Cleveland Police Chief And Safety Director Accused Of Lying To CBS News Around The Murders Of 11 Black Women On Cleveland's Imperial Avenue

By Kathy Wray Coleman
Editor of the Determiner Weekly.Com and
the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog and Media Network

Cleveland Safety Director Martin Flask and Police Chief Michael McGraph, two members of Cleveland, Ohio's all non-Black top city law enforcement team, told CBS Evening News With Katie Couric that no wrongdoing occurred by police or prosecutors regarding the celebrated murders of 11 Black women on Imperial Ave. at the hands of suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell.

"I don't find any direct fought, no," Flask told CBS pursuant to the national news segment that ran Thursday evening. "I know that investigators did a good job."

The comments from the top echelon of the predominantly Black major metropolitan city's law enforcement venue fly in the face of a database that reveals that six of the 11 murdered women went missing after December 2008 when police and prosecutors discounted an attempted rape complaint from Gladys Wade as "unfounded" and released Sowell from custody following a report that makes no mention of the 15 years he spent in prison after a sex offense conviction. The 50-year- old Sowell is now in custody and has pleaded not guilty to more than 80 charges including rape, kidnapping and murder.

Flask, McGraph, Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi, and Chief Prosecutor Victor Perez, none of whom or Black, have come under fire from grassroots groups such as the Imperial Women, the Carl Stokes Brigade and the People's Forum. The organizations have not stood still in the face of the unprecedented murders in Cleveland's impoverished Mt. Pleasant neighborhood and demanded their firings by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, who is Black, at a rally on Nov. 10, 2009, days after the remains of the 11 Black women began servicing in and around the Imperial Ave. home occupied by Sowell before his arrest 10 days earlier.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Timothy McGinty, under fire for his alleged part in the illegal jailing of African-American Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman, who before being released without charges in 2008, was held naked and allegedly threatened over her articles in the Cleveland Call and Post Newspaper, Cleveland's Black press, blamed the debacle on incompetence by city police and prosecutors.

"There's something wrong with this issue," said McGinty to CBS news. "This would not have happened anywhere else."

One of the mothers of the murder victims agreed saying that police and prosecutors allegedly knew that Sowell was allegedly a risk to society because of a prior sex related conviction and evidence of a struggle and blood at his home when Wade's December 8, 2008 attempted rape complaint was investigated by police and prosecutors.

"They did know," said Florence Bray, the mother of murder victim Crystal Dozier, 38, and an aunt to Almelda Hunter, 47, who is also among the dead Black women.

Though CBS noted that Sowell was released from custody without charges in 2008 following the attempted rape complaint by Wade, who is Black, it did not mention that in November 2009 a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury did indict Sowell on that complaint, a gesture that a son of Hunter says is proof that both Flask and Mcgraph lied to CBS in claiming a thorough investigation and above board activity.

"We will be suing the city for what happen to my mother," said Bobbie Danzy, 23, one of Hunter's three children. "I loved my mother and she loved me unconditionally."