As the executive director of Cleveland’s Police Accountability Team, Leigh Anderson leads the city’s final implementation of its consent decree and ensures progress toward cultural change within the police department. Her team establishes strong relationships with the many collaborators among the U.S. Department of Justice, which entered into the consent decree with the city in 2015 when it determined the police engaged in excessive use of force; the police department; city entities including public health and community relations; and community organizations. Complicating the matter are issues of turnover, continuity and morale as the effort extends multiple years. She explains how she leads her team to commit to and accomplish the goals through time management, task prioritization, accountability and making sure she and her team invest in themselves emotionally, mentally and physically. 

Trevor Brown 0:03

Welcome to the podcast Leadership Forum conversation with leaders who serve the public good. My name is Trevor Brown, and I'm privileged to serve as the dean of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University where we aspire to fulfill a simple phrase that Senator John Glenn used to describe what we do, inspire citizenship and develop leadership. I also have the honor of serving as the host of this conversation series. So welcome to a thoughtful and reflective conversation about leadership and public service. I'm joined today by Leigh Anderson, the executive director of Cleveland's police accountability team. After launching her current criminal justice career in Washington, DC, she's gone local, having served in a variety of police accountability roles in Chicago, Illinois, Ferguson, Missouri and Oakland, California, all major cities whose police departments are involved in consent decrees with the US Department of Justice. Her work on police accountability is informed by her extensive educational experience having received a bachelor's degree of administration of justice from Howard University, a Master's of Public Administration with a focus on inspection and oversight from the John Jay College in New York, and a PhD in Public Policy and Management from the Glenn College. At the same time that she has served as a practitioner, she has also served as a faculty member at Chicago State University, Southern Illinois University and now Cleveland State University. Leigh, thank you for joining me today to talk about police accountability and managing and leading in a complicated stakeholder environment.

Leigh Anderson 1:37

Thank you so much for having us a pleasure to be here.

Trevor Brown 1:41

So let's let's start with some scene setting. I want to give our audience some background on the kind of work that you do. Tell us what is a consent decree? And why is the city of Cleveland's Police Department under one with the US Department of Justice? Was there a specific event that sparked a decree or a series of events and sort of past practices?

Leigh Anderson 2:03

Trevor Brown 4:37

So paint, paint the broader landscape. And thank you for starting where you did in terms of the difference between the two most recent presidential administrations prior to the Biden administration. So you said there were 10 under Obama and zero under Trump.

Leigh Anderson 4:52

Well, there were over 10 I'm sorry.

Trevor Brown 4:54

Oh over 10. Okay, well, that was gonna be my question is how, how common are these and is Is Cleveland situation unique? Or if this is more of a sort of national phenomenon about a police accountability? What's what's driving the use of consent decrees?

Leigh Anderson 5:15

Trevor Brown 8:42

So we're gonna break a lot of that apart here in the next 20 minutes or so. But let's start by talk to us about your specific team and your specific charge. So you run the police accountability team for the city of Cleveland, what is it? What authorities does it have, you know, what, what ability to influence policing you have in this role?

Leigh Anderson 9:06

Pause for pause for one second. So you said there are 400 paragraphs?

Yes.

And then now there are 1000 tasks. So within each of those paragraphs could be multiple tasks.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Absolutely. And for example, one of the and we talked about I think, you know, I talked about this a little bit before, in terms of measuring compliance. Right. So one of the tests is that officers must know their geographic area. Right? And so it's like, how do you measure that? Right? Is it the amount of time that they take to get to a scene? Or a call? Is it do you do ride alongs with them, and you quiz them, right? What streets are here? How fast you get here? So what we're doing is we're breaking the consent decree down, we're assigning those tasks, and then we're moving forward to see what constitutes compliance. In each of those tasks. How can we demonstrate yes, we've hit this mark, right. And so it's also about not just checking those boxes, but making systemic change. And both have to happen at the same time, right? Because you can't make the systemic change without going through the separate task. Well, you're not supposed to go through the separate tasks without making sure that systemic organizational organizational change happens. And I say not supposed to, because a lot of people will come in and say, well, consent decrees, I said, you just want to check the boxes. Right? The idea here is that we have to check the boxes, right in order to demonstrate compliance. But we're also involved in making sure that this leads to a cultural change within the department, which can be seen and reflected in the community. So the police accountability team is very involved with the we report directly to the mayor. But we work very closely with the chief ethics officer as well as the Director of Law. And in these positions, we also collaborate very, very heavily with the police chief, the head, the administrator for the Office of Professional Standards, the new Community Police Commission, the community police Review Board, right. And so these are independent entities, the Community Police Commission, and the community police Review Board are all independent entities, but they are still named underneath the federal consent decree. So even though our so it's very, it's a very interesting, dynamic, because even though the police accountability team or the pat, I'll just call it the pat works underneath the mayor's office, right, you also have independent entities that you have to help them achieve compliance as well, and make sure that they're on on task. And so but they're not underneath the purview of the city. So it gets very tricky to try to figure this out. But the police accountability team has made great strides in really establishing strong relationships with these parties, a strongly shows with their administrators, with their directors and their members to really express we're here to help. But first and foremost, we're here to make sure that the parts of the consent decree that are important to you, are fulfilled.

Just to summarize, because this is crazy complicated.

Yes.

But the court drives the consent decree.

Right.

They're the ones who you have to demonstrate compliance to but you are hired by the mayor.

Yes.

You report to the mayor.

Yes.

And your job is to both influence the the another entity that reports to him sort of the police department, but then all these other entities that don't directly report to him, and yet they fall under the consent decree and the court is looking for you to make systemic change there as well.

That's it.

Oh, wow. Okay. So within that complicated stakeholder environment, what what is your we'll get into, like, how do you manage stakeholders, but what's your sort of general approach to sort of leading and managing in this, this space?

Um, I use the consent decree everything within the four corners of the consent decree. Right. So I say if it's not in the consent decree, the Pat doesn't touch it. Right. And so but what this leads to is issues where we find ourselves involved in And possibly conversations with human resources, possibly conversations with public health conversations, you know, with community development, community relations, and all the other entities that sit with the cabinet, or sit in the cabinet for the mayor, right? Because people think that Oh, my goodness, the the city of Cleveland Police Department or their division of police was sued by an AR under a consent decree. And that's incorrect, right? The city of Cleveland is underneath consent decree. That's the United States versus the city of Cleveland. And so we're all in this together. And what we see is that in the 400, paragraphs, there are portions of the consent decree which implicate different areas. So for example, dispatchers discipline, it has to do with right discipline also goes through human resources. So we have to make sure that that those ties are connected. We have individuals that, you know, that may not contribute to what they're supposed to be doing in their day to day duties. Right. And that might affect the consent decree directly. So we've seen incidences where, you know, people were supposed to produce certain reports, they did not produce those reports. And we got a downgrade as a result of that. And so now, the public is looking for the police accountability team to really intervene in that space and say, Okay, well, we understand there are issues here, but we also have this federal mandate that we have to abide by. So human resources, you have to deal with this issue.

So you're, you're you've sort of answered my question, but I wanted to ask it anyway, which is, so you got all these different entities that fall under the blanket of the consent decree? And you said, we're all in this together. But I'm guessing everybody's got different goals and different definitions of success within that. Is that a fair statement?

Very fair.

And how do you how do you get them aligned? Other than just saying, Hey, we're all in this together? What are your strategies for trying to get people to row in the same direction under this federal mandate?

Yeah, again, right, the consent decree, I'm constantly printing out paragraphs going to meetings, right? saying, Look, we're mandated to do XY and Z. This directly implicates or directly is connected to your section, you know, your division, your department. And this is how we need to move through this right. And so when I first came into this job, it's like, oh, yeah, compliance with consent decree. I've worked on monitoring teams before inspector general with inspector general's that have worked with cities that have been underneath consent decree. So you know, part of this is, oh, my goodness, you just move into the space. And you look and see what tasks need to be done. And you execute those tasks? Well, no, there's a underbrush here. Right. And so each task is connected to a person, a situation, a policy, a training module, or multiple training modules that needs to happen, and also implementation. So the three areas that are important in the consent decree, which I think are important to mention is that for each area in the consent decree, you have to and there are more areas than the eight. So you have eight overall themes. But within those, you have separate portions. And one of the things that we have to recognize is that as we move in, each area needs a policy, then you have to train on the policy. And then there's an assessment or audit process, right. And so once those three areas are done, then we can go to the court and say, Hey, can we move into substantial compliance, which means you move that area into a two year sustainability period. And once you keep your numbers pretty much static, or they go up, right, better and decreasing or you'll be removed out of the substantial sustainability period. You can be released from the consent decree. So one of the areas that we have that is closest to the area is a crisis intervention. The Division is knocking it out of the park with crisis intervention, right. The officers have been trained, they're showing up we just had an award ceremony for officers that were involved in crisis intervention. And so but that is completely tied to public health. It is completely tied to areas of community organizations that are completely interested and very much involved in the process of making sure that police officers actually here we go don't respond to crisis instances. Right. And so we have to work with the community to see that, oh, my goodness, this is not in the consent decree, right, the care response and CO responder models that are coming up in the community, but we have to move forward with with that place. So I kind of went off topic.

Because you've taken me into just thinking about sort of general approaches to getting people to follow when you don't have you yourself, don't you're not their boss, you have. And I'm going to oversimplify, but But it sounds as if I'm hearing on the one hand, you have the power of the law, to try and compel behavior, like, hey, here are the here are the areas where we need to come into compliance. If we don't come into compliance, bad things happen. But you've also mentioned that this is an effort around systemic change. And there's a lot of focus on implementation. And I could imagine that you can also appeal to people on the sense of, Well, don't you want this process to work better. And what the consent decree has done is shone a light on that, here's some stuff we could be doing better. So sure, we could comply. But more importantly, we need to fix this process to make it deliver better value for our constituents. And I'm curious, like, how do you balance? Like, when do you decide on pulling out the, hey there is this court that's going to come in and do and do stuff to us that we don't want, you know, they're going to take over stuff? versus, you know, let's this is just good practice. And we need to we need to do this to be better how, and maybe you do both simultaneously? I'm just curious how that how that works in your mind.

Yes. So definitely both simultaneously. I think that one of the things though, when I first enter into a space, where someone is not even familiar with the consent decree, I have to bring, bring the paragraphs, right? And say, actually, you're in this as well. So welcome, right. And so that is, is where we start with these are the parameters, right? Because like I said, the police accountability team works within the four corners of the consent decree. And that's it. Right? We we if there are issues that lead up to making change in the consent decree to make sure that we're in compliance, we will slightly be involved in that process just to move it along. Right. And so but part of this has to do with you're exactly right, how do we encourage people to say this is worth it? Because, you know, one of the things that is very, very real, is that consent decrees take a long time, and people get tired. Yeah, you know, and, and you are constantly under scrutiny from not just the federal monitor, but also the Department of Justice that is there watching and monitoring as well. And then you have a federal judge that decides whether or not you're in compliance or not. And so it gets, it gets heavy. It gets real heavy for us. And having to explain that, right, that you have this federal mandate, but we also want to change culturally. Right. And then on top of that, you also having to motivate people to say stay in this with me.

Yeah. So that's, that's another thing you mentioned earlier, I'm curious if we're painting a very complex landscape here, you have a hard job. So, you know, you mentioned in other cities, this has gone on for almost a decade, eight years in one place, 11 and another 13, in another. So you said just a moment ago, people get tired. I also imagine it's different people, right? Like, you might have turnover in some of these areas. And does the judge turnover at some point to like, do you ever have that instance, where you're dealing with a different judge over the course of a consent decree?

So that can happen? Um, what also can happen is, so we have one judge now that that has been there. And then we have, but the city of proven has had over three, maybe four lead monitors. And we just seeded a new monitoring team or selected a new monitoring team about four or five months ago, and so maybe a little bit longer, but the the point that I'm trying to make is that change happens at the Department of Justice. It happens with the monitoring team, and it happens with the city, the entity that is underneath the consent decree. Right. And so when you look at longevity of ideas, we look at continuity. It's tough. Yeah, it's really tough.

So let's, let's, let's make it even tougher. So you, you've laid out all these numbers. There's the four corners of the consent decree there the eight themes, there's the 400 paragraphs, there's 1000 tasks. How do you prioritize? How do you decide what if given that this is a long time, you know, five to 10? or more years? How do you decide what to tackle? When is that literally prescribed in the consent decree? Or do you have to go through the exercise of working with all these stakeholders to decide? We're going to handle this one now? And then we're gonna move to this one later?

Part of this has to do with really moving forward with time management, with what's important to the community with what's important to stakeholders, we have to really look at the fact that we have search and seizure crisis intervention, and use of force, which are the three areas that are closest to general compliance. And in this phase, we have these three areas that we feel are the most prominent because they are how we got into the situation in the first place. Right? So there's a prioritization there. But then there's a prioritization for bias, free policing, right, that training to make sure that procedural justice is happening on the streets to make sure that everyone is being treated fairly, right. We also look at accountability, make sure Internal Affairs is operating the way that it should, the Office of Professional Standards, which takes office officer complaints is operating the way that it should. So one of the things that my team is doing is we're splitting up the eight areas. And we are moving forward with executing community and problem oriented policing, right, which is the area that we got hit very hard on and the 13th semi annual report. But one of the things that the team has done, right, and so this is where it gets even trickier. So I hope everybody's ready. The department justice sued the city of Cleveland, we are also receiving technical assistance from the Department of Justice, to help us achieve compliance with the consent decree in the area of community and problem oriented policing and recruitment and hiring. And we are doing that through the what's called the CRItech. A and the CRItech is the collaborative reform initiative, Technical Assistance Center, through the Department of Justice, through the COPS office, the Community Oriented Policing Services Office. And so one area of department justice has sued the city and is looking for monitoring compliance, whereas the other portion of the Department of Justice is helping us reach that compliance and providing technical assistance. So this gets even trickier because we had even more stakeholders that have now joined the process.

So this is, this is a crazy complicated environment. And as we pull this conversation to a close, you mentioned spinning plates before and, you know, we're all in a world, obviously, where some, some failure must be tolerated, and you're gonna drop some plates, but even when those plates are spinning, that's gonna make you dizzy. Right? So so how, how do you as a leader, in this space, maintain your own energy and enthusiasm and your your focus and your commitment to the goal? That's just a lot of complexity, and a super dynamic environment? I imagine you would get tired too. How do you keep yourself going?

That's a great question. Um, self care. So I put myself first and I tell my team to put themselves first. You know, when when things happen, that that involve police misconduct, and people protest, and they go out in the street, and you know, they really express their anger, right, um, but then that dies down and people go home, right. But in this job, we technically don't go home, we're still moving forward to make sure that police misconduct is eradicated, right? And that we're not seeing violations of civil rights, that we're seeing where the community and the police are aligned and understanding that they want the same thing, right, both don't want crime, right, they both want to really be in a space to get along. I truly believe that I've heard that from officers in the city of Cleveland. I've heard that from community members. And then there's some community members that don't believe it, right. There are some officers that that have low morale, because of this, they feel scrutinized, right? And so there are a plethora of feelings about this process. And so my goal is to not really digest that mentally, emotionally, right, but to take it in professionally, and then just have separations there, right? And also, I'm big on work life balance, right. So this is a field where you're constantly thinking about the solutions and never stops. When you're out in the community. When you're driving with your family. And you see a police officer, when you are in the grocery store, and you see a friend, right? This is hey, I got a ticket the other day. And the first thing you think was, you know, did procedural justice happen? Did you know and so it never leaves your mind. And so with that, I tell my team, take it easy, right? Um, invest in your family, invest in yourself emotionally, mentally and physically. Because professionally, we have a lot on our shoulders. And it's important for us to show up ready for the community and the police officers and all these different internal and external stakeholders to really get the job done within the four corners of the consent decree and really balancing not just the spinning plates but also these these varying relationships.

Yep, well, we there's there's no question as I said earlier, but you have a very hard job and and one that requires a tremendous amount of attention and scrutiny. But I am I marvel at your ability to stay stay focused and, and goal goal directed. So thank you, on behalf of citizens of large urban areas, like like Cleveland, and here in Columbus for the good work you're doing to ensure that policing is operating at the highest level and ensuring procedural justice. So thank you for that. And thank you for this conversation.

Thank you. It was my pleasure.