Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest, and the most read independent digital news sites in Ohio. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief. Coleman trained for 17 years as a reporter with the Call and Post Newspaper and is an investigative and political reporter with a background in legal and scientific reporting. She is also a former 15-year public school biology teacher.
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelly has appointed Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin, a former executive director of the community relations board under current Mayor Frank Jackson, to lead city council's safety committee in place of former councilman Matt Zone, a west side councilman who resigned last week to take a job with Western Reserve Land Conservancy.
The safety committee chair, who oversees the city's safety forces for city council but has no direct authority over them, is a highly sought after committee assignment
Griffins' new committee assignment comes as the city remains a party to a consent decree for police reforms with the U.S. Department of Justice, which came about in 2015 following questionable Cleveland police killings of unarmed Blacks, including Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell in 2012, and Tanisha Anderson and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in November of 2014, all of them shot and killed by police but Anderson, 38.
Anderson was slammed to the concrete and killed by police at her east side family home after the family called for mental heath assistance.
Zone replaced Ward 9 councilman Kevin Conwell as safety committee chair after Kelley, a likely mayoral candidate in 2021, among others, and a Jackson ally, assigned Conwell, who had been safety committee chair for some nine years, as assistant safety committee chair under Zone.
On the city council since 2017, Griffin is Black, as is Conwell, who represents Ward 9, which includes the historic Glenville Neighborhood.
Cleveland is a largely Black major American city of some 385,000 people.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest, and the most read independent digital news sites in Ohio. 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.
