Former member says administrators continuously altered the board's decisions about police misconduct


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