A special prosecutor tapped by the City of Cleveland in 2022 declined to charge Council Member Joe Jones with a crime after a woman told police that he grabbed her arm and pushed her while she was handing out political flyers.
The prosecutor wrote there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Jones over the September 2021 incident. She rejected two potential charges, assault and menacing. City Hall released a copy of the special prosecutor’s letter to Signal Cleveland on Monday.
Though nothing came of the case at the time, the complaint is one of several about Jones’ conduct toward women that have come to light over the last few days. City Council hired the law firm McDonald Hopkins to investigate complaints made by staffers and an outside agency.
Jones has stepped down from all of his committee assignments since news of that investigation became public. Council President Blaine Griffin has said that council has no power to discipline Jones, an elected official, but that council is planning changes in workplace policy recommended by the law firm.
City Council staff complained that Jones yelled at employees, and a Destination Cleveland executive wrote that he made unwelcome comments to an artist about her physical appearance, according to records released by City Council last week.
Council has denied public records requests for a copy of the McDonald Hopkins investigation, citing attorney-client privilege.
Jones did not return a message Monday evening seeking comment about the police report. He has not replied to other attempts to reach him over the last week. When asked after a City Council meeting Monday night if he wanted to comment on the complaints that have come out, he replied, “No.”
A police report during the 2021 City Council campaigns
The woman and a friend who was with her described their recollections of the 2021 complaint in separate interviews with Signal Cleveland on Monday. The woman asked that Signal Cleveland not name her out of concern for her family.
The woman told Cleveland police that she was distributing political literature in the Lee-Harvard neighborhood when Jones and another man approached her, according to a police report dated Sept. 9, 2021. The flyers urged Ward 1 residents not to reelect Jones.
The man who was with Jones pushed her and Jones joined in, she told Signal Cleveland. (The man with Jones is not named in the police report.) She was so scared that she urinated on herself, she told police and recalled in the interview Monday.
“Jones grabbed her left forearm while the other male grabbed the pamphlets out of her arm,” the police report said, summarizing the woman’s statement to police.
Jones pushed her toward the passenger side of the car she had been riding in, she told police. She lost her balance and fell against the car, she told Signal Cleveland. The friend in the driver’s seat, Andre White, said he heard the “thump” of her hitting the car, according to the report.
The woman told police that Jones said to her, “I’ll find you, you can check my track record,” the report said.
While she wasn’t physically injured, the woman told Signal Cleveland that she was “really scared” by the encounter.
“They were really loud, like they were so close in my face,” the woman told Signal Cleveland. “They were really in my personal space.”
She got into the car and called police, the report said. She and White drove a few houses down, she said in the interview Monday. Jones later pulled his car up and stopped in front of them, she said.
The woman shared a video with Signal Cleveland showing a man who appeared to be Jones walking from a red pickup truck to a house with a flyer in the door. The man, who wore a yellow “Reelect Joe Jones” t-shirt, then turned and walked back to his car, holding his phone up as if recording.
The woman and White eventually drove to the Fourth District police headquarters to file a report. A police officer interviewed both of them, noting in the report that Jones was a member of City Council.
City officials couldn’t immediately confirm Monday whether police followed up to interview Jones about the report.
Several months later, in February 2022, Cleveland finalized an agreement with Beachwood prosecutor Nathalie Supler to act as special prosecutor in the case. Supler wrote in a letter to Cleveland’s law director that she reviewed the field report, 911 calls, police body camera footage and witness statements. She also met with the detective on the case, she wrote.
Although the woman’s friend heard a “thump,” he “concedes he did not see anything” from the driver’s seat of the car, Supler wrote. The “I’ll find you” comment was “a veiled threat with no direct evidence the Alleged Perpetrator threatened physical harm,” and the friend did not corroborate it, she wrote.
“Due to the lack of corroborating evidence, lack of injury and the high burden of a criminal prosecution, I do not believe there is sufficient evidence to proceed with a prosecution for Assault in the matter,” Supler wrote in the letter, which is dated May 6, 2022.
But White — who acknowledged that he was “not a good fan” of Jones — told Signal Cleveland that he did see something. When he heard the “thump,” he turned around and saw Jones trying to take the flyers from the woman, he said.
“I heard the thump and her hollering, and then I saw him grabbing the literature and pushing her,” White said of Jones.
White said that he talked with a City of Cleveland prosecutor during the investigation, but he did not speak with the Beachwood prosecutor. The woman said she spoke with Supler on the phone.
Signal Cleveland has left a message seeking comment with Supler.
Staff lodge complaints about Jones
Since 2022 several council staff members have complained about Jones. Council released the complaints to Signal Cleveland on Friday.
In February 2024, a staffer wrote that Jones touched the top of her breast while patting her on the shoulder with two hands. The moment occurred while Jones was sitting next to the staffer to see a document on her tablet. When he patted her shoulder, he put his right hand on the back of her left shoulder and his left hand on the front, the staffer wrote.
“There’s no reason for his hand to have been close enough to me for that to have happened, even if it was an accident,” she wrote.
The following month, a staffer wrote an email to the council clerk to complain about the way Jones treated another employee. The staffer wrote that Jones “raises his voice” with the employee and “creates a very uncomfortable work environment.”
In June 2022, during a conversation about Community Police Commission applications, Jones told a staffer, “I’d like to remind you that you’re an at-will employee,” according to an account written by a manager of council staff.
The manager sent the account to the council president and council clerk, writing, “I am not at all comfortable with the councilman threatening a member of the policy team.”
Staffer said Jones was ‘aggressive and demanding’ over spending request
In November 2022, Jones yelled at a staffer while trying to request casino revenue money for a neighborhood project, four written complaints said.
Jones had waited until the deadline to allocate money for the project and became “aggressive and demanding” while asking a staffer to help him fill out paperwork, the staffer wrote in a complaint. He called the process “shady,” and he and the staffer moved into a meeting room to continue the conversation, the complaint said.
“He then continued to scream at me and say I was ‘interrupting him’ but only because he kept insinuating deceit but would not clarify who or what he was referring to,” the staffer wrote.
Jones “continued to bang his hand on the table yelling about how ‘the process is shady,’” the complaint said.
The manager wrote in her own account of the meeting that she “could hear yelling” and joined Jones and the employee in the room. The employee “was clearly shaken by the interaction,” the manager wrote.
“I knew I had to tell him that it was not ok to speak with the staff the way he was speaking,” the manager wrote of Jones.
A third employee also wrote a complaint about the meeting. The employee wrote that Jones “became quickly angry and extremely rude” while talking with the staffer in an office cubicle that staff shared.
The first staffer remained calm while explaining the process of requesting money, the complaint said. He became upset when he was told that he could not use casino funds for the project.
“Joe Jones got VERY VERY angry, he slammed the desk and started to be extremely rude to [redacted] saying things like ‘You have been here long enough, you should know how to do your job’ ‘Give me my money’ continually harassing her and not allowing her to talk,” the third staffer wrote.
The staffer and Jones relocated to another room. The third staffer could hear “screaming and cursing by Joe Jones” along with “table slams” coming from the other room.
“He should simply not be able to talk to anyone in this way ESPECIALLY a female,” the third stiffer wrote. “He acted and behaved like a sexist bully and I can only hope I never have to have any interactions with him.”
Signal Cleveland Community Reporter Najee Hall contributed to this story.
