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.

DeWine's report cites numerous violations of departmental policies and procedures by Cleveland police including the policy that permits only three police cars relative to police chases without supervisory permission.

Outraged over the shooting, community activists have been up in arms ever since and want criminal charges brought against  police.

"A baby could have been in that car," said Community Activist Roz McAllister.

As unrest continues to grow in the Black community of greater Cleveland an internal investigation by Cleveland officials on whether the officers involved should be disciplined is ongoing, Mayor Jackson said Tuesday.

East Cleveland Councilwoman Barbara Thomas led a group at an East Cleveland City Council meeting Tuesday night angry that the shootings occurred in East Cleveland with community activists calling the scene of the shooting  near Terrace and Lee Roads  "a war zone."

U.S. Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-11), a Warrensville Hts. Democrat whose majority Black 11th congressional district includes Cleveland and its eastern suburbs and who is also chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, blasted DeWine's report as frivolous and irresponsible.

“I am disappointed with the Ohio attorney general's report on his review of the police shootings of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams," said Fudge in a press release to Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read online Black newspaper. “A chronology of events is certainly welcome, but without a thorough forensic investigation, drawing conclusions primarily based on interviews and suggesting that only the system was at fault leaves much to be desired.”

Outspoken Cleveland Ward 2 Councilman Zack Reed said that DeWine did nothing more than “take the easy way out.”

Whether Reed or the other eight Black members of the 19 member all Democratic Cleveland City Council who like Jackson are up for reelection this year want criminal charges against police remains to be seen. Other than Reed, who vacillates, many of them follow the

lead of Jackson, whose biggest ever challenge of his political career is now before him, whether he has internalized it or not.

Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, who chairs the safety committee and has said nothing on his position on the shooting, is busy pushing for the adoption of  new city ordinances to heightened criminal penalties against the majority Black people that ride RTA buses, and in the absence of first ensuring seemingly  necessary community relations training for Regional Transit Authority bus drivers in the wake of recent fallout and violence between bus drivers and passengers, mainly young Black female passengers.

DeWine's celebrated investigation covered interviews of police officers and ranking personnel from Cleveland, East Cleveland, the RTA, the State Highway Patrol, and Bratenahl, as well as dispatchers, among others.

A review of images from 53 surveillance cameras from cruisers, government agencies, and private businesses was also undertaken, DeWine said, after branding the shooting “a tragedy for Timothy Russell, a tragedy for Malissa Williams, and a tragedy for their families."

Some 243 items were collected and viewed or tested by the BCI, the report said.

DeWine does have a link to Cleveland police.

The Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, the union that represents the rank and file,  endorsed him for state attorney general in 2010, a conflict say community activists, some of whom say his report was really structured in an effort to unofficially exonerate police before the public but packaged as highlighting intrinsic police problems that could be gleaned even on the surface of the fiasco.

Not all Black leaders were as critical of DeWine with some saying that no entity or person associated with the shooting escapes blame, including a docile Black Cleveland community.

State Representative Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat, said during an interview yesterday that DeWine's report shows confusion the night of the shooting and that “the system failed all of us."

Cuyahoga Prosecutor Tim McGinty, who like DeWine was endorsed for his seat by the Cleveland police union, and who also took campaign monies for his election as county prosecutor last year, said that neither Russell nor Williams deserved to die and that evidence will be presented in the near future to a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury for a potential indictment of the police officers that did the shooting.

Community activists have called for McGinty, 61, to step aside and permit a special prosecutor to take over due to the conflict, though mainstream media and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper that publicly admitted that McGinty was a source to it as a judge for nearly 17 years before retiring last year and getting elected as county prosecutor, are downplaying his relationship with police.

State law permits a judge of a county common pleas court, such as the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, to appoint a grand jury foreman not originally on the panel, and without that intrusion, the grand jury so impaneled chooses the person itself.

As a prior common pleas court judge, McGinty did just that, and appointed former Cleveland NAACP President Stanley Miller as a grand jury foreman where Miller then led indictments against Blacks that accused Cleveland police of impropriety that prior county grand juries would not indict.

Miller has since resigned as executive director of the local chapter of the nation's most prominent Civil Rights institution and Sheila Wright was handed the job last month with the support of the Rev Hilton Smith, who was elected last year after longtime president George Forbes resigned.

Now a part time lawyer and still general council of the Call and Post Newspaper, Ohio and Cleveland's most notable Black press, Forbes has taken a position on the shooting, and neither has the newspaper, which has distributions also in Columbus and Cincinnati, Oh.

Reach Cleveland Urban News.Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by phone at 216-659-0473.