I-Team: New safety adviser answers questions on hiring issues

CLEVELAND (WJW) — The FOX 8 I-Team has found a former roommate of Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb got hired at City Hall after helping write a description for the job he ended up getting.

The city recently hired Phillip McHugh as a safety adviser, a newly created position. But McHugh doesn’t believe helping to write the job description gave him an unfair advantage.

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“I will say I helped write a job description,” McHugh told the I-Team on Friday. “I had no expectation that I was going to get the job — that I was even going to get an interview.”

We asked, how could he not expect to get a job he helped create?

McHugh said he was one of 16 people who had applied for the safety adviser post. The $124,000-per-year position was created shortly after McHugh was turned down for another city job.

“I interviewed for that job that I didn’t get, and it kinda sparked in the team here that there was a need for someone to assist the former safety director with being more strategic, more data-driven,” McHugh said. “Whether it was me or someone else with that skill set, or more — they realized there was a need for that position.”

He said he had two interviews for the safety adviser job, and the person who hired him was former director of public safety Karrie Howard, not the mayor.

Some city council members have called for McHugh’s resignation since they learned a civil lawsuit was filed against him by an elderly African American woman back in 2016.

The lawsuit was later dismissed and settled. We reached out to the woman involved. She has even written a book on the ordeal, but she declined to discuss the case.

City Councilman Richard Starr said McHugh should have never been hired.

“They did a soft background check. They didn’t do a social media check, or Google search, or anything, because if they did, they would have seen this type of case come up,” Starr said.

McHugh said he didn’t bring up the lawsuit during the interview with Howard because he wasn’t asked about it, and it was settled years ago. He also said he faced no internal discipline and was promoted in Washington, D.C., following the incident.

City Hall officials also said they were aware of the lawsuit, and they talked to McHugh’s former bosses, who praised his work.

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The I-Team also reviewed a 300-page deposition of McHugh from the 2016 lawsuit. The deposition shows hard questions about the investigation, the search of a home and the arrest.

“It’s not that I had it out for them, or I was being more aggressive than on other cases,” McHugh said. “I was a thorough detective.”

McHugh said he told prosecutors that he had probable cause, yet the case should be dropped.

“Time and time again, I told the prosecutors this is a weak case,” McHugh said. “This is not something we should move forward with.”

McHugh said he hopes city residents will give him a chance. He said his goal is to make the streets safer. He said he has started a top-down review of Cleveland police, fire and EMS.

The mayor’s office is happy with McHugh’s work and has no plans to have him removed from the position.

“I’m doing a lot. And, as I said before, it is good to get back to the work,” McHugh said. “I’m ready to get down to the work of making Cleveland safe.”

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