Kristin Volk
CLEVELAND - A former member of
Cleveland’s Civilian Police Review Board said city administrators continuously
altered the board’s decisions about police misconduct.
“Their mode was to try to
protect the police as much as they could,” said Bishop Eugene Ward, a member of
the review board from 2009-2011 and a former police chaplain.
Ward, a Cleveland resident,
said the chief of police or safety director would step in to knock the
recommended punishment of an officer down a level.
For example, if the board
recommended that an officer be suspended for physically abusing a person, the
administrator would instead reprimand that officer with a letter.
Suspension was the most severe
level of punishment the board could give.
“We could never recommend
termination, even though it may have been justified,” added Ward.
Ward was appointed by the mayor
to serve on the Civilian Police Review Board and paid about $500 a month for
his service.
His four-year term was cut
short when he resigned over a domestic violence charge that he says a judge
later threw out.
The board, made up of seven
members, reviews investigations of police misconduct and use of deadly force by
city residents and the safety director.
It meets behind closed doors
twice a month.
“We’ve got to learn the truth,”
said Ward. “We pay our police force. They get paid by taxpayer dollars.”
“I’m not surprised, I’m
disappointed,” said Dr. Ronnie Dunn, a Cleveland State University professor who
specializes in urban affairs.
Dunn conducted a two-year study
of the board. He surveyed people who made complaints and concluded that the
board’s actions were symbolic and lacking substance.
“They [the complainants] didn’t
feel that the process nor their cases were thoroughly investigated or had
integrity to it,” Dunn said.
The City of Cleveland has
declined NewsChannel5’s repeated requests for an interview with any Civilian
Police Review Board membe
