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-Three young White men that were active in the Occupy Cleveland movement who previously pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb Route 82 bridge in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in April in Sagamore Hills between Cleveland and Akron, Oh. with dummy explosives provided by an FBI informant were sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Court Judge David Dowd Jr. to prison terms below what prosecutors had requested.
Akron is a city some 35 miles south of Cleveland.
Brandon Baxter, 21, of Lakewood, Oh., was sentenced to 9 years and 9 months in prison and Connor Stephens, 21, of Berea, Oh., received an 8 year prison sentence.
Ring Leader Douglas White, 27, of Indianapolis, In., was handed a sentence of 11 and 1/2 years in prison.
Federal prosecutors had requested 19 to 30 years but Dowd, a federal district judge out of the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland, opted for lesser time.
A fourth suspect, Anthony Hayne, 35, of Cleveland, has not yet been sentenced after pleading guilty in July and agreeing to help prosecutors.
Fifth suspect Joshua Safford, 23, of Cleveland, is undergoing psychiatric analysis and his case is still pending.
The guilty pleas earlier this year from those sentenced came after former pleas of not guilty and claims by defense attorneys, including Stephens defense attorney Terry Gilbert of Cleveland, that the men were victims of a sting by federal authorities at the hands of paid FBI informant Shaquille Azir, 39, who found them housing and fed them food and drugs.
That alleged sting, defense attorneys once said, was part of a conspiracy to ruin the thriving Occupy Cleveland movement. And that they did, say community activists.
"Protests are necessary but they need to be peaceful and non-violent," said Larry Bresler, a Cleveland community activist who leads Organize Ohio and the Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. "And yes, I believe that this incident destroyed the Occupy Cleveland movement."
No protests, however, got violent in Cleveland, partly because of a Black mayor who grew up in the ghettos of Cleveland himself, and lives there now with his wife and other family members, and is skilled in dealing with community conflict, no matter how aggressive it might ultimately become.
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
