Pictured is Chief U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Anne Gaughan of the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland
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Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com |
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief (A longtime Cleveland activist and community organizer, Coleman, also a former educator, attended the rally and march in Cleveland, Ohio on May 30 for justice for George Floyd)
CLEVELAND, Ohio-A request for a federal court injunction filed late Wednesday night by Attorney Mark Ondrejech against Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and the city for issuing curfew restrictions following riots that broke out Saturday in downtown Cleveland at the George Floyd protest, has been withdrawn, and the mayor has agreed to back off on any sanctions of those who violate curfew trying to get to and from work in downtown Cleveland after a federal court judge intervened.
After speaking this morning with Ondrejech and attorneys for the city, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Anne Gaughan of the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland, a former assistant county prosecutor and Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge, ruled the issue moot for now due the agreement between the parties and said that the request for an injunction can be refiled if necessary, and that curfews must be reasonable.
Gaughan, 66, has been on the federal bench since 1995 and is a Bill Clinton appointee.
She became chief judge in 2019, and like Mayor Jackson, a four-term Black mayor, she is a Democrat.
Her order filed Thursday in the curfew dispute says that “if new information [unrelated to Saturday's protest] is presented to the City of Cleveland, a new declaration of curfew may be ordered by the city within appropriate legal confines."
The request for the injunction says Jackson's curfew actions are arbitrary and capricious, unconstitutional, and otherwise illegal.
The curfew runs from 8 pm to 6 am and ends Friday.
In essence, the since withdrawn lawsuit, or request for an injunction, says the city is not in crisis mode now and that there is no direct or indirect danger that necessitates a curfew, which the suit says is an abuse of power by the popular mayor.
The mayor overstepped his bounds, the lawsuit says, and had no legal basis for the curfew restrictions, the city arguing in response that torching police cars, throwing debris, writing profanity on government buildings and breaking out the windows of more that 45 downtown businesses and other venues during Saturday's protest warranted the mayor's actions.
Jackson and city officials had hoped to chill free speech of protesters by shutting down downtown Cleveland, sources said, but backed down after the injunction request was filed.
The mayor's supporters say the mayor supports free speech and freedom of assembly and that he simply did what a strong mayor would do to protect the city in issuing the curfew restrictions.
The injunction request says police blocked access to people working downtown to their jobs because of the curfew orders, which is what occurred initially, and that they threatened jail to some people found disobeying the orders, some of them just trying to make a living.
Cleveland is a largely Black major American city of some 385,000 people.
Some 99 protesters, most of them White and residents of Cleveland and its outer suburbs, were arrested at Saturday's riots in Cleveland, 45 of them felony arrests.
Charges range from disorderly conduct to criminal damaging and aggravated rioting.
Police shot off pepper spray and tear gas repeatedly at the protesters at the rally of more than three thousand people, and in some instances unnecessarily, said activists.
One woman purportedly lost her eye from debris.
The violence at Cleveland's rally follows a national pattern of racial unrest since Floyd's death last week by Minneapolis police.
Five people were arrested and two cops injured following two nights of protests over Floyd's death in Columbus, Ohio's state capital. And seven people were shot in Louisville, Kentucky last Thursday, one critically, during a protest for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year Black EMS worker whom Louisville police shot and killed in March when three cops barged into her home.
Other incidents with police and protesters have occurred across the country, including during protests in Oakland, Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Floyd, 46, died Monday after since fired White cop Derek Chauvin, the arresting officer, held his knee on his neck until he killed him, and before a crowd of people as the Black man and father of two pleaded for his life and cried out that he could not breathe.
He was pronounced dead an hour later at an area hospital.
The disturbing video of the incident, taken by a bystander, has shocked the conscience.
Chauvin and the other three involved officers, all of them White, were immediately fired.
Chauvin has since been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter and the other three officers have been charged with aiding and abetting, all four in jail in custody with bail set at $500 thousand for Chauvin, and $750 thousand each for the other three officers, who, if convicted, face up to 40 years in prison.
Protesting in Minneapolis began with rioting and widespread looting last Tuesday night as crowds of protesters clashed with police, who met them with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Multiple businesses were destroyed and an unmanned police station and an airport were set on fire.
The governor has called in the National Guard.
Arrested on a forgery charge over a counterfeit $20 bill, the murder by police of Floyd has caught on nationwide as Black people and others are obviously fed-up with excessive force by police against America's Black community.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
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