Cleveland has failed to fully investigate dozens of internal complaints against police officers, including allegations of sexual harassment, workplace violence and discrimination, according to records released by the Cleveland Community Police Commission (CPC) on Tuesday.
The CPC identified “alarming gaps in accountability related to serious internal complaints” dating back to at least 2019, the commission said in a statement on Tuesday. In its own statement Wednesday morning, Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration called the CPC’s allegations “fundamentally misinformed” and “inappropriate” but did not deny that some complaints have gone unaddressed for years.
The city’s consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice requires that “all allegations of officer misconduct — whether internally discovered or reported by civilians — must be fully, fairly, and efficiently investigated,” said CPC, which is the final authority on police policy, disciplinary decisions and training. “However, recent findings indicate these standards are not being met.”
The statement was accompanied by images of a spreadsheet that CPC said were sent in response to its records requests to the Cleveland Division of Police and the city’s Human Resources Department. The spreadsheet lists basic facts about the status of 44 complaints lodged between December 2019 and February 2025. Thirty-one of them, including all from 2019 through 2021, are labeled “under review.”
The spreadsheet indicates that none of the “under review” cases had been assigned to investigators in HR or in the police department. In six of those cases, interviews had been conducted. Two complaints were withdrawn.
Twenty of the complaints alleged some form of harassment, including sexual and racial. Seven were for workplace violence that was not specified — and in one such case the complaint was “amended to add second incident.” Nine complaints mentioned race or discrimination.
The list includes just one complaint from 2022 and none from 2023. Twelve complaints are listed with no dates.
“We don’t know” why some complaints are undated, said John Adams, co-chair of the CPC. “They could be new cases, or they could be maybe some of the ones that are missing from 2022 and 2023. We don’t know. … We’re going to probably have to make some additional requests to make sure that we have everything.”
City says it has ‘identified procedures that can be better refined’ for internal complaints
The Bibb administration’s response said that the Police Accountability Team, established by Bibb in 2022, “identified the issue last month” and “immediately refer[ed] it for independent investigation to the Inspector General’s Office. … We have identified procedures that can be better refined to ensure a more efficient process moving forward.”
The city’s statement also criticized the CPC for sharing the document with names of the targets of complaints and the people who filed them.
“The individuals who filed these complaints felt like they were wronged and were brave enough to speak up,” the statement said. “The weaponization of this information is not only wholly inappropriate, but may have a chilling effect on our workplace environment as it was a clear breach of trust.”
The city’s statement did not explain when or why the Police Accountability Team started looking into the issue.
CPC said that in March 2024, the commissioners “identified potential missing records related to bias, harassment, and other serious complaints while reviewing personnel files for police commander candidates,” according to the statement. CPC interviews and recommends candidates for command positions.
Later, Adams said, the commissioners learned from a resident that 2022 allegations against Timothy Maffo-Judd, who had just been appointed interim commander of the Second District, had been sent to the city’s Human Resources Department but never investigated. Maffo-Judd acknowledged and apologized for using homophobic slurs in text messages.
“So then the question was, well, when are you going to deal with the case?” Adams told Signal Cleveland. “And also, are there other cases there?”
In December, CPC asked for the status of all complaints filed in the previous five years. The harassment complaint filed against Maffo-Judd (and three other officers) in June 2022 is listed as “investigation in progress.”
Four and possibly five of the “under review” complaints are against one sergeant (one of the mentions uses a slightly different spelling). Another sergeant may be the subject of as many as six complaints; the spreadsheet includes rank, first name and last name on some lines, but just rank and last name on others.
One of CPC’s goals, said Adams, is to avoid more lawsuits over unresolved complaints, like the retaliation allegations that cost the city $2.5 million in 2023. Another is to ensure that all open and future cases are investigated promptly and thoroughly.
“I think the biggest question is, who’s actually responsible for investigating these cases?” Adams said. CPC has been told that at least some cases are transferred to the city’s Human Resources Department. “But it seems like there should be more to it, to make sure that there’s a little bit more accountability.”
In September, the Police Monitoring Team, which is part of the consent decree, urged Cleveland police to adopt new promotion practices after an officer was promoted to sergeant despite having 16 administrative violations on his record in 2017.
