For years, Cleveland police discipline records have been public – technically. But in practice, they have been difficult to access, search or analyze. The records exist across thousands of pages of hearing notices, disciplinary decisions and arbitration records that have never been assembled into a single public resource.
Signal Cleveland, working with Cleveland Documenters, spent years collecting and organizing those records into a searchable database that covers disciplinary hearings involving more than 1,000 Cleveland Division of Police employees between 2016 and mid- 2026. (About 100 cases aren’t searchable because discipline records didn’t include names.)
We’ve created a tool for residents, attorneys, officials and local journalists that shows how the department responds when employees are formally accused of misconduct. Users can search for specific officers, explore discipline histories or examine which rules were violated – all to better understand how discipline decisions are made.
The project comes at a significant moment. Cleveland has operated under a federal consent decree since 2015, after the U.S. Department of Justice found officers too often used excessive force. The Department of Justice investigation also pointed to shoddy discipline and accountability systems within the police department, including failures to spot patterns of misconduct and investigate problematic officers and a sloppy response to residents’ complaints.
In the decade since, police unions say that the pendulum has swung the other direction and that harsh discipline led to officers fleeing the force. The city says it has shored up discipline processes, and federal monitors largely agree. Now, as Cleveland’s leaders seek and end to federal oversight, questions continue to bubble up about whether new accountability systems will work as intended – and whether the changes translate into increased public trust.
Next month we reach the five-year mark of Cleveland residents voting to create the most powerful community police commission in the country.
Voters gave the Cleveland Community Police Commission significant authority. Aside from having the final say on officer discipline, the commission is supposed to track and publicly share information about officers that could call their credibility into question or help someone’s defense. This requirement is rooted in two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases – Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States. The commission must ensure police and prosecutors disclose that information early in relevant criminal and civil cases and hold officials accountable if they fail to do so. The commission has not yet achieved those goals. Our tool would allow the commission to do just that.
Kareem Henton, one of the engines behind the Issue 24 ballot initiative, said putting the power to look up an officer’s record directly in residents’ hands is a deterrent to bad behavior – especially during or after an interaction with police. It also eliminates bureaucratic and technical steps for residents to get records through public request, which can take weeks or months, he said, a process that can feel very deflating. “People are always empowered by information,” he said.
What does the tool include?
The discipline records you can search involve police officers, dispatchers and other department employees. Some started with citizen complaints, while others began as write-ups from supervisors. In some cases, they followed internal or criminal investigations. The reasons for discipline range from paperwork errors, attendance violations and workplace disputes to allegations of excessive force, dishonesty and other serious misconduct.
They also include findings of untruthfulness, falsified reports, evidence tampering, body-camera violations, misuse of police databases, impaired driving and other conduct that can undermine public trust and officer credibility. The most serious cases involve criminal charges, failures to investigate domestic violence and sexual assault allegations, evidence-handling violations and findings of untruthfulness.
As we’ve collected and explored over 1,800 disciplinary records, we’ve noted a few patterns and cases that deserve a deeper look.
- Nearly 40% of employees in the database had multiple disciplinary hearings, and more than 150 employees faced three or more hearings.
- Less than 4% of all cases —71 hearings ––ended in termination. Untruthfulness was the most common charge among those cases. In general, the police unions fight termination cases, and some of those were overturned.
- Body camera violations account for more than one in five disciplinary hearings. This can include failing to record an interaction, cutting off a recording or not uploading footage as required. Violations are more serious when paired with other misconduct allegations.
What we’ve assembled is not the final word on accountability for police conduct in Cleveland. It is a starting point. The point of sharing the information isn’t to name and shame officers with minor infractions. It’s to document police discipline in Cleveland. We do expect that people might look up officers they interact with, and that officers will look and compare discipline within their ranks.
It’s worth noting that the Cleveland Documenters who worked on this project initially thought that discipline would be largely for brutality or misuse of power. The picture they got from reading the records was far more nuanced, and one said it helped them realize how tough working in local law enforcement is.
We also are publishing this information with input from the unions that represent the majority of police department employees. We shared what we planned to do and sought feedback.
The Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association helped with understanding some of the records and urged us to try to make the tool more complete by including information on cases where officers disputed their discipline through a grievance or arbitration process. The unions have that information but did not provide it to us. Cleveland Fraternal Order of Police President James O’Malley cited legal advice related to the union’s duty to represent members.
Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Andrew J. Gasiewski said the city should have the responsibility to update the discipline information it publishes to reflect when suspensions are reduced or overturned during the grievance or arbitration process. Outcomes change in a significant number of cases, he said, so that would be more fair for officers and employees. (Late Friday the union provided names of several officers whose terminations were overturned and we are working to get those records to update the tool.)
The City of Cleveland denied our records requests initially, saying it didn’t track the discipline in a way that allowed it to provide records. Eventually, the city agreed to provide some arbitration records, and the tool includes about two dozen cases, mostly from 2021 and 2022, and a smattering from other years. We’ll keep requesting the rest of the records, and any officer or employee who wants to provide us with an updated outcome can do so here and we will verify it and add it to the tool.
In the coming months, Signal Cleveland will continue to dig into the records in this tool to examine how discipline changed over time, how often penalties are reduced or overturned, whether repeat misconduct is addressed effectively, and whether findings that affect officer credibility are being properly disclosed to courts and defense attorneys.
Most importantly, we want this information to be useful to the public. Explore the database, search for officers and cases, and tell us what questions you think deserve answers.
Cid Standifer contributed data editing for this series.
