The Cleveland Police Monitoring Team is charged with overseeing implementation of the Consent Decree and helping the Court and City of Cleveland gauge whether the Decree's requirements are taking hold in practice – in the real world and across Cleveland's communities.

The Cleveland Police Monitoring Team oversees, on behalf of Judge Solomon Oliver, Jr., the day-to-day efforts of the City and Cleveland Division of Police (the "Division" or "CPD") toward complying with the reforms required by the Consent Decree.

The Monitor and his Team play many different roles. One role is that of arbiter. The Consent Decree indicates that the Monitor "will assess and report whether the requirements of this Agreement have been implemented, and whether this implementation is resulting in constitutional and effective policing, professional treatment of individuals, and increased community trust of CDP."  (¶ 350). This means that the Monitor reviews, provides feedback on, and ultimately recommends approval or disapproval to the Court of changes in policy, training, procedure, and other practices within the Division of Police.  

A second role is that of technical advisor. The Cleveland Police Monitoring Team's goal is for the Division of Police to benefit from the decades of law enforcement, monitoring, and organizational change experience of the Team's members. As the Division crafts new policies or revamps particular practices, the Monitoring Team will, wherever possible, provide information about best practices, discuss what has worked and not worked well in other cities to address similar issues, and make expectations clear from the beginning. The Team's goal is for efficient and effective progress – with the ultimate goals never a surprise.

Another role of the Monitoring Team is that of facilitator. The Consent Decree involves a host of interrelated reforms. To ensure that all stakeholders, from within the Division and across the Cleveland community, are heard and can participate in the Consent Decree process, the Monitoring Team works with the City, Division, Department of Justice, and Court to provide a framework and process for implementing the Decree. Likewise, the Monitoring Team will organize and lead meetings, summits, discussions, and educational forums throughout Cleveland aimed toward involving the Cleveland community in all aspects of the reform process.

The Monitor and Monitoring Team are not a substitute for the Chief of Police, Director of Public Safety, Mayor, or City Council. At the same time, the Monitoring Team is not an arm of the Department of Justice. Instead, we serve as truly independent monitors and an agent of the federal court overseeing the Consent Decree.

Likewise, the Team does not have the authority, jurisdiction, or ability to take specific actions on particular cases or incidents. The Team cannot bring criminal charges against either citizens or police officers.  It is not a substitute for local prosecutors. Likewise, the Team cannot intervene in employment or disciplinary issues within the Division. It is not a substitute for the formal disciplinary process and cannot override the decisions of the Division, City, or arbitrators.

However, the Team is charged with assessing whether the Division is effectively implementing the overall, systemic changes to how it functions that the Consent Decree requires. This will include changes to how the Division's internal investigations of officer behavior and performance function, including the disciplinary system.

In short, the Monitor is charged with overseeing overall, long-term reforms required by the Consent Decree so that, in the future, policing in Cleveland is effective, safe, constitutional, and consistent with the values of Cleveland's diverse communities.

The Cleveland Police Monitoring Team is a diverse and seasoned team of former and current law enforcement professionals, social scientists, lawyers, organizational change experts, psychologists, and data and technology experts.

Monitoring Team

Karl Racine
Monitor

Karl Racine is a Partner at Hogan Lovells. From 2015 to 2023, Racine served as the first elected and independent Attorney General for the District of Columbia, managing an agency of over 700 attorneys and professionals. As Attorney General, Racine worked to build an independent office focused on serving the public interest. He prioritized data-driven juvenile justice reform, introduced measures to advance democracy, and took legal action to protect affordable housing.

As the chief legal officer for the District of Columbia, Racine advised the Mayor and District agencies, defended the city in court, and used the law to serve the most vulnerable. Racine represented three city agencies who were the subject of receivership and decades-long consent decrees enforced in federal court. He helped to end mandatory shackling of juveniles appearing before DC Superior Court and led the way to increase options for the rehabilitation of low-risk juvenile offenders. Racine defended the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) on issues related to use of force, de-escalation, training, and search and seizure practices, and served for eight years on the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) in the District

Stephanie Yonekura
Deputy Monitor

Stephanie Yonekura is the Global Head of the Investigations, White Collar, and Fraud practice at Hogan Lovells and former Acting U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles—the largest office outside of Washington, DC representing more than 19 million people. Throughout her 14 years serving as a federal prosecutor, Yonekura was an active participant in the larger U.S. DOJ community and served on nationwide criminal justice committees. As the chief law enforcement officer in Los Angeles, Stephanie oversaw a multi-year investigation into civil rights violations, corruption, and obstruction of a federal civil rights investigation by deputies in L.A. County jails, leading to the indictment of twenty former and current officers, including the Sheriff and Undersheriff from the L.A. Sheriff’s Department. Yonekura also served as a member of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners’ Advisory Committee that reviewed LAPD discipline and accountability; assessed current policing reform proposals; evaluated the implementation of past LAPD reform proposals; examined the LAPD’s recruitment, hiring, retention, and training process; and analyzed data collection and retention practices.

Dr. Modupe Akinola

Dr. Akinola is an Assistant Professor at the Columbia Business School in New York. She is an expert in organizational behavior, management, social psychology, and social science research methods. Her academic research has focused on the features of organizations and workplace environments that influence performance, including the effects of stress on police officer decision-making. Before her academic career, Dr. Akinola advised large professional organizations on organizational change and management at Bain & Company and Merrill Lynch. At Bain, she led the firm's diversity recruiting and professional development initiatives. She has conducted organizational training and coaching for HSBC, the Bridgespan Group, the Executive Leadership Council, Harvard's Divinity School, KIPP Schools, and CoreNet Global.

Assistant Chief Shunta Boston

Assistant Chief Boston is a proud Wisconsin native who has been in policing for over 26 years.  She retired as an Inspector of Police from the Milwaukee (WI) Police Department in 2021 and was sworn in as Assistant Chief in Sun Prairie, WI a few weeks later.  Assistant Chief Boston has had significant command roles in nearly every aspect of policing, including patrol, criminal investigations, administration, and risk management.  She has worked progressively in leadership roles to promote professional development.  She has excelled in providing visionary leadership to high performing teams while motivating and empowering them to meet and exceed project goals.

 While an Inspector and assigned as the executive officer of the Administration Bureau, she was the Project Manager for Milwaukee’s Settlement Agreement.  She oversaw compliance in inspections, patrol, special investigations, police academy, information technology, human resources, technical communications and internal affairs. She was responsible for developing a project management system to track progress and next steps for over 100 requirements while skillfully moving compliance work forward.   In addition, she served as a member of the Critical Incident Review Board, the lead member of the executive steering committee for the 911/CAD Public Safety Enhancement Program and was appointed and served as the lead member for the Use of Force Committee.

 Assistant Chief Boston fully understands the needs and the spirit of a community.  She empathizes with the legitimate concerns of the community and exercises due diligence in achieving organizational goals associated with those concerns.  She continuously leverages her personal and professional affiliations to create opportunities for robust exchange of dialogue between historically silenced groups.

 Assistant Chief Boston holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Management in Criminal Justice from Concordia University: Summa Cum Laude.  She graduated from the International Association of Chiefs of Police Leadership in Policing Organizations, the 64th Session of Police Executive Research Forum-Senior Management Institute for Police (SMIP).  She is committed to continuously improving the police profession through training, collaborative partnerships, and maintaining legitimacy within communities she serves.  

Courtney Caruso

Courtney Caruso is is a Senior Associate at Hogan Lovells and skilled litigator whose practice is focused on white collar criminal defense, government enforcement actions, and internal investigations. She works with clients through all phases of litigation, and serves as an investigator in both internal and independent investigations. Caruso also has an active pro bono practice, most often representing her clients in criminal proceedings or in their efforts to obtain post-conviction remedies. She currently serves as the Deputy Monitor in the United States v. City of Ferguson Consent Decree. She excels in the administration of complex project plans involving subject matter experts, government agencies, and community groups, and specializes in conducting and managing interviews and investigations surrounding sensitive issues that intersect with class, race, immigration status, sex, and gender identity. She has also served in matters involving alleged violations of Title IX, discrimination, and sexual misconduct policies.

Christine Cole

Ms. Cole was most recently Vice President & Executive Director of the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI), a nonpartisan criminal justice policy analysis organization. She was previously the Executive Director of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, where she led high-profile assessments of the LAPD's progress under its federal consent decree and lessons learned in the law enforcement response to the Boston Marathon bombing. She has worked in multiple law enforcement agencies – as Director of Business & Technology for the Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department and Chief of Staff in the Executive Office of Public Policy for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Ms. Cole began her career as a Victim Witness Advocate in Middlesex District Attorney's Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dr. Ronnie Dunn

Dr. Dunn is a professor of Urban Studies in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, where he has been on faculty since 2004.  He is an urban sociologist and criminal justice scholar, who has taught courses in criminology and public safety and justice management at the University of Akron and Cleveland State University, respectively. His research and scholarship has had considerable public policy implications in the area of policing, community-police relations, and public safety. This includes the use of traffic cameras in the City of Cleveland and jurisdictions across the state of Ohio, the first comprehensive study of Cleveland’s Citizen Review Board, which led to the transition to an all-non-sworn investigator staff, and former Governor John Kasich’s establishment of a statewide taskforce on policing and the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board, both of which he was appointed to.  

He has served as the Interim Chief Diversity Officer at Cleveland State University since July of 2018. In this role, he is the senior advisor to the president on issues of diversity, inclusion, and equitable policies, practices, and institutional planning that support the University’s vision, mission, values and strategic priorities. He is also the past chairman of the Cleveland Branch of the NAACP’s Criminal Justice Committee and the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners. 

Dr. Dunn is a nationally recognized, frequently sought-after media commentator on issues of race, policing, and criminal justice and has been interviewed and quoted in over 100 local, national, and international media outlets, including PBS New Hour, MSNBC, CNN, The New York and L.A. Times, The Sunday London Times, and the BBC. Dunn is a native Clevelander, an Air Force veteran and the father of an adult son.

Chief Tammy Hooper (ret.)

Tammy Hooper established Unit One Consulting after serving 32 years in active law enforcement. She has consulted with leading public safety innovators and policy experts throughout the US and abroad on a wide range of projects with an emphasis on the development and implementation of progressive reform policy for law enforcement.

She was appointed as the first female Chief of Police with the Asheville Police Department in 2015. During her tenure in Asheville, Chief Hooper led the department through two CALEA accreditations, implementation of a body worn camera program and revision of two-thirds of all APD policies and procedures. Chief Hooper also developed a community input process to revise the Use of Force policy mandating the training and use of de-escalation tactics.  This contributed to a 61% decrease in use of force incidents in the first year of implementation. 

Prior to her appointment as Chief, she served 26 years with the City of Alexandria, Virginia, where she retired as the Deputy Chief of Police and served in command positions in every bureau of the department.

Chief Hooper is a graduate of George Mason University, Session 235 of the FBI National Academy, the Senior Management Institute for Police at Boston University and the Professional Executive Leadership School at the University of Richmond.

Victor Ruiz

Mr. Ruiz is the Executive Director of Esperanza in Cleveland, where he has overseen substantial growth and partnerships across the Cleveland community to spearhead major community initiatives. Mr. Ruiz has built a career in public service in Cleveland, serving as Assistant Vice President of Advisory Services and, before that, Manager of Advisory Services for Cleveland Scholarship Programs, Inc. He is a Vice-Chair of the Cuyahoga Community College Board of Trustees, President of the Board of Directors of the Hispanic Alliance, and a member of the Hispanic Roundtable. Mr. Ruiz was a member of the selection panel for the Community Police Commission, which the Cleveland Consent Decree established.

Charles R. See

Mr. See has more than 50 years of experience in Cleveland building community partnerships and bringing together diverse groups with divergent social, political, and cultural views. As the Executive Director of the Community Re-Entry Program at Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, Mr. See managed the implementation of 16 programs designed to assist formerly incarcerated individuals and at-risk youth. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on inner-city crime, served as a member of the Ohio Governor's Select Committee on prisons, been a member of the Ohio State Sentencing Commission, served as chairperson of the Ohio State NAACP Prison Committee, and been a member of several other task forces and policy councils.

Abby Wilhelm

Abby Wilhelm is a Senior Policy Advisor at Hogan Lovells and previously served as Chief of Staff at the Office of Attorney General for the District of Columbia. As Chief of Staff, Abby was responsible for ensuring the office delivered on its priorities and managing critical projects covering a wide-range of issues from police reform, violence interruption, out-of-school time programming, and more. Wilhelm played an instrumental role in developing programming and providing strategic advice for the Attorney General’s 2021 bipartisan presidential initiative focused on combatting hate. She has significant experience working with external stakeholders as well as federal, state, and local government.