Cleveland officials investigating take-home vehicles for police: I-Team

CLEVELAND (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team investigated how Cleveland police top bosses are using take-home cars, and we found city hall looking at it too.

This comes after we revealed city officials misusing take-home cars or simply commuting long distances every day.

The I-Team reviewed monthly logs for take-home cars used by Cleveland police top brass.

We mostly saw times showing cars used during normal working hours.

We noticed most descriptions of travel were vague. For example, “Commute and Response” and “Administrative Operations Duties” and “Investigation/Commute” and “Training.”

What we looked at is also part of an internal review of take-home cars.

Last week, the city’s new safety advisor sat down with the I-Team. He told us he’s leading the internal review.

“I’m, actually leading the audit of all police take-home vehicles to see who has a car, who doesn’t need a car anymore,” Phillip McHugh said.

We found McHugh also has a take-home car, so we challenged him.

“Why do you need a take home car?” we asked.

“I’m on call 24/7. One of the things I committed to the mayor to do is to be present in the community when things happen,” he said.

So, we followed up with, “how many of those have you gone to in your time here?”

“I’ve been here a month. I’ve been to several community meetings on the weekends. We had a bombing call at Wade Oval,” McHugh said.

We checked out three-dozen of the monthly logs for the police command staff. We only saw one entry specifically labelled “call up” referring to a major incident after hours.

Some city council members don’t believe any employee needs a city car just to travel to and from work.

We recently found a Cleveland Hopkins International Airport official living 70 miles away with a take-home car. But, last year, she never had to go to the airport after-hours.

A safety official got fired for misusing a city car. We also found no records of her going to emergencies after regular hours.

Additionally, the former safety director resigned after admitting to the I-Team also had misused a city car.

The mayor’s office is conducting a citywide review of take-home cars. Again, part of it includes how police supervisors are using those vehicles.

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