All Black East Cleveland jury finds Cleveland police supervisor Patricia Coleman not guilty in '137 shots' dereliction of duty case where two unarmed Blacks were gunned down by 13 non-Black Cleveland cops shooting 137 bullets

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com CLEVELAND, Ohio- A Cleveland police supervisor prosecuted on a second degree misdemeanor charge of dereliction of duty regarding her role in a 2012 police chase chase from downtown Cleveland to neighboring East Cleveland that left two unarmed Black suspects dead was found not guilty by an all Black jury in neighboring East Cleveland on Friday.

East Cleveland is an impoverished suburb of Cleveland.

The city is  99 percent Black and the median income of its residents is roughly $20,000.

 

The case was heard before East Cleveland Municipal Court Judge William Dawson and was a loss for East Cleveland City Law Director Willa Hemmons, who is Black, and was unsure from the beginning, activists have said.

Cleveland Police Sgt. Patricia Coleman was acquitted by a jury of six women and five men, a controversial case brought to trial some six and a half  years after the deadly 2012 shooting and one that raises questions as to why Patricia Coleman was singled out when the 13 non-Black Cleveland police officers who gunned down Timothy Russell 43, and Malissa Williams 30,  all of them men, went free.

The police supervisor faced up to 90 days in jail and a $750 fine had she been convicted.

 

Prosecutors argued during the five-day trial that began on July 15  that Patricia Coleman failed to control the deadly chase or to properly supervise subordinate police officers involved in the tragic execution-style killings of two unarmed Black people.

 

Cleveland police officers and supervisors were among those who testified.

The Black jury deliberated for two hours before reaching its verdict, Patricia Coleman with top notch defense counsel in Kevin Spellacy, who told the jury that his client followed protocol and could not be singled out.

 

Spellacy later praised jurors for what he said was a prolonged and high profile case, and a fair verdict in his client's favor.

Blacks upset over the verdict called it "business as usual."

Another Cleveland police supervisor, Sgt Randolph Dailey, awaits trial on the same dereliction of duty charge.

Community activists protested annually on the anniversary of the killings and were at court this week hoping for a conviction they did not get, a courtroom nearly full to capacity at one point and also with other community members and members of East Cleveland City Council.

 

Cleveland activist Kathy Wray Coleman, who leads the Imperial Women Coalition and who has organized rallies around the '137 shots'  shooting with activists Art McKoy and Alfred Porter Jr. of Black on Black Crime Inc., said  Patricia Coleman's acquittal "is unfortunate for the Black community and our fight against excessive force and police negligence and malfeasance and if innocent Blacks had representative counsel and fair judges and prosecutors when we are maliciously prosecuted our people might not get erroneously convicted and illegally imprisoned so frequently and so easily by our racist legal system."

"Police have an advantage in this society no matter what they do to Black people," said Kathy Wray Coleman

Patricia Coleman and Dailey, who awaits trial, and supervisors Michael Donegan, Jason Edens and Paul Wilson all initially faced  misdemeanor dereliction of duty charges from the 22-minute chase  the deadly night of Nov. 29, 2012, where 13 non-Black officers officers fired 137 bullets at Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, killing both of them instantly, Russell the driver of the shot-up 1979 Malibu Classic and Williams a passenger.

Williams and Russell were homeless, and struggled with drug addiction, hardly enough to justify the execution-style shooting, legal pundits have said.

Originally indicted in common pleas court, the case was dismissed and charges were filed in East Cleveland where the deadly chase, which began in downtown Cleveland when a cop claimed he mistook Russell's car backfiring a s a shot at him, ended.

Earlier this year charges were dismissed against Edens, Wilson and Donegan, with Patricia Coleman and Dailey both scheduled to go on trial Monday.with Dailey's attorney getting a continuance of trial.

 

Donegan had been fired and later reinstated and two other supervisors were demoted and were later reinstated to their previous supervisory positions, all three fighting the discipline and winning

 

Of the 13 Cleveland officers that fired the combined 137 shots, 12 White and one Hispanic, six were fired, including Michael Brelo, who jumped on the hood of Russell's car and shot 49 times through the front windshield, both Russell and Williams dying at the scene in the parking lot at Heritage Middle School in largely Black and impoverished East Cleveland where the chase ended

Five of the six officers fired for their roles in the shooting had their jobs reinstated in 2017 by an arbitrator and are Michael Farley, Erin O'Donnell, Christopher Ereg, Wilfredo Diaz, and Brian Sabolik.

The  sixth officer, officer Brelo, was not reinstated after he was acquitted in May of 2015 on two counts of voluntary manslaughter in a bench trial before Democratic Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell.

 

O'Donnell ruled that there was no way to tell which bullets killed Williams and Russell.

Some 276 patrol officers were working the night of the chase, and 104 faced punishment, Williams and Russell chased by some 64 patrol cars, and literally fleeing for their lives.

The city settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $3 million that was split between the families of the two victims, Russell leaving behind a grown disabled son.

Former prosecutor Tim McGinty, criticized for scheming and preventing felony indictments against the cops at issue, and also protecting the rookie cop that, in 2014, shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, was voted out of office in 2016 in favor of fellow Democrat and current county prosecutor Mike O'Malley

The celebrated 137 shots shooting, the impetus for a still pending consent decree for police reforms with the city and federal government, gained national attention, some 75 protesters arrested, mainly for resisting arrest, following the  issuance by O'Donnell of his controversial 2015 Brelo verdict.