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 former biology teavher, Coleman is a legal, political and investigative reporter who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years.
CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, WASHINGTON, D.C. Today, U.S. Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11) (pictured), a Warrensville Heights Democrat whose largely Black 11th congressional district includes Cleveland, announced her support of the Justice in Policing Act, comprehensive legislation introduced today in both the House and Senate that is aimed at increasing police accountability and transparency and building trust between members of law enforcement and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve.
In large part, the Justice in Policing Act, which follows national protests in the past two weeks that followed the killing by a Minneapolis police officer of George Floyd, and ongoing racism and excessive force by police against the Black community countrywide, prohibits federal, state, and local law enforcement from racial, religious and discriminatory profiling, and mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement.
Also a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Fudge, one of two Blacks in Congress from Ohio, is an original cosponsor of the bill, which was introduced by Rep Karen Bass (CA-37), who is also chair of the CBC, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (NY-10), and former presidential candidates Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA).
Bass, Booker and Harris are Black, and Rep. Nader is White, and all four are Democrats, the bill needing passage in the Democratically-controlled House, and the majority Republican Senate before it can be sent to the desk of the president, who could veto any such measure.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, faces Democratic nominee Joe Biden for the 2020 presidential election in November, Biden leading Trump in the polls following fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and the president's unorthodox response to rioting by protesters.
“When we heard George Floyd’s plea, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and witnessed the last eight minutes and 46 seconds of his life, it was hard not to be reminded of the hundreds of unarmed Black men and women killed at the hands of law enforcement,” said Rep. Fudge. “As people all over the country band together in outrage, it is time for Congress to hear and answer their cries for help by taking legislative action. "
Fudge said that "the Justice in Policing Act includes long overdue, bold reforms that will help end the police brutality and racial profiling that have plagued our communities for too many years. "
"By holding police accountable, increasing transparency of police misconduct, banning choke-holds, and making a number of other needed changes," said Fudge, "we can begin to rebuild the severed relationship between the police and the people they are sworn to serve.”
Arrested on a forgery charge over a counterfeit $20 bill, the murder by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of Floyd, 46, has resurrected anger in the Black community relative to Blacks questionably killed by anxious White cops.
This includes Staten Island police murder victim Eric Garner, whom New York police choked to death in 2014, the same year Cleveland police gunned down 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a park and recreation center on the city's largely White west side, and the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old community activist who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas in 2015.
Floyd died May 25 and after Chauvin, the arresting officer, held his knee on his neck until he killed him, and before a crowd of people as the Black man pleaded for his life and cried out that he could not breathe.
Riots immediately broke out in Minneapolis and thereafter in cities across the country, including Cleveland, Columbus, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Oakland, and Indianapolis, which had three fatalities.
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 upped today by a federal judge from $500 thousand to $1 million for Chauvin, as the other three former police officers, who, if convicted, face up to 40 years in prison, were previously handed a bond set at 750 thousand each.
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.
