Vol. 79/No. 22 June 15, 2015
Russell and Williams, both unarmed, died in a hail of 137 bullets after being chased at high speed through this city’s streets by as many as 62 cop cars. Brelo fired 49 shots. Cuyahoga County Judge John O’Donnell found him not guilty of felony voluntary manslaughter in a nonjury bench trial.
Three days after Belo’s acquittal, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and the U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement over a pattern of excessive force and civil rights violations by the city’s police department. The consent decree was based on a Justice Department report issued in December following an investigation initiated in the wake of the killings of Williams and Russell.
The agreement is an effort by the government to rein in the police, in response to the rising struggle around the country against cop brutality and abuse. Under the consent decree, the Cleveland Police Department is supposed to institute new policies, such as not firing guns from and at moving vehicles and prohibiting use of force on people who are handcuffed — with some exceptions.
But as many workers know from long experience, such agreements don’t change the basic class character and bias of the cops and courts.
“I already knew what the verdict was going to be,” Jerry Townsend, a self-employed African-American construction worker who lives on this city’s predominantly Black east side, told the Militant May 25. “They convict people all the time and send them away every day based on little or no evidence. Here you have a mountain of evidence against this cop, and the judge can’t convict him of anything? He didn’t want to.”
Police say the Nov. 29, 2012, incident began after Russell and Williams drove away from a traffic stop. A few minutes later their car backfired as they passed the police station. A cop reported the incident as a gunshot and the chase was on. Some officers said someone was shooting at them. But the Washington Post reported that at least one radioed: “Passenger just put his hands out asking us to stop. He does not have a gun.”
When the vehicle Williams and Russell were in came to a stop, 13 cops fired into their car. According to prosecutors, Brelo fired the last 15 shots downward through the windshield of the car. Williams and Russell were Black, Brelo is Caucasian.
In announcing his verdict, O’Donnell said prosecutors had not proven that Brelo’s shots alone had killed Williams and Russell. Five police supervisors still face misdemeanor charges in relation to the killings, but none of them were among those who fired on the pair.
Hundreds of workers and youth took to the streets in protest that afternoon and night after the judge’s ruling and again the next day. Among the actions on May 23 was a protest of more than 100 marking the six-month anniversary of the killing of 12-year-old African-American Tamir Rice by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann.
“You can’t really say that only the bullets fired by Brelo caused their deaths,” Terrance Hood, who works at McDonald’s, told the Militant May 25. “But that doesn’t mean Brelo should have gotten off. They should have charged all 13 of the cops.”
Sheila Lopez, an office worker who is Caucasian, echoed Hood’s opinion. “There’s no way one man could be held accountable for all that happened that night. But it’s still not right for him to walk away with nothing,” she said. “Any time you go against a police officer the odds are against you, because they protect their own.” She added, “No one deserves to die like that simply because they are fleeing.”
Leroy Watson contributed to this article.
Related articles:
‘All lives will matter, when Black Lives Matter’
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