Pictured are Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cleveland Ward 5 Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland
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- The third of four scheduled open-to-the-public community meetings sponsored by Cleveland City Council's safety committee in response to a U.S. Department of Justice report that found systemic problems in the Cleveland Police Department will be held on Wednesday, January 14, at 6 pm at Elizabeth Baptist Church, 6114 Francis Avenue, in Cleveland Ward 5.
Ward 5 is one of the city's poorest communities, and is represented by Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland (pictured), who is also a host of the event.
Also a licensed attorney, Cleveland was elected in 2005 to serve the Ward 5 community, an area that includes the Central, North Broadway and Kinsman Union neighborhoods. She has been reelected twice by her constituents. Her predecessor, Mayor Frank Jackson, was council president at the time and opted to run for mayor rather than for another council term.
A Democrat like the mayor, and a Jackson ally whom he endorsed to succeed him to lead the ward where he grew up and still lives with his wife and family, Cleveland is also Majority Leader for city council.
Whether the mayor will attend Wednesday's meeting in his own Ward 5 is not known, though he has not attended the first two listening tour meetings sponsored by city council, one held last month in the Lee-Harvard community on the predominantly Black east side, and the other, also held last month, on the largely White west side.
Sources say that the mayor, who held a similar public meeting with county prosecutor Tim McGinty, Community Relations Board Director Blaine Griffin and safety director Michael McGrath on the city's west side in early December, wants to give city council room to also lead around the controversial police brutality issue that has plagued his largely White police force.
In addition to Cleveland, several members of the 17-member Cleveland City Council are expected to attend Wednesday's forum, including Jeff Johnson, Zack Reed, Mamie Mitchell, Kevin Conwell, Safety Committee Chairman Matt Zone, and Council President Kevin Kelley.
The fourth meeting of what city council has dubbed a listening tour is Tuesday, January 20, at 6 pm at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church, 1161 East 105th Street, in Ward 9, which is represented by Councilman Conwell, former chair and now co-chair of the safety committee.
The DOJ's findings on gross impropriety by Cleveland police, which were announced last month by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and 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."
A consent decree between the city of Cleveland and the federal government, and designed to address the DOJ findings, is in the workings.
The controversial report comes on the heels of recent arbitrary police killings in Cleveland, including Tanisha Anderson, whom police killed in November 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 west side.
Ongoing protests around police brutality, and rallies in response by police and their supporters, have been had, in Cleveland, New York City, and elsewhere across the country.
The national spotlight is on Cleveland, a majority Black major American city, relative to the Rice shooting, and the killing of Anderson, among other high profile police killings.
The night of November 29, 2012 13 non-Black Cleveland police officers gunned down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell slinging 137 bullets following a car chase that began in Cleveland and ended in neighboring East Cleveland. Both Russell and Williams were homeless at the time, but not wanted by the law. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
