Community demands justice

On Aug. 30 at 5 a.m., Cleveland police invaded the home of 15-year-old Brandon McCloud and stormed up to his bedroom. They then shot him 10 times, claiming he had been hiding in the closet and lunged at them with a knife. His family, however, insists he was sleeping in his bed. Blood stains on the bed linens back up the family’s version of events.

One month later to the day, Laray “Larry” Renshaw was chased down, shot and killed in the stairwell of an apartment building, allegedly while involved in a drug deal. Renshaw’s killer, Patrolman John Franco, says the 36-year-old man tried to grab his gun. Renshaw was unarmed.

Between these two cold-blooded kil lings, Cleveland police also shot and wounded a third African-American male.

The community is fed up. Renshaw’s killing nearly sparked a rebellion in the neighborhood. Crowds of youth surrounded the cops; some were heard saying, “Next time we’ll shoot back.” A local imam urged restraint. His advice was heeded—for the moment.

Hundreds took to the streets two days later, marching, blocking streets and chanting, “Who killed McCloud? Police. Who killed Renshaw? Police. What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” The next day the protest moved downtown as angry residents marched into City Hall to demand justice. On Oct. 8, Renshaw’s relatives were among the crowd demanding answers at a meeting sponsored by Mayor Jane Campbell.

“Accentuate the positive” seemed to be the message beaming from the mayor, who had the incredible effrontery to say that prior to these three incidents, the city had gone 14 months without a fatal police shooting. The meeting announced the city’s hiring of a so-called expert on reducing the use of deadly force.

The “expert,” John Timoney, has been involved in the brutal repression of anti-globalization protests, most recently in Miami. He was previously employed with the New York and Philadelphia police—not exactly a glowing recommendation. He brags that while fatalities in Miami are down, arrests are up. His main message is to extol the virtues of Tasers—”stun guns ”—without acknowledging the growing number of deaths associated with their use.

Those challenging city officials from the audience included relatives of Ren shaw, Craig Bickerstaff and others killed by police in recent years. Other speakers includ ed community activists Abdul Qahhar and Art McKoy, whose organi zation “Black on Black” helped organize the marches, and Cleveland State Univer sity professor Ron nie Dunne, whose academic study of racial profiling here points the guilty finger at this city’s police. Officer Franco’s arch-racism was documented by McKoy, who spoke recently with a white couple in the neighborhood where the cop lives. This couple told him that Franco harassed them repeatedly for renting to a Black family.

A concerned mother explained the anger of the youth: they have no jobs, their parents have no jobs, and the cops treat them like dirt. In fact, the most visible symbol of the poverty in the East 140th/St. Clair neighborhood is a huge vacant field, the former site of the General Motors’ Fisher Body plant. Over 20 years after its closing, nothing has been built there to replace even a fraction of the jobs that fed this once-thriving community.

Just over a year ago, while Vice Pre sident Dick Cheney and Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards were in the city pretending to debate the issues, statistics came to light calling Cleve land the poorest city in the country. With growing poverty, joblessness, overcrowded schools, police brutality and the not-so-distant memory of racist disenfranchisement during the 2004 presidential election, No amount of police terror will stop the community's thirst for justice.