The Cleveland Cops Who Fired 137 Shots and Cried Victim
by: Michael Daly
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.
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.
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/02/the-cleveland-cops-who-fired-137-shots-and-cried-victim.html?via=newsletter&source=CSMorning
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