Police Department Marred In Controversy Of Alleged Corruption And Misconduct Could Face DOJ Scrutiny

“We have seen so much cor­rup­tion, we’ve seen law­suit after law­suit filed against the city,” said Kayla Griffin, first vice pres­i­dent of the Cleveland chap­ter of the NAACP

Griffin says the East Cleveland Police Department has kept the Cleveland NAACP chap­ter busy with numer­ous com­plaints lodged against the department.

“Men and women are being gunned down, phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed by police offi­cers, thrown in jail but not processed right so being lost in the system.

When you have high speed chas­es that go through the city of East Cleveland and come into the east side of Cleveland as well and destroy prop­er­ty and take lives, so at this point we’re like we can­not con­tin­ue to sit on our hands, we need to call in rein­force­ments,” Griffin said.

Names like Arnold Black, Tamia Chapman, Redrick Ward and Vincent Belmonte are all linked to the city’s police department’s rep­u­ta­tion for exces­sive force and brutality.

In response to the alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and police mis­con­duct, the NAACP sent a let­ter to the Department of Justice request­ing the fed­er­al agency step in to over­see the East Cleveland Police Department by obtain­ing a con­sent decree.

“What a con­sent decree does is it puts the city on charge say­ing, you have to clean this up and allows the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to have a say on what’s going on, on the local gov­ern­ment,” Griffin said.

A con­sent decree is an agree­ment entered as a court order between the Department of Justice and a munic­i­pal­i­ty that is enforce­able by the court.

“Consent decrees out­line need­ed changes to use-of-force poli­cies, offi­cer train­ing, trans­paren­cy, and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment. Police depart­ments must com­ply with the mea­sures for sev­er­al years before the juris­dic­tion is released from fed­er­al over­sight,” as described by Pew Charitable Trust.

“Over the past three decades, the Justice Department has con­duct­ed more than 70 inves­ti­ga­tions of local police depart­ments although the Trump admin­is­tra­tion did not issue any con­sent decrees,” Pew Charitable Trust reports. 

Griffin says the NAACP was influ­en­tial in the Justice Department step­ping in to over­see the Cleveland Police Department in 2015 after a Department of Justice inves­ti­ga­tion found Cleveland Police engages in a pat­tern or prac­tice of using exces­sive force vio­lat­ing the Fourth Amendment.

The city of Cleveland and the Justice Department entered into a court enforce­able agree­ment to fix prob­lems with­in the police depart­ment and imple­ment police reforms. Activists want the same thing done in East Cleveland.

“It’s clear East Cleveland won’t be able to clean itself up,” said Chris McNeal, an attor­ney and chief legal offi­cer for the Cleveland Black Lives Matter chapter.

The city of East Cleveland is on the east side of Cuyahoga County, the same coun­ty Cleveland is locat­ed. It has a pop­u­la­tion of 13,792 and is near­ly 89 per­cent Black accord­ing to the lat­est Census data.

“I call him Pac Man because that’s what every­body on the street calls him,” McNeal said of Vincent Belmonte, 19, who was killed by an East Cleveland police offi­cer on Jan. 5, 2021.

The Cleveland Black Lives Matter chap­ter was help­ful in draw­ing atten­tion to the shoot­ing of Belmonte, by Larry McDonald, an East Cleveland police sergeant.

According to an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation report, McDonald pulled Belmonte over after hear­ing the 19-year-old’s loud muf­fler. Before McDonald could ask for iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion, Belmonte fled the traf­fic stop, lead­ing to a chase.

Surveillance video shows parts of the pur­suit, towards the end of the pur­suit, Belmonte’s car became dis­abled and came to a stop, that’s when the 19-year-old ran on foot. The BCI report says Belmonte ran between a pair of hous­es to jump a fence, but became caught on the fence, that’s when McDonald claimed he saw Belmonte reach for his gun and fatal­ly shot Belmonte.

The com­mu­ni­ty react­ed to the shoot­ing with protests led by the Cleveland Black Lives Matter chapter.

“We had height­ened sens­es to real­ly get involved in this case because this is one of many times you had East Cleveland police using as a pre­text they’re going to pull some­one over because they said the car is report­ed stolen,” said Kareem Henton, co-founder of the Cleveland Black Lives Matter chapter.

Last October, a grand jury deter­mined McDonald act­ed law­ful­ly and did not bring any charges, but while Belmonte’s fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty activists believe the shoot­ing should not have been jus­ti­fied, the actions of McDonald come as no sur­prise to Henton. “Before this inci­dent, he was one that had been involved in numer­ous inci­dents,” Henton said.

McDonald is among sev­er­al East Cleveland police offi­cers named in the let­ter the Cleveland NAACP sent to the Justice Department. McDonald was also the focus of a WOIO inves­ti­ga­tion where he was alleged­ly caught on body­cam video ask­ing for mar­i­jua­na seized in a traf­fic stop.

The man in the video said to be McDonald is heard telling anoth­er offi­cer, “I’m going to take this weed home, and say look, look, baby, look what dad­dy brought you.”

“The city of East Cleveland just gave him a lit­tle slap on the wrist where he was try­ing to get drugs out of the evi­dence room,” Henton said of the alleged inci­dent involv­ing McDonald.

Within the NAACP’s let­ter, oth­er cas­es described include Arnold Black being beat­en by East Cleveland police detec­tive in 2012, that result­ed Black being award­ed $50 mil­lion dol­lars by a jury in a law­suit he brought against the city.

Other inci­dents high­light­ed include East Cleveland police offi­cers Torris Moore, Antonio Malone and Eric Jones all were sen­tenced to prison in 2016 for keep­ing thou­sands of dol­lars from alleged drug deal­ers, much of it seized through ille­gal search­es and fab­ri­cat­ed reports accord­ing to the Justice Department.

Griffin hopes with more scruti­ny under a con­sent decree, the East Cleveland Police Department can clean up its act. “Personnel reviews, bet­ter equip­ment, updat­ed train­ings and a con­tin­uüm of train­ing and you have a judge over­sees that and man­dates imple­men­ta­tion,” Griffin said of hope­ful out­comes after a Justice Department intervention.

Atlanta Black Star brought the alle­ga­tions of alleged police mis­con­duct to the East Cleveland Police Department, and East Cleveland Police Commander, Dominique King says the NAACP’s let­ter comes as a surprise.

“It is a sur­prise they would not voice their con­cerns with us to allow us to explain to them our process in deal­ing with any alleged mis­con­duct from our offi­cers,” King said.

King went on to defend the police depart­ment which has 46 full-time employ­ees, and its process for han­dling offi­cer mis­con­duct, at least under its cur­rent leadership.

She says any­time the depart­ment is made aware of any alleged mis­con­duct from one of its offi­cers, it launch­es an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and if crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing is sus­pect­ed, out­side law enforce­ment agen­cies are brought in to inves­ti­gate which can include the local sheriff’s office up to the FBI.

Atlanta Black Star asked King to com­ment on Sgt. McDonald being named in the let­ter and alleged­ly caught on tape sug­gest­ing he would take seized drugs. “They were just alle­ga­tions and they proved to not with­stand the test of inves­ti­ga­tions,” King said of McDonald’s alleged mis­con­duct after reit­er­at­ing “we do not tol­er­ate mis­con­duct by our officers.”

Atlanta Black Star also sought com­ment from the city on the num­ber of pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion cas­es it has stem­ming from the police depart­ment, and the city of East Cleveland respond­ed by say­ing, “The City of East Cleveland does not keep that infor­ma­tion to doc­u­ment the orga­ni­za­tion, func­tions, poli­cies, deci­sions, pro­ce­dures, oper­a­tions and/​or oth­er activ­i­ties of its office or offices.”

East Cleveland has a long-stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion of being in a state of a fis­cal emer­gency for its han­dling of its finances, and accord­ing to an Office of Management and Budget report released April of 2022, the city is still at finan­cial risk: “In addi­tion to the rev­enue chal­lenges fac­ing the City, there are a num­ber of legal cas­es against the City which have exhaust­ed appeals with out­stand­ing dam­ages to be paid by the City and addi­tion­al cas­es cur­rent­ly in appeal. These cas­es present the poten­tial for sig­nif­i­cant future lia­bil­i­ty that could fur­ther impact the City’s finan­cial solvency.”

“The city of East Cleveland is so poor, they’re essen­tial­ly judg­ment proof, mean­ing that if they vio­lat­ed your con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in the most clear and egre­gious man­ner, you can­not be com­pen­sat­ed because they’re essen­tial­ly insol­vent and they can­not pay their debts,” McNeal said of East Cleveland’s finan­cial risks.

Griffin says the DOJ has not respond­ed to the Cleveland NAACP regard­ing its let­ter sent to the depart­ment in February.