After disruptions derailed a public meeting yet again Wednesday night, Cleveland Community Police Commissioner Maya Kincaid had a pointed message for city officials: The commission needs help addressing repeated interruptions of its meetings by Teri Wang, a former commissioner.
“We cannot get the work done if we are going to have people like Ms. Wang who come here making accusations, not only of us but of other members of the public, slandering people, defaming people and just refusing to yield her time to allow us to continue our work,” Kincaid said, looking directly into the livestream camera.
“This work is important … but we cannot do it under these conditions,” Kincaid said.
Her comments reflected growing frustration among commissioners over Wang’s behavior at meetings stretching back more than a year. The city hired a special prosecutor to investigate, but he has not brought charges.
Wang did not respond to Signal Cleveland’s request for comment. In the past , she has argued that her comments at meetings are dissent and therefore protected under the First Amendment. She has also frequently accused the commission of violating Ohio’s open meetings laws and of lying to the public.
“If they stopped lying, I wouldn’t have to say anything,” she once said at a meeting.
In 2024, commission co-chairs John Adams and Sharena Zayed asked Mayor Justin Bibb to remove Wang from the commission due to “uncollaborative, adversarial and accusatory actions” that “create an unsafe work environment, and … fear for the City’s liability, our staff, and the community.” Bibb did not remove her, but she was not reappointed when her term expired at the end of that year.
Commission asks city to intervene
In June, the commission’s executive director warned the city’s Law Department about Wang’s “escalating disruptions” saying they are causing community members to stay away from meetings and commissioners and staff to fear for their safety.
Law Director Mark Griffin responded that the city’s position is “clear and balanced”: Commission meetings have to be safe and open to all. He said the city would send police officers to meetings, as it had in the past, and reminded the commission of its obligations under Ohio public meetings law.
About six minutes into Wednesday’s meeting, Wang made a public comment that included accusations against the commission and Pastor Aaron Phillips, director of the Cleveland Clergy Coalition, who was also there. Soon taunts and accusations were flying between Wang and Phillips, who asked Wang if she is an American citizen. When the confrontation appeared on the brink of getting physical, Cleveland police officers stepped in.
Adams, the commission co-chair, read aloud a statement that the law department had provided for such occasions. It had no effect. Adams called for a vote to recess the meeting, and the police officers asked everyone to leave the room. Wang refused. The officers eventually issued her a citation for disorderly conduct and the meeting resumed after a recess of an hour and 15 minutes.
In a post on Facebook Thursday, Wang wrote that critics are trying to silence her instead of addressing what she says is corruption. “The problem isn’t me,” she wrote.
Special prosecutor has been monitoring disruptions
The commission “has faced severe, persistent disruptions from Ms. Wang during our public meetings for more than two years,” wrote Executive Director Shalenah Williams in an email Thursday morning to the special prosecutor. The Law Department hired former assistant county prosecutor Edward Fadel last year, after a meeting at which Wang shouted at Adams and argued with City Council Member Stephanie Howse-Jones, leading to a recess of almost 20 minutes.
Williams asked Fadel for “a formal review of the ongoing situation regarding Teri Wang for the purpose of seeking a sworn criminal warrant.”
The citation issued Wednesday night was not Wang’s first. In May 2025, the commission’s accountability committee recessed a meeting because Wang repeatedly called out from the public seating area and ignored the chair’s demands for order. “It is not disruption, it’s dissent,” she said.
During the 90-minute recess that followed at that meeting, she refused to leave the room, at one point telling the officers, “No, there’s no law about [leaving the room during a recess]. If there was a law, you would be able to remove us.” (Loh, an activist who attends many meetings across the city, also stayed in the room.)
Sarah Johnson, a Cleveland spokesperson, said that Fadel will investigate the events of Wednesday night and recommend whether charges are warranted. Johnson also said that the 2025 citation was part of a deferred prosecution agreement with Wang. (Signal Cleveland requested a copy of the agreement in June but it has not been provided. Adams said he was told that Wang never signed the agreement. The city did not respond to a question about that.)
‘We need prevention, not management’
In May of this year, Wang “barged into” a closed-door executive session commission meeting, Adams said. There were no officers or cameras present. The following week during a meeting, she taunted another community member and officers intervened.
Williams emailed Griffin the next day.
“What began as disruptive behavior has now crossed an unambiguous threshold into workplace violence,” Williams wrote. “Ms. Wang’s conduct at recent CPC meetings has caused Commission staff, sitting Commissioners, and members of the public to experience panic attacks, anxiety attacks requiring days away from work, and genuine, reasonable apprehensive fear for their physical safety.”
Williams stated that she had attempted to lock Wang out of the meeting but then let her in, deferring to commissioners who were concerned about violating her rights. “But the outcome has reinforced my position: the current approach of monitoring and responding after disruption occurs is no longer sufficient,” Williams wrote. “We need prevention, not management.”
She asked Griffin to bar Wang from commission meetings “until a permanent solution has been identified and implemented.”
When he responded almost three weeks later, Griffin wrote that he “cannot support that remedy.” He said the commission could rely on “visible police presence, sign-in procedures, security screening, designated seating areas, separation between members of the public and Commissioners or staff, rules against approaching the dais or staff tables, time limits for public comment, recesses when order cannot be maintained, and removal of any person who is actually disruptive, threatening, and refuses to comply with lawful meeting rules.”
He also reminded the commission about the state law governing executive session meetings, including giving advance notice to the public.
Most of the measures Griffin suggested were already in place at the time. Signal Cleveland asked Griffin on Thursday why Wang has not been removed from meetings, but he declined to answer, citing the possibility of future litigation.
Monitoring team is paying attention
In the spring, the commission took its concerns to the monitoring team that tracks Cleveland’s progress under the consent decree, the city’s agreement with the federal government to reform policing. (The consent decree established the commission in 2015, and Cleveland voters gave it more oversight power in 2021).
At a June status hearing, a monitoring team member informed U.S. District Court Judge Solomon Oliver, who oversees the consent decree, of the commission’s issue with meeting disruptions. At another hearing on Aug. 18, the monitoring team said the city still had no plan for dealing with the disruptions. Oliver did not ask for more information.
On Thursday, Phillips — who was at the meeting to thank the commission for a $35,000 grant for youth job training — said a common pleas court judge had granted him an emergency civil order of protection from Wang based on the events at Wednesday’s meeting.
