CLEVELAND — The 18th Semiannual Report from the Independent Monitoring Team was filed Monday evening, detailing the progress the Cleveland Division of Police is making towards completing federal reforms that began in May 2015.
Monitor Christine Cole wrote in her letter that, while Cleveland has made significant upgrades in crisis intervention and staffing, there is still more work to be done.
Cole said that the main focus for 2026 is the civilian oversight apparatus, accountability and discipline, which are areas "still in need of work."
According to the letter, she hopes to assess every remaining area of the consent decree by the end of the year, but she did not directly comment on the city's motion to terminate the consent decree, filed last month.
However, she and her team are working as quickly as possible to assess whether Cleveland has met the federal consent decree requirements, the letter stated.
Read Cole's full letter here.
Motion to terminate
The report comes as the federal judge overseeing Cleveland police reforms considers whether to terminate the city's 2015 settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.
RELATED: Cleveland files a joint motion with Trump DOJ to end police oversight, despite unmet goals
The City of Cleveland and the Trump DOJ filed the joint motion to terminate the city's consent decree last month. The motion said the city has achieved "substantial compliance" with federally mandated police reforms.
One day after the motion was filed, Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. said he was surprised by the Bibb administration's news conference regarding the motion.
RELATED: Federal judge surprised by motion to end Cleveland consent decree
According to the judge, the City of Cleveland is not claiming it has met all the requirements to formally end the nearly 11-year-old consent decree, but instead said it has met the most important ones.
Case Western Reserve University law professor Ayesha Bell Hardaway, who spent years serving on the federal monitoring team overseeing Cleveland's progress and as interim head monitor, noted there are eight other areas of reform in the consent decree that were not mentioned in the city's motion. Hardaway also noted the Trump Department of Justice has not been supportive of consent decrees.
"For them to file this motion in agreement with the Trump DOJ certainly does make for strange bedfellows at this time," she said.
During a court hearing, Deputy Assistant Attorney General R. Jonas Geissler said the joint motion to end the consent decree wasn't political but rather based on Cleveland's progress.
"The facts dictate its time," said Geissler, "Not who's in charge at DOJ."
137 shots
The Cleveland Division of Police has been under federal oversight since May 2015, after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found the department engaged in a "pattern or practice" of excessive force and raised concerns about additional civil rights violations, including the deadly shooting of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, known as the 137 shots incident in 2012.
On Nov. 29, 2012, a police chase involving 60 police cruisers through multiple cities in Northeast Ohio ended with 13 officers firing 137 shots into the car Russell and Williams were driving after dozens of CDP cars chased them from Downtown Cleveland to a parking lot at Heritage Middle School in East Cleveland. The pair was unarmed.
A status conference to discuss the 18th Semiannual Report is scheduled for 3 p.m. on Wednesday at the Carl B. Stokes United States Courthouse.
