By Kathy Wray Coleman, publisher, editor-n-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper
CLEVELAND,Ohio-Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (pictured) on Tuesday released findings by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI) in a comprehensive 290 page report on the 137-bullets Cleveland police shooting that left unarmed Black suspects Malissa Williams (pictured) and Timothy Ray Russell (pictured) dead following a 23 minute police chase that went from Cleveland to a middle school in the neighboring city of East Cleveland.
Cleveland is a largely Black major metropolitan city and East Cleveland is a small impoverished suburb that is roughly 99 percent Black.
During a press conference at the state crime laboratory in Richfield, Oh. that brought DeWine, a Republican, to the Cleveland area yesterday morning, the former U.S. senator said 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 told reporters. "Clearly officers misinterpreted facts, they failed to follow established rules.”
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, a two-term Black mayor up for reelection this year with no serious competition to date, was annoyed with DeWine's report and branded it bull during a press conference he held Tuesday afternoon flanked by Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath, who is White.
As a civil suit by the victims families looms, McGrath denied any wrong doing or incompetence by the mayor's top brass including himself and said that his officers simply failed to follow established policies and procedures the night of the shooting late last year.
Jackson said that no favoritism will be shown one way or another as to the deadly force internal investigation by the Office of Professional Standards for the city of Cleveland.
The mayor literally jumped to the aid of McGrath when reporters asked during his press conference if the resignation by his police chief might be coming given the findings by the office of the state attorney general, and then he turned focus back to his police officers.
“If officers are within the box they will be protected and if they are out of the box there will be consequences,” said Jackson, a former Cleveland City Council president who grew up in the ghettos of Cleveland and is a protege of the city's Old Black Political Guard, a power group of area Black politicians and some of the same people that helped the late Carl B. Stokes become the mayor of Cleveland and the first Black mayor of a major American city when then majority White Cleveland voters elected him to office in 1967.
Though popular, the mayor is not without criticism.
A Democrat, Jackson has no Blacks as law director, safety director, chief of police or chief city prosecutor in the city where Blacks are disproportionately prosecuted and sentenced, a gesture that now has him under fire by community activists and Black criminal defense attorneys like Michael Nelson Sr., who complained to legal redress committee members of the Cleveland branch NAACP during a community forum on the shootings Monday night.
Lawyers for Williams and Russell responded to DeWine's report with their continual claims of police malfeasance, a failure to train police efficiently, and outright statutory and constitutional infractions by Cleveland police and city officials.
The family of Williams renewed the call for felony murder charges against police.
“They murdered Malissa and Timothy because they ran from police probably out of fear and we want them charged with murder,” said Walter Jackson, who is of no relation to Frank Jackson but is an uncle of Williams, and her mother's brother.
Cleveland police union president Patrick D' Angelo quickly called the shooting justified and is now speaking publicly for the union on the divisive issue in place of Cleveland Patrolmen's Association President Jeff Follmer, who took criticism for antagonizing community activists, and the shooting victims family members by calling the killings “a good shooting.”
The incident began at 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 initially, data show. The chase continued over a distance of more than 20 miles with 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.
But while 93 of the 106 officers backed off, 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.
Those 13 officers, 12 White and one Hispanic, and all on desk duty that keeps them out of trouble, all told DeWine that they feared for their lives, though after meeting with their attorneys.
One of the officers jumped a top of Russell’s 1979 Chevy Malibu and fired 49 rounds, most through the front windshield, Chief McGrath admitted.
Williams, 30, a passenger in the car, and Russell died at the scene, one shot 23 times and the other 24.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, publisher, editor-n-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper
By Johnette E. Jernigan, Cleveland Urban News. Com 
