Pictured are Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelley and Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin, a Black east side councilman
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio- Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelley and Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin, head of city's council's public safety committee, are discussing a possible change in Mayor Frank Jackson's chase policy and held a press conference on the controversial issue on Friday in the Tremont neighborhood on the city's largely White west side.
They really lack authority to alter the policy.
The current policy, adopted in 2014 by Jackson behind a 2012 police chase that left two unarmed Blacks dead and shot up by 13 non-Black cops slinging 137 bullets at them, essentially precludes a police chase absent suspicion that the suspect has either committed a violent felony or is under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Officers must also get supervisor approval to further a chase, the policy says, and road conditions, weather and other factors must be taken into consideration.
Killed were Malissa Williams, 30, and Timothy Russell, 43.
A likely mayoral candidate, Kelley wants the policy in its current form lifted all together, and Griffin, who allegedly hopes to become city council president if Kelley wins as mayor, says he will begin holding hearings this week to take a closer look at the issue.
Community activists will picket on Wednesday, March 17 at 4:45 pm in the parking lot of Heritage Middle School to oppose any changes in the policy.
They say that Griffin in particular should be ashamed of himself since he is Black.
"Unnecessary chases are not good for the community," said Black on Black Crime President Alfred Porter Jr., who will lead Wednesday's protest at Heritage Middle School.
Porter said that "I really expected more out of Councilman Blaine Griffin in his leadership role as chair of city council's safety committee and if he does anything to change the policy and hurt the Black community we will remember him at election time this year."
Black on Black Crime founder Art McKoy questioned Griffin's actions, and said "Blaine is wrong."
Also on board with Councilmen Kelley and Griffin regarding the chase policy is Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack, who lobbied Kelley to hold Friday's press conference with Griffin regarding the chase policy.
McCormack says cars are getting hijacked in his neighborhood and crime is escalating.
The police union says its hands are tied and that the policy subordinates police to the suspects they pursue, and limits their authority to pursue suspects without restrictions.
Proponents of the policy say that in some instances police are misusing the policy to ignore crime because they think the policy makes no sense and is an abuse of discretion by the mayor.
Kelley is siding with police.
“We need to send a message loud and clear: Enough is enough. If you commit a crime in Cleveland, Ohio, you will be pursued, you will be caught and you will be prosecuted,” Kelley said Friday, though the policy allows chases for violent felonies and really seeks to stop unnecessary and sometimes deadly car chases for minor misdemeanor crimes or no alleged crime at all.
Griffin is a Black east side councilman and a former Community Relations Board director under Jackson, a four-term Black mayor whom sources say will not seek reelection this year.
Kelley and McCormack are both White west side councilman.
In actuality the policy was issued by the mayor and unless city council pursues an ordinance in an attempt to usurp Jackson's authority, only he can change the policy.
Community activists remain leery of any changes to the chase policy in an election year for mayor and city council members, a policy that the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association and its leader Jeff Fulmer, vehemently oppose.
The Cleveland NAACP has has not responded on this latest issue one way or another.
At least one councilman, Ward 10 Councilman Mike Polensek, a White east side councilman, has said police have been negligent relative to chases and it has resulted in the death of too many innocent bystanders.
On that deadly November night in 2012 that left Williams and Russell dead, a White cop, according to public records, claims he mistook Russell's 1979 Chevy Malibu Classic backfiring near the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland and began pursuit of the homeless couple, also radioing the dispatch to call for backup, which came in droves, precautionary measures be damned.
Williams was a passenger in the car.
Some 276 patrol officers were working the night of the high speed 22 min. chase that ended in the Heritage Middle School parking lot in neighboring and impoverished East Cleveland, a Cleveland suburb, Williams and Russell chased by some 64 patrol cars, and literally fleeing for their lives.
The city later settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $3 million that was split between the families of the two victims, Russell leaving behind a grown disabled son.
Of the 13 Cleveland officers that fired the combined 137 shots at Russell and Williams, 12 White and one Hispanic, six were fired, including Michael Brelo, who jumped on the hood of Russell's car and shot 49 times through the front windshield, both Russell and Williams dying at the scene.
Five of the six officers fired for their roles in the shooting had their jobs reinstated in 2017 by an arbitrator and are Michael Farley, Erin O'Donnell, Christopher Ereg, Wilfredo Diaz, and Brian Sabolik.
The sixth officer, officer Brelo, was not reinstated after he was fired roughly a year following an acquittal in May of 2015 on two counts of voluntary manslaughter in a bench trial before Democratic Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell, an acquittal that brought about community protests and some 71 arrests, mainly for minor infractions with police, though a few protesters faced felony charges.
Activists and some Black leaders, led by some Black members of 17-member Cleveland City Council, all of them Democrats like O'Donnell, later blocked the common pleas judge as to his 2016 bid for a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court, his second bid, and a race he lost by less than 24,000 votes.
A third bid undertaken last year by the judge for a Supreme Court seat met the same opposition, O'Donnell, in turn, losing to incumbent Justice Sharon Kennedy, a Republican.
Cleveland police supervisors Patricia Coleman and Randolph Dailey, Michael Donegan, Jason Edens and Paul Wilson all initially faced misdemeanor dereliction of duty charges regarding their roles in the celebrated shooting.
But charges were dismissed against Edens, Wilson and Donegan, with Sgt. Coleman subsequently winning an acquittal by an East Cleveland jury, and Sgt. Dailey's case never getting duly prosecuted after Coleman won her case.
Former county prosecutor Tim McGinty, criticized for scheming and preventing felony indictments against the cops at issue, and also protecting the rookie cop that, in 2014, shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, was voted out of office in 2016 in favor of fellow Democrat and current county prosecutor Mike O'Malley.
The celebrated 137 shots shooting fiasco is the impetus for a court-monitored consent decree for police reforms with the city of Cleveland and the U.S. Department of Justice, it along with so many other excessive force police killings in Cleveland of unarmed Blacks including 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Brandon Jones, rapper Kenneth Smith and Tanisha Anderson.
Other than Anderson 38, whom police slammed to the concrete and killed at the family home on Cleveland's east side in November 2014, the year Tamir was shot and killed, all were killed by gun fire from anxious trigger-happy cops.
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.
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