Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson (in eye glasses), safety director Michael McGraft (in White shirt) and former safety director Martin Flask (in green suit with maroon tie), now a chief executive assistant to the mayor. Data show that Jackson, who is Black, protects these White men at any cost, even rehiring them after both retired, and paying them annual salaries in excess of $120,000 a piece. Before recently hiring a Black police chief following calls for diversity in the top brass by community activists, the Black mayor had no Blacks as law director, safety director, chief prosecutor, chief of police, and ems commissioner in the predominantly Black major metropolitan city, insensitivity to the Black community supported by Black preachers and an all but defunct Cleveland NAACP that is currently under investigation by the national headquarters.
From the Metro Desk of Cleveland Urban News.Com, and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper and newspaper blog. Tel: (216) 659-0473 (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
CLEVELAND, Ohio- Hundreds of people, mainly college students, community activists, union affiliates and a handful of area Black ministers, peacefully rallied against police killings outside and inside of Cleveland City Hall Monday night, and called for the resignations of safety director Michael McGraft, and Martin Flask, the former safety director who is now the chief executive assistant to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson.
"We want accountability and when the system is broken, you get rid of the leaders," said Kathy Wray Coleman of the Imperial Women Coalition while leading chants on the steps of City Hall and demanding the ouster of Flask and McGraft." We are not dumb."
Inside at the regular city council meeting community activists and Councilman Jeff Johnson echoed the sentiment that McGrath and Flask need to go, a posture also demanded at a press conference earlier that day by the attorneys for the family of 12-year-old Cleveland police shooting victim Tamir Rice, and Dr. Jawanza Karriem Colvin, the dynamic young Black pastor at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church on Cleveland's east side.
As Johnson was speaking the entire Jackson administrative team walked out in disgust, prompting Councilman Brian Cummins to say that they have no respect for the community.
"This is disrespectful to the community," said Cummins.
Some 30 of the many protesters there were escorted out of the council meeting by police for demanding justice.
There were over 19 different activists groups represented at the gathering, and there were no arrests.
The protesters were rallying against police brutality nationally and locally, from Michael Brown in Missouri, to the killing death by police of Eric Garner in New York, and recent arbitrary police shootings in Cleveland, including Tanisha Anderson, and Rice, who was slain by Cleveland police for sporting a toy pellet gun at a public park on the city's largely Black west side.
Both Flask and McGrath are White, and Jackson, who is Black, seems to have a fixation with White men, even in the midst of the announcement last week by the U.S. Department of Justice of systemic problems in the largely White Cleveland Police Department from reckless police killings, to the tasering and pistil whipping of people, mainly Black people.
Moreover, neither can get along with the rank and file of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, the police union that says the duo has no respect for the collective bargaining agreement and has contributed to the overall low morale among Cleveland police.
Until recently hiring Black police chief Calvin Williams following demands for diversity among the city's top brass by community activists, Jackson had no Blacks as law director, safety director, chief of police, chief city prosecutor and ems commissioner in a largely Black major American city. And even when he had the opportunity to replace McGrath and Flask because of their retirements a couple of years ago, he re- hired them so that on top of their pensions they could maintain the high paying jobs that exceed salaries of $120,000 a piece, annually, jobs that could support the families of young Black professionals.
And the mayor is supported in his insensitivity to the Black community by some self-serving Blacks that he gives favors to, from Black preachers seeking grant monies from the city and its affiliates, to the all but defunct Cleveland NAACP that has done virtually nothing in at least the last decade and is currently under investigation by the national headquarters.
Both Flask and McGraft also came under fire by Cleveland area community activists, who demanded their resignations in 2009 at a protest in front of the mayor's home during a rally led by the Imperial Women Coalition around police negligence as to the the killings of 11 Black women on Imperial Avenue on the city's east side by since convicted serial killer Anthony Sowell. Following a 2008 rape complaint police went to Sowell's home, and according to a CNN report, smelled death and saw blood, and still released him from custody. He was recaptured a year later, and convicted in 2011 of charges of aggravated murder and rape, among other charges, convictions on 82 of 83 counts, in fact. He sits on death row as his convictions and death sentence are on appeal before the Ohio Supreme Court
(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
