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[wedding march playing on keyboard]
[officiant] Ladies and gentlemen, I now pronounce to you,
Mr. and Mrs. Tim Russell.
Let's give 'em a hand, everybody.
[applause]
[officiant] God bless you. Okay. All right…
[indistinct chatter]
Ah! [laughs]
[indistinct chatter]
[chatter continues on TV]
[gospel song playing on video]
[man] Everybody said I had good kids.
[song continues on tape]
[man] My wife, she really taught them how to stick together.
And if one of them hurting, just about all of them are hurting.
[song continues on tape]
But that's about all I know right now.
[woman] They were saying that he was a thug and…
in other words, like, they deserved to be shot.
And they were trying to make it seem like he didn't have a family,
that there was nobody that cared and loved him.
That was, like, very frustrating 'cause, you know, they got it wrong.
That's not who he was.
I found out when I saw it on the news, and I was lookin' and I said,
"Oh man," I said, "I hope that family is okay."
But here it is, it was me. My family.
You know, so…
Malissa had a good life. You know? She just had some mental health issues.
It's just been hard on our family.
They… they ain't shoot Bonnie and Clyde up like that.
How she went.
This case should have been worldwide.
I mean, it should have went worldwide.
[radio stations quickly changing]
[radio announcer] WMMS, Cleveland.
[piano flourish playing]
[R&B instrumental music playing]
[Robert Kennedy] What has violence ever accomplished?
What has it ever created?
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force.
[siren wailing]
Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily,
in the name of the law, or in defiance of the law,
then the whole nation is degraded.
Some look for scapegoats.
Others look for conspiracies.
But this much is clear,
violence breeds violence.
Repression breeds retaliation.
And only a cleansing of our whole society
can remove this sickness
from our souls.
[man 2] Let everybody get situated here.
BCI is the lead agency here.
Our policy is, officer-involved shootings, it's a criminal investigation.
This is not internal.
[reporter] Yellow police markers on the scene
signaling the number of shots fired, possibly hundreds between…
[man 2] Don't take some of the questions personal.
And, of course, please be honest.
If you don't know, don't fall back on the old cop speak.
Just say you don't know.
The medical examiner went through that car and found no gun.
Again, the medical examiner found no gun in the suspects' vehicle.
With the new prosecuting attorney in Cuyahoga County,
you get a grand jury subpoena down the road, that's what's going on.
My personal preference, I like the grand jury to sign off,
but the FBI officers are right on the money here with everything.
[reporter 2] Thirteen officers fired 137 rounds at the vehicle.
[siren wailing]
[reporter 3] Investigators now say one of those killed, Timothy Russell.
We're told the other person, a 30-year-old woman, homeless.
On behalf of the Russell family,
we would like to extend our deepest sympathies
to Miss Malissa Williams' family and loved ones.
[intense music playing]
[man 2] You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.
The family is struggling to get answers to what really happened.
[man 3] You have the right to consult an attorney
and have an attorney present during questioning.
Right now, we know that Tim was unarmed and that he was executed by the police.
If you can't afford an attorney,
one can be provided to you before questioning at no cost.
[woman] The police chose to fire 137 rounds into a car
with two unarmed people in it,
and that cannot be justified.
-You understand these rights? -Yes.
Bearing them in mind, do you wish to speak to me?
Yes.
We believe in the power of prayer, and we know that God will…
[emotionally] …right all wrong.
[intense music playing]
[announcer on radio] This is The Forum with Mansfield Frazier
on Cleveland's News Radio, WTAM 1100.
[Frazier on radio] The 137 shots case,
it goes back to who runs the country.
You know, in totalitarian states, men with guns run countries.
This is about power.
And policing is still a reflection of society.
And we have a society that doesn't want a mirror held up to it.
[announcer on radio] The Forum with Mansfield Frazier.
[Frazier] And our next caller, we got Karen from Mentor. Go right ahead.
[Karen] Hi. The one common thread in all these shootings
is the victims,
the so-called victims,
none of them complied with the officers.
[Frazier] So hold on.
You're saying, "As long as you comply, you'll be okay." Right?
-[Karen] Did you learn respect? -Of course I did.
[Karen] All right. Then why haven't these people?
You're seeing exactly what you want to see.
There's more to this story. You wanna cause trouble.
[Frazier] You mean to call…
Oh, by speaking out against brutality, I'm causing trouble.
-How 'bout that? Huh? -[Karen] What about…
You're not speaking out. You're poking the bear.
[Frazier] And I'm gonna keep poking the bear. And?
-[Karen] You're provoking-- -I'm provoking change.
-No. -And the country is changing.
-Yeah, right. -The country is changing. Believe me.
Really the question is, is this even gonna go to trial?
[station jingle playing]
[Frazier] We're going to go to break.
You're listening to The Forum with Mansfield Frazier.
We'll be right back.
[commercial playing faintly]
We could do this show over and over.
-You know? -[Mitchell] Huh?
We could do this kind of show over and over.
[man 4] I'm gonna introduce the prosecuting attorney.
In fact, he might as well come on up here now.
He's gonna say something. Uh…
In the end, when police officers
are in what they perceive to be a life-and-death situation,
and they're making split-second decisions,
you know, the system let these guys down.
And women down.
It is now in his hands.
Considering the friendly fire that tore up the police vehicles,
it was indeed, I would concur, a miracle
that there weren't more burials that followed this event.
[bird chirping]
[McGinty] In November of 2012,
the month after I took office as prosecutor,
there was a high-speed chase over a very minor incident.
The police…
received a report from another police officer
that shots had been fired at him.
[loud bang]
[man 5] An old Chevy just popped a round
as he passed by the Justice Center, westbound on Superior.
[McGinty] Actually, it was a backfire.
When you slow down in an old-fashioned carburetor car, out of tune,
there's a gas build-up and a backfire.
[engine accelerating]
[loud bang]
[McGinty] The individual officer kind of overreacted.
And he was known for overreacting.
That night he reported over the air he had been shot at.
-[sirens wailing faintly] -Police cars started chasing 'em,
and there began a 23-minute, 23-mile chase, approximately,
all over the city, and out of the city of Cleveland.
Actively chased by 60-some cars, over 100 police officers.
Different cars came and went.
Some cars dropped out, realized it was lunacy.
This was a wild goose chase, and it was a fiasco.
It was a Blues Brothers chase.
They had lost total control.
The supervisors had gone totally crazy.
It's all over a backfire.
[woman 2] Our phones were blowing up.
If you were a journalist, you heard right away.
It was more than 60 cars.
The first time I heard that, I thought, "What… Who gave this order?"
How could that possibly have had
anything but a chaotic and violent end to it?
The reason we're starting with you…
You're the keystone.
You're the one that everything started with.
What we need to do is understand how all this started.
[Nan] I parked the car on St. Clair.
I exited the car in front of the police headquarters building.
Almeida came out and…
I wasn't there very long before this occurred.
We're standing on St. Clair,
and we hear
an engine come up.
Really stepped on it hard.
-Engine just starts really revving. -[engine accelerating]
As that vehicle passes in front of us…
[Nan] I hear a loud…
[bang]
…gunshot.
You can even briefly smell the powder from this thing.
The… the shot.
He goes, "Go get 'em."
[Almeida] An old Chevy just popped a round
as he passed by the Justice Center, westbound on Superior.
Two Black males.
[sirens wail]
We heard Officer Nan start screaming that shots had been fired.
Your adrenaline starts going up a little bit.
You hear, "Shots fired. Policeman called."
-So you figure, this is the real deal. -Right.
[officer on radio] 10-6-4, what's this in connection with?
[Nan] Shots fired out of a vehicle.
Popped a round right as he drove by us.
[officer on radio] 31, what was the description on that again?
A Chevy just blew by us going over the Detroit-Superior Bridge.
Going westbound.
[Nan] Use caution. Occupants are armed.
[man 2] Who were you riding with?
Uh, my partner that night was Mike Brelo.
-[man 2] Who was driving? -[Moore] He was.
-[man 2] What channel were you guys on? -Channel two, sir.
-[siren wailing] -[officer on radio] Passengers are…
very angry.
The passenger picks his left arm up, over the headrest.
And points like this.
-Okay. You can see the passenger do that? -Yes.
[O'Neill] Man's pointing a gun out the back window.
[officer] He's pointing a gun out the back window.
Heads up. Heads up.
[officer 2] Channel five, be advised.
The passenger's pointing a gun out the back side of the vehicle.
The passenger's pointing a gun out the back of the vehicle.
Heading toward the highway.
He's making the highway, 90 East.
Adrenaline going at that point. I look down briefly. I was doing 125.
[Moore] The chase went on and on,
and everybody was yelling on the air to be careful.
[Nan] This point there was a lot of zone cars there.
[Brelo] There were zone cars that were next to me.
I had to stop for cars that were stopped in front of us.
I ended being, like, tenth in line.
[O'Neill] He just rammed into a police car.
[officer 3] Be advised, he just hit a zone car.
Police car just hit.
[O'Neill] They're fumbling with something up in that front seat.
Looks like the passenger's possibly loading a weapon.
[officer 3] Passenger's possibly loading a weapon.
[officer 4] Sergeant Coleman, you got this now?
[Coleman] I'm in it!
[McGinty] They chase the car out the city, into the city of East Cleveland.
Eventually chased into a schoolyard parking lot.
No escape.
The street was eerie. It was all smoky.
The visibility's really bad with all the zone cars in front of us.
I'm pulling up.
[two bangs]
That's when I heard two or three shots fired,
and I broadcast that shots were fired.
I hear, "Shots fired. Shots fired."
[O'Neill] Shots fired! Shots fired!
-Next thing, you hear more shots. -[gunfire]
I am on the floorboard of the car,
and I had my gun up in the air, looking out the passenger window,
trying to look, you know, peek up, and I'm screaming at Billy,
"Are they coming for us? Are they coming for us?"
At which point I heard shots being fired from the area of the suspect vehicle.
I heard shots, and I returned fire through the windshield of the zone car.
[gun shots]
[officer 5] We got shots fired! Shots fired!
-[glass shatters] -Shots fired!
Watch your crossfire.
[continual gunfire]
[Brelo] Shots fired. Rapid fire.
[gunfire continues]
[rapid gunfire]
[gunfire stops]
[police sirens wail]
[intense music playing]
[man 2] What was going on then?
[sighs]
I saw…
[man 2] It's all right.
[O'Neill] I saw, uh, car 217.
Windows were all shot up.
And the suspects' car was totally shot up.
The back window.
And I thought the people in 217 were dead.
[McGinty] She was a supervisor in the Second District.
She bears a lot of responsibility for this event
because the police were following their leader.
She was the leader.
She never should have been in a car, she shouldn't have been in the lead.
She shouldn't have let that many cars in a chase,
she shouldn't have extended it that far.
I could go on with the things she did irresponsibly.
[man 2] Do you believe your actions were consistent with your training?
Yes. If I had to do this all over again, I wouldn't change one thing.
Well, the only thing I'd change is that they… they should have stopped.
-So you wouldn't change your actions then? -I wouldn't change my actions, no.
[McGinty] This is insanity.
It was horrendous, ridiculous, and wrong.
[officer 6] Passenger put his hand out, asking us to stop.
He does not have a gun. He has a pair of black gloves on.
He does not have a gun in his hands.
They realize midway through
that the source of the so-called gunfire was backfire.
[officer 6] There's a pop can in his hands.
There's a red pop can in his hand. Just be advised.
[officer 7] Now stating he has a pop can in his hand.
It is not a gun. It's a pop can in his hand.
[McGinty] At the end of the chase,
they surround and form a circle around this car,
a circular firing squad, as it turns out, and the police shoot at themselves.
They see the police bullets going through the car,
and they think they're coming at them from the people within.
They're actually coming from the police on the opposite side of them.
Miraculously, of these 137 shots that we know about,
none hit the other police officers.
Many of 'em hit other police cars.
[emotional music playing]
[Schultz] I have spoken to a lot of police officers off the record,
which is the only way they'll talk to you about this.
And the adrenaline rush is considerable.
The camaraderie of the police is very real.
Every story is about the humans in it, and this is a story about human beings.
[reporter 4] Union officials say
they believe the officers' actions were justified.
They say the suspects should have pulled over,
and added that the prosecutor took months to go over the officers' actions,
when the officers only had seconds to make decisions.
"The police formed a circular firing squad."
You know? Stop. You're not an activist.
You're the prosecutor of the largest county in the state.
The long and the short of it is that a policeman got shot at, you know.
That's the facts that they knew at the time.
Mr. Russell and Malissa, they drive by,
cap a round off.
And we're saying "cap a round off"
because police officers know the difference between a backfire
and a gunfire.
It might not be pretty,
but it's not a set of circumstances
any of those police officers up there chose to be in.
Tim Russell and Malissa Williams made those choices.
My brother lived with me, off and on, for nine years,
so we were really close.
I know he had issues,
but it doesn't mean that you're a bad person.
You know, for the most part, he would be clean
for like six, seven years at a time,
and then he would, like…
You know, bad things that happened to him in his life,
and he would wind up doing drugs, but he always came out of that.
The media is trying to make it seem like this was just a no-good drug addict.
They were saying he got what he deserved, in so many words.
That's not who he was.
Anybody that knew Tim
was just, like, shocked that this happened to Tim.
'Cause he liked people. He loved people.
-He was really the life of the party. -[laughs]
-Tim would come in a door, bubbly. -[Michelle] But it wasn't just us. It was…
-Just people in general. -Yeah, he would.
[Michelle] This is Tim there in the white shirt. He's holding the Bible.
We knew there was never a gun.
That wasn't even a question in my mind.
And then, we all knew that his car backfired,
so when they were talking about the gunshot,
we already knew it had to be the backfire.
And it's just…
It's just obvious to me that the police were upset
that they did not pull over.
And, by the way, the police union, they knew that there was no gun
because one of the police officers told them the night of the chase
that he witnessed the car backfiring like two or three times,
and he saw the muffler come off or--
He told the union representative this, and they told him to keep his mouth shut.
This is in the testimonies of the police officers.
[groans, sighs]
[man 2] What we need to do, since you were the number-one car,
is talk about these backfire things.
-Okay. -Okay. I seen it.
There was the flash, okay. The flash of the tailpipe.
Out of the tailpipe, okay.
-Like… Vroom! You know? -Uh-huh.
And then, pop, another backfire, and he took off.
Maybe the backfire started this whole chain of events.
I got nothing to hide. I just wanna do this the right way.
You know what I'm saying? I'm not, you know…
It's… [laughs] You know.
-I had to call… I called the union. -Right.
What did the union say when you told them?
They were like, "Keep it to yourself for now."
"Don't go out telling the rest of the world."
"We got other interviews, other witnesses. We're out looking for the gun."
[Michelle] They cornered them in a school parking lot.
Thirteen officers were shooting into the car.
And then, you wouldn't believe, but one of the officers, Michael Brelo,
uh, just like all of 'em, he said that he was scared.
I… I don't buy it.
I don't believe he was afraid and so scared,
more scared than he'd ever been in his life,
when he jumped up on top of the car.
He jumped up on the hood of the car.
[reporter 5] Brelo fired his gun 49 times,
standing on the hood of the victims' car while firing the last 15 shots.
[firing]
[sobs]
I've never… [clears throat]
-I'm sorry. -You're fine.
I've never been so afraid in my life,
and I just couldn't understand
why the suspects were moving and still shooting at us.
If he thought they had a gun,
he shouldn't have never jumped on top of the car.
[Michelle] Right. He'd have been afraid of getting shot.
If I was scared, I would've been running. I'd be running the opposite way.
Or you would think, if you jump up there,
one of your fellow officers might shoot you by mistake.
As soon as we pulled up, we started hearing shots going off.
I turned and fired two rounds,
and then I stopped firing
because I saw somebody jump on the hood of the car.
We'll back up a little bit here. We'll go over some details now.
-Okay? -Yes, sir.
Okay.
Did you see what they were doing?
Yes. They were shooting down into the car.
At some point, did you jump on the suspects' vehicle?
I have no recollection if I did, sir. Absolutely none.
[man 2] You said later on you found out who was up on the hood of the car.
-Yes. -How did you find that out?
Um…
Because he was talking about it.
He was talking about it? Who was that?
Mike Brelo.
I don't recall that, sir.
The shoe prints that were on the top of the suspect vehicle
match your shoe prints.
If… I…
No. I was so in fear of my life.
I mean, I have no recollection of how I got there, sir.
There was no logical explanation to give, so he claimed he didn't recall.
But even if he didn't recall, in actuality it didn't make any difference.
The physical evidence showed he was standing on the hood.
His footprints were on the hood.
It was proven ballistically, scientifically.
Not only the physical evidence
but the evidence of a police officer from another police department.
So it's very important for us to make sure justice is done.+
[suspenseful music playing]
[reporter 6] Breaking developments in that 2012 Cleveland police chase
and deadly shooting.
Let's go live to the Cuyahoga County Justice Center.
County Prosecutor Tim McGinty is at the podium.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the Cuyahoga County grand jury today voted to indict
Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo
on two counts of manslaughter
for the killing of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams
on November 29th, 2012.
We, the County Prosecutor's Office, did not recommend
that the grand jury seek charges against any of the other 12 officers
who took part in an initial barrage of shots upon the car.
[woman 3] Sixty-two Cleveland police vehicles got involved in that chase.
They went at speeds over 100 miles per hour.
Thirteen different Cleveland police officers
fired 137 shots into that vehicle.
And only one officer was brought up on a charge of voluntary manslaughter.
[James Gutierrez] The perception is that the prosecutor's office
is too close to the police
to do some of these type of use-of-force cases.
I can understand and I can appreciate that.
But the reality is
that our office prosecutes police all the time.
I'm a prosecutor, okay?
That's what I do. I just… I prosecute cases.
I'm not naive to the political or social type of atmosphere we're in,
but I try to not… I don't get involved in that.
[news anchor] Shocking new allegations against the Cleveland police officers
involved in the November 2012 police chase and shooting.
Tonight they're being called out by Cuyahoga County prosecutors
for refusing to cooperate in a case against one of their own.
[reporter 7] And that is why prosecutors filed a motion today,
asking the judge to allow them to treat CPD officers
as hostile witnesses.
We ask for a prospective panel in this case
who's not been tainted or polluted
by the reckless, inappropriate, and false portrayals of the events
as they happened in real time that night,
not based on sound-bite presentation.
[reporter 8] Dozens of uniformed Cleveland officers
lined the halls outside the courtroom prior to the arraignments.
There's a couple of hundred people here between the fourth floor and downstairs.
We're here to show our support for our brother officers.
The union representative kept saying that they didn't have family,
they were, um, homeless,
and that, you know, now their family members are coming out of nowhere,
trying to seek and get money
for the death of these two people.
And it was like, you know…
he's saying all this stuff, he doesn't even know.
[man 6] This just isn't gonna go away.
And there's no doubt in my mind that we're gonna be attending
some disciplinary hearings out of this. I'm sure of it.
[McGinty] What happened publicly was
the union encouraged people not to cooperate with this investigation,
which I find disgraceful.
And hypocritical.
[reporter 9] A judge set Officer Michael Brelo's trial date for April 6th.
[Loomis] What's gonna happen when Officer Brelo's acquitted?
You know, what's he gonna do then?
All he's doing is kicking the can down the road,
saying, "Hey, look, folks. I got him indicted."
The reason he's gonna walk is because he's not guilty of a crime.
[Frazier] I think we are, as a species,
we're moving in the right direction.
I honestly believe that.
What people fail to comprehend
is that cultures change so slowly.
That arc of justice,
it bends, but it bends so, so slow.
Because we're faced with it right now.
It's in our eyes. It's in our face.
Right up close and personal.
We're living it day to day.
[dispatch] Cleveland Police, Hollinger.
[caller] I'm sitting in the park at West Cudell.
And there's a guy with a pistol, you know.
It's probably fake, but he's like pointing it at everybody.
He's scaring the shit out of people.
We were waiting to find out what was gonna happen in the Brelo case.
Would there be justice?
And then we find out that a 12-year-old boy
waving an air gun in a community park
was shot dead.
[dispatcher] Is he Black or white?
-[caller] I'm sorry? -[dispatch] Is he Black or white?
[caller] He's Black. He's probably a juvenile, you know?
[dispatcher] Okay, we'll send a car. Thank you.
And the first time you see it…
I'll never forget.
I was actually sitting with my husband.
"Oh my God!"
[dispatcher] Young male sitting on a swing pointing a gun at people.
[gunshots]
[officer 8] We need EMS here right away.
[girl] Oh my God, my brother!
[boy] Oh, they just killed her brother.
[officer 9] Shots fired. Male down.
Black male. Maybe 20.
Black revolver, black handgun by him…
[Shultz] Less than two seconds after they pull up,
Tamir Rice, he is on the ground.
And we're supposed to believe
that those two police officers feared for their life.
[reporter 10] The issue of police shooting once again front and center in Cleveland…
[reporter 11] In Cleveland today,
a Black child shot by a white police officer was laid…
[Barack Obama] I hope we don't fall into the typical patterns that occur
after these kinds of incidents occur.
It starts dividing people instead of bringing folks together.
[indistinct conversations]
I ask God to let me use my words wisely.
I don't wanna speak recklessly about anyone.
But for those whom it apply,
please go down on your knees to God and ask forgiveness for what you've done,
if you were reckless and stupid and just plain old evil
when you pulled up into this parking lot that day
and shot a 12-year-old.
God, I ask you to remind Mr. McGinty and all of those involved
that if Tamir had an end date at only 12 years old,
that no man knows the date, the hour or the time of God's coming,
and you don't know the day of your departure.
But Tamir was blameless, and his soul went to heaven.
And I can hear Tamir the last couple of years.
He brung joy into our life.
She raised Tamir to be the kindest, most helpful, and sweetest young man.
It is not justifiable,
two officers rushing up on my child like that.
There definitely need to be some reform with the law-enforcement system, period,
across the nation.
Like…
All of these shootings, just…
I done heard stories of people sitting 18 years, waiting for justice.
Twenty years waiting for justice.
When do they heal?
Accountability. That's all we want.
Accountability.
[all singing] ♪ All in my heart I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ Let it shine Let it shine, let it shine ♪
[reporter 12] In the hours, now 24 hours, since this,
do you worry about the protests?
No, I don't worry about protest. People have a right.
I mean, people have a right.
People have a legitimate sense of injustice.
The police shootings are the most obvious things
because it happened.
But it's not just the criminal justice system.
It is a lack of justice,
in terms of social, economic, and political.
And it's legitimate. It's legitimate.
What are you saying today to the family?
A 12-year-old lost his life.
What can I say to a mother?
There's nothing that anybody in this room or I can… is sufficient enough
to deal with the grief
that a mother has for losing a child.
Chief, you wanna add?
We'll commence with the Critical Incident Review Committee,
and we anticipate
it's definitely gonna take a shorter time frame
than the review of the 13 shooters in the pursuit case.
[woman 6] This Critical Incident Committee that you're talking about, who's on it?
We'll get you that list. We'll get you the list.
[woman 6] But it is an internal investigation?
Somewhat, yes.
So somebody looking from the outside might say,
"How independent can an internal investigation be?"
There are civilians on the Critical Incident Review Committee.
Mayor, do you think racial bias plays a role in your police department?
So, of course, overlaying this theme is the whole context of race.
We are in America.
[Frazier] Is that fair that Black parents have to tell their kids, in America,
"Be careful 'cause there's somebody out to hurt you."
That "You must be held to another standard."
"You must carry yourself in another way."
"Because you're Black, you can get shot real easy."
Is that a fair way to run a country?
[Loomis] I am the president of
the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association.
And what we do is we make sure that the members of the police department
are defended if they're accused of something.
You're old enough to understand why a police department
is important to the city, right?
You know, you can't have criminals running the street.
You can't have people doing…
We're a society of laws and rules, just like you have here in the school.
You think it's fair that someone comes in your yard and takes your bike?
[kids] No.
[Loomis] No.
[woman 7] Makes you a little angry, doesn't it?
Don't you think they should be held accountable?
It's all about accountability.
You know? Make sure people are held accountable for their actions.
[Loomis] Any question that you have. Any question that you have,
Lisa and I will answer as honestly as we can.
Somebody's gotta have a question. Any topic.
[woman 7] I know it'll come up, and I'll just… I'll break it open.
Tamir.
Tamir was at the park.
He's doing wrong. I mean, it's clear on video that, in my opinion…
If you want to play cops and robbers, you should play it in your own yard,
not at the park where people are gonna panic. Right?
But…
[Frazier] The job of the police union is to protect the rights of police.
And I'm a… I'm a union man in a union town.
Where it goes off the rail is that they protect wrongdoing.
[woman 7] …and you know you're doing it.
[Frazier] It's obvious what's on the tape,
but you will get people coming in saying, "You didn't see what you thought you saw."
It's like, "Do you wanna believe me or your lying eyes?"
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
[woman 7] ... for the gun.
[Loomis] Yes, ma'am.
Some of our students have concerns
that it's an us-versus-them type deal with the police.
Citizens versus officers.
[Loomis] Um… Yeah, I… I pray that you don't have that,
and I can tell you, without doubt, that that's not what it is.
We're part of the community.
We're out here. We're out here for you guys.
We have deep concerns about some of the stuff
that we see going on out here,
and we're out here trying to make it better.
So it's not us against them.
And if we don't do everything in our power to fight against this false…
I'll call it a false narrative that's out there
because that's not the truth.
Every cop in a beat
should know the kids on his beat.
Now, you haven't got to know five- and six-year-olds,
but every teenager, you know, 12, 13, 14-year-old.
The cops should have pulled up and said,
"Hey, Tamir. What are you doing?"
He should have known the kid, and… and Tamir should have known him.
That's true community policing.
But here's the thing.
That's not the type of policing
that people like the police union's president…
He said, "Our guys don't believe in community policing."
Well… And that cuts to the heart of the matter.
Who runs the country? Do they take orders, or do they make the rules?
[crowd chanting]
This whole damn system is guilty as hell!
Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail!
The whole damn system is guilty as hell…
Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail!
The whole damn system is guilty as hell!
Indict! Convict!
Send those killer cops to jail!
The whole damn system…
[man 7] Ten years ago, the Department of Justice was here
investigating the Cleveland Police Department.
And ten years later, they're here again.
They were looking at issues of use of force back then,
and they're reviewing the exact same issues today.
This is one of the poorest cities in the country.
However, we spend millions of dollars behind the scenes,
paying families because of officers' negligence.
[applause]
I come before you right now, Holy Spirit,
that these people who are here will hear our voices.
The lives of Black people mean nothing to those that sit on top of this empire.
Now I'm scared.
I'm scared for my boys.
In an age when technology is at its peak,
how could the communication be so bad
between dispatch and an officer on the scene
that they don't know the caller said it was a fake gun
and that the kid was a juvenile?
Okay?
And that Timothy and Malissa,
with all the discipline you guys handed down,
you still think you did nothing wrong.
You had 63 officers suspended, nine supervisors demoted,
one supervisor fired, one guy's on trial for his life,
and you wanna stand here with a straight face and talk about
fixing community relations between the police and the community.
-I don't see it happening. -[crowd applauding]
[suspenseful music playing]
[reporter 13] After more than two years,
the case of a deadly police chase and shooting
finally heads to court.
[reporter 14] Thirty-one-year-old Michael Brelo
faces up to 25 years in prison,
is not expected to testify at this trial,
and a judge will decide this case.
[Judge O'Donnell] We're here in the case of State of Ohio v. Michael Brelo.
This is case number 580457.
We're here for trial. All participants are present.
I'll be happy to hear an opening statement.
[Gutierrez] In this state, the defendant has a unilateral right
to go in front of a particular judge, and not have a jury.
Generally speaking, when defense attorneys do that,
they usually wanna take the emotion out of the case
because judges are not gonna have the emotional tug or pull
that you have with a jury.
They are not here to tell us what happened that night from their perspective.
And the evidence will show that they died that night
after a harrowing chase,
and in a hailstorm of bullets,
49 of which were fired by defendant Brelo.
[D'Angelo] Your Honor, the State paints
a very sympathetic picture of the two occupants,
in their effort to recast what happened that night,
but you'll hear testimony from Dr. Felo
that both occupants, because of their toxicology levels,
were smoking crack throughout the course of this pursuit.
Officers broadcasted that they thought they saw a weapon,
and they made those perceptions, Your Honor, irrespective of skin color.
He did it out of fear
and out of perception that they were taking gunfire.
[O'Donnell] Thank you, Mr. D'Angelo.
[Alfredo] My name is Alfredo Williams.
Malissa's my sister.
A lot of stuff in this case was covered up.
See, they… This whole story wasn't told right.
Wasn't told right.
Before the incident started,
one of the cops abused my sister.
Let's hear your full name, sir.
John Jordan.
What was your assignment that night?
[Jordan] Plain clothes.
What we do is we look for drugs,
crack, everything.
-Vice stuff? -Yeah, vice stuff.
Okay.
[Alfredo] Down at Bishop Cosgrove
is a homeless place where they feed people.
They give 'em housing.
Cops, they're always around there in plain clothes.
They be jumping on the homeless, planting stuff on 'em.
Stems, rocks, all that crazy crap, man.
Just some dirty cops.
[Ebony Hall] Do you know what? I know Malissa wanted to get high.
And when I see Malissa getting in the back seat,
I said, "Malissa, get out that car."
And then that's when I've seen Jordan. He came around.
[Fishbourne] Malissa came out and went to call my name.
I said, "Don't call my name in front of Jordan."
"He's the type that like to beat the homeless."
"That's his MO."
[Jordan] Everybody over there, they know me.
You know, they know Jordan.
So I pulled behind the car.
I saw the car was taking off,
so I said, "Okay, let me follow 'em,
to see if I get any probable cause to stop."
So he turned on 18th and St. Clair.
He didn't use his blinker, so I was like, "I got him."
It was this undercover cop that initially tried to stop them.
[McGinty] It was over a turn-signal violation.
That's what the chase was all about.
[Jordan] I'm by myself.
I open my doors, and I tell the driver,
"Let me see your hands."
It was two people. So I was… He was like this.
Then the passenger just turned around. Then she just started screaming.
Like, "Officer, why you stopping me? Why you stop us? We didn't do anything."
So I saw something in her hand.
It looked like it was silver and red maybe.
But she was just doing like… I was like, "Man."
"I'm not gonna go up to this car. I don't have no vest on."
"And she acting crazy."
Got back in the car, turned my overheads off.
Took off. They took off.
[Michelle] We don't know what happened in that initial stop.
We don't know, but they took off like their lives were in jeopardy.
That's why they were speeding by the police department
where the backfire took place.
[engine accelerates]
[loud bang]
I think Timothy was protecting her, trying to get her away from the cops
'cause they've been messing with Malissa.
Everybody had told us that.
And Timothy was protecting her
because they was peekin' with her two days ago.
They've been peekin' with the homeless, the shelter people, all day long
'cause they think they not nothing. They are somebody.
And they need to be protected from them cops down there.
[crowd clapping]
[reporter 15] Security cameras caught Russell and Williams
being pulled over by a Cleveland police officer.
Investigators asked him about pulling them over.
He apparently told them, on at least two occasions,
that had never happened.
So then they showed him the video tape.
Then the officer said, yes, he did pull them over.
Now, why did he lie to investigators? That, we don't know.
See, it's a lot wasn't told
at this… at trial.
[bailiff] Sir, please raise your hand.
Do you solemnly swear to testify to the truth, so help you God?
-Yes, sir. -[bailiff] Thank you.
Kindly have a seat here. Please speak into the microphone.
[O'Donnell] Could you please state your full name
and spell your last name for the record?
John Jordan. Last name is J-O-R-D-A-N.
[Alfredo] This cop, he's a Black cop.
Malissa was beaten up by the same cop.
Well, the first officer wasn't on trial, but he did not follow the rules either.
In the first place, are you allowed, in the unmarked car,
to make a traffic stop?
It's not a written rule,
but if they do a traffic stop in front of you, you can stop the car.
[McGinty] If he would have done his job, the chase wouldn't have happened.
But to charge him would have been the only police officer,
Black police officer, really involved in the case.
[Schultz] The thing that Officer John Jordan does illustrate
is that there was a culture of not abiding by the rules.
That there are too many moments
where they decided that their own personal judgment
was better than what protocol was put into place for them to follow.
[Gutierrez] All right, so when did you find out that the car that you pulled over
was the one being chased by the police that night?
On the news the next morning.
[Gutierrez] And, sir, when you went to the station,
and everybody knew that you had been involved,
did you get any grief from the other officers?
A little.
[Gutierrez] What was the nature of that grief?
What I shouldn't have did, or what I should have did.
[Gutierrez] And how do you feel about that?
Took it on the chin, but I felt sad.
Feel sad now.
[Michelle] Most people respect officers and believe they're credible
and they're gonna be forthcoming and honest,
but now it's being shown that these officers are lying.
And then they all went in the depositions and said the exact same thing?
"Oh, I was so scared. I never been so scared in my life."
They all said it the same way.
What was your, uh, state of mind as you were on the scene?
I was scared shitless. [chuckles]
I was in fear of my life. I was in fear of my partner's life.
-And were you afraid? -I was.
Anything you think we need to know that we didn't ask you?
-Nothing I can think of. -No? Okay.
-Scared to death? -Scared, yeah. Definitely scared.
This is something more
than just Brelo shooting at them and getting on the car incident.
It's a cultural thing within the Cleveland Police Department.
The blue wall.
Nobody in that police department
is gonna come forward and say what actually really happened.
[O'Donnell] State your full name and spell your last name for the record.
[Demchak] It's Michael Demchak. D as in Dan, E-M-C-H-A-K.
[Gutierrez] Were you working on the night of November 29th, 2012?
-Yes, I was. -[Gutierrez] Okay.
Did there come a point in time where you were involved in the pursuit?
On advice of my counsel, I am invoking my right to remain silent.
[Gutierrez] Judge, we believe at this point in time,
this is exactly what the State has been talking about, the blue wall.
This individual will not come and testify.
He's a police officer. His loyalty should be to the citizens of…
We were trying to make a point.
Whether it was legitimate or not, I don't know.
But police officers have their Fifth Amendment rights.
Simple as that. Just like we do.
-…I'll tell you that. Jim. -Well…
If I may, I would just like to object to Mr. Gutierrez's remarks
and move that they be stricken, relative to blue wall
and setting up this argument in the midst of this trial.
[O'Donnell] Noted.
Now, my boss, Mr. McGinty didn't like that, but…
As the County Prosecutor, can I make a statement?
I haven't said a word in this trial, I'd like to now.
Your ruling will result in all police officers,
and then all witnesses,
if you're thinking, as you're espousing now, follow,
then all witnesses will demand immunity before they come in.
It won't end with this. It will end with every police officer.
We need his testimony in this trial. We're asking for his testimony.
We're asking for the truth. That is his duty as a police officer.
If their requests
to assert the Fifth are granted,
how can you say that will result in all witnesses in every case
being able to assert the Fifth?
[McGinty] Well, you watch it, Judge.
Watch every single police officer from this point want the Fifth.
We've already had two others.
I've never seen this in 40 years around here.
That police have taken the Fifth
on an investigation of a fellow police officer
who jumped up on a hood…
Every one of 'em knows it's wrong, what happened.
Jump up on a hood and clip two people in a car, unarmed.
They knew, from that moment it happened, they were in trouble.
They knew it, from the dispatcher to the police at the scene.
And they didn't tell people. This has been our whole argument.
They didn't tell the investigators until it was forced on 'em.
[Loomis] This whole thing reeks of politics. Reeks of politics.
I asked Prosecutor McGinty. I says, "Who are you tap-dancing for here?"
Your, uh, request to the court now, Mr. Gutierrez,
is to order him to answer the question?
-Correct, Your Honor. -Right. I decline.
Uh…
Okay.
Uh, thank you. You're welcome to depart at this point.
-Okay, thank you.
[McGinty] You tell the truth. That's what a good police officer does.
Even if it's against another police officer.
It made them look like they operate on a double standard.
If it's a policeman being accused, they won't cooperate,
and they refuse to do their duty and tell the truth and testify.
The Fifth Amendment was simply a cover.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Richard Bell] Your Honor, the State was going to call to the stand
five supervisors, uh, one after another, at this point.
Each of them will be invoking their Fifth Amendment rights, Your Honor.
[O'Donnell] Well, I will say this then.
I see all of them present with their lawyers.
-Mr. Spellacy, you represent Coleman? -That's correct, Judge.
-[O'Donnell] And she is present? -She is, Your Honor.
[O'Donnell] If she were called to the stand, would she testify?
Judge, she would exercise her Fifth Amendment right.
[O'Donnell] Is that a sufficient record for you, Mr. Bell?
[Bell] Yes, Your Honor.
[O'Donnell] Ms. Gragel, uh, you represent Mr. Donegan?
I do, Your Honor.
[O'Donnell] I see he is present. Am I right?
Yes.
[O'Donnell] If he were called to the stand, would he testify?
He would not. He would assert his Fifth Amendment right.
-[O'Donnell] Sufficient record, Mr. Bell? -Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.
[O'Donnell] If Mr. Dailey were called to the stand, would he testify?
No, Your Honor. He'd use his Fifth Amendment right.
[O'Donnell] Mr. D'Angelo or Mack or Shaughnessy,
do you think something else should be done to make an adequate record?
No, Your Honor.
[O'Donnell] Thank you. For the moment, we're off the record.
So we'll stay off the record…
[McGinty] It is a shameful day
when police officers involved in a case
step up on the stand and take the Fifth Amendment,
refuse to cooperate.
[Schultz] Just think about that.
Police officers are at the scene of the crime.
You want to be able to count on them
to give their accounts of what they witnessed,
and one after another after another pleads the Fifth.
You look at that and think, "The only reason you don't talk
is because you don't want us to know what happened."
[McGinty] But this was more than just police out of control that night.
It was a criminal act.
When this individual jumped on the hood of a car,
at the point of cease-fire, after these 100-odd shots were fired
and everybody else stopped,
he gave the coup de grâce to these two unarmed individuals,
which he knew by then were unarmed.
You don't stand there with your testicles exposed
on top of a car if you think they're armed.
He was there to make sure they were dead.
They were by the time he was finished.
[Gutierrez] Where'd you grow up?
[Sabolik] I grew up in the West Park neighborhood.
-High school? -Saint Ignatius.
[McGinty] Finally, one of the officers came forward, under oath.
He basically was the one who was the first to admit
that Brelo had jumped up on the hood.
[Gutierrez] So when you see this individual on the hood,
and you were about to fire,
you stop firing, but your testimony is gunshots are still ringing out?
[Sabolik] As far as I remember.
Could you demonstrate to the court what you saw?
Um…
He was standing on the hood, firing down, like so.
[Gutierrez] Could you please point him out for the court?
[Sabolik] Uh, he's sitting right over there.
[Gutierrez] Okay, wait a second.
-Stipulate ID? -[lawyer] Sure.
[Gutierrez] Thank you. Thank you, officer.
-You were in a shoot-out, right? -[Sabolik] Correct.
And in your heart of hearts,
you felt that you were being shot at by the folks in that car.
[Sabolik] Uh…
Right at that point when we pulled into the parking lot--
-[Shaughnessy] Yeah, how did you feel? -The scaredest I've ever been in my life.
[Shaughnessy] Okay.
You saw
an officer on the hood of the Malibu.
-Correct? -[Sabolik] Correct.
[Shaughnessy] You stopped firing
because you didn't wanna hit another officer
who had a different tactical position. Correct?
Correct. I still perceived a threat.
You continued to perceive a threat to yourself and fellow officers
while you observed that officer on the hood.
[Sabolik] Correct, sir.
[Gutierrez] You're trying to tell us right now,
even though somebody's shooting multiple times in that windshield,
you still perceive a threat?
Absolutely, I--
[Gutierrez] You don't think these people are dead by then?
I have no idea.
So somebody shooting multiple times inside a windshield,
you're trying to tell us you still perceive a threat?
-Yes. -Thank you.
[O'Donnell] Thank you, Mr. Gutierrez.
Sir, I appreciate you coming today. You're certainly excused at this point.
Thank you.
Let's go off the record for one second. Uh, who's your next witness?
[news anchor 2] Breaking news. We've just received word
that a verdict is in in the Michael Brelo case.
[reporter 16] Police in the sky, on the ground.
Does anybody really think there's going to be
a guilty verdict in this case?
-[Mitchell] I think it's 50-50. -[Frazier] Ha!
[crowd chanting] No justice, no peace!
[reporter 16] The crowd of more than 50 continued to grow
outside the Justice Center.
No justice, no peace!
[O'Donnell] We are on the record in the State of Ohio v. Michael Brelo.
All counsel and the defendant are present.
In many American places,
people are angry with, mistrusting, and fearful of the police.
Cleveland, too, is one such place.
Some say the volatile relationship between police and the community
is rooted in our great country's original sin.
Whether it is or not,
that sin won't be expiated by the verdict in a single criminal case.
[reporter 17] As the verdict came down, officers in riot gear
bracing for protests.
[reporter 18] Tension between police officers and African Americans
have dominated the headlines…
[Mitchell] I still want to believe
that our judicial system is fair and unbiased.
[Frazier] Lady Justice, that blindfold she wears.
She lifts the blindfold up to see the size of your wallet,
the color of your skin…
-[man 8] No justice! -[crowd] No peace!
[Schultz] There's a part of you that always wants this to be
the story that's different,
that this is the moment, perhaps, we are starting to turn that corner.
Perhaps we're going to believe it,
that sometimes police officers can behave very badly.
[O'Donnell] Additionally, Brelo was acting in conditions
difficult for even experienced police officers to imagine.
He described it as, "Worse than being under attack
from rockets and mortars while serving as a marine in Iraq."
So I reject the claim that 12 seconds after the shooting began,
it was patently clear from the perspective
of a reasonable police officer in Brelo's position
that the threat had been stopped,
and therefore find that Brelo's entire use of deadly force
was a constitutionally reasonable response
to an objectively, reasonably perceived threat of great bodily harm.
I therefore find the defendant not guilty of counts one and two, as indicted,
and the defendant is discharged.
Thank you. We're off the record.
[bailiff] All rise.
[Alfredo] It's all a game. It's nothing new.
Police been getting away with murder for so many years.
You gotta watch lawyers too.
Lawyers, judges, cops, they all crooked.
They all eat together, flop together.
'Cause they all running the same game.
[D'Angelo] We are humbled by his verdict,
and I know I can speak for all Cleveland police officers,
that we are not emboldened by it.
But having said that,
I've never in my 37 years witnessed
such an unprofessional and vicious prosecution
of a police officer.
I hope the African American community can understand and embrace
that we understand
and we're part of what their experience is about being mistreated.
[reporter 19] What message does this verdict send to your officers?
Do things the right way and you're gonna be okay,
despite the rhetoric, despite the emotion, despite the politics of it.
[reporter 20] What's next for Brelo? Does he wanna return to the force?
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. He's a policeman. He loves public service.
[sighs]
This has been very, very hard for many, many people
in the community and people that were directly involved.
[emotional music playing]
[minister] God is good.
[whimpers] Amen. Amen.
[minister] God will save us with his grace.
Amen.
[Michelle] To me, it's mind-boggling.
It's like it didn't make no sense.
And finally, I wanna say to you that we have some great struggles ahead,
all over the nation and right here in Cleveland,
but as we struggle,
let us have the courage to be nonviolent.
You see, it doesn't take much courage to be violent.
It is, ultimately, the strong man who can be nonviolent.
It is a courageous man who can be nonviolent.
[words echo]
[Brelo] After the shooting, I started having panic attacks.
I got worried about my family.
I was worried about retribution from somebody.
I think the first three months, I slept on this couch with a .38
while the kids slept upstairs 'cause I wanted to protect us.
I might be paranoid, but, you know,
my family's the most important thing in my life.
[children laughing]
[Brelo] I'm still in purgatory with the police.
I'm still waiting for the City to make up their mind, three years after the fact.
Fire me. Don't fire me. What's going on?
Real life, especially that night, November 29th,
there was just a perfect storm.
[interviewer] Can you take me through it, November 29th?
Let's do that a different day 'cause that's pretty involved, if you don't mind.
[intense music playing]
[Brelo] I remember it was a Tuesday morning.
It was Spanish class. Second period.
That night, when I was saying prayers for all the people who died,
I thought, "I wanna become a marine."
Pretty much, if you went in in '03,
it was a foregone conclusion that you would be going to Iraq.
[dramatic music playing]
Hit is where I was, west of Fallujah.
[people clamoring]
Over there, you'd have to be on your guard 24 hours a day.
We're in the middle of this country with God-knows-who around us.
It got to the point where every day we got bombed.
We ended up losing 49 total, which was hard.
The most since Vietnam for a unit.
Many Ohioans lost their lives in Iraq,
including 48 members of the 3/25.
Enormous heartbreak for communities in northeastern Ohio.
[reporter 21] Rarely has so much loss
befallen such a small region of the country.
[reporter 22] A deployment that stunned Cleveland,
taking 48 lives.
Sorta going back, this has come up through the course of our investigation.
I gotta ask.
Were you yelling, at some point, "Semper Fi" or anything of that nature?
-Absolutely not. -Are you certain?
Absolutely not. Never, sir.
A lot of people had post-traumatic stress syndrome.
I'm not saying I had it. I may have it in one capacity or another.
But growing up, I always wanted to be in the military and police.
It's my dream job. I'd dream about being a cop every night.
[woman 8] Doesn't it feel better?
[Jim Simone] We all see death as grandpa in a casket,
with the suit and the flowers.
We go pay our respects.
That's nice.
That's not how it is on the street or in combat.
[gunshot]
[two gunshots]
[gunshot]
[Brelo] Jim Simone, um…
he's a cop's cop.
He's been around forever. He's been in a dozen shootings.
[gunshot]
[Brelo] He was in Vietnam.
I mean, this guy's a legend.
After the shooting, him and his wife wanna sit down.
We went to, I think, an Applebee's,
and we just sat down for like two or three hours and talked.
I says, "Michael,
did you believe that your life or someone you were with was in jeopardy?"
"And if you did, whether that jeopardy is real or imagined,
you have the right to use deadly force."
The law's very specific.
[on radio] Six-six, we're in pursuit southbound…
[Loomis] The landmark Supreme Court decision Graham v. Connor
ensures that police officers are judged based on the information that they have
at the time of the incident.
[Simone] This male has a gun, right?
There was once a time I was involved in a shooting where the guy
actually, uh, baited us into killing him.
Everybody use caution. He's slowing down.
[McGinty] So we have to accept what the Supreme Court tells us.
If a police officer doesn't know if it's a replica gun,
can he fire?
And the Supreme Court says yes.
[Simone] Looks like he's gonna try to make it to his house.
[officer 10] Give this guy some room.
[Simone yelling] Hold it right there!
Hold it right there!
Last thing I said was, "Drop the gun or I'll kill you where you fucking stand."
He looked at me, and we were just a couple feet apart,
like you and I are, and he goes, "Go ahead and do it."
"Do it."
Pointed a gun at me.
Don't move!
[sirens wailing]
[Simone] And I can't describe fear to you.
Until we're reversed…
[indistinct yelling]
[Simone] …and you're the person that's scared out of your mind.
Don't move or I'll kill you!
The fear is overwhelming sometimes.
[gunfire]
[officer 11] Jimmy. Oh, God damn it.
-I don't know. -Get him in the car. In the car.
-Hold on. Are you hit? -Hang on.
His gun was empty. He didn't have the ability to kill me.
So they ruled that a homicide because we took his life in a viol--
But it's not. It should have been ruled suicide.
[male caller] In the heat of the moment, I think what happened
was a genuine, honest mistake.
I don't think that those officers came into that situation
to get blood on their hands.
They were probably scared, and with what had happened--
Well, let me… Let me tell you something, Derek.
-If they're scared, get another job. -[Mitchell] Straight like that.
Yeah, if you're so scared, you gotta pull your gun
and be trigger-happy,
then maybe patrolling the streets of Cleveland
is not where you should be.
[man 9] Thanks, Chief.
[Frazier] We have to be careful who we give a badge and a gun to.
And I think we have to check at every stage of their career.
You know, we have this super cop, Jim Simone.
At some point you would think, "Wait a minute, Jim."
"You keep running into situations where you gotta shoot somebody."
"Maybe we should take you off the street for the public safety."
Oh no. They thought he was a hero.
Today, May 26, 2015,
marks a new way of policing in the city of Cleveland,
one built on a strong foundation of progressive change,
sustained trust and accountability.
The Department of Justice comes in and tells the City of Cleveland,
"You fix this or we will."
"Because if you don't, we're gonna sue you."
[reporter 23] The new 105-page Consent Decree
calls for the department to retrain and review its officers,
to make sure they use force properly.
[applause]
As you know, we're here to talk about police use-of-force policies,
and we need your input.
We can't do business the way we did 20 years ago,
and I think the chiefs around this country
and the officers around this country are kinda, you know,
in the quiet time they have with themselves, are saying,
"Yeah, we shouldn't have did that, and we're not gonna do that again."
So things are changing.
I've kinda told my guys,
"We're gonna give people the benefit of the doubt."
Next on the agenda is, um,
an update on the citizen's police review board ordinance.
We do understand that there's not a formal diversity and inclusion plan
for the Cleveland Division of Police,
but we've been asking for documents or information
associated with the recruitment policy for months now.
In the African American community,
people feel like they aren't treated with respect and dignity
in their own communities.
Good evening, everyone. My name is Pierre Napier.
I am the co-founder
of the New Black Democratic Party of Cuyahoga County.
137 bullets strong.
The United States of America is at war with itself.
Cleveland is one of the most racist cities--
[man 10] All right. Well, that… Please.
When Timothy and Malissa got shot and killed 137 times,
the head of the Cleveland police union said, "Good kill."
So, come on. What's wrong with the words of Pierre Napier?
[Williams] If you're thinking it's made up and everyone is on the police,
attacking the police,
you're not listening to the stories, you're not understanding,
you're not hearing the history.
In the 1960s, we had the Freedom Movement here.
We had Black Power politics here.
[siren blaring]
[Williams] We had the Glenville Rebellions.
[gunshots]
Three of 'em ran into a shoot-out with two Sixth District policemen,
and they came out second best.
[news announcer] On July 18th, rioting broke out in Hough.
It took only a simple matter to spark the outbreak.
A white bar owner had refused a Negro man's request
for a glass of water.
[Williams] We had Martin Luther King coming through here.
[Dr. King] Like many of our nation's cities,
we find Cleveland
a teeming cauldron of hostility,
with crude methods of police repression,
rather than compassion and creative programming.
[Williams] We also had one of the first African American mayors
in the entire nation, Carl Stokes.
This election today
saw all of the many different parts of Cleveland
come together.
The east side and the west side.
[loud cheers]
[Williams] And one of the things that he wanted to do
was to reform the police.
This was one of his mandates.
In his political autobiography, Stokes says,
in a chapter called "The Police,"
"Ask yourself why the cries for law and order
come from conservative whites,
most of whom live safely in the suburbs."
"The very people who are least affected by crime
are the most vocal about it."
"The Black community pleads for police protection,
and what it gets is indifference,
or patrols by men looking for an excuse to get violent themselves."
"I saw it as one of my most important tasks,
the reform of the police."
"This great hope became my greatest frustration,
my greatest failure."
He talks about how he was not able to make a dent in the culture
of policing here in Cleveland, Ohio.
And the Consent Decree is talking about some of the same things.
Police accountability. Use of force.
It echoes this desire
to reform the police.
-You cannot reform police. -[van horn honks]
You cannot reform police departments enough
to take care of generations and decades of social decay.
Fatherless families. Babies raising babies.
Um, terrible school systems in the inner cities.
Crime rates are through the roof.
You gotta deal with the problems directly,
and the problem's not the police department.
[indistinct chatter]
[mellow music playing]
[man panting]
[reporter 24] In Cleveland tomorrow, family members of Tamir Rice
will testify before a grand jury deciding whether to indict the police officer
who killed him more than a year ago.
[panting]
[reporter 25] We tried to talk to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor,
Tim McGinty, about the case.
Have the cops cooperated with you? Can you say that?
[McGinty] I told you, we can't comment.
[Samaria Rice] The grand jury process, it was horrible.
James Gutierrez, he was yelling at me and my kids,
like this was my son's fault.
Like, taking up for the officers basically, you know?
It was the most horrific feeling that I ever felt, walking in a room.
I felt like he had already poisoned them before I got there, yeah.
Well, obviously, I can't.
I'm bound by the secrecy of the grand jury.
But at the end of the day, I know the police officers feel
that nobody's got their back right now.
You have to understand, I'm a very pro-police kinda guy
'cause I've worked 'em for 31 years.
[Subodh Chandra] The way that McGinty and his assistants
approached the grand jury was so biased.
McGinty did something that I can guarantee you
no prosecutor in America ever does,
which is to permit the targets of a criminal investigation,
which is what these two police officers were,
permit them to come to the grand jury,
read previously written self-serving statements,
and then leaving without answering a single question.
No cross-examination from the prosecutors, no questions from the grand jury.
Just read and leave.
[Gutierrez] What did the police officers know at that point?
There is a man with a gun at a rec center.
Do you know there were over 100 people in that rec center at that point in time?
So you have a potential active shooter,
so police officers say, "Code red."
They're gonna come in hot.
If he was a man with evil intentions, in our day and age,
to go in and shoot people up, that's not a bad assumption, is it?
We are here for the interview of Officer Timothy Loehmann.
I started screaming verbal commands.
"Put your hands in the air! Let me see your hands! Freeze!
Put your hands in the air!"
I said numerous times out loud.
And I presented my gun, you know, through the window, so--
[man 11] Is your window down?
It was closed, I believe. Not 100%. I believe it was closed.
[Chandra] An example.
"When exactly was it, sir, that you were shouting out commands?"
"Show me on the video."
Or, "Officer Loehmann, are you in the habit
of shouting out commands through a closed window
while driving forward at a rapid speed toward someone who can't hear you?"
"Is that normal?"
How do we know this happened? Grand jury proceedings are secret.
Because the union said so.
Officer Garmback and Officer Loehmann gave a written statement.
They didn't answer any questions
because they are the targets of whatever it is that's going on here.
[panting]
[Chandra] You can't do that.
You can't put the Fifth Amendment genie back in the bottle
once you've taken the oath and started testifying.
So the bottom line is that Prosecutor McGinty and his assistants
took a dive on cross-examining the targets of a criminal investigation.
And I can guarantee you,
that special privilege is only afforded to you
if you are a Cleveland police officer
and you are under the jurisdiction of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor.
[reporter 26] New information this morning
about the officers involved in the Rice shooting.
[reporter 27] Loehmann's previous police supervisors had wanted to fire him,
citing insubordination, lying, and an inability to emotionally function.
Timothy Loehmann shouldn't have never been a police officer.
He was crying on the gun range. His mama had to come and get him.
He was crying over his girlfriend. Um…
How did you become a Cleveland police officer?
[reporter 28] Cleveland Police never asked to see Loehmann's personnel records.
That's how he slid through the cracks, and now I have a dead son.
You understand?
[panting]
I had to, you know, make the decision fast
because Frank and I were in immediate danger.
-[man 12] So you thought what? -I thought I was gonna die.
[Schultz] McGinty knew…
When he spoke out the way he did during the Brelo trial,
he knew that could have political consequences.
The question was
how would he conduct himself moving forward,
and I guess we got our answer.
[breathing heavily]
Today a Cuyahoga County grand jury completed its thorough investigation
of the fatal shooting of the 12-year-old Tamir Rice.
Based on the evidence
and the law as it applies to police use of deadly force,
the grand jury declined to bring criminal charges
against Cleveland police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback.
The outcome will not cheer anyone, nor should it.
Every time I think about this case, I cannot help
but feel that the victim could have been my own son or grandson.
[crowd clamoring]
[chanting] CPD, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?
Now it is time for the community, and all of us, to start to heal.
[clamoring]
[reporter 29] A tense weekend in Cleveland, as police in riot gear
confronted protesters angered over the acquittal of an officer
charged in the shooting deaths…
[Williams] What can I think as a citizen? What can I think as a community member?
There was enough probable cause to say there was a crime committed
in the slaying of Tamir Rice.
Even in the Michael Brelo case,
there were 12 other officers who were on the scene.
He was the most egregious, but he was one of 13.
Some may say that Prosecutor McGinty aggressively prosecuted that case.
There are many in the community that said he did the absolute minimum he could do.
That there was no justice there.
[man on megaphone] McGinty went into the grand jury
knowing what he had planned to do.
-[protester 1] That's a fact. -[protester 2] Make it plain.
[man on megaphone] He has made hypocrisy out of democracy.
[crowd cheers]
It is a tragedy.
[male caller 2] For the life of me, I can't understand what his motivation is.
[Frazier] Well, hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
What McGinty did is called political calculus.
-That's what I've been told. -It might be a miscalculation.
[Mitchell] Yeah, it's definitely a miscalculation.
We're also here
because the Bible says that when God spoke to Cain,
and he said, "Where's your brother?"
he said, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
-Are we our brother's keeper? -[crowd] Yes, we are.
[Colvin] He said, "Your brother's blood cries from the ground."
And so Tamir's life…
[man] Yes.
-[Colvin] …demands justice. -Yeah.
And so we have come here
as people of various faiths and traditions.
We have come as Black, brown, and white
because all blood is red.
[crowd shouts agreement]
[Colvin] All blood is red.
[crowd chanting] McGinty has got to go! McGinty has got to go!
McGinty has got to go!
We are following the law. That's all we can do.
And the consequences, we accept whatever they are politically.
[reporter 30] New developments today
in that now-infamous Cleveland police chase and shooting from 2012.
[reporter 31] Today the City of Cleveland announced the firing
of six of those officers, including Michael Brelo.
These decisions were handed down
more than three years after the initial incident.
[airplane engine whooshing in distance]
[Loomis] At the end of the day, folks,
this discipline is not gonna be supported by fact.
This is politics. This is politics 101.
They put a hat together
and just started pulling names out of the hat
until they got to the number they thought was good enough
to appease a certain segment of society.
Unbelievable to me.
The fact is
there's two people promoted out of this whole thing.
Mike McGrath, the then-police chief, gets promoted to Safety Director.
Marty Flask, then Safety Director,
gets promoted to whatever the hell he's doing in the Mayor's office.
Those two guys get promoted, and the buck should've stopped with them,
with policies and command and control.
But we got six guys fired, so politically we're gonna be okay.
Loomis is gonna be the bad guy 'cause I'm gonna get their jobs back, folks.
And I promise you, they're gonna get their jobs back.
Every single one of 'em is gonna get their jobs back.
[intense music playing]
[loud gunfire on TV]
[explosions, gunfire]
[snare drums playing]
[bagpipes droning]
[pipe band playing]
[Frazier] The institution is so strong
because we're a fearful nation.
Fear sells.
Everybody wants to be secure in their home,
their family secure and safe.
And the police say, "Okay, but that comes at a price."
"You must give us this power and this control."
And again, the electorate is afraid
that if we don't let the police do what they want,
we're gonna pay the price.
So politicians tread gingerly with the police.
They don't wanna fight with the police. They wanna get re-elected.
[Loomis] McGinty, with Brelo, was atrocious.
With Tamir Rice's case, he did the right thing.
He wants a pat on the back for doing the right thing.
Oh, he's not gonna be re-elected.
No way is he gonna be re-elected. Heard it here first.
[pipe band continues]
[Frazier] Don't get this twisted.
The majority of police officers are good, honest, hard-working guys.
Most cops are good cops.
They just protect bad cops.
[band playing fades]
[news anchor] And now to a local story the nation is talking about.
A political bombshell.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, Tim McGinty,
loses his re-election bid to Michael O'Malley.
[reporter 32] McGinty's handling of the Tamir Rice case
outraged much of the African American community.
Police and supporters were upset McGinty prosecuted Michael Brelo
for his being the main shooter that killed Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.
[indistinct chatter]
I was very, very proud
when Michael became a policeman.
My dad in heaven would have been extremely proud.
[Brelo] That's my grandfather.
He was actually the first 416. Badge 416.
And then my uncle, his son, got it, and I became 416.
You know, keep it in the family. It's a third-generation badge, so…
He, uh, was around during the Hough riots. He was a pretty tough guy.
I liked him a lot, so…
He was an army veteran as well. A navy veteran.
So, you know, we keep that around. It's good to remember where you come from.
[siren chirping]
[reporter 33] The half-century championship drought is over in Cleveland.
LeBron James and the Cavaliers completing an unprecedented series comeback.
Today, touching down to a hero's welcome.
-[James] Cleveland! -[crowd cheering]
[reporter 34] Over a million people swarm the streets.
[reporter 35] It's only fitting Cleveland is home
to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
for today every block of this jubilant city
is truly rocking and rolling.
[James] 2016 world champions, Cleveland, Ohio!
[reporter 36] The eyes of the world will remain on Cleveland.
Work crews turning the Cavs' home court into center stage, hosting Donald Trump
and the Republican National Convention next month.
[reporter 37] RNC organizers told the Cleveland City Council
they have worries that a rocky campaign will lead to violence at the convention.
[reporter 38] Hundreds of police officers from across the country
are taking an oath to protect and serve here in Cleveland.
[reporter 37] The FBI is heading up counterterrorism efforts,
and the Secret Service is providing safety support for local businesses.
[dramatic music playing]
[Frazier] We're turning into a country
that the founding fathers never envisioned,
that men with guns start making the rules and decide which rules they want to obey.
And we're seeing the results of it with young Black males being killed.
And it's not just Cleveland, it's nationwide.
[reporter 39] We begin tonight with the growing outrage
after a deadly police shooting in Baton Rouge.
[boy sobbing] My dad!
He is 15 years old.
[reporter 40] Sterling's family demanding answers.
[sobs]
[woman 9] Stay with me.
We got pulled over for a busted taillight in the back,
and the police just… They killed my boyfriend.
-[cop] Get on your knees. -[Williams] Those are crimes.
They're not justifiable police tactics and uses of force.
They're inhumane. They're unconscionable.
The US Supreme Court standard, Graham v. Connors,
that's the minimal standard.
That's the floor.
Police departments need to hold themselves to a higher standard
that is driven by human dignity and respect,
that is driven by policies that allow them the time,
in second situations,
to assess in a different kind of way.
[reporter 41] On the eve of this convention,
the country has been shaken by another deadly act of violence.
Three officers shot and killed, three others wounded
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
[reporter 42] As for the gunman,
we're told he left the US Marine Corps back in 2010
with an honorable discharge.
Between the Dallas shooting and the shooting today,
we've had two former members of the military
kill eight police and wound another ten, including a number of veterans.
And in this country, roughly 20 veterans commit suicide every day.
[Loomis] I don't know how we got to this point in America,
where the police officers are the enemies.
I can tell you this. Um…
They have us bunkered down.
Um, we're not getting out of the cars.
Across the country, we're not proactively policing.
We'll go there if we're called there, but we're not doing anything proactive,
and we're not going to do it
until something changes and changes in a big way.
[Frazier] That's the threat that police hold in America.
It's called the blue flu.
That cops basically say,
"If you don't let us police the way we want to police,
we'll quit policing altogether."
And this goes back to power.
Who really runs the country?
And cops say, "We run the country."
We're gonna ask Paul in Twinsburg his thoughts.
[Paul on phone] Yeah. Are…
What is your nationality?
-[Frazier] My nationality? -Yes.
[Frazier] I'm an American.
Why? Oh, what did you think I was gonna say?
-[Paul] I don't know. -I'm an American.
So, your next question. Go ahead.
And what do you stand for?
What? I… I stand for democratic principles.
Now, we talked about three very intelligent conversations
about building up the Black community.
Nobody called.
We start talking about the Brelo case,
my goodness, the board lights up.
[melancholy music playing]
[Colvin] I ain't going nowhere!
And the reason I know that the fate of this nation is in our hands?
'Cause we built this country.
[applause, whistling]
My Mama and Daddy helped build this country.
We helped start this country.
We bled in the same wars.
We fought in the same battles.
We have blood in the same streets.
How can you talk about "You want your country back"?
This ain't all your country in the first place.
[applause]
[Colvin] This our country too!
Without further ado,
Dr. Cornel West.
Let's give him an Olivet-Cleveland-Ohio welcome.
[applause]
[organ playing]
So I wanna begin with an epigraph
from the greatest intellectual ever produced in the American empire,
the greatest scholar ever produced in American democracy.
His name was W. E. B. Du Bois.
And Du Bois says every generation has to deal with four questions.
The first question is: how shall integrity face oppression?
[applause]
[West] Let that linger for a while.
Let it sit on your mind, heart, and soul.
How shall integrity face oppression?
-[applause] -Amen.
[West] And the second question is: how shall honesty
meet deception?
The mendacity, the lies, lies, lies,
beginning with white supremacy itself.
What a lie!
Black people less beautiful, less moral, less intelligent.
[applause]
[crowd chanting on TV] USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation.
The attacks on our police
and the terrorism of our cities
threaten our very way of life.
[West] A nation that lies to itself about its innocence
and hides and conceals its violence,
psychic, economic, social, and physical violence,
from plantation to lynching, on to trigger-happy police.
[Trump] There can be no prosperity without law and order.
How great are our police?
And how great is Cleveland?
[crowd cheers enthusiastically]
[patrons clapping]
[West] Third question.
What does decency do
in the face of insult and assault and attack?
And, you see, in an age of massive assault…
[coughs]
…institutions, structures…
[Trump] The irresponsible rhetoric of our president,
who has used the pulpit of the presidency
to divide us by race and color,
has made America a more dangerous environment
than, frankly, I have ever seen,
and anybody in this room has ever watched or seen.
[West] The last question:
What does virtue do in the face of brute force?
And the virtue that he's talking about is the enabling virtue of courage.
[Trump] I have a message.
To every last person
threatening the peace on our streets
and the safety of our police.
When I take the oath of office next year,
I will restore law and order to our country.
-Believe me. Believe me. -[man clapping]
[crowd cheering]
Every generation has to attempt to meet the standards
of integrity, honesty, decency, and courage.
[congregation applauding]
[Alfredo] Growing up, we all stayed in a house, and there was 14 of us.
Grandma raised us.
Malissa was an excellent kid.
Did the normal thing, what a normal kid do.
Go outside, play.
We didn't get no justice for my sister. We didn't get no justice.
This case need to be tried again.
That man, Officer Brelo, need to be in prison.
Firing him, that's not good enough for me.
They don't deserve to be out here on this street.
Let that had been me who shot somebody that many times,
shot them two in a car that many times.
They killing me.
[Samaria] Tamir, my beloved son,
two police officers took your precious life.
You were only 12 years old.
Although there has been no accountability
for your untimely death,
I fight daily to make sure that your name continues to live on
and that you did not die in vain.
Love, Mom.
Hi, this is Michelle, calling from the non-profit organization
From Darkness to Light.
This is our charity. It's called From Darkness to Light.
We provide food for homeless and needy people.
And my brother, Tim, he was really instrumental in the beginning.
We started it in 2005, and now here we are, still doing it,
because he had such a passion for helping people.
And, you know, that's why we're doing this, and, um…
Yeah, I just… I, uh…
I try not to harbor, you know, ill in my heart,
and I always try to think of things in somebody else's point of view.
But until this day, I just cannot understand
how or why they would have shot
Tim and Malissa so many times.
[reporter 43] Five years after more than a dozen Cleveland police officers
fired an astounding 137 shots into a car…
[reporter 44] Cleveland Police are reinstating five officers
involved in the 2012 high-profile police chase and shooting
that left Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams dead.
[Brelo] I got a call from the union president, Steve Loomis.
He told me that the arbitrator finally decided,
and I did not get my job back.
The other five did though.
[suspenseful music playing]
[sirens wailing]
[Almeida] Chevy just popped a round.
He's pointing a gun.
[O'Neill] Shots fired! Shots fired!
[Brelo] I've relived that night so many times.
Every night pretty much.
It kinda reminded me of Iraq.
Like, there was dust everywhere from this back road that we're going in.
It's dark.
And through my time in the military,
you're trained, when in an ambush attack,
you're supposed to face the enemy and push through it.
[gunfire]
Police are trying to become paramilitary, like military.
That's how we were trained.
[gunfire continues]
[Williams] Cuyahoga means "crooked river." It's a Native American word.
The Cuyahoga River helps us to think about
the meandering of justice or lack thereof.
[Frazier] As the river bends,
so do societies.
They ebb and flow.
They improve. They step back.
Now, the genius of the American system
is that, over time, it self-corrects,
that if it goes too far in one direction,
the public will pull it back.
But that doesn't apply to policing.
The institution never goes back the other way.
Why?
'Cause there's nothing to go back to.
I will light you up. Get out of the car!
[Frazier] They have the gun, the power, the badge,
and the belief that they're going to be exonerated,
no matter what they do.
[reporter 45] All charges have been dropped against police
in the death of Freddie Gray.
[reporter 46] Prosecutors will not bring charges
against any police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner.
I can't breathe.
Police officer Alan Buford has been acquitted.
[reporter 47] The officer, Jeronimo Yanez, has been found not guilty.
[reporter 48] Perjury charges against that trooper have been dismissed.
[Frazier] We have a broken criminal justice system in America,
and the point of the spear is police officers with guns,
but behind that, there's a broken grand jury system,
a broken prison system
that all points to officers overreacting with weapons.
[officer] Completely in fear for my life. Scared to death.
[reporter 49] How much evidence does it take to indict a white police officer?
[Robert Kennedy] When you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother,
when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color,
then you also learn to confront others
not as fellow citizens but as enemies,
to be met not with cooperation but with conquest.
The question is whether we can find, in our own midst and in our own hearts,
that leadership of humane purpose
that will recognize the terrible truth of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions
and learn to find our own advancement
in search for the advancement of all.
[Frazier] See, I believe change is coming.
I think that the genie is out of the bottle on police brutality.
It is a call-in show, and we got Paul on the line.
[Paul] Yeah. Hi, Mansfield.
[Frazier] How are you?
[Paul] Yes, this is the best radio show in Cleveland bar none.
[Frazier] Well, your check is in the mail, Paul.
I always like for you to say that.
-[Paul] Thank you. You do good work. -[Mitchell laughing]