Cleveland police department treats white officers unfairly, suit alleges

Associated Press

Nine Cleveland officers involved in a deadly 2012 police shooting that left two people dead accuse the department of racial discrimination in a federal lawsuit against the city and various police officials.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by eight white officers and one Hispanic officer says the department has a history of treating nonblack officers who shoot blacks more harshly than black officers who shoot blacks. Messages seeking comment Sunday from Cleveland’s law department and a city spokesman weren’t immediately returned.

Dozens of officers were involved in the November 2012 high-speed chase of a vehicle in which two unarmed people died in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire. Thirteen officers fired at the vehicle carrying 43-year-old driver Timothy Russell and 30-year-old passenger Malissa Williams.

Relatives of Russell and Williams will split a recent $3 million settlement of their lawsuit against the city. The U.S. Justice Department is conducting an investigation of the police department’s pursuit and use of force tactics.

The officers who fired their weapons in the 2012 shooting were put on three days’ administrative leave and then ordered to report to restricted duty for what the lawsuit says is traditionally a 45-day “cooling off” period for officers involved in shootings. Their restricted duty was for a period “substantially longer than that which had been meted out to similarly situated African American officers,” the lawsuit states.

The officers returned to full duty in the summer of 2013 but were later ordered back to a restricted duty within their districts in a move that the lawsuit alleges was “politically expedient” based upon the officers’ being non-African American. They were not allowed to return to full duty again until June 2014, the lawsuit states.