The Cleveland Community Police Commission welcomed five new members this year and took a significant step forward by exercising its authority over disciplinary decisions for the first time. But progress has come in fits and starts, and some of the people who helped the commission gain its power have grown impatient.

All of that was on display at the commission’s final meeting of 2025. 

During a discussion about ways to speed up processes, Commissioner Shandra Moreira-Benito said that some commissioners, herself included, aren’t working hard enough.

“When we were selected [for the commission], we were told to expect 10 hours a week of work,” she said. “And I can tell you that most weeks I am not doing 10 hours a week of work. And I think that probably other than the co-chairs, very few of us are doing 10 hours a week of work.”

Her admission sparked spontaneous remarks from members of the public, some of whom had made similar points during the public comment period.

The mostly orderly but occasionally chaotic meeting capped a year of progress and frustrations for the commission, which since 2022 has been the final authority on police policy and discipline.

Moreira-Benito told Signal Cleveland that she wasn’t “trying to attack individuals on the commission,” but to remind them that “the community has been repeatedly telling us for two and a half years that we’re not fulfilling what they wanted when they voted for Issue 24.”

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.

A year of progress and challenges

The commission updated several police policies this year, including disciplinary guidelines, and more will be ready for votes early next year. In October it held its first ever review of a police discipline case, one of its most important powers. Last week aside, meetings have been far more cordial and productive than in years past.

But it’s also been dogged by challenges. Committees have frequently postponed or cancelled their monthly meetings without explanation and sometimes with little advance notice.

The commission and city have traded accusations over access to records and what the commission does with them when it gets them. 

The commission recently asked the Department of Public Safety’s inspector general to investigate discipline agreements that the city made with three officers, apparently circumventing the commission’s authority.

The commission’s full-time staff, for day-to-day operations including communication and research as well as legal analysis, is down to one person (it’s supposed to have six). Only an executive director can hire new staff, and a months-long search to fill that rolewas a bust. The next search yielded a new candidate — the commission’s former community engagement coordinator, Shalenah “Shelly” Williams — but the commission has been waiting about a month for Mayor Justin Bibb’s approval. (A city spokesperson said the two are scheduled to meet later this week.)

The executive director also plays a key role in discipline review hearings, so those are on hold.

John Adams, co-chair of the commission, told Signal Cleveland that he doesn’t consider the staff issue an excuse and agreed with Moreira-Benito’s comments about working harder.

“My take has always been that we should be doing the work and that the staff should be supporting it, and not the other way around,” he said.

Adams added that he’s proud of what the commission accomplished this year. “We’ve got it in a position where we can fulfill” the promise of Issue 24.

At least one commission seemed to take offense at Moreira-Benito’s assessment. A few minutes later, Commissioner Tera Coleman said, “My blood is boiling a little bit, I did my 10 hours this week.”

Next on the commission’s agenda

Here are some of the issues that will carry over into the new year.

Commission leadership: Adams and Sharena Zayed will not keep the co-chair roles next year. At the Dec. 11 meeting, the commissioners were asked to nominate new co-chairs. Coleman, Maya Kincaid and Imoh Umosen, all of whom joined the commission this year, were named. They have one week to accept or reject the nomination. The commission is expected to vote on new co-chairs at its January meeting.

Grants: The lack of an executive director is the latest in a series of delays in distributing grant money that was awarded for violence-prevention efforts in 2024. At the November meeting, Adams explained that, by law, only an executive director can “press the button” to disperse funds. And at the December meeting, Umosen, chair of the Budget and Grants Committee, said he’s been working with the city’s Law Department to determine what information it still needs from grantees.

Discipline review hearings: Rules Committee members recently discussed inserting language in the rules to discourage the use of executive sessions (to discuss the case in private before voting in public). Ohio law allows public officials to discuss employment matters in executive session but it’s not required.

Vehicle pursuits: The commission proposed changes to the policy in July that would require more certainty that a fleeing suspect is dangerous before engaging in a high-speed chase and restrict pursuits around dismissal hours during the school year. But after someone apparently sabotaged an attempt to gather community input through an online survey, the commissioners opted to postpone a vote on the policy.

At last week’s Policy Committee meeting, Coleman proposed asking the full commission to vote in January and committing to launching a new effort to seek community input within a year.

Surveillance technology: Also at the policy committee meeting, Commissioner Piet van Lier said that January would be a good time for “the long-delayed conversation around Fusus,” the software platform that Cleveland police use to access city-owned and private cameras in the Real Time Crime Center.

Moriera-Benito then mentioned hearing from people about their concerns over license plate readers and the company that makes the ones Cleveland police use, Flock Safety. (CMSD uses Flock LPRs too.) License plate readers are cameras that can alert police when a car they’re looking for passes through its field of vision. Flock’s system allows camera owners to share images with other law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This has caused a backlash against the technology in cities across the country, including Cleveland.

In October, the Bibb administration asked city council to approve another contract with Flock for its gunshot detection technology to replace ShotSpotter.

In anticipation of that change, the commission recently updated the policy for gunshot detection to remove the brand name. But “who the vendor is does matter,” Benito-Moriera said, “and right now we don’t really have a process through which we evaluate the vendors being used by [Cleveland police].”

The 13th Commissioner: The commission has been short one member all year. Luther Roddy, a Cleveland police officer assigned to The Black Shield Police Association, was appointed to the commission in the summer but has not participated. At the December meeting, Adams explained that Roddy is on restricted duty as an officer and that the collective bargaining agreement with the city prohibits him from holding a second job. Adams said he is waiting on more information from the city or Roddy.