“For ’tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard”
– Hamlet Act 3, Scene 4
Not for nothing is ‘ol Willie Shakespeare, who died 399 years ago, still considered the greatest writer the world has ever known. Name a situation or circumstance (no matter how fair, foul or otherwise) regarding life, politics, the spiritual, or the metaphysical, and you can find an illuminating allegory somewhere in his voluminous and amazing work. His keen sensibilities missed nothing … and deft touch omitted even less.
Thus the situation in Cleveland — vis-à-vis police brutality in general and the Tamir Rice case in particular — is beginning to take on dire, Shakespearian proportions.
Had we the gift of clairvoyance we might be able to see Waterloo looming for Mayor Frank Jackson … a circumstance that should not bring joy to even his worse enemies, for as the mayor fares so too does the city. But, alas, Jackson might be on a collision course with history, one dictated as much by karma as anything else.
And this would be a shame, a wreck of tragic proportions, given all the tough times Cleveland has been going through for decades … to have the glimmers of light we’ve gotten glimpses of over the last five or six years to be so cruelly extinguished — snatched from our grasp — just as we are poised on the cusp of comeback.
What else but karma, bad Juju, or foul misfortune explains how, while Mayor Jackson was attempting to “engineer” a response to critics via a press conference in which he was highlighting the positive changes his administration has made regarding the Cleveland Division of Police, his own Law Department was lighting the fuse on a “petard,” and the repercussions of the explosion just might blow him into oblivion.
In a mind-boggling response to the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Tamir Rice, the city, in a boilerplate response, claimed that the 12-year-old was negligently responsible for his own death. The story resulting from the callous response has made national news, and while it has elicited a quick apology from Mayor Jackson … it’s a move — albeit sincere — that many are characterizing as much too little far too late.
Back to Shakespeare: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” And, while Mayor Jackson didn’t personally write the response that certainly could by construed as bordering on evil, he oversees city Law Director Barbara Langhenry, who personally signed off on the offensive language contained in the document. For a veteran city attorney to be so politically tone-deaf is indeed beyond mind-boggling — it’s totally incomprehensible. If this had occurred in any other city in the country the law director would have been cleaning out his or her desk by the end of the day … but not here in Cleveland, where no one ever is fired.
Which brings up another tragic flaw in Frank Jackson’s persona — another “chink in his armor” if you will: In addition to being overly loyal to city employees, and stubborn beyond reason or belief, we can now add that he is too tolerant of incompetence.
Indeed, to continue with the Shakespearian analogies, “Something is truly rotten in the Denmark of City Hall that sits at 601 Lakeside Ave.”
An error of this magnitude bespeaks a much larger and deeper problem within the Jackson administration. It’s already a well-known fact that the Law Department is totally dysfunctional and has been for years … ask anyone who has attempted to do business with the city only to have contracts fall into a black hole, from which some have never emerged since the company went out of business waiting for the city to pay up so they could pay their bills.
A department where the denizens refer to themselves as the “We-bees.” A term that translates to a smarmy response to any mayor that attempts of foist change on the behavior of the civil service protected employees as, “We were here when you got here, and we’ll be here after you’re long gone, so don’t say shit about how we do, or don’t do, our jobs.”
Thus, the “We-bees.” It’s quite similar to the attitude of many rank and file cops.
So, while I continue to believe that Frank Jackson is a extraordinarily decent and honorable human being — those tears he almost shed when he apologized to the family of Tamir Race on camera were indeed genuine — his tragic flaws are coming to the fore as the waters become more turbulent and troubled in Cleveland, and his shortcomings are made more manifest as the debate continues to heat up.
Human nature is such that, when things are going relatively well much is forgiven by the populace, even potholes; but when things are going badly the public can turn on an elected official as quickly as a pit viper … with every pothole now becoming a shameful crater in their mind’s eye, every slow response to a snow storm a reason to reach for the tar and feathers, and every disrespectful statement to a grieving family a hanging offense.
Is it fair? No, it’s the nature of politics.
[Photo: Erik Drost]
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.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Something Is Rotten In City Hall”
hank wait
Jackson is only loyal to his management not city employees. Concerning the rank and file he’s not as bad as Mike White in his distain but there certainly is no loyalty. I know. I work here. Management in my Division (no I’m not saying where I work) is and has been incompetent for years and nothing gets done about it. It’s pathetic and discouraging for those of us who show up and do our best. All too often we have to cover the asses of those who are out “superiors”. It hasn’t changed in years and won’t. Sadly.