Pictured is convicted serial killer and death row inmate Anthony Sowell, who strangled 11 Black women to death, beginning in 2008, at his since demolished home on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio on the city's largely Black east side. He raped three others, also at his home. His convictions on 82 of 83 counts by a Cuyahoga County common pleas jury, including 11 counts of aggravated murder and three counts of rape, and his death sentence, are on appeal before the Ohio Supreme Court.
By Cleveland Urban News. Com and the Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio- Local community activists and family members of murdered Black women that rallied Thursday, Oct 29 on Imperial Avenue on Cleveland's largely Black east side to commemorate the 6th Anniversary of the Imperial Avenue Murders were met with what they say was orchestrated harassment by some 11 majority White Cleveland cops, some of them with their hands on the gun trigger.
Practically all of Cleveland's mainstream media were there, but for different reasons, most of them seeking to promote flowers and balloons over substantive changes regarding increased violence against poor Black inner city women, activists said..
And seven police cruisers were there too, compliments of city officials that activists say promised to send White cops to the rally to try to intimidate them for seeking public policy changes and other initiatives around the shocking murders.
"It was a confusing situation," said activist Frances Caldwell, also the executive director of the Cleveland African-American Museum who told Cleveland Urban News.Com that activists were clearly harassed by police and the Rev Jimmy Gates, a Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson ally and convicted felon who served time in prison for taking bribes as the former assistant director of the city's water department r under former mayor Jane Campbell .
Nobody got arrested.
Police and Gates demanded that the activists, some 50 of them, rally only where they were told, while Gates, a lapdog for the mayor, could do as he pleased.
It was all planned, say activists, to seek to silence free speech and to exercise what that say is the arbitrary and capricious abuse of power by police and city officials.
And Gates walked around stalking and threatening women activists, they said.
Some complied with the police harassment, and others refused. But all of the activists targeted, mainly Black women, said that they felt violated.
"This is a clear violation of the first amendment of the United States Constitution, including the provision for the freedom to assemble and protest on issues of public concern free from harassment and intimidation, and it was also a violation, we believe, of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment as to targeting Black female activists," said Kathy Wray Coleman, a key organizer of the rally and a founding member of the Imperial Women Coalition, a grassroots and women's rights advocacy group established in 2009 relative to unprecedented murders.
Coleman said that activists and family members of murder victims will meet next week to decide whether to picket the home of Cleveland Mayor Jackson for a third time pertaining to the murders and malfeasance by his majority White police department, or to call for the immediate resignation of new Cleveland Fourth District Police Commander Brandon Kutz, who is White in an east side police district, the city's largest, that is 99 percent Black.
Sowell, 56, was convicted in 2011 on 82 of 83 counts, including 11 counts of aggravated murder of the 11 Black women that he strangled to death at his since demolished home on the city's east side where the annual anniversary rally is held, and three counts of rape as to the rape of three other Black women, also at his home. His convictions, including the death penalty imposed by a Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas jury, are on appeal before the Ohio Supreme Court. (Editor's note;Six of the 11 murdered Black women were killed by Sowell after police released him from custody in 2008. He was arrested a year later on another rape complaint).
Oct 29. marked the 6th anniversary since 2009 when the first of serial bodies were pulled from Sowell's home on the now infamous Imperial Avenue, and city officials and police, say activists, want the community to forget and move on.
Other community activists upset over the police and City Hall harassment Thursday's anniversary rally include Bettie Simpson, Lavitta Murray, who protested there with a bullhorn, Minister Gwen Pitts, Valerie and Dr. Stewart Robinson, Donnie Pastard, Erica Connors,Bill Swain, and Marva Patterson.
Family members of greater Cleveland Black women murdered, including Angelique Malone, whose mother Christine Malone 43, was one of four women, three Black and one White, killed in 2013, were also upset. Those women were murdered by a still at large serial killer between late March and mid May, and along a mile long strip beginning bat East 93rd Street and Bessemer Avenue in Cleveland, also on the city's east side.
"He [Rev Gates} came up on the Reverend Pamela Pinkney-Butts as the program was beginning for the rally," said Malone, 29, and he told her to shut the hell up."
Gates, said Coleman, is a fraud, a thief, and a hypocrite who also harassed the women during last year's anniversary rally.
Activists said also that they will seek criminal charges against Gates, whom Coleman called "potentially dangerous, and seemingly out of control."
Gates' role, said Coleman, was to harass the women activists for the mayor and police, and to lure the city's racist mainstream media into pushing his menial agenda over the activist women's demands for changes in public policy around the murders. Activists also want reward monies for a suspect as to the East 93rd Street Serial Murders, and for the mayor to fully implement the 27 recommendations by his appointed three-member committee on the Imperial Avenue Murders.
Pinkney-Butts said after the rally that Gates, an unemployed Black Baptist preacher who found God after he was released from prison a couple of years ago, menaced her, and is another example of the intimidation that Black women experience at the hands of some angry and out of control men.
Pinkney-Butts said that Gates is a decoy designed to cover up documented impropriety around the Imperial Avenue Murders, and in exchange for grant monies to keep him afloat.
What fiscal kickbacks he may or may not have received from the city to harass activists women at the rally on Thursday is not yet public record, data show.
"They do not want the truth to come out about what really happened to the 11 Black women murdered by serial killer Anthony Sowell on Imperial Avenue," said Pinkney-Butts.
Another issue of interest to the activists is suspected East Cleveland serial killer Michael Madison, who is
custody on a $6 million bond.
Madison is accused of killing three Black women in 2013 and wrapping their bodies in Black trash bags. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
