On the day that Mayor Frank Jackson invited the media into the Red Room for a press conference (where he did an excellent job of setting forth his administration’s accomplishments in terms of the reforms his administration has foisted on the Cleveland Division of Police by the way) his Law Department was blowing him out of the water by stating that Tamir Rice was the cause of his own death. The juxtaposition of the two messages was startling, to say the least.
Jackson recalled that during his first press conference after he was sworn in as mayor in 2006 he’d stated, “excessive force will not be tolerated and that officers will be held accountable for any violation of that standard.” I was in attendance at that press conference and the mayor was very sincere and forceful in his pronouncement. However, over the years, stone-cold, hard-edged reality set in.
He discovered, as former mayors Carl Stokes and Mike White before him (and as other mayors around the U.S. have also discovered), that reforming a police department is more than a notion. Indeed, in his book Promises of Power, Stokes rates his inability to bring about change in the Cleveland Division of Police as his biggest failure as mayor.
Nonetheless, at the recent press conference Jackson shared statistics and graphs that clearly demonstrated the improvements that have been made in the police department under his watch. This kind of information is red meat for Jackson, who lives, eats and breathes public policy and numbers crunching. And anyone who knows the mayor should also know that he’s not into fudging statistics or padding figures. Whatever he says can always be taken to the bank.
The problem, however, lies in not in what the mayor said, but what he didn’t say: When will Special Assistant Marty Flask and Safety Director Michael McGrath make their final exit from City Hall. While the facts and figures Mayor Jackson presented were indeed glowing, in the end they come off as obfuscation … a diversionary tactic to avoid the one question that’s on everyone’s mind: Does he really think he can force these two down the throats of angry citizens?
No one in their right mind would argue with Mayor Jackson in regards to the glowing improvements in the police department he so well documented … but the real issue is visceral, not cerebral. For the average upset citizen it’s not about the glowing numbers that show improvement, it’s all about the number of dead bodies, how they died, and who killed them, and on whose watch the killings occurred.
So while Mayor Jackson is brilliantly making his case that he’s on top of the situation with the police, his Law Department, in response to the lawsuit filed by the family of Tamir Rice, was making the statement that Tamir’s death and his sister’s rough treatment at the hands of police “were directly and proximately caused by their own acts, not this Defendant.”
The release went on to say that the 12-year-old’s death was caused “by the [his and her] failure … to exercise due care to avoid injury.” I guess that means Tamir was responsible because he didn’t jump out of the way of the two bullets in a timely manner, and his sister should have just controlled herself as her brother lie dying on the ground. Right.
Clearly some pen-headed pencil pusher in Cleveland’s Law Department no doubt thought they were just doing their job in defending against the lawsuit filed against the city, but the timing and wording of the response could not have been worse in terms public/community relations. The day, which could have been a net gain for Frank Jackson due to his adroit presentation of the facts, actually turned out to be a net loss due to clumsy timing and wording by another city employee. And in typical Frank Jackson style, the cluck will no doubt be forgiven.
Vigorously fending off the lawsuit in the death of Tamir Rice will require city lawyers to engage in legal mud wrestling, which is the last thing the city needs right now. Considering the millions the city has already paid out in wrongful death lawsuits in recent years, a few million more for a city that’s self-insured really isn’t all that much. Besides, a quick and non-combative settlement would go a long way in terms of healing the breech that currently exists between cops and the citizenry. This isn’t rocket science, folks, it’s just common sense.
Mayor Jackson’s press conference was designed to provide information to the media in order to quell the drumbeat of criticism, and again, the mayor did such an outstanding job of offering up facts of accomplishment that it begs the question … if all of these positive changes were already occurring within the Cleveland Division of Police, why did he still feel the need to call in the Department of Justice?
Hush, truth.
[Photo: Ken Lund]
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.