CONCERNING

Cleveland Police Oversight Deputy Pushed Out Over Criticism of Policing

Ayesha Hardaway sent a letter to the group’s leader Monday informing him of her resignation.

An official police watchdog group in Cleveland has pushed out one of its deputies over comments she made in the wake of Derek Chauvin’s conviction criticizing U.S. policing. Ayesha Hardaway wrote in her resignation letter to the group’s leader, Hassan Aden, that her comments were being wrongly perceived by Aden and the U.S. Department of Justice as infringing on her objectivity. Instead, she wrote, her comments referred to the nation’s policing as a whole, not specifically Cleveland’s police force. “And the fact that that somehow makes me unqualified, despite all my other qualifications, to be involved in this work really concerns me about the level of fidelity and rigor that this process is going to go under moving forward,” Hardaway later said.

Hardaway, a law professor, was a deputy on Cleveland’s police monitoring team, which oversees police reform efforts since a consent decree was formed with the DOJ.