tamela eaton

A photo of Tamela Eaton taken after a confrontation with officers Tim Guerra and Frank Garmback. (Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court)

Tommy (left) and Terry (right) Shoulders are identical twin brothers, both who were Cleveland police officers who The Plain Dealer wrote about in 2008.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Officers involved in multiple excessive force lawsuits shouldn't be on the streets, let alone passing on their brand of violent policing to rookies, a woman who successfully sued the department after a 2010 altercation believes.

Tamela Eaton said the officers she sued -- Tim Guerra and Frank Garmback - deserved to be fired or given desk jobs after the city agreed to pay $100,000 to settle her lawsuit, which accused them of beating and improperly arresting her.

City officials have said that settling a lawsuit, such as Eaton's, does not mean an officer did anything wrong. But the lawsuits, as a whole, aren't currently taken into consideration when it comes to flagging officers at risk to escalate violence when they encounter citizens.

The city lacks a functioning system to document or track use of force reports, civil claims and criminal charges against officers, according to last month's Department of Justice findings. It's a problem that went unaddressed after an earlier Justice Department investigation ended with an agreement for improvements in 2004, federal officials said.

In Eaton's case, she said her brief encounter with officers turned ugly after she called to report a car blocking the driveway to her parking lot.

Eaton, 43, said she heard a commotion outside and checked to see what was going on.

The officers pounced on her because she witnessed Guerra hitting a young woman, Eaton contends. City officials, in court documents filed as part of her civil case, say Eaton "impermissibly intruded" on a stop the officers made of a potential murder suspect. The officers, in a report, said she disobeyed their orders to back off.

Eaton was charged with assault and resisting arrest but a jury found her not guilty.

The payout, she said, didn't seem to prevent the officers from advancing or being handed more responsibility. Guerra was promoted to sergeant last year and Garmback was allowed to be a training officer for Timothy Loehmann -- who shot and killed 12-year old Tamir Rice in November.

"Someone who does that shouldn't be put out on the streets again and definitely not train someone," she said.

City officials say they have stepped up efforts to track officer behavior that could tip them off to potential trouble.

Earlier this year, the city purchased software that will evaluate officers based on things like sick time abuse, civilian complaints, use of force incidents and internal affairs investigations, said Matt Zone, the Cleveland councilman who heads the Public Safety Committee.

However, civil lawsuits are still not among the items tracked, according to city officials.

Before January 2014, an early intervention program was voluntary but that has changed. If concerns do come up about a particular officer, they can be sent for a psychological assessment, Zone said.

"It should help the department better figure out who might be having problems," Zone said. "It can help answer the question: "Is this person fit for duty?'"

Guerra, who joined the department in 1997, has been sued in at least five cases -- three were settled by the city and two were dismissed -- that accuse him of using excessive force or making wrongful arrests.

In three of the cases, the people who claimed they were brutalized were the ones who originally called police for help, including Eaton.

The Plain Dealer attempted to reach out to Guerra, Garmback (and all officers mentioned as a part of this series) through the two police unions that represent rank-and-file officers and supervisors.

Aside from Eaton's lawsuit, the city settled two other cases involving Guerra in the past decade. One suit that cost the city $40,000 involved a young professional from Hudson who said Guerra used a leg sweep to slam him to the ground in front of Hairy Buffalo after he questioned the officer's lack of response to a police call.

A photo of Frank Garmback taken after an altercation with Tamela Eaton. Eaton was found not guilty of charges that she assaulted him or resisted arrest.

Another involved an East Side mechanic who called to report drug activity and ended up with broken ribs after he questioned the officers' disinterest in taking a report from him. He was paid $2,500 by the city.

A federal jury found in favor of Guerra in a 2009 brutality case and another 2009 case alleging a beating during a traffic stop was dismissed.

The Plain Dealer and Northeast Ohio Media Group on Dec. 23 requested department records regarding discipline and administrative or internal investigations related to the many of the lawsuits but those records have not yet been provided.

Guerra is among a number of Cleveland police officers who, during their careers, have faced multiple civil rights lawsuits. Guerra also had four citizen complaints filed against him alleging physical abuse or that he used improper police procedure between the years 2006 and 2011. City investigators dismissed three as unfounded and sustained one complaint.

The city represents officers in the majority of cases so long as they are acting within the scope of their duties as officers.

Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Steve Loomis downplayed the significance of the lawsuits, saying they were not representative of the majority of interactions officers have with citizens on a daily basis.

Loomis said officers respond to more than 400,000 calls for service a year, resulting in an average of 26,000 arrests.

"If most the people get arrested peacefully because they did what the cops told them to do, why is it that we are choosing to focus on the small minority where officers had to use some force?" Loomis asked.

As for officers who get repeatedly sued, Loomis said each case should be looked at individually. Often, he said the city is too quick to write a check -- even when it knows its officers have done nothing wrong.

"Sometimes officers have to engage in verbal judo with the bad guys," he said. "Sometimes they have to do things to protect their own safety."

Civil attorneys, however, alleged in many of the lawsuits reviewed that the city failed to train or discipline officers in cases in which they had faced multiple allegations of police brutality or other misconduct. The city, in court records, denied those accusations.

Last month's Justice Department report, however, called it "deeply troubling" that some investigators specially-trained to review the use of deadly force incidents involving officers felt compelled to cast officers in a positive light. The report also found that very few officers were correctly disciplined even when investigations showed force was improperly used.

Shortly after the federal report was released, Cleveland councilman Matt Zone requested a summary of deadly use-of-force and internal affairs investigations. He shared those public records with The Plain Dealer.

Of 110 investigations from 2011 through December 2014, 88 are complete and 22 are pending. They revealed that in 80 percent of the cases, the city prosecutor found insufficient evidence of criminal conduct, or that officers' actions were justified. In some cases, administrative discipline or retraining was recommended.

Here are a few of the officers who faced multiple lawsuits:

Det. Michael E. Rasberry

Rasberry, who joined the force in 1996, has been involved in at least three lawsuits the city settled in the past decade.

Rasberry was one of five officers sued over a 2011 traffic stop that left 23-year-old Maurice Bryant in a coma.

According to the lawsuit, which the city paid $9,000 to settle, Bryant was pulled out of the passenger seat of a car during a traffic stop, beaten and pepper sprayed as an officer shouted for him to spit out drugs they thought he was trying to swallow.

He was then handcuffed and lost consciousness after an officer placed a knee in his back while he was face-down on the ground. He went into cardiac arrest and doctors later said he sustained brain damage, the suit said.

In a 2009, a lawsuit alleged that Rasberry punched a man in the chest and took $280 from him after he questioned whether the officer had the right to enter his home. The man, Darnell Burns, was arrested along with his cousin, Bernadean Houston, who said a different officer slammed her head into a wall. Both were arrested but were never charged with crimes.

They sued the officers, claiming their constitutional rights were violated. The city settled the lawsuit in 2011 for $50,000.

In 2005, Curtis Scott said Rasberry was among several plainclothes officers who pulled a gun on him as he got out of a car in front of his home.

Scott said the men did not identify themselves as police officers and he ran toward his house. The officers, he said, pounced on him, struck him with handcuffs and arrested him. He was charged with drug abuse and resisting arrest, though the case was later dismissed by a judge.

According to Scott's lawsuit, which the city later settled for $6,000, police officials were already aware of the "vicious propensities" of Rasberry and the two other officers involved, David Gibson and Jerome Barrow but "took no steps to train them, correct their abuse of authority or discourage their unlawful use of authority."

Citizens filed five complaints against Rasberry from 2006-11 alleging harassment, physical abuse or the use of improper police procedure. All of the complaints were deemed unfounded, withdrawn or closed by city investigators.

Sgt. Terence "Terry" Shoulders

Shoulders, a vice unit supervisor who retired last year, has been sued a half-dozen times in the past 25 years. Shoulders started with the department in 1981.

The lawsuits allege he and officers he supervised used excessive force or foul and sometimes racist language. Some suits were later dismissed. At least two resulted in settlements paid by the city.

One who settled for $5,000 involved an 18-year-old who said his thumbs were twisted back during an arrest on Public Square.

Another who settled for $25,500 involved a man whose home was fired upon by officers who Shoulders was supervising. The officers were serving an arrest warrant at the wrong home and one officer thought he was being fired on, but was actually hit by a piece of concrete that flew up and hit him after a fellow officer accidentally fired his gun, according to the suit.

The most recent civil rights lawsuit, filed last month, alleges that a tirade of racial language was shouted at a 23-year-old man arrested in a drug case. The man, Patrick Carner, also said he was beaten.

The suit is unclear on whether the racist language -- including the 'n' word -- was used by Terry Shoulders or his twin brother Thomas, also a vice sergeant. According to the lawsuit, the exchange was captured on a voicemail. (Thomas has been sued at least nine times during his career.)

Terry Shoulders was also sued but later dismissed as a defendant in a 2007 case that alleged officers beat, cursed at and used a Taser on a 15-year-old in 2006 after stopping his car. In that case, the teen claimed an officer called him a "stupid n----."

The Shoulders brothers were featured in a 2008 Plain Dealer story in which they recounted the broken noses and fingers they had given and gotten. They admitted to the use of strong language, which in one case was captured in video earning Terry Shoulders the moniker "Sgt. Pottymouth." While some questioned the hard-charging brothers' methods, others praised them for being warriors against crime.

Citizens filed three complaints against Shoulders from 2006-11 and each case was unfounded or withdrawn.

Shoulders did not return a call for comment.

Patrolman Alvin White

White, hired by the department in 1991, has been sued at least four times, including two cases in the last decade that resulted in settlements. In two other cases juries or judges found in favor of White.

In 2007 the city paid Kenneth Taylor $5,000 to settle a case involving allegations that White and another officer, Daniel Dickens, were harassing him because he beat charges that he had been illegally selling Cleveland Browns tickets downtown. Taylor said the officers used racially charged language and arrested him twice in two years.

A federal jury awarded special education teacher Narlin Shadd $50,000 after he accused White of punching him twice in the face and yanking him out of his car after he misinterpreted a police order as he attempted to pick his wife and daughter up after an Indians game downtown.

Between 2006-11 citizens filed six complaints against White alleging he used improper police procedures. Five were deemed unfounded, withdrawn or closed. One was sustained.