Wary Cleveland City Council Cautiously Vets Mayor's Picks to Rebuild Fractured Community Police Commission

Chief Ethics Officer Delante Spencer Thomas defended Mayor Bibb’s nine picks to fill the Community Police Commission at a Council committee meeting on Wednesday. Credit: Mark Oprea

Nearly everyone at City Hall agrees that 2024 wasn’t the best year for Cleveland’s Community Police Commission.

There was the infighting; the meeting disruptions; the accusations of harassment; calls for removal of former commissioner Teri Wang.

Then, of course, came December. Six CPC members’ four-year terms expired. Three of them quit outright altogether. All which left a chasm in a body that couldn’t oversee police policy with a paltry four members. Not that it had made much, if any, progress in doing so since its inception to begin with.

On Wednesday, about a month after the process was originally meant to close, City Council’s Public Safety Committee gathered in an attempt to vet Mayor Justin Bibb’s nominees to bring the CPC back to its full 13 members and finally resume its duties after months of delays.

A series of tough job interviews followed with Council’s intense scrutiny.

The questions councilmembers threw at the nine interviewees veered between the cautionary and the political: Do you support defunding the police? How would you discipline a misbehaving officer? How exactly would you improve the health of the CPC in general—as to pave way for a healthy 2025?

“I’d just be responsible,” Sharena Zayed, a mental health specialist and nurse who was up for reappointment, told Council. “I would be responsible for myself, and I would be responsible for my behavior.”

The byproduct of a city-wide election for Issue 24, the CPC kicked off in November 2021 charged with a wide range of duties meant to keep Cleveland Police from all forms of bad conduct. Duties that give the CPC, according to law, quite the say: in helping create bias screening programs; scrutinizing officer training; aiding officer invesigations; even having the final say in how bad egg officers are properly punished.

What’s been agreed upon as the best way to keep police in check is to strive for maximum diversity amongst the 13 commissioners. Mayor Bibb is tasked with nominating two members engaged in civil rights; one involved in homelessness or mental-illness issues; one personally impacted by police violence; one formerly imprisoned; one a survivor of gun violence; and a lawyer who’s represented a victim of police misconduct.

Councilmembers felt the need to be tough on Thomas and Bibb’s picks. “When the Neo-Nazis return to Cleveland,” Ward 13 Councilman Kris Harsh said, “I would like to know if the members of this board will encourage the Cleveland police to use every tool at their disposal to monitor and to assess the threat level of those protests.” Credit: Mark Oprea

While the CPC’s managed to produce a trove of reports and policy recommendations—from those on chase policy to how to approach transgender victims—the board’s efficacy has seemed to be stymied more so by inner conflict than external matters.

Last July, following six months of problems with commissioner Teri Wang, CPC co-chairs sent Bibb a letter urging for Wang’s sudden removal, Signal Cleveland reported. The accusations hinted at a highly-fractured group — accusing Wang of disrupting meetings she wasn’t invited to, of filming others, of calling another member an “opportunistic bitch.”

In late March, CPC temporarily shut down operations out of, the letter explained to Bibb, “concerns for the mental health and physical safety of the staff.”

“Powerless to remove [Wang] on our own,” the letter added, “we are pleading with you to help us return balance to our organization and to give us the ability to perform the police accountability work the city entrusted us to do.”

CPC member count dwindled to four come December, after six ended their terms and three dropped out altogether. (Putting a pause on operations.) Council had demanded City Hall allow them more time to talk to Bibb’s nine nominees, a process that culminated in Wednesday’s wary interview session at Council Chambers.

Which several councilmembers took as a chance to lob a wide range of questions, beckoned by police protests and the start of President Trump’s second term in office.

“When the Neo-Nazis return to Cleveland,” Ward 13 Councilman Kris Harsh said, “I would like to know if the members of this board will encourage the Cleveland police to use every tool at their disposal to monitor and to assess the threat level of those protests.”

Ward 16 Councilman Brian Kazy took a stab at the CPC’s discombobulated effort to restore their member count, which already, he pointed out, clocked some seven months in the making.

“It shouldn’t take you a year and four months for you to hire a law firm to find a new executive,” Kazy said, referring to the CPC’s longstanding issue selecting a chief. “Where is the confidence that you’re going to get anything done in a timely matter?”

Fielding the brunt of Council’s concern was Delante Spencer Thomas, the city’s Chief Ethics Officer and liaison between Bibb and Council in regards to the nine interviewees.

Thomas reiterated that Bibb and his department were following the line-by-line details of the city charter, despite several in the room that doubted him. The city charter didn’t require a member of a Black police association, he said. It didn’t require a member of the clergy, he said.

“Ultimately we believe that the nominees that are put forward would be able to best continue and enhance the work of the commission,” Thomas said.

Final recommendations following the nine interviewed with head to Council’s Finance Committee in February, with hires confirmed soon after.