Recall effort against Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson by Black Lives Matter Cuyahoga County is suspended because the Black mayor is "too popular."....Some activists refused to participate saying targeting only Black elected officials like Jackson while leaving questionable White one's alone was an issue.....Those activists say more focus should be given to dealing with corrupt White elected officials such as County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley, who is prosecuting innocent Blacks, and racist White common pleas judges, led by chief judge John Russo, who are handing down excessive sentences to Black men and Black juveniles tried as adults with O'Malley's support....A Black defendant whose mouth was taped shut by Russo during a court hearing got a 33-year excessive prison sentence, allegedly for questioning alleged judicial and prosecutorial malfeasance, and ineffective assistance of counsel....By Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog
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| Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson |
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief
CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio- A group of Cleveland activists, led by Black Lives Matter Cuyahoga County leader Jeff Mixon, has announced that they are suspending an effort to recall Democratic Mayor Frank Jackson because the city's third Black mayor is "too popular."
Mixon said his group could not garner enough signatures to put the issue before voters.
A similar recall effort against Jackson, led by Michel Nelson Sr., now a Cleveland Municipal Court judge, failed miserably in 2015 when election officials rejected 98 percent of the petitions.
"The still-popular mayor will, unfortunately, continue in his role as Pied Piper, leading the Black community into incrementally deeper states of socioeconomic oppression," said Mixon in a prepared statement.
Mixon had 30 days to gather signatures from the time he picked up petitions and needed 12,160 registered voters who cast ballots in the 2017 mayoral election to get the measure on the a ballot.
He did not even come close, sources said.
A former Cleveland schools teacher, Mixon, who is Black, said that Black residents believe Jackson's alleged failings as mayor are the result of "family-related blackmail."
Voters who have reelected Jackson three times obviously do not agree.
Mixon said activists will redirect recall efforts to select Cleveland City Council members and Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish, whose office was raided last week by the FBI and other authorities following eight recent county jail deaths of inmates and an ongoing investigation into jail malfeasance and public corruption that has rocked Cleveland, and Cuyahoga County.
The second largest of 88 counties statewide, Cuyahoga County is roughly 29 percent Black and includes the largely Black major American city of Cleveland, which is about 58 percent Black with a population of some 375,000 people.
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| Cuyahoga County Presiding and Administrative Judge John Russo (left) and County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley |
Those judges, led by chief judge John Russo, who is also lobbying for a merger of the city and county jails and for those charged with misdemeanors to be housed with felons, are handing down excessive sentences to Black men and Black juveniles tried as adults.
The defendants, no doubt, are disproportionately Black.
A Democrat too, O'Malley's office recommends the excessive sentences to the judges, which are worse when appointed lawyers are at the helm. And he is keen on malicious prosecutions of innocent Black people, public records reveal, particularly for political favors and regarding foreclosure malfeasance with big banks and mortgage companions, including JPMorgan Chase Bank.
The presiding and administrative judge of the 34-member largely White general division court of Cuyahoga County since 2013, Russo does the bidding for his judicial colleagues, right or wrong.
The common pleas court has four Black judges, Shirley Strickland Saffold, Cassandra Collier Williams, Deborah Turner, and Wanda Jones, the only Republican among the four and whom then governor John Kasich appointed to the bench in December to replace Judge Michael Donnelly, now an Ohio Supreme Court justice.
Last year Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo, whose sentences are often excessive, handed a 17 -year -old Black juvenile tried as an adult a 30-year sentence for a string of robberies in a month. And last week visiting judge Patricia Cosgrove gave a 33- year sentence to Franklyn Williams in alleged retaliation for him speaking out against alleged prosecutorial and judicial malfeasance and ineffective assistance of counsel. This was after Judge John Russo had his mouth taped shut during a court proceedings and then recused himself from the case after a video of the incident went viral.
A career criminal, Williams, 32, was convicted of a string of robberies, but 33 years by a visiting judge who replaced John Russo in the case after he quit following community pressure, is excessive, say community activists, and some Black area leaders.
Data show that when Blacks challenge municipal and common pleas judges of Cuyahoga County for conflict or prejudice per the filing of an affidavit of prejudice under state law, the visiting judges that sometimes replace them routinely retaliate against them.
The same is true as to retaliation for complaining of unfairness for judges like John Russo, who quit cases when the going gets tough and allegedly work behind the scenes for replacing visiting judges to allegedly retaliate against those who complain.
It is the height of injustice, and impropriety, sources say, and data reveal.
There are four Russo's on the county's general division common pleas bench, Judges Nancy Margaret Russo, John Russo, Joe Russo and Michael Russo, all of whom are Democrats who benefit in elections from a popular surname, and all of whom say they are collectively unrelated to one another.
Longtime greater Cleveland community activist Art McKoy called the unfair sentencing relative to Black men and Black male juveniles "nothing but slavery."
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
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