Cleveland is becoming a city defined by its collective impatience. Nearly three months have passed since a white Cleveland police officer shot and killed Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy wielding an air gun in a city park.

We’re still waiting to see if the rookie officer who shot him, Timothy Loehmann, will be indicted.

Less than two weeks after Tamir died, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder flew to Cleveland to publicly deliver the Department of Justice’s findings after a two-year investigation into police practices.

The devastating 58-page report, written by U.S. attorney Steven Dettelbach and DOJ staff, chronicled a pattern of unreasonable and excessive force so extreme and systemic—and unconstitutional—that federal and city officials are now negotiating a consent decree, enforced by court supervision, to ensure reform.

We’re waiting for that, too.

I asked Dettelbach earlier this month when, if he were solely in charge, would he announce the consent decree. His response: “Yesterday.”

He quickly added that, of course, it was appropriate to wait for community input, but there’s no denying his restlessness. “My constant push is, ‘Why isn’t it done yet?’”

Police Chief Calvin Williams’ response to Dettelbach’s question is to raise his eyebrows and frown. “Easy for him to say,” he said in an interview last week. “They had two years to work on this report. We’ve only had a few weeks to digest it and respond.”

Mayor Frank Jackson echoed the chief. “We asked for them to do it. We cooperated with them. Now, I am trying to bring calm and stability to the process to get this right.”

Jackson made early headlines and drew considerable criticism by insisting problems outlined in the DOJ report were not systemic, despite its extraordinarily blunt conclusion that “the trust between the Cleveland Division of Police and many of the communities it serves is broken.” The report called for “a cultural shift at all levels to change an ‘us-against-them’ mentality we too often observed.” In an interview last week, Jackson said his critics were missing the point.

“My biggest complaint [with the DOJ report] is that it didn’t go far enough,” he said. “Investigate the criminal justice system and the disparity in how police are held accountable. Investigate who gets arrested and who does not; who gets indicted and who does not. ... If you aren’t addressing that, then the consent decree is an illusion, and a facade.”

After years of covering the criminal justice system, and doing so here in Cleveland, I certainly see his point about how this is about more than just the police—how economic and racial disparities play out in the courts. When I suggested that this can’t be an excuse to do nothing, he agreed. Somewhat.

“I think this is about our comfort level,” Jackson said. “If you’re talking about the whole system, it’s too much to consider for most people: ‘Don’t put that anxiety on me,’ ‘This is too much for me to handle.’ Instead, they say, ‘I will accept this [consent decree] as a quick fix.’”

He is not, he assured me, rattled by his critics.

“I’m not frustrated. I’m really not. When they say, ‘The mayor has lost trust,’ I say, ‘Lost trust with whom?’ I’m not hearing that from the people I talk to. Whenever someone says that, I say, ‘Consider the source. Check their agenda.’”

Williams, who, like Jackson, is black, is fiercely defensive about his police force, and he too is dismissive of the systemwide indictment of the DOJ report. However, when I asked Williams to address the arguments made in Loehmann’s defense by Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Association president Steve Loomis—who insisted that questions about the patrolman’s competence raised by his dismissal from the Independence, Ohio, police force were nonsense—the chief hedged. Williams refused to discuss the Loehmann case, citing the ongoing investigation, but he added: “I don’t know if Steve knows the [Independence] mayor, if he’d interviewed the chief.” The heads of police unions “are going to fight for their members,” Williams said. “Sometimes you’re fighting for someone who’s guilty.”

When I asked if he was suggesting that was the case with Loehmann, Williams shook his head. “No. I’m just saying I know how it works.”

Dettelbach has made it clear that if the city isn’t willing to agree to major reforms, he will sue. “That’s not the best result in this case,” Dettelbach said. “Court battles are divisive, very adversarial. My job is to work with whoever will work with me. I’m more focused on the fact that every day it’s not fixed, we’re continuing the status quo.”

And so we are a city of two tales, one authored by a federal government certain of its crusade; the other written by city officials claiming a superior perspective. It’s unclear which narrative will prevail, not just in fact, but in the hearts and minds of the citizens they serve.

Are the apparent divisions more a matter of rhetoric from men trying to save face? Or are the differences rooted in entrenched beliefs that the other side is dead wrong and an unwillingness to confront one’s failings?

As tedious as the back-and-forth bickering can be at times, we should hope for the former. The last thing Cleveland needs now is another round of trench warfare, hidden from view.

***

Neither race nor Tamir Rice were mentioned in the DOJ report, but his death and the police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson and New York have added a sense of urgency to the call for action in Cleveland.

In the absence of visible and immediate progress, generalizations about what’s at stake in Cleveland continue to dominate discourse here and across the nation—in media coverage, on talk shows and on social media. The mix of opinions, in no particular order:

Residents fear and hate the police, or they respect the police and want more of them in their neighborhoods.

The mayor has been weakened by recent events, or he is emboldened by not-so-distant successes in downtown development and school reform.

Consent decree negotiations between the DOJ and city officials are stalled or progressing, productive or hostile, concluding soon or God only knows when.

Every accusation meets its counterpunch; every proposed solution seems daunting in its execution. One of the most enduring allegations, in the wake of recent police killings of a number of unarmed black residents, is that too many Cleveland cops are racist and unnecessarily aggressive.

Too often in that regard, the rank and file who insist otherwise have not been served well by their spokesmen.

Consider, for example, the comments made by Loomis, the police union chief, to The Plain Dealer in May 2011, when asked if the city’s population losses necessitated fewer police.

"The people that are leaving are the God-fearing, taxpaying workers,” he said. “They're flocking out of here. Businesses are flocking out of here. And we're left with the same dregs of society that we had to deal with in 2003."

For a few years, Loomis lost his union leadership to Jeff Follmer, who was even more intemperate. Last fall, Follmer insisted in an interview with MSNBC that Tamir Rice’s death was “justifiable.” For those Americans concerned about excessive use of force, he had a suggestion.

"How about this: Listen to police officers' commands. Listen to what we tell you, and just stop. I think that eliminates a lot of problems."

As of last month, Loomis is back at the union’s helm. He seems determined to help frame the ongoing conversation of what comes next. Three weeks ago, he showed up at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church for a packed rally convened by the Greater Cleveland Congregations.

The GCC is a nonpartisan coalition of faith groups from the city and surrounding Cuyahoga County. It is arguably one of the most influential of the 13 groups to make consent decree recommendations in recent weeks to Jackson, Williams and Dettelbach.

At the GCC event on Feb. 3, dozens of people, representing more than 1,100 in attendance, walked up to the microphone and announced their organizations and how many members they’d brought with them. Soon after, one of the speakers on stage introduced Steve Loomis, who was sitting in the audience at the front of the church. The same white guy who four years earlier had described Cleveland residents as the “dregs of society” stood and smiled.

The crowd, two-thirds black and sitting in a church in one of Cleveland’s poorest neighborhoods, erupted into prolonged applause.

“I was surprised,” Loomis told me in an interview two days later. “I was surprised at that amount of support for the police. It was a stark contrast to some of the other public meetings I’ve attended where I’ve been called a neo-Nazi and leader of the Klan.”

Chief Williams smiled when I told him about the applause for Loomis. But unlike Loomis, he acknowledged that mistakes occur.

“I’ve been saying that all along. There are a lot of things happening that don’t reflect well on us, but the majority support us. They understand we make mistakes. ... I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a community meeting or run into someone and they say, ‘We support you.’”

Mayor Jackson, who was also in attendance, said he also wasn’t surprised by the warm response to Loomis, and used it to illustrate what he thinks the DOJ got wrong. “I’ve said continually that we don’t have in Cleveland the kind of anti-police mentality they have in other places. As a general rule, they do well.”

The Rev. Jawanza Colvin, who is head pastor at the storied and influential Olivet Church and co-chairs GCC with Rabbi Joshua Caruso and the Rev. Tracey Lind, says it’s important to understand the mood of the people.

“It was not Loomis being applauded, it was the officers he represents,” he said in an interview. “Most don’t know Steve Loomis or what he’s said. Many of us have law enforcement in our families and in our congregations, not just in Cleveland, but also in the suburbs. We didn’t want to disparage the majority of police. There were about 20 officers present that night.”

Colvin’s message: Do not mistake applause for complacency.

“We wanted the police to hear us recognize their sacrifices, and also understand we are examining racial disparities, excessive use of force—all the issues between police and the communities they serve. Last Monday, I attended the swearing-in of an officer from our church. The next day I’m calling for police reform. That represents the range of our relationship with the police.”

Colvin said he is confident reform is coming because the federal government will insist on it—and because groups like his are in for the long haul.

“We are watching how the mayor and the U.S. attorney negotiate this consent decree, to see whether it goes smoothly or drags because of resistance,” Colvin said. “This is not just a black community issue. This is a national issue. We intend to keep public pressure on those who need to be held accountable.”

***

Nothing gets Steve Loomis churning faster than questions about what happened on the day that Tamir Rice was shot.

His constant refrain: The police are heroes misunderstood by a public being fed a steady, media-generated, activist-fueled diet of false information about how they do their jobs.

“Tamir Rice is an absolute example of that,” Loomis said. “There’s this perception that police just slid up in the car and shot him. That’s not reality from the officers’ perception. They acted based on what they knew at the time.”

On November 22, a resident called police to report “probably a juvenile” waving a gun “that was probably fake” in the park at Cleveland’s Cudell Recreation Center. As has been widely noted, the dispatcher failed to tell officers answering the call, Timothy Loehmann and driver Frank Garmback, that the gun could be fake.

“Dispatcher information wouldn’t have changed anything,” Loomis said. “There’s a guy saying, ‘There’s a kid waving a gun around here and he’s scaring the shit out of me.’ If it’s a toy, then why are you calling? You don’t see that part in the video that shows him pointing at people and cars going by.”

What the surveillance camera video does show is Tamir talking on a cellphone and goofing around in the snow with an air pellet gun in his hand minutes before the police car zoomed into the park just feet away from him. Within two seconds, Loehmann rushed out of the passenger side of the car and Tamir dropped to the ground. He lay on the ground unattended for four minutes until an FBI agent in the area showed up and administered first aid. Hours later, Tamir died in a hospital.

Police spokesman Sergeant Ali Pillow said Loehmann and Garmback are “currently assigned to the training section [gym] on restricted duty.”

Loomis objects to much of the above depiction of events, shifting between past and present tense as he explains why.

“Tamir Rice is in the wrong,” he said. “He’s menacing. He’s 5-feet-7, 191 pounds. He wasn’t that little kid you’re seeing in pictures. He’s a 12-year-old in an adult body. Tamir looks to his left and sees a police car. He puts his gun in his waistband. Those people—99 percent of the time those people run away from us. We don’t want him running into the rec center. That could be a whole other set of really bad events. They’re trying to flush him into the field. Frank [the driver] is expecting the kid to run. The circumstances are so fluid and unique. …

“The guy with the gun is not running. He’s walking toward us. He’s squaring off with Cleveland police and he has a gun. Loehmann is thinking, ‘Oh my God, he’s pulling it out of his waistband.’”

As for Loehmann, whose lawyer did not return a call for this story, Loomis is livid about media coverage of the young officer’s personnel file from his time in 2012 with the police force in Independence, Ohio. The file, which Cleveland police admit they never saw before hiring Loehmann in March 2014, outlines numerous concerns about his emotional maturity that led to his forced resignation. Much of the coverage focused on a description in the file of Loehmann breaking down in tears at a firing range.

All rubbish, Loomis said.

“This Timothy Loehmann thing, this is a sideshow,” he said. “Nothing in Timothy Loehmann’s history would have made him ineligible to be hired. The Select Committee recommended him unanimously. He was emotional at the firing range because his girlfriend of three years broke up with him in a text message.

“And there’s something you need to understand about suburban police forces like Independence. It’s even more competitive. For some reason, Timothy had juice with the mayor, who told the chief, ‘Hire Tim.’ He had a political target on his back from Day One. For some reason, the sergeant didn’t like him ... he didn’t fit the mold.”

Independence Police Chief Michael Kilbane scoffed at Loomis’ version of Loehmann’s short tenure on the force there.

“Absolutely, unqualifiedly, not true,” he said. “I wasn’t chief then, but I’ve had to familiarize myself with every aspect of this case.” No one, he said, makes the chief hire officers, and Loehmann was still on probation when they let him go.

“He didn’t have time not to fit in here. He was here a matter of two to three days after he finished academy. There are no secrets here. His personnel file speaks for itself.”

***

It does not take long in the company of Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams to sense his impatience with much of the recent media coverage of his force. He has had it with the prominent narrative that casts Cleveland as a city of communities betrayed by the police who were supposed to protect them.

“This whole notion that everyone is afraid of Cleveland police officers—and there’s that perception out there—every chance I get, I say it’s not true.”

This is a persistent theme in conversations with the mayor’s office and the police department: The media are the enemy. Of course, incompetent governments have been blaming the messenger—the media—since the days of the first scribes. The Department of Justice presumably did not make up its evidence. Dettelbach rattled off a partial list of the research efforts behind the findings, which included meeting with nearly 50 groups in the community.

“We met with ministers, the police unions, at [public housing] headquarters, forums at Olivet church, at LGBT offices, with homeless groups,” he said. “We’ve tried to be different about transparency, involving as many people as possible. We also interacted as much as possible with police officers, and had a series of ride-alongs in every police district in the city.”

The chief and mayor do have legitimate grievances about some coverage, particularly from younger, less experienced reporters assigned to what used to be veteran beats. Just as valid are journalists’ complaints that Cleveland has a long tradition of thin-skinned public officials who fashion their level of accountability not on the public’s right to know, but on the state of their moods. The relationship is increasingly contentious. After he appeared recently on CBS News' “60 Minutes,” the Plain Dealer’s online partner, Northeast Ohio Media Group, posted a story with the headline, “Should Police Chief Calvin Williams talk to local media?”

This growing animosity between officials and the local media is a disservice to a community that—in town hall meetings and in written recommendations, and on social media—has made clear its top priority: transparency, transparency, transparency.

This requires a fragile balance. Private consent-decree negotiations allow for the give-and-take that can occur only when you aren’t afraid of starring in the latest single-source blog post. However, the public must be privy to the process, with regular updates, if officials are to earn the trust necessary for this city to heal.

Calvin Williams, who is 51, has the potential to be the conduit for change. This is his 29th year with the police force, but only his first as chief. He came to our interview with a written list of improvements in hiring, training and management that he’d launched before the DOJ report’s release. He is quick to point out that he has called Cleveland home from age 4, when his strong-willed single mother brought him here from Tuskegee, Alabama.

“She didn’t take any stuff” from her three boys, he said. “She taught us to work hard and help people when we can.”

When Williams was a sophomore at Glenville High School, he was bused to the white side of town to attend Lincoln West.

“I loved busing,” he said, smiling. “Never had an issue with it. I was on the football team at Glenville, and football players start the school year early because of practice. So, we were bused over three weeks early, which really helped. It was where I made my first white friends. It showed me that people are people. Hispanics and whites on the West Side are dealing with the same things as blacks on the East Side.”

If he’s bothered by journalists’ complaints about his inaccessibility for interviews, he doesn’t show it. I got the impression that he thinks he’s better off without us.

“This whole notion that everyone is afraid of Cleveland police officers—and there’s that perception out there—every chance I get I say it’s not true.

“I’m out and talking to people. If there’s an issue, I want to be out there. … I am the chief, and I represent this office. I’m not going to yell and scream. That’s not the way I operate, ever. I have to be respectful and professional. My guys need to see me behave that way. I emulate what a police officer is in this community. I tell cadets, ‘You treat people the way you would treat family. If you treat them decently, you don’t have to look over your shoulder.’”

The Rev. Jawanza Colvin expressed confidence in Williams’ leadership, with a caveat.

“He is a man of great decency and great dignity and committed to change. However, I am a student of history. I don’t believe in the ‘Great Man’ theory, that one man ... can change the course of history. Great change is led by individuals but happens through the confluence of people and strategic planning. If we’re imposing ‘Great Man’ [expectations] on the chief, we’ll set him up—and set us up—for disappointment.”

As chief, Williams is reserved and shows no discomfort with pregnant pauses. Union president Loomis, on the other hand, loves to talk. He’s capable of long stretches of thoughtful conversation but seems unable to resist the temptation to be bombastic, fueling depictions that cast him as a caricature, rather than an advocate.

He opposes body cameras, which the chief insists all officers will soon wear. He complains that the union was never asked to weigh in on the consent decree, “but the NAACP did have a seat at the table,” a charge the chief denies. And he rejects the chief’s claim that every officer can be trained to do the kind of community policing that builds relationships with residents.

“Look,” Loomis said, “I remember the days of community policing, before the cuts in 2004, when a helicopter landed in the backyard of a school and kids could walk up and touch it, talk to the pilot. We’d bring our motorcycles and horses—positive, positive, positive. But some are born to be community policemen, and others are not.”

In fairness to Loomis, he believes in the value of community policy and credits one such officer for his career.

When he was in 7th grade, drivers used his school’s parking lot as a cut-through. During recess, Officer Sean hung out there to keep kids safe.

“We all got to know him,” Loomis said. “That was when I knew I wanted to be a police officer. I kept out of trouble because I wanted to become a policeman. That’s the power of community policing.”

Loomis and Williams find common ground when they insist the DOJ is wrong to describe the police relationship with the community as broken. Both men reject any suggestion of racism on the force, even after I told them about off-the-record conversations with officers of color who insist otherwise.

“A lot of officers have my cell,” Williams said. “They know how to reach me. They don’t tell me someone’s racist.”

Loomis scoffed. “Racial tensions?” he said. “No. I don’t see it at all.”

Two Saturdays ago, Loomis inadvertently illustrated a version of the problem he denied existed.

Before 9 that morning, Loomis sent to my cellphone a police officer’s photograph of an elementary-age student’s drawing hanging on a school wall. In it, a white police officer is arresting a black man wearing a suit and fedora and sitting at a counter. Large dark letters on the bottom read, “Civil Disobedience.”

“Connie, this is what we are up against,” Loomis wrote in a text. “While the skill of the grammar school artist is apparent the content is troubling. If our schools and teachers are accepting and in fact celebrating this message (by hanging it on the wall) how is anything going to change. Someone is teaching this kid to that feeling and acting like that is acceptable when it is not. The kids should be taught to respect elders and authority not defy it.”

I pointed out that February is Black History Month and suggested the drawing might depict the lunch counter sit-ins in the South in the 1960s.

He did not acknowledge that. “It’s amazing to watch 5 or 6 year old kids interact with each other in playgrounds and school settings,” he responded. “They have NO care about race, economic status (the brand name of their sneakers) or religion. They are ALL innocent and pure…It is not until us grown ups, media, apparently our teachers, and special interest groups poison the hearts and minds of these innocent angelic kids. The teachers and principal should be ashamed.”

A few days later I tracked down the elementary school and spoke to the principal, Alisha Evans. I hadn’t even finished describing the picture before she knew which one it was.

“Oh, my gosh,” she said. “It says ‘civil disobedience’ on it? Yes, that’s ours.”

She sighed. “The man in the suit? In that picture? That’s Martin Luther King Jr.”