Pictured are deadly Cleveland police shooting victims Malissa Williams and Timothy Ray Russell
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief
Kathy Wray Coleman is a community activist and 20 year investigative journalist who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
CLEVELAND, Ohio- A Cuyahoga County Grand Jury on Friday handed down an indictment on two counts of voluntary manslaughter against one of 13 non- Black Cleveland police officers that gunned down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Tim Ray Russell the night of Nov. 29, 2012 with a hail of 137 bullets but freed the other 12 cops of any charges, a decision that has heighten racial unrest in the predominantly Black major metropolitan city. (Editor's note: Community Activist Art McKoy of Black on Black Crime Inc. will lead a picket on the steps of Cleveland City Hall, 601 Lakeside Ave in Cleveland, at noon on Monday, June 2, 2014. The contact phone number for the protest is (216) 704-5036 for more information).
Prosecutors had sought a two-count murder indictment for Patrolman Michael Brelo, among other charges, but the grand jury opted for the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Manslaughter is a first degree felony in Ohio that carries a possible prison sentence of three to 10 years.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty told reporters during a press conference afterwards on Friday that his office did not recommend any charges against the 12 officers that escaped indictments, 11 White and one Hispanic.
Some community members and community activists called the grand jury decision and McGinty's refusal to seek charges against the 12 police officers at issue unjust, racist and outright shameful.
"The neo- Nazi's won and it is unbelievable that only one police officer faces felony charges and the other 12 got away with killing two unarmed Black people," said Community activist Pierre Nappier, who had protested over the deadly shooting with Cleveland area religious groups such as the United Pastors in Mission and the Baptist Ministers Alliance and with members of the Cleveland Chapter NAACP and greater Cleveland grassroots groups including Black on Black Crime Inc, the Carl Stokes Brigade, the Imperial Women Coalition, Revolution Books, Peace in the Hood, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, and the Oppressed People's Nation.
Nappier blamed Black leaders and Black politicians and said that the Black community should have been more aggressive leading up to the grand jury decision.
"They are still acting like slaves," said Nappier.
Cleveland NAACP Criminal Justice Committee Chairperson Attorney Michael Nelson Sr. told reporters that the indictments did not go far enough.
The lone patrolman charged, Brelo jumped aboard the hood of the 1979 Chevy Malibu driven by Russell and fired 49 shots through the windshield, though by then the car was stopped, and even McGinty admitted to reporters that neither Williams nor Russell posed any immediate threat.
Brelo's shooting escapade followed a 23 minute high speed chase that began in downtown Cleveland and ended in the parking lot at Heritage Middle School in neighboring East Cleveland.
Police say they they thought they heard a gun shot and initiated a chase, but it was allegedly Russell's car backfiring.
No gun was found at the deadly scene.
All 13 of the cops that shot Williams and Russell that night, including Brelo, told the grand jury that they feared for their lives and believed that Williams and Russell, and not fellow cops, were slinging bullets gangsta-style at Heritage Middle School the night in question. Some of the officers even cried to the television cameras, before the grand jury convened.
Russell,43 and Williams, 30, were killed in a fetal position in Russell's car, and died on the scene, Russell shot 23 times and Williams, 24.
Also charged on Friday were five police supervisors, but on second degree misdemeanor charges of dereliction of duty. They are sergeants Patricia Coleman, Randolph Daley, Jason Edens, Michael Donegan and Lt.Paul Wilson
The police supervisors, other than Donegan, who was fired last year, have been placed on restricted duty while Brelo has been suspended without pay. Those supervisors were among nine involved in the tragic episode that were suspended last year, with two demoted, some of them still fighting the disciplinary measures.
How any potential misdemeanor convictions, which carry a possible fine and up to 90 days in jail, will impact their employment status is not clear, though a felony conviction for Brelo is automatic termination under state law.
All 12 police officers that got off still face possible disciplinary charges, said Police Chief Calvin Williams at a press conference on Friday.
Calvin Williams, who is no relation to Malissa Williams and is the only Black among the top brass of the Cleveland Police Department, called the grand jury decision "a step toward healing our community."
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty, who was endorsed for county prosecutor in 2012 by the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association and whom its union president Jeffery Follmer said had pledged to protect the officers at issue, did just that, keeping 12 of them from indictments, while throwing Brelo and the five supervisors to the wolves.
Follmer has defended the 13 police officers, hook, line and sinker and has publicly called the unprecedented shooting, "a good shooting."
The victims family members remain up in arms.
“They murdered Malissa and Timothy because they ran from police probably out of fear,” Walter Jackson, Williams' uncle, told Cleveland Urban News.Com in an interview before Friday's indictments.
Prominent Cleveland Attorney Terry Gilbert, who unsuccessfully prosecuted a civil suit for wrongful imprisonment on behalf of the son of Sam Shepherd and has won multi-million dollar verdicts on Cleveland excessive force cases, represents the Russell estate relative to an affiliated lawsuit alleging excessive force, among other claims.
"They should at least be charged with negligent homicide," Gilbert told Cleveland Urban News.Com in an interview prior to Friday's grand jury decision. He told Cleveland Urban News.Com earlier this week that the Jackson administration is stubborn in settling excessive force cases.
Jackson's predecessor, former mayor Jane Campbell, was more amenable than Jackson to settling meritorious excessive force cases, sad Gilbert, most of the plaintiffs Black.
Attorneys Tyrone Reed and David Malik, also a heavy hitter like Gilbert, filed the suit on behalf of the Malissa Williams family.
The City of Cleveland this week moved to have both federal lawsuits dismissed, an unlikely gesture, legal experts have said.
The incident began at or about 10:26 pm on Nov. 29, 2012 when police allegedly heard the car that Russell was driving backfire, though that claim was not made to dispatchers, or even raised initially, data say. The high speed chase continued from downtown Cleveland for over a distance of more than 20 miles with some 62 police vehicles and a total of an alleged 106 police officers, most from Cleveland, others from Bratenahl, and other units from East Cleveland in hot pursuit as Russell and Williams fled for their lives.
They ended up in a school parking lot, and then the execution style killing began.
But while 93 of the 106 officers backed off as some supervisors demanded by radio, the infamous 13, all Cleveland police officers and many of them veteran cops, began shooting in a 17 second gun spree that was raining bullets, if not hailing them.
Attorney General Mike DeWine help clear the 12 officers at issue , some say, and released findings last year by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI) in a comprehensive 290 page report where he laid blame on the administration of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and what he said are infrastructure problems in the Cleveland Police Department, a claim the mayor has publicly denied.
Jackson, who is Black and began a third four-year term in January, has not publicly commented on the grand jury decision, though he and McGinty led a forum Thursday evening on violence at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church on Cleveland's largely Black east side. The 137 shots case was not mentioned though and the community was not allowed to ask questions at the gathering, community activists said.
DeWine, a Republican and former U.S. senator, said around the time his controversial report had been released that his investigation reveals systemic failures in the overwhelmingly White Cleveland Police Department, and an entourage of routine violations of departmental policies and procedures.
“We have to have a debate here in Cleveland about the systemic problems we have here in Cleveland,” DeWine said. "Clearly officers misinterpreted facts, they failed to follow established rules.”
Outspoken Cleveland Ward 2 Councilman Zack Reed said that DeWine did nothing more than “take the easy way out.”
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief
Pictured are Cleoford "Zeke" Forbes (in stripped tie), a former Cleveland Municipal Clerk of Court, 
