Revolutionary Communist Party, Black on Black Crime Inc, other activist groups to picket City Hall in Cleveland at 6 pm on October 19 for justice for 12-year old Tamir Rice, whom Cleveland police shot and killed last year....The City Hall protest follows demands by activists and Rice's mother and her attorneys for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty to step aside from the grand jury indictment process on possible criminal charges against police....McGinty is racist and otherwise prejudiced and is under fire for tainting the grand jury process with erroneous expert reports to help cops involved in the Rice shooting escape criminal charges, activists and Rice's mother and attorneys say....The national Revolutionary Communist Party is led by Bob Avakian....By Cleveland Urban News.Com Editor-in-Chief Kathy Wray Coleman

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. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is a 22-year political, legal and investigative journalist who trained for 17 years, and under six different editors, at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio.  (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com). 

National Revolutionary Communist Party
leader Bob Avakian

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Community activists and others seeking justice for  slain 12-year-old Tamir Rice will protest at 6 pm at Cleveland City Hall today, Oct. 19,  in downtown Cleveland, according to the grassroots local and national group Revolution Books, which is led locally by community activist Bill Swain, and nationally (out of New York City) by communist leader Bob Avakian.

"I will likely be there," said longtime community activist Art McKoy, who leads Black on Black Crime  Inc, a local grassroots group stationed in the city of East Cleveland, a neighboring Black and impoverished Cleveland suburb.

The protest coincides with the 7 pm Cleveland City Council meeting, which will put the activists face-to-face with the 17-member city council and three- term Black mayor Frank Jackson, who is under fire for not speaking out enough on arbitrary police killings in the largely Black major American city.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty

Activists want Jackson's city prosecutor to file a criminal complaint and to push a city judge to find probable cause and bring felony criminal charges against the two White officers involved in the shooting, Timothy Loehmann, who pulled the trigger, and his partner,  Frank Garmback . If this happens, the officers, by law, would have the option of a preliminary hearing before a city judge to determine if the case would be bound over for review for possible indictments by a county grand jury. But if Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty is first to present the case to the grand jury, the municipal court loses what limited jurisdiction it already has.

McGinty claims that he has authority to defy state law and to preclude White and other cops from getting charged with felonies at the municipal level in fatal excessive force cases, a stance, say community activists and some Black elected officials, that is unconstitutional . They say that it violates the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment since the county prosecutor still wants others, mainly Blacks, to get charged, arrested and jailed on felony charges at the municipal level, and before the case is even handed to a county grand jury for assessment.

Rice, who was Black, was gunned down in less than two seconds when police pulled up at a public park and recreation center on the city's west side where the kid was playing with a toy gun.The killing has heightened tensions between police and the Black community and follows or precedes other police killings of unarmed Black people in Cleveland and nationwide.

Samaria Rice, the mother of Cleveland police fatal murder victim Tamir Rice  at a press conference last week where she and her lawyers called for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty to step aside as to an investigation relative to possible county grand jury indictments of criminal charges of the two White Cleveland police officers involved last year in the tragic shooting death of her 12-year-old son. 

Last week Rices' mother, Samaria  Rice, and her attorneys, flanked by community activists, held a press conference calling for for McGinty, who has been investigating the case for nearly a year since last November when the tragic shooting occurred, to step aside relative to a possible grand jury indictment of police on criminal charges .

McGinty, who is White and a former longtime common pleas judge, said last week that he will not budge, even amid claims that he is racist and otherwise  prejudiced, and that he handpicked law enforcement experts to issue biased reports for the grand jury to seek to exonerate the White cops that killed Tamir before the process concludes.

"Mr. McGinty thinks he is above the law and can get away with doing anything to Black people," said community activist Ada Averyhart, 81.

Activist Al Porter, president of Black on Black Crime, told Cleveland Urban News.Com that "McGinty has a double standard that protects cops in criminal matters and why don't Black people get the advantage of handpicked expert reports before they are indicted on criminal charges by a county grand jury?"

Mayor Jackson has stalled on pushing for criminal charges, saying in essence that it is McGinty's job as the elected county prosecutor.

In the end, and per state law, only a county grand jury can indict people on felony charges in Ohio, which is raising eyebrows as to how municipal judges can influence the process in any shape or form by charging  people with felonies, mainly Blacks,  before a grand jury even convenes. All of this, say community activists, to get bond money and to continue disenfranchising the Black community, and to taint the grand jury process at the municipal level. a likely violation, say legal experts, of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, among other authorities. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).