CLEVELAND — Cleveland agreed to sweeping changes in how its police officers use force, treat the community and deal with the mentally ill, under a settlement announced Tuesday with the federal government that will put the 1,500-member department under an independent monitor.

The settlement was made public three days after a white Cleveland patrolman was acquitted of manslaughter for his role in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire that left two unarmed black suspects dead in a car in 2012.

Mayor Frank Jackson said the ambitious plan that was worked out over five months of negotiations with the U.S. Justice Department will be expensive and will take years to put in place. But he said he sees it as a chance to set an example for other cities.

In December, after an 18-month investigation prompted in part by the 2012 shooting, the Justice Department issued a scathing report accusing Cleveland police of a pattern of excessive force and other abuses.

The settlement is an expansive list of items aimed at easing tensions between the police and the city’s residents, especially in the black community. Cleveland is 53 percent black. About two-thirds of its police officers are white. The mayor and the police chief are black.

The reforms were outlined in a 105-page consent decree filed in federal court. It calls for new guidelines and training in the use of force; a switch to community policing, in which officers work closely with their neighborhoods; an overhaul of the machinery for investigating misconduct allegations; modernization of police computer technology; and new training in avoiding racial stereotyping and dealing with the mentally ill.

The city is still awaiting a decision on whether any officers will be prosecuted in two other deaths: that of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who was killed by a white rookie patrolman last November while playing with what turned out to be a pellet gun, and that of 37-year-old Tanisha Anderson, a mentally ill woman who suffocated last fall after she was subdued on the ground and handcuffed.