Police Chases Have Dramatically Decreased Since East Cleveland’s New Police Chief Took Office

Brian Gerhard officially took over as the police chief of the embattled and beleaguered East Cleveland force in October.

He’s now in charge of a department where nearly one-third of his officers have been indicted in Cuyahoga County for a range of offenses including bribery, civil rights violations, and assault.

While change is slow to come to Cleveland’s east side neighbor, beset by financial and political troubles for years, Gerhard has promised to usher it in, and, to be more transparent.

“I’m very blunt about stuff,” Gerhard told Scene early April, sitting back in his office chair. “I don’t have nothing to hide. You’re not going to read about me in the newspaper that I have seven women that I got kids with, and I’m not paying child support. You’re not going to read about that about me because, well, I’m very boring away from here.”

Gerhard believes that he can improve the department’s image, and make it more boring, by tightening hiring protocols and severely adjusting its chase policy—two of the central reasons, he said, for the current officer indictments.

A 2021 Cleveland.com investigation found East Cleveland had been engaging in almost near-daily police chases that often led to damage or injury, that often far escaped the boundaries of the tiny suburb, and that disproportionately involved minorities being chased on minor charges.

Following a promise made in an August press conference last year, Gerhard amended several internal policies on chases, including the usage of pit maneuvers—turning a car to spin it out—and curtailing the reasons for which an officer can begin a chase. Petty reasons, he said. (The department follows chase recommendations by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a common practice.)

“The second thing I put in there is that [officers] are not to go after anybody for stupid shit,” Gerhard said. “The stupid shit is tinted windows, expired plates, running stops. Okay?”

Gerhard’s revisions have made immediate improvements. In 2022, up until his installment in October, East Cleveland police tallied 149 chases (14.9 per month), Gerhard told Scene. From October to December there were 31 (10.3 per month.)

“And only 10 pursuits this year,” Gerhard said. “I mean, at the end of the day you don’t get paid more because you catch somebody. We don’t have bonuses for somebody getting a ticket.”

Those chases, however, are still dangerous: Three were injured in February crash when East Cleveland police officers pursued a drunk driving suspect.

But that’s only one part of his job guiding the force.

In March, eight officers were indicted (or re-indicted) for a laundry list of charges—from taking bribes, to tampering with evidence, to kicking suspects in the head—that are currently being examined in Cuyahoga County court.

“Make no mistake, there has been a cancer growing in the East Cleveland Police Department,” County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said at a March press conference following the indictments. “We are doing our best to remove every tentacle of that cancer so that this department can rebuild.”

With the 11 officers now facing indictments for misbehavior going back to 2020, the outcry from the region has been vocal. Gerhard and other officers said the blowback was heard at the station.

“The first two weeks were just awful,” a dispatcher told Scene, sitting at her computer station. “Threats. Names. I got called every single thing in the book.”

The string of threats, from persons as far as Texas and South Africa, hasn’t affected him personally. He said that him and King have discussed returning background checks on new officers to the rigor of the 1990s, when Gerhard was first hired as an auxiliary officer.

There’s currently no written best practice at the moment. Gerhard said he’s looking for the middle ground of giving new recruits “second chances” while turning anyone away who he perceives as “looking for action.”

“I’m not going to give an offer to somebody that’s got a history of use of force, or who’s written bad checks,” he said. “We’re not just going to bring anybody in the door anymore.”

Patricia Blochowiak, one of East Cleveland’s most outspoken councilpersons, told Scene that she believes in Gerhard’s chase policy revision but she is skeptical of his other vows for department renewal. Gerhard’s push to leverage a $150,000 federal grant for hundreds of ShotSpotter sensors to improve potential homicide response times, she said, is just one signifier of doubt.

Though the department’s sensors pick up, Scene found, about 30 shots a week since it was implemented in March, there have been no arrests yet with the technology’s implementation. Which hasn’t swayed Gerhard’s faith in it.

But Blochowiak points to a case in early April. A man was shot in a vacant house on Paige Ave. The ShotSpotter pinged patrol officers’ phones, and they responded in less than five minutes.

“But he died!” Blochowiak said. “[ShotSpotter] didn’t catch a criminal, and it didn’t prevent a death.”

Blochowiak, who herself has had numerous problems with police misbehavior, added: “Take anything [Gerhard] says with a grain of salt. You can’t trust him.”

On April 4th, some seven months into Gerhard’s tenure, he walked Scene around the department. He displayed the “closet” that critics said was in previous years used as a makeshift holding cell. (“Does a closet have this much space?” Gerhard said. “No.”) He showed off their ShotSpotter flatscreen in the secured office space, where three detectives work 12-hour shifts, and pointed to new cameras with youthful energy.

“My poor dispatchers got hell,” he said in the dispatch room, for the third or fourth time. “Getting calls from as far away as South Africa. From Los Angeles County, talking about, ‘Oh, you’re corrupt officers! How corrupt they are!”

He paused, then added, “I’ve been a cop for 27 years now. I’ve been in situations where you run up on somebody you have to wrestle to the ground. Now, did I ever stand there and high five people? No, we don’t teach that. I was never taught that.”

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This article appears in Apr 5-19, 2023.