Cleveland
police officers filed false duty reports, sat in parking lot for hours during
storm
An arbitrator reduced the
suspension given to two Cleveland police officers in 2013 from six-months to
just 30 days after TV news crews caught them idling in a parking lot and filing
false duty reports during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. (File photo)
By Cory Shaffer | Northeast
Ohio Media Group
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Two on-duty
Cleveland police officers falsified documents to mask the fact that they sat
idling in a downtown parking lot for hours on end during a massive, three-day
power outage in the wake of 2012's Hurricane Sandy.
Wesley Harris and Kevin Freese
agreed to a six-month suspension, but Cleveland police union officials
successfully whittled the discipline down to 30 days through an arbitration
process that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson on Friday lambasted as broken and
prevents him from being able to rid the department of officers who break the
rules.
The mayor made his comments at
a time when the Cleveland police department and city officials have come under
scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department for a litany of shortcomings
including excessive use of force, failure to punish officers and a lack of
accountability.
The case against Harris and
Freese is one of 20 arbitration rulings the city provided Northeast Ohio Media
Group in response to an open records request. Jackson has repeatedly said that
arbitrators often overturn and weaken discipline handed out by police and city
officials.
Harris and Freese were assigned
to patrol Cleveland's Third District, which encompasses downtown, overnight
Oct. 31, Nov. 1, and Nov. 8 in 2012. The city was reeling from widespread power
outages and downed power lines.
Local television cameras
captured Harris and Freese sitting in their police car in the Asian Plaza
parking lot for an hour and 23 minutes on Oct. 31. They also captured Freese
with his feet hanging out the car's open window.
Cameras also caught the
officers idling in the parking lot for 26 minutes on Nov. 1, and for two hours
and 13 minutes on Nov. 8, according to the arbitration ruling.
In a disciplinary hearing, the
officers said they had decided to take their lunch break in the plaza, and
stayed as they finished writing reports. Union officials said its standard
practice for officers working overnight shifts to park in well-lit areas to
finish writing reports for safety reasons.
But Freese and Harris admitted
to filing erroneous reports that did not reference their breaks. The reports
they filed said they were paying special attention to other parts of the city
despite Fox8 footage showing otherwise.
After the news story, city
officials launched an investigation. Then-Safety Director Martin Flask said in
a January 2013 hearing that the offenses, made more egregious by the fact that
they came in the midst of torrential storm that rendered many homes without
power, were punishable by termination. Instead, he recommended an unpaid,
six-month suspension for both officers.
The officers said that they had
no choice but to agree to the suspension, because they needed to do whatever
they could to keep their jobs in order to support their families, according to
the ruling.
The Cleveland Police
Patrolmen's Association disagreed and fought the discipline. The union argued
that filing a false duty report is "a relatively minor" offense, and
cited numerous cases where the department suspended officers for fewer than 10
for much more egregious offenses.
This is a common thread
throughout many of the arbitration rulings.
Union attorneys pointed to a
case in which one officer was caught sleeping on duty five separate times. He
was given an eight-day suspension.
An officer was suspended for 10
days after he filed a false report saying he went to the scene of a traffic
crash, but never went.
The city defended the
suspension, comparing it to the 2010 case in which officers Matthew Prince and
David Muniz were also suspended for six months. They were assigned to check on
a reported dead body along Interstate 90. The officers sped by and, without
stopping or getting out of the car, decided the body was actually a dead deer.
They returned to a cemetery where they parked and sat for the next two hours,
according to a Plain Dealer Publishing Co. story.
That object turned out to be
the nude body of 28-year-old Angel Bradley-Crockett, who had been robbed,
strangled to death and dumped along the highway.
The union argued that the
charges against Harris and Freese were not nearly as extreme as those against
Prince and Muniz.
In a December 2013 decision,
arbitrator James Mancini agreed with the union that, based on the past cases,
the city's six-month suspension was too harsh. Mancini lessened the punishment
to 30 days and ordered the city to reimburse Harris and Freese for any wages
lost beyond the 30 days.
