respond to mental health crises, for instance. It highlights police accountability and oversight as key areas that need improvement. 

Monitor Christine Cole wrote in her report that the completion of the decree “appears closer.” But she emphasized that police must sustain a change in culture over time.

“The foundations are established,” Cole wrote in a paragraph about independent police oversight. “Maturation, achieved over time, and through resources and support, is necessary for these systems to achieve the necessary level of confidence from all.”

Mayor Justin Bibb’s office did not provide a comment on the latest report by the end of the day Tuesday.

The monitor’s report graded Cleveland’s compliance with each paragraph of the consent decree on what amounts to a scale of 1 to 5. The lowest grade is “non-compliance” and the highest is “substantial and effective compliance.”

Cole’s team ranked the city as substantially compliant in about 16.4% of paragraphs. Cleveland was generally compliant, the second-highest level, in about 34.3% of paragraphs. The city received a grade of “operational compliance” in about 24.4% of paragraphs. Another 18.2% of paragraphs were partially compliant. Cleveland was noncompliant with 6.8% of paragraphs. 

Cleveland makes progress in use of force, but monitor ‘concerned’ about inspector general’s independence

Cole’s report reiterated her team’s findings from recent in-depth assessments of the city’s progress.

Nearly all non-lethal uses of force were “necessary, proportional and objectively reasonable,” and the city has made “meaningful advancement” in searches and seizures, she wrote.

Cleveland received the two highest compliance ratings for all provisions of the consent decree dealing with mental health crises. The city has also improved in consent decree provisions for officer assistance and support.

One problem area that Cole flagged was Cleveland’s public safety inspector general. Although Cleveland has hired an inspector general and a deputy, it hasn’t defined the office’s authority or a process for investigations and audits, she wrote. 

She also highlighted an episode in July 2025 that left the monitoring team “highly concerned.”

During a meeting about a human resources audit, the Safety Director Wayne Drummond “abruptly interrupted” Inspector General Shayleen Agarwal “and took her into an offline discussion,” the monitor wrote. 

About 20 minutes later, the inspector general returned and ended the meeting. There was no follow up on that report the remainder of the year, Cole wrote. 

The monitoring report did not specify what the inspector general had been asked to investigate, saying only that the audit was at the request of the mayor’s office. The meeting was about workplace complaints against officers that the city hadn’t investigated, Community Police Commission Co-Chair John Adams told Signal Cleveland.

“The manner in which the Chief Director of Public Safety, to whom the IG reports, interrupted the briefing calls into question whether City leadership is respecting the independence of the IG,” the monitor wrote. 

Cleveland will soon launch a new system for evaluating officers’ performance. The city is also making “steady progress” toward an officer intervention program to flag problematic conduct, the monitor wrote. 

But the monitor flagged a different supervision issue. The city recently adopted a promotion policy without input from the Community Police Commission, the 13-member civilian oversight board originally created by the consent decree. 

On the issue of bias-free policing — keeping officer decisions free of racial or other discrimination — Cleveland is making “incremental progress,” Cole wrote. Police have begun incorporating bias-free policing into their training, although the city hasn’t yet produced an annual bias-free policing report, she wrote. 

The Office of Professional Standards, which investigates citizen complaints about police, has set up a public dashboard on its activity, the monitor wrote. There is a “growing backlog of cases” awaiting a hearing from the Civilian Police Review Board, which renders a judgment on the complaints that OPS investigates. 

The CPRB decided 18 bias complaints in the second half of last year, the monitor wrote. None of those complaints was sustained. Two had insufficient evidence, one was dismissed, one was an exoneration and one was unidentifiable, Cole wrote. 

Understand the history: See how police reform has evolved in Cleveland and what led to this moment.

Is the end of the consent decree in sight?

Cleveland and the Justice Department argue that the city has made enough progress to warrant the end of the nearly 11-year-old consent decree. 

The monitor did not make a recommendation in her report on whether the judge should agree to terminate the decree. She wrote she was continuing her work as normal because Oliver hasn’t yet ruled on the city and Justice Department’s motion. 

Cole has completed assessments of Cleveland’s compliance with such parts of the decree as use of force, searches and crisis intervention. She wrote that she has an “ambitious plan” for assessing the remainder of the decree this year. 

“Our shared goal is to reach substantial and effective compliance across the Consent Decree in an expeditious manner,” she wrote.

Frank W. Lewis contributed reporting to this story.