By Kathy Wray Coleman , Editor of Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog,.Com
CLEVELAND,Ohio- The unprecedented shooting of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams (pictured) and Timothy Russell (pictured with beard) by a group of White Cleveland police officers who gunned them down gangsta-style late last year and shot off 137 rounds of ammunition has brought the FEDS to Cleveland to investigate the city's police department, officials from the U.S. Department of Justice announced at a press conference in Cleveland on Wednesday.
The investigation will be led by assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez (pictured with eye glasses), U.S. District Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Steven Dettelbach told community activists and other community affiliates at a meeting sponsored Thursday afternoon by the Cleveland Chapter NAACP.
Perez reports to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the nation's first Black U.S. attorney general, whom President Obama tapped for his administration after taking office for a first term in 2009.
Among those at the meeting with Dettelbach were Cleveland NAACP President the Rev. Hilton Smith, first vice president the Rev. Dr. E. Theophilus Caviness, who also leads the Cleveland Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Community Activists Frances Caldwell, Marva Patterson, David Patterson and Amy Hurd.
Federal officials have said that the Russell-Williams shooting was what catapulted the investigation and that it includes a complete review of policies and practices in the Cleveland Police Department, including whether there was negligence around the Imperial Ave. Murders, murders of 11 Black women that were undertaken by since convicted serial killer Anthony Sowell and uncovered at his home on Imperial Ave. in 2009.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty, however, retains control over any criminal investigation in cooperation to what a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury will do as to any grand jury indictment on criminal charges of the 13 all non-Black Cleveland police officers that killed Williams and Russell on Nov. 29 following a high speed car chase.
Part of the federal investigation, which began in Cleveland last week, includes police policing police with supervised job monitoring by federal authorities such as riding in patrol cars while cops are on duty.
The Cleveland NAACP and area Black elected officials, led by Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, a Warrensville Hts. Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, had lobbied for federal intervention, and they got it last week, though the FEDS intervened in 2002 and did little on nothing thereafter, community activists complain.
But this time, the FEDS said last week, is different, given the magnitude of the Russell-Williams shooting, and repeated deadly force shootings by Cleveland police, notwithstanding the police killings of 15-year old Brandon McCloud in 2005 in his own bedroom, 27-year-old and father of two Daniel Ficker in 2011, and aspiring 20-year-old rapper Kenneth Smith just last May.
People are getting solicited by federal authorities to meet to get information on Cleveland police to further the investigation.
Community Activist Donna Walker Brown, a Black Republican, said that she and other community activists want protection for community residents against any police retaliation for meeting with the FEDS to speak with federal authorities, which might be perceived by Cleveland police as snitching.
"We need to know how people are protected from retaliation by police," said Walker Brown, who added that the FEDS are in town to grandstand and will do nothing but "rubber stamp Mayor Jackson and his police force."
Outspoken Police Patrolmen's Association President Jeffrey Follmer, under fire in the Black community for publicly called the shooting of Williams and Russell a good shooting, has not been vocal on the federal involvement and on what implications in might have on the police collective bargaining agreement, if any.
Caught between a rock and hard place on whether to back the police rank and file or the demands by the Black community for an overhaull of the majority White Cleveland Police Department, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson told the Huffington Post on Thursday that he welcomes the federal oversight and that "it is vital that there is a level of support between police and the community."
Last week community activists and deadly shooting victims family members. including the Williams family and the attorney for the Russell family, attended the regular Cleveland NAACP meeting to complain about a plethora of alleged excessive force issues by Cleveland police and more than 4,000 complaints of police misconduct, a great many of them completely ignored by Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath and the all non-Black law enforcement leaders ship team appointed by Jackson.
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