Magistrate Dismisses Police Assault Case Against Black Cleveland Teen Who Protested Against Teacher Layoffs, Angering Police Union President
By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor of theDeterminerWeekly.Com and
the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog and Media Network
A case against a Black Cleveland schools student arrested at a student organized protest of district wide teacher layoffs at Collinwood High School in May and charged with assaulting police was tossed out by a juvenile court magistrate at trial on Wednesday after prosecutors concluded their case and the girl's attorney moved for dismissal for a lack of evidence. And the president of the police union is hot, vowing that an appeal to a juvenile court judge of the magistrate's decision for a possible reversal of it is possible and likely upcoming, though authority to file any such appeal rests with the county prosecutor's office
DeAsia Bronaugh, 17, had been charged with two felony counts of assault on a police officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, all brought by the office of embattled Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason on behalf of the State of Ohio.
"I watch professional wrestling," said Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Magistrate Jeffrey Ehrbar in vindicating Bronaugh, and discounting the argument by assistant county prosecutors that the teen assaulted two White male Cleveland Fifth District police officers with a wrestler's kick in the face that he said was practically impossible for a lay person to make. Before throwing the charges out, the magistrate said that the video of the protest and arrests taken by local journalist and Community Activist Caleb Maupin did not support the prosecution's depiction of what had allegedly happened that day.
An assistant principal, school security guards and the arresting Cleveland Fifth District police officers were called to the stand by prosecutors.
Cleveland Criminal Attorney Terry Gilbert, who took the case pro bono, told the magistrate that the charges against his client were a stinging retaliation for free speech, and he made a fool of prosecutors at trial and said that police were summoned to the peaceful protest for the sole purpose of starting trouble, and trouble did they start.
The girl's mother said after trial that she was pleased with the unprecedented victory against police and over zealous prosecutors, and the vindication of her daughter.
"I am so happy with the outcome," said Tina Bronaugh, 41, and mother of the teen."Thank God for Mr. Gilbert and we thank the grassroots community for its support."
Mason could not be reached for comment.
Steve Loomis, President of the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association, a union for police and other law enforcement affiliates, was angry over the magistrate's dismissal of the charges and said he is urging Mason to appeal it to juvenile court judge within the 14 day time period following the decision, a matter he says that prosecutors are now discussing.
"The officers acted appropriately and the magistrate was dead wrong in dismissing the case, " said Loomis. "Community activism and politics played a role."
Asked if he believes that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson influenced the magistrate's decision, Loomis said that all he would say is that it was in his opinion politically motivated.
"I cannot reveal exactly who did it and I think Mayor Jackson is doing a good job with what he has to work with," said Loomis. "The dismissal of the case is an absolute atrocity."
Jackson, who by state law controls the Cleveland Municipal School District and appoints members of the policy making Cleveland Board of Education, did not return phone calls seeking comment, and neither did his press secretary, Andrea Taylor.
The dilemma unraveled at the school on Cleveland's predominantly Black East Side of town on May 13 as a group of about 30 students, led by Collinwood student Seth Barlekamp, who is White, attempted to leave the school to protest district wide teacher layoffs and the the closings this summer of 14 Cleveland schools. All but two of those schools are on the East Side of Cleveland, a major metropolitan city with some 450, 000 residents, roughly 57 percent of whom are Black.
School administrators convinced some of the students to return to class with the threat of a suspension, but about 20 of them proceeded to the protest anyway, testimony at trial denotes. Determined to stop the protesting students by any means legal, or possibly illegal, Cleveland police confronted Bronaugh saying she had violated a daytime curfew, a charge dismissed by a Juvenile Court magistrate before Wednesday's trial. She was arrested and subsequently charged as was a sister, 19-year-old Destini Bronaugh, who graduated from Collinwood High School this summer.
Destini Bronaugh is awaiting trial before Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough on misdemeanor charges brought by the City of Cleveland of obstructing official business and resisting arrest in allegedly asking police why it was necessary to arrest her sister on a bogus and since dismissed daytime curfew charge rarely brought. She has pleaded not guilty to both charges. Keough is the Democratic nominee for a seat on the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals and according to her campaign website, she has been endorsed by police unions, a puzzling issue, some say, since she was allegedly hand picked by Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi to preside over the Destini Bronaugh case and other malicious prosecutions by the City of Cleveland that target Black women in retaliation for free speech on issues of public concern.
Both girls had gone back into the school before the protest per a teacher's request but were put out, documents and trial testimony reveal, and Destini Bronaugh was arrested after she questioned the arrest of her sister.
The Collinwood area , which emcopasses Cleveland's Ward 10, is a mixed neighborhood where racial tensions with police and Black residents traditionally run high. It was once a village, but was annexed by the city in 1910. Activists say that the arrest by police of the Bronaugh girls smells of police brutality. Last year in Collinwood an elderly White female neighbor reported to police that she witnessed them call a Black girl a "nigger" and allegedly beat the 24-year-old college girl without just cause.
"Justice was served for DeAsia," said Community Activist Valerie Robinson, a respected White activist, a retired Cleveland area biology teacher, and member of the Imperial Women and Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, grassroots organizations that along with Black on Black Crime, the Carl Stokes Brigade, the Oppressed People's Nation, Cleveland FIST, the Peoples' Forum, and the Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network have championed the cause of the Bronaugh girls as motivated by racial animus. They say the malicious prosecutions of Destini and DeAsia Bronaugh are in retaliation for free speech issues and a corrupt justice system where Black women and girls are maliciously prosecuted with charges brought under the leadership of White city and county prosecutors who happen to be all male.
Robinson, who protested with grassroots groups at Juvenile Court and elsewhere over the treatment by police and city and county officials of the Bronaugh sisters in conjunction with the arrests and prosecutions, said that every once in a while the disenfranchised come out on top and get a fair trial.
"Once in a while something good happens and this was one of those times," said Robinson, whose husband Stewart Robinson is also an activist, and a retired Case Western Reserve University math professor. "Everything DeAsia stood for was vindicated," she added.
Community Activist Art McKoy said at a protest in June that Cleveland schools officials should have just let the students proceed with the peaceful protest. Experts agree.
"Instead of perpetuating a situation that culminated in what appears was a preventable arrest of the students, of whom school districts are often are responsible for when they are on school property, I would have recommended that the students be permitted to go forward with a peaceful protest with potential but not necessary suspensions if effective measures to convince them not to protest at all failed," said Dr. James M. Coleman, a retired Cleveland schools Assistant Superintendent, who added that "the interests of children must always come first, even Black children that attend Cleveland's public schools."
Other than the semi-mainstream news magazine "The Scene," the mainstream media have not reported on the dismissal by the magistrate of all charges against DeAsia Bronaugh. State law requires that if the media report that a person has been charged with a crime it must also report the outcome of the case, particularly when the person is vindicated of criminal charges that impact job or career enhancement, and community standing.
Posted by Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman at 11:02 PM
the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog and Media Network
A case against a Black Cleveland schools student arrested at a student organized protest of district wide teacher layoffs at Collinwood High School in May and charged with assaulting police was tossed out by a juvenile court magistrate at trial on Wednesday after prosecutors concluded their case and the girl's attorney moved for dismissal for a lack of evidence. And the president of the police union is hot, vowing that an appeal to a juvenile court judge of the magistrate's decision for a possible reversal of it is possible and likely upcoming, though authority to file any such appeal rests with the county prosecutor's office
DeAsia Bronaugh, 17, had been charged with two felony counts of assault on a police officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, all brought by the office of embattled Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason on behalf of the State of Ohio.
"I watch professional wrestling," said Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Magistrate Jeffrey Ehrbar in vindicating Bronaugh, and discounting the argument by assistant county prosecutors that the teen assaulted two White male Cleveland Fifth District police officers with a wrestler's kick in the face that he said was practically impossible for a lay person to make. Before throwing the charges out, the magistrate said that the video of the protest and arrests taken by local journalist and Community Activist Caleb Maupin did not support the prosecution's depiction of what had allegedly happened that day.
An assistant principal, school security guards and the arresting Cleveland Fifth District police officers were called to the stand by prosecutors.
Cleveland Criminal Attorney Terry Gilbert, who took the case pro bono, told the magistrate that the charges against his client were a stinging retaliation for free speech, and he made a fool of prosecutors at trial and said that police were summoned to the peaceful protest for the sole purpose of starting trouble, and trouble did they start.
The girl's mother said after trial that she was pleased with the unprecedented victory against police and over zealous prosecutors, and the vindication of her daughter.
"I am so happy with the outcome," said Tina Bronaugh, 41, and mother of the teen."Thank God for Mr. Gilbert and we thank the grassroots community for its support."
Mason could not be reached for comment.
Steve Loomis, President of the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association, a union for police and other law enforcement affiliates, was angry over the magistrate's dismissal of the charges and said he is urging Mason to appeal it to juvenile court judge within the 14 day time period following the decision, a matter he says that prosecutors are now discussing.
"The officers acted appropriately and the magistrate was dead wrong in dismissing the case, " said Loomis. "Community activism and politics played a role."
Asked if he believes that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson influenced the magistrate's decision, Loomis said that all he would say is that it was in his opinion politically motivated.
"I cannot reveal exactly who did it and I think Mayor Jackson is doing a good job with what he has to work with," said Loomis. "The dismissal of the case is an absolute atrocity."
Jackson, who by state law controls the Cleveland Municipal School District and appoints members of the policy making Cleveland Board of Education, did not return phone calls seeking comment, and neither did his press secretary, Andrea Taylor.
The dilemma unraveled at the school on Cleveland's predominantly Black East Side of town on May 13 as a group of about 30 students, led by Collinwood student Seth Barlekamp, who is White, attempted to leave the school to protest district wide teacher layoffs and the the closings this summer of 14 Cleveland schools. All but two of those schools are on the East Side of Cleveland, a major metropolitan city with some 450, 000 residents, roughly 57 percent of whom are Black.
School administrators convinced some of the students to return to class with the threat of a suspension, but about 20 of them proceeded to the protest anyway, testimony at trial denotes. Determined to stop the protesting students by any means legal, or possibly illegal, Cleveland police confronted Bronaugh saying she had violated a daytime curfew, a charge dismissed by a Juvenile Court magistrate before Wednesday's trial. She was arrested and subsequently charged as was a sister, 19-year-old Destini Bronaugh, who graduated from Collinwood High School this summer.
Destini Bronaugh is awaiting trial before Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough on misdemeanor charges brought by the City of Cleveland of obstructing official business and resisting arrest in allegedly asking police why it was necessary to arrest her sister on a bogus and since dismissed daytime curfew charge rarely brought. She has pleaded not guilty to both charges. Keough is the Democratic nominee for a seat on the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals and according to her campaign website, she has been endorsed by police unions, a puzzling issue, some say, since she was allegedly hand picked by Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi to preside over the Destini Bronaugh case and other malicious prosecutions by the City of Cleveland that target Black women in retaliation for free speech on issues of public concern.
Both girls had gone back into the school before the protest per a teacher's request but were put out, documents and trial testimony reveal, and Destini Bronaugh was arrested after she questioned the arrest of her sister.
The Collinwood area , which emcopasses Cleveland's Ward 10, is a mixed neighborhood where racial tensions with police and Black residents traditionally run high. It was once a village, but was annexed by the city in 1910. Activists say that the arrest by police of the Bronaugh girls smells of police brutality. Last year in Collinwood an elderly White female neighbor reported to police that she witnessed them call a Black girl a "nigger" and allegedly beat the 24-year-old college girl without just cause.
"Justice was served for DeAsia," said Community Activist Valerie Robinson, a respected White activist, a retired Cleveland area biology teacher, and member of the Imperial Women and Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, grassroots organizations that along with Black on Black Crime, the Carl Stokes Brigade, the Oppressed People's Nation, Cleveland FIST, the Peoples' Forum, and the Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network have championed the cause of the Bronaugh girls as motivated by racial animus. They say the malicious prosecutions of Destini and DeAsia Bronaugh are in retaliation for free speech issues and a corrupt justice system where Black women and girls are maliciously prosecuted with charges brought under the leadership of White city and county prosecutors who happen to be all male.
Robinson, who protested with grassroots groups at Juvenile Court and elsewhere over the treatment by police and city and county officials of the Bronaugh sisters in conjunction with the arrests and prosecutions, said that every once in a while the disenfranchised come out on top and get a fair trial.
"Once in a while something good happens and this was one of those times," said Robinson, whose husband Stewart Robinson is also an activist, and a retired Case Western Reserve University math professor. "Everything DeAsia stood for was vindicated," she added.
Community Activist Art McKoy said at a protest in June that Cleveland schools officials should have just let the students proceed with the peaceful protest. Experts agree.
"Instead of perpetuating a situation that culminated in what appears was a preventable arrest of the students, of whom school districts are often are responsible for when they are on school property, I would have recommended that the students be permitted to go forward with a peaceful protest with potential but not necessary suspensions if effective measures to convince them not to protest at all failed," said Dr. James M. Coleman, a retired Cleveland schools Assistant Superintendent, who added that "the interests of children must always come first, even Black children that attend Cleveland's public schools."
Other than the semi-mainstream news magazine "The Scene," the mainstream media have not reported on the dismissal by the magistrate of all charges against DeAsia Bronaugh. State law requires that if the media report that a person has been charged with a crime it must also report the outcome of the case, particularly when the person is vindicated of criminal charges that impact job or career enhancement, and community standing.
Posted by Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman at 11:02 PM
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