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- The union representing the rank and file of Cleveland police on Wednesday called for the resignation of Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath, an unprecedented announcement that has shaken up City Hall .
"Our members no longer have trust in our chief in his ability to lead and we are asking him to step down," said Jeff Follmer(pictured), president of the Police Patrolmen's Association.
The demand for McGrath to step down comes in the wake of a report by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine released on Tuesday that found violations of departmental policies and procedures by police and systemic problems in the Cleveland Police Department relative to a fatal shooting of two unarmed Black suspects late last year by a group of White Cleveland police officers.
Follmer said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon that even before an internal review committee could meet the union was told that police officers involved in the Nov 29 shooting that left Malissa Williams,30, and Timothy Ray Russell, 43, dead after a high speed chase from Cleveland to a middle school in East Cleveland will be either suspended or terminated.
Police cornered the car Russell was driving, in which Williams was a passenger, near Heritage Middle School in East Cleveland and shot 137 rounds of ammunition at it, gangsta -style. No gun was found at the scene of the shooting and police have said the deadly chase was precipitated when Russell's car backfired.
Williams and Russell were both Black and their families have called for criminal charges against police, a demand that a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury will decide in the near future county prosecutor Tim McGinty has said.
McGrath was not intimidated by Follmer's aggression and said that he will move forward on the investigation on whether the officers involved in the shooting , 12 White and one Hispanic, were unbecoming of police officers and broke departmental rules and city policies.
Follmer is under fire by area Black leaders and community activists for calling the tragic shooting "a good shooting."
Meanwhile Jackson, who is running for reelection to a third term this year, is trying to temper the fallout from the state attorney general report by sending top level City Hall officials throughout the Black community to ask community activists and others to agree that no systemic problems or racism exist in the overwhelmingly White police department, a hard sale for thinking Blacks at least, and one that activists collectively rejected as self serving.
Community activists say that the systemic problems that plague the Cleveland Police Department to the detriment of the Black community and others have been heighten by a lack of diversity of the mayor's top level law enforcement leadership team
Jackson has no Blacks as law director, safety director, chief of police, chief prosecutor or EMS commissioner in a majority Black and impoverished major metropolitan city.
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