Pictured is Cleveland police shooting victim Daniel Ficker
(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com). Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM- Cleveland, Ohio-The family of Cleveland police shooting victim Daniel Ficker, who was killed at his home in Parma, Ohio on July 4, 2011, will host the fifth annual memorial celebration to remember Daniel Ficker on Sunday, June 26 from 1 pm-5 pm in Westlake, Ohio at the Clague Park Cabin, 1400 Clague Road.(CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE DANIEL FICKER MEMORIAL GATHERING . For media inquires, please call Bernie Rolen at 440-773-6102 or email her at bern316@cox.net).
"On the fourth of July this year, it will be five years that my son Dan has been gone," said Bernie Rolen, Ficker's mother. "We all miss him dearly and the memorial event is intended to be a day at the park for the whole family to enjoy as Dan always did with his family."
Community activists say Ficker and his family deserve justice.
"We continue our fight for justice for Daniel Ficker and his family, and others killed by Cleveland police in a manner that we deem inappropriate," said greater Cleveland community activist Kathy Wray Coleman of the Imperial Women Coalition.
Coleman has led forums and rallies with activists groups such as Black on Black Crime Inc, the Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party and the Carl Stokes Brigade in support of Ficker and a host of others killed by Cleveland police.
Others of whom Coleman has led rallies include Cleveland police killing victims Malissa Williams, Timothy Russell, rapper Kenneth Smith, Brandon Jones, Tanisha Anderson, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice. All of them are Black, unlike Ficker, who was White.
"We support victims of alleged police abuse across racial and gender lines," said Coleman, a longtime journalist who trained for 17 years at the Cleveland-based Call and Post Newspaper, and who now edits Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper.
Ficker was killed on July 4, 2011 at his home in Parma, Ohio after the cops approached him and allegedly harassed him, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of the family by Cleveland Civil Rights and criminal defense attorney Terry Gilbert.
He was 27-years-old.
To ultimately kill him, police crossed jurisdictions from Cleveland to Ficker's home in Parma, a largely White working class suburb of Cleveland.
One of the officer's was on patrol on Cleveland. The other was off duty.
Police say he allegedly took some jewelry at a party one of the cops at issue was attending along with Ficker and his fiancee, the mother of his two young children.
Gilbert denies such claim and has said that Ficker is innocent and was killed in cold blood after Cleveland police allegedly started a fight with him in Parma, and where they had no place business going to in an effort to allegedly start a fight, particularly without first notifying police dispatchers of an alleged crime.
No stolen jewelry surface at the killing site or otherwise, and police and the city say Ficker was allegedly at fault.
The police officers involved in the killing escaped Cuyahoga County grand jury indictments on criminal charges and were not disciplined in any manner by the city, data show.
Both police officers have since retired, or quit.
Since then, and following a number of questionable police killings, including Malissa Williams and Tim Russell in 2012 and Tamir Rice and Tanisha Anderson in 2014, the city and the U.S. Department of Justice have entered into a court-monitored consent decree for police reforms.
In addition to his mother, fiancee and children, Ficker left behind a father, Dennis Ficker, who, like his mother, has been actively fighting with community activists for legal redress.
A surviving sister is also dedicated to the cause.(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com). Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
