Cleveland, Ohio After months of disagreements with city officials, the monitor in charge of the court-ordered Cleveland police reform resigned on Wednesday.
In front of U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver, Karl Racine, who assumed the role of lead monitor of the 10-year-old consent decree, submitted his resignation at a monthly meeting.
Oliver commended Racine and other members of his Hogan Lovells legal team for their more than two years of work on the consent decree.
According to a court order filed by the judge, Oliver informed Racine that the court and the parties have greatly benefited from the oversight, counsel, and comments that you and the Monitoring Team have provided during your term.
Messages asking for comment were not immediately answered by Racine.
A city official described Racine’s resignation as “unexpected.”
According to the statement, we will thus hold internal talks to decide on the next course of action in the days ahead.
For the transformation required by a 2015 agreement between Cleveland and the U.S. Department of Justice to guarantee constitutional policing in the city, the consent decree monitor plays a crucial role.
Following the Justice Department’s damning report in December 2014, which claimed that city police officers frequently used excessive force, that the department lacked proper training in a number of areas, and that police brass failed to hold officers accountable for misconduct, the city signed the agreement.
The monitor oversees a group that has frequent meetings with the city and the Justice Department, evaluates their efforts to carry out court-mandated reforms, and publishes reports outlining the police department’s accomplishments and shortcomings.
In April 2023, Oliver named Rapine, a former attorney general of Washington, D.C., as monitor. He served the shortest period of time and was the third monitor.
Racine and the city’s legal department have been at odds over a number of topics in recent months. Oliver stated during a hearing in June that the relationship grew more heated and close.
He said that the reform effort had been hampered by problems brought up by Cleveland authorities, such as a disagreement about the billings made to the city by the monitoring team and another about whether the monitors had adequately informed the city of their evaluation of the city’s advancements.
It took months to address the city’s concerns regarding the monitoring team’s access to city records that included data from the federal and state crime databases.
Oliver mandated monthly meetings to expedite the resolution of the issues because they were taking up so much time.
During that period, the consent decree’s progress seemed to stall. According to a Cleveland Community Police Commission analysis published in April, the agency has only made 3% progress since 2023 and has only finished roughly 45% of the reforms outlined in the consent agreement.
Racine’s retirement also coincides with the Justice Department’s assessment of all its current police consent agreements to determine whether any should be closed or altered, per President Donald Trump’s directive.
While looking for a permanent monitor, Oliver on Wednesday named Racine’s temporary replacement.
He selected Christine Cole, a former executive director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the nonpartisan research organization Crime and Justice Institute. Since its launch in 2015, she has been a member of the consent decree monitoring team.
Oliver said in his ruling, “The court is confident that momentum towards full compliance will not be lost during this transition, given Ms. Cole’s tenure with the Cleveland Consent Decree and her extensive work overseeing compliance assessments.”
Melody Stewart, a former justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, was also added to the monitoring committee. Serving a single term from 2018 to 2024, Stewart was the first Black woman elected to the supreme court. In the 2024 election, Republican Justice Joseph Deters defeated her.
According to Oliver, the court believes that Justice Stewart’s judicial background and previous work as an assistant law director for the cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland will immediately and significantly position her to support the Cleveland Monitoring Team’s efforts to work with the City to move toward full compliance with the Decree.
