Community meeting on consent decree to focus on CDP search and seizure practices

By Rich Weiss, Neighborhood & Community Media Association of Greater Cleveland

The Cleveland Consent Decree mandates that the City of Cleveland Division of Police conduct all investigatory stops, searches, and arrests fairly and respectfully as part of an effective overall crime prevention strategy that considers community values.

How well they are discharging that mandate is the subject of the next community conversation in the series of discussions jointly sponsored by United Way of Greater Cleveland and the Cleveland NAACP.

The next meeting in the series is this Wednesday, August 11 at 6:00 p. The theme will be Search and Seizure. The public is invited and encouraged to attend these sessions to help in the monitoring process.

To attend, ask questions or voice your concerns, register for any of the four remaining Consent Decree public meetings by visiting unitedwaycleveland.org.

The meetings are conducted via Zoom on the second Wednesday of each month. The July meeting focused on “Bias-Free Policing and Racial Profiling,” Among the topics raised last month:

  • “What does ‘trained, bias-free policing policies’ mean practically, and what does that training look like?
  • How do we justify over-policing in communities of color and lower-income communities?
  • How are we measuring success with these initiatives?

Richard T. Andrews contributed to this report.

Community members needed to join fifth Cleveland Consent Decree Community Conversation sponsored by NAACP- Cleveland Chapter and United Way of Greater Cleveland: 6:00 pm, May 12

By Rich Weiss, for Neighborhood & Community Media Association of Greater Cleveland

If you missed your chance to attend the April 15th public input meeting on the Cleveland Police Consent Decree, your input is still needed for the upcoming Consent Decree Community Conversation at 6:00 pm on May 12 (on Zoom).  This public meeting (co-sponsored by the local chapters of the United Way and NAACP) seeks your opinions and questions on progress of the Cleveland Division of Police in the areas of Crisis Intervention and Officer Wellness.

According to Roger Smith, Administrator of Cleveland’s Office of Professional Standards, “It’s really what the grassroots wants that should be driving this train.  It’s important for public figures and people who work in public agencies to understand with clarity what it is the community wants, here—what role they want the police to play in their communities and what kind of rules do they want to govern those interactions.  The only way to find that out is to get it from the community.”

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