Of the hundreds of times that Cleveland police officers used force to de-escalate situations or arrest Clevelanders in 2024, 97 percent were completely justified, a report released this week disclosed.
The Cleveland Monitoring Team, contracted with the city to keep tabs on the Cleveland police department’s progress and behavior, determined in a 120-page use of force report released this week that the department is much more in compliance with the demands of the federal Consent Decree than ever before.
The team reviewed 272 incidents of force, through body cam footage and police reports, and determined that the department has improved in 74 notches of the Consent Decree first laid out in 2015, shortly after Tamir Rice’s killing led to the Obama-era DOJ’s inspection of Cleveland’s law enforcement.
“When it comes to interacting with the public,” the report reads, “the reviewers found that officers are generally following policies, supervisors are engaged, and when policy violations occur, there is internal identification of those issues, and the systems designed to address those violations are in place and working.”
CPD’s use of force policy is generally conservative and cautious, ordering patrol to match their reaction to unruly suspects with the appropriate level of force—from lower-level reactions like locks or takedown, to higher forms like discharging guns or (in deadly cases) using chokeholds.
It’s the job of the Monitoring Team to actually determine if CPD’s officers are actually following what the Feds have told them to comply with when it comes to reforms.
And in 74 paragraphs of that policy—from when to use pepper spray, to how to train recruits in de-escalation, to when to actually point a gun at someone—CPD officers were behaving just fine, either “effectively” or “generally” complying with policies.
Force was surely still used. In 2024, officers reported 334 use of force incidents, the highest amount since 2018, when the department saw 335. (Black men made up roughly 80 percent of those on the receiving end of that force.) It also saw the highest tally of body force moves, de-escalation manuevers, and pressure point controls.
But the Monitoring Team found nearly all of those incidents justified. Out of the 272 they analyzed, just 15 of those in 2024 received any kind of complaint.
“These upgrades are a testament to our shared commitment to accountability, transparency, and meaningful reform,” CPD Chief Dorothy Todd said in a statement, “building trust and strengthening partnerships with every community we serve.”