Did Black Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams sell out the Black community by telling CBS 60 Minutes that the Cleveland Police Department has no systemic problems and no pattern of excessive force in opposition to DOJ findings to the contrary? Community activists said at a town hall meeting in Cleveland last week that they support Williams, 'but will picket him if necessary:' White cops interviewed by 60 Minutes say that they are scared of Black people
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| Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams |
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog Kathy Wray Coleman is a community activist and 21- year investigative journalist who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Cleveland's third Black police chief told CBS 60 Minutes during a 15 minute television segment on Sunday on controversial Cleveland police killings of unarmed Black people, including a 12-year-old boy, that the Cleveland Police Department does not have a pattern of excessive force and has no systemic problems in spite of findings issued last month by the U.S. Department of Justice to the complete opposite.
The pro-police posture by Police Chief Calvin Williams has no significance over the determination by federal officials, namely U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, because Williams is merely a city employee, and what some have called a lapdog of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson.
Jackson, like Holder and Williams, is also Black and has balked at the DOJ findings in a manner similar to when some Black Cleveland Board of Education members decades ago resented the findings by the late federal district court judge Frank Battisti of racial discrimination against Black children and their families in the federal Civil Rights case dubbed Reed v Rhodes
Battisti found a violation by the board of education and state of Ohio of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment as to operating a dual school system to the detriment of Black Cleveland Public Schools children and their families. That desegregation court order resulted in a consent decree and 12 affiliated remedial orders, including crosstown busing.
The now defunct Cleveland schools court order was dissolved in 1998 followed that year by the implementation of a state law that gave control of the city schools to the city mayor.
Now in the second year of a third-four year term Jackson, a former city council president, was first elected mayor of the majority Black major American city in 2005.
Whether Williams, a 29-year veteran of the largely White Cleveland police force, will be branded a sellout to the Black community remains to be seen. He also told 60 minutes that having an overwhelmingly White police force in a largely Black city such as Cleveland is acceptable, though community activists are fighting for more diversity in the police department's rank and file, including more Black cops.
Williams did tell 60 Minutes that the Cleveland police force has some bad cops, a decoy, say some, to soften his stance to go against a mountain of data and subsequent findings by a Black U.S. attorney general of systemic problems by Cleveland police to the demise of the Black community.
Some greater Cleveland community activists said at a town hall meeting last week on police-community relations that was sponsored by the Greater Cleveland Civil and Human Rights Committee at the Cleveland Public Library Martin Luther King branch that they support Williams, "but will picket him if necessary."
High profile police killings of Blacks, from the shooting death last year by Cleveland police of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, to the killing last year of Tanisha Anderson while in police custody, and the November 2012 slaying by police slinging 137 bullets of unarmed Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell were the focus on the 60 minutes segment Sunday night.
Other than Anderson, who was slammed to the pavement last November and killed at her home on the city's east side, all of the aforementioned cop killings involved non-Black policemen.
CBS 60 Minutes News Correspondent Bill Whitaker reported from Cleveland where he accompanies two of the the city's White officers on routine patrol on the city's largely Black east side and discusses the controversial policing issues that have caused racial unrest in the largely Black major metropolitan city. Those cops did not have a clue, data suggest, and both told Whitaker that they are afraid of Black people, particularly Black men.
The television segment comes on the heels of heated national and local protests against questionable police killings of Black men and boys.
The DOJ's findings on gross impropriety by Cleveland police, announced by Holder, came following a 20-month investigation, and are damning, from illegal deadly force killings, to vicious pistil whippings of adults and children, and "cruel and unusual punishment against the mentally ill."
A consent decree between the city and the federal government, and designed to address the DOJ findings, is in the workings.
Williams of Cleveland, who is homegrown, was promoted by Jackson in February of last year from deputy police chief to replace former police chief Michael McGrath, who was promoted to replace ousted safety director Martin Flask, who got another high paying position as assistant to the mayor.
Both Flask and McGrath are White and are under fire as community activists, some Cleveland City Council members, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which is Ohio's largest newspaper, and the Call and Post, a Black Cleveland weekly, want the mayor to fire them.
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