Pictured are U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, (in blue suit with blue tie) U.S. District Attorney Steve Dettelbach of the northern district of Ohio (in red tie), and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson (in green suit)
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, 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. Kathy Wray Coleman is a community activist, educator and 21-year investigative journalist who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
CLEVELAND, Ohio- Representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice will hold a open-to-the-public community meeting at 7 pm on Monday, Dec 15 at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Cleveland around the report issued from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder two weeks ago that found systemic problems in the largely White Cleveland Police Department. Doors open at 6:30 pm, organizers of the event said. (Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church is at 3290 East 126th Street near Kinsman Avenue on the city's east side. From downtown Cleveland take Kinsman Avenue to East 126th Street, make a left, and go two blocks to the church).
Holder delivered the DOJ report personally to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson before a press conference that he led in Cleveland with U.S. District Attorney Steve Dettelbach of the northern district of Ohio on Dec 5.
The report's findings on gross impropriety by Cleveland police, which came following a 20-month investigation, are damning, from illegal deadly force, to vicious pistil whippings of adults and children, and "cruel and unusual punishment against the mentally ill."
The controversial report comes on the heels of recent arbitrary police killings in Cleveland, including Tanisha Anderson, whom police killed three weeks ago while she was in custody, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was slain by police on Nov. 22 for sporting a toy pellet gun at a public park on the city's largely White west side.
In 2012, 13-non Black Cleveland police officers gunned down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Tim Russell slinging 137 bullets, a celebrated shooting that followed a car chase that began in downtown Cleveland and ended in neighboring East Cleveland.
Jackson has been openly deviant against the DOJ report, which the feds say will culminate in a consent decree between the U.S. government and the city of Cleveland. The three term Black mayor claims that he and his police department are getting picked on and that the judges and city and the county prosecutors that refuse to push for charges against his cops for killing people, mainly Blacks, are getting a federal pass on an investigation by Holder's office.
Jackson, 67, has also come under fire from the Call and Post Newspaper, a Black Cleveland weekly, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper.
Both newspapers have taken on the mayor in editorials, to say the least, and partly for his stubborn stance in hanging onto White police officials while Cleveland is in a crisis, namely safety director Michael McGrath, a former police chief, and former safety director Martin Flask, now a chief executive assistant to the mayor.
Both Flask and Martin retired a couple of years ago and were re-hired by Jackson to get their pensions and six figure salaries. Prior to recently hiring police chief Calvin Williams the mayor had no appointed Blacks as law director, safety director, chief of police, chief city prosecutor, and ems commissioner in the largely Black major American city. And Williams, say community activists, is now lobbying publicly to protect the White cop that killed Rice, and may need to step down too for trying to manipulate a subsequent grand jury decision on the tragic killing.
