Over the last eight years, hospital police departments in Cleveland have set up review boards to hear complaints about how officers treated people — a move that initially came at the request of the city and council members. But the process can be opaque, with reviews that happen largely behind closed doors without community input.
The effort to set up review boards for hospital police began in 2018 after the City of Cleveland made it a requirement to bring the departments in line with the federal consent decree.
The issue snowballed two years later, when a report from ProPublica found that Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and a nearby entity that patrols University Circle disproportionately charged or cited Black people…