The Cleveland Cops Who Fired 137 Shots and Cried Victim
They unleashed a hail of bullets to rival the final scene in ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’ But the man and women killed in 2012 were unarmed—and now these cops are claiming racial discrimination.
(first of all, it was two men but this idiot reporter never bothered to check into that I guess...the other bad guy's name was Malissa, not Melissa)
Nine of the 13 Cleveland cops who fired 137 shots at two apparently unarmed black civilians following a high-speed chase in 2012 have filed a federal lawsuit saying they are victims of racial discrimination.
Really.
Eight of the aggrieved cops are white. The ninth is Hispanic. They charge that the city of Cleveland has “a history of treating non-African American officers involved in the shootings of African Americans substantially harsher than African-American officers.”
As if their race was the deciding factor in the cops being kept on restricted duty for 16 months after a backfire mistaken for a gunshot and an ensuing cross-town chase led to police firing nearly as many shots at the unarmed Melissa Williams and Timothy Russell as were unleashed upon Bonnie and Clyde in their famous final shootout—leaving Melissa with 24 gunshot wounds to Bonnie’s 23 and Timothy with 23 to Clyde’s 25.
Replay the last scene of the movie Bonnie and Clyde in your mind, only replace the decidedly armed and deadly pair with a homeless duo armed with nothing in the car besides a couple of crack pipes and an empty Coca-Cola can.
The Cleveland Nine should count themselves lucky that they were returned to full duty after 16 months.
Just imagine if one of them had been the cop who fatally shot a black 12-year-old named Tamir Rice after he flashed a realistic looking toy gun in a Cleveland park late last month.
There is already a damning common denominator between the two shootings: the Cleveland police department itself.
After the 2012 shooting, an investigation by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office found the department far more to blame than the individual cops.
And some of the same failures in communication and tactics seem to have played a major role in the more recent tragedy involving young Tamir.
In announcing the results of his investigation into the 2012 deaths, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine did make clear that no report would have been necessary if Russell had not sped wildly away from police in his 1979 Malibu with Williams at his side, reaching speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. Russell had been pulled over for the most minor of traffic violations by a cop who had a hunch that he and Williams had been buying drugs.
“To state the obvious, the chase would have ended without tragic results if Timothy Russell had simply stopped the car in response to the police pursuit,” DeWine said as he released the report in February 2013. “Perhaps the alcohol and cocaine in his system impaired his judgment. We will never know.”
DeWine went on: “We do know that each officer at the scene believed he or she was dealing with a driver who had fled law enforcement. They each also believed they were dealing with a passenger who was brandishing a gun—and that the gun had been fired at a police officer. It is now clear that those last two beliefs were likely not true.”
He said something that applies to cops of whatever race in whatever jurisdiction.
“Police officers have a very difficult job. They must make life and death decisions in a split second based on whatever information they have in that moment. But when you have an emergency, like what happened that night, the system has to be strong enough to override subjective decisions made by individuals who are under that extreme stress.”
He continued: “Policy, training, communications, and command have to be so strong and so ingrained to prevent subjective judgment from spiraling out of control. The system has to take over and put on the brakes.”
As it was, the chase was accompanied and spurred on by apparently erroneous radio reports of the occupants firing and reloading a gun. And it all culminated in a middle-school parking lot with the cops mistaking gunfire from other cops as coming from inside the suspect’s car and blazing away as if they had encountered a modern day Bonnie and Clyde rather than just unarmed Melissa and Timothy.
“We are dealing with a systematic failure in the Cleveland Police Department,” DeWine concluded. “Command failed.
Communications failed. The system failed.”
After such an indictment, you would expect the department to do all it could to remedy such failings. And that should have prominently included communications. A test came with a phone call to 911 on Nov. 22.
(and then buddy goes into the that tamir kid's case for some reason)
The Cleveland Cops Who Fired 137 Shots and Cried Victim - The Daily Beast
just a little back story:
CLEVELAND -- A chase that ended with 13 officers firing 137 rounds, killing two people, began with a pop – perhaps a gunshot or backfire from a car speeding past police headquarters.
For the next 25 minutes late in the night of Nov. 29, the car crisscrossed Cleveland tailed by officers, headed along Interstate 90 and wound up near the back entrance of a school in East Cleveland, where police opened fire.
Police don't know why the driver, Timothy Russell, 43, refused to stop. Russell had a criminal record including convictions for receiving stolen property and robbery. His passenger, Malissa Williams, 30, had convictions for drug-related charges and attempted abduction.
[...]
The chase began about 10:30 p.m. when an officer thought he heard a gunshot from a car speeding by the police and courts complex in downtown Cleveland and jumped into his patrol car, made a U-turn and radioed for help.
The chase went through crowded residential neighborhoods, then reversed course, headed east onto busy I-90 and through parts of Cleveland and eventually East Cleveland, ending with the car blocked in the rear of a school.
By police accounts, at least 30 patrol cars were involved in the chase, including Cleveland and East Cleveland police, sheriff's deputies and state troopers.
As the chase ended along hillside driveways heading to the school in John D. Rockefeller's old neighborhood, Russell allegedly rammed a patrol car and drove toward an officer on foot. Then the gunfire erupted: 137 rounds, Russell shot 23 times and Williams 24 times and their car pockmarked.
Jeff Follmer, president of the police union, defended the officers' actions and said officers used force to confront a driver using his vehicle as a potentially deadly weapon.
more
Timothy Russell, Malissa Williams Shooting: Cleveland Community Wonders Why 137 Rounds Fired
They unleashed a hail of bullets to rival the final scene in ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’ But the man and women killed in 2012 were unarmed—and now these cops are claiming racial discrimination.
(first of all, it was two men but this idiot reporter never bothered to check into that I guess...the other bad guy's name was Malissa, not Melissa)
Nine of the 13 Cleveland cops who fired 137 shots at two apparently unarmed black civilians following a high-speed chase in 2012 have filed a federal lawsuit saying they are victims of racial discrimination.
Really.
Eight of the aggrieved cops are white. The ninth is Hispanic. They charge that the city of Cleveland has “a history of treating non-African American officers involved in the shootings of African Americans substantially harsher than African-American officers.”
As if their race was the deciding factor in the cops being kept on restricted duty for 16 months after a backfire mistaken for a gunshot and an ensuing cross-town chase led to police firing nearly as many shots at the unarmed Melissa Williams and Timothy Russell as were unleashed upon Bonnie and Clyde in their famous final shootout—leaving Melissa with 24 gunshot wounds to Bonnie’s 23 and Timothy with 23 to Clyde’s 25.
Replay the last scene of the movie Bonnie and Clyde in your mind, only replace the decidedly armed and deadly pair with a homeless duo armed with nothing in the car besides a couple of crack pipes and an empty Coca-Cola can.
The Cleveland Nine should count themselves lucky that they were returned to full duty after 16 months.
Just imagine if one of them had been the cop who fatally shot a black 12-year-old named Tamir Rice after he flashed a realistic looking toy gun in a Cleveland park late last month.
There is already a damning common denominator between the two shootings: the Cleveland police department itself.
After the 2012 shooting, an investigation by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office found the department far more to blame than the individual cops.
And some of the same failures in communication and tactics seem to have played a major role in the more recent tragedy involving young Tamir.
In announcing the results of his investigation into the 2012 deaths, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine did make clear that no report would have been necessary if Russell had not sped wildly away from police in his 1979 Malibu with Williams at his side, reaching speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. Russell had been pulled over for the most minor of traffic violations by a cop who had a hunch that he and Williams had been buying drugs.
“To state the obvious, the chase would have ended without tragic results if Timothy Russell had simply stopped the car in response to the police pursuit,” DeWine said as he released the report in February 2013. “Perhaps the alcohol and cocaine in his system impaired his judgment. We will never know.”
DeWine went on: “We do know that each officer at the scene believed he or she was dealing with a driver who had fled law enforcement. They each also believed they were dealing with a passenger who was brandishing a gun—and that the gun had been fired at a police officer. It is now clear that those last two beliefs were likely not true.”
He said something that applies to cops of whatever race in whatever jurisdiction.
“Police officers have a very difficult job. They must make life and death decisions in a split second based on whatever information they have in that moment. But when you have an emergency, like what happened that night, the system has to be strong enough to override subjective decisions made by individuals who are under that extreme stress.”
He continued: “Policy, training, communications, and command have to be so strong and so ingrained to prevent subjective judgment from spiraling out of control. The system has to take over and put on the brakes.”
As it was, the chase was accompanied and spurred on by apparently erroneous radio reports of the occupants firing and reloading a gun. And it all culminated in a middle-school parking lot with the cops mistaking gunfire from other cops as coming from inside the suspect’s car and blazing away as if they had encountered a modern day Bonnie and Clyde rather than just unarmed Melissa and Timothy.
“We are dealing with a systematic failure in the Cleveland Police Department,” DeWine concluded. “Command failed.
Communications failed. The system failed.”
After such an indictment, you would expect the department to do all it could to remedy such failings. And that should have prominently included communications. A test came with a phone call to 911 on Nov. 22.
(and then buddy goes into the that tamir kid's case for some reason)
The Cleveland Cops Who Fired 137 Shots and Cried Victim - The Daily Beast
just a little back story:
CLEVELAND -- A chase that ended with 13 officers firing 137 rounds, killing two people, began with a pop – perhaps a gunshot or backfire from a car speeding past police headquarters.
For the next 25 minutes late in the night of Nov. 29, the car crisscrossed Cleveland tailed by officers, headed along Interstate 90 and wound up near the back entrance of a school in East Cleveland, where police opened fire.
Police don't know why the driver, Timothy Russell, 43, refused to stop. Russell had a criminal record including convictions for receiving stolen property and robbery. His passenger, Malissa Williams, 30, had convictions for drug-related charges and attempted abduction.
[...]
The chase began about 10:30 p.m. when an officer thought he heard a gunshot from a car speeding by the police and courts complex in downtown Cleveland and jumped into his patrol car, made a U-turn and radioed for help.
The chase went through crowded residential neighborhoods, then reversed course, headed east onto busy I-90 and through parts of Cleveland and eventually East Cleveland, ending with the car blocked in the rear of a school.
By police accounts, at least 30 patrol cars were involved in the chase, including Cleveland and East Cleveland police, sheriff's deputies and state troopers.
As the chase ended along hillside driveways heading to the school in John D. Rockefeller's old neighborhood, Russell allegedly rammed a patrol car and drove toward an officer on foot. Then the gunfire erupted: 137 rounds, Russell shot 23 times and Williams 24 times and their car pockmarked.
Jeff Follmer, president of the police union, defended the officers' actions and said officers used force to confront a driver using his vehicle as a potentially deadly weapon.
more
Timothy Russell, Malissa Williams Shooting: Cleveland Community Wonders Why 137 Rounds Fired