MANSFIELD: An Officer and a Gentleman

Cleveland’s Chief of Police, Michael McGrath, is perhaps one of the finest men to ever wear a badge… in ours or any other city in this country. His dedication to duty is beyond reproach… that’s why it’s so difficult for someone like me, who is a big fan of this fine officer, to see him placed between such a big rock and an extremely hard place.

He’s in a Catch-22: In order to be the chief he has to be upright, forthright, and trustworthy (which he certainly is)… but in order to stay the chief, he has to learn to hold his nose and dissemble, to parse the truth without flat-out lying when it comes to defending the actions of a few of the officers who serve under him. Talk about being in a real trick bag, as we used to say back in the day.

In a recent open letter to the community, he’s put in the untenable position of attempting to defend the indefensible… and, quite simply, it can’t be done. Pointing out to the citizenry how many times Cleveland officers do their jobs in a professional manner and not violate anyone’s civil rights (which happens in 99.9 percent of the cases) cannot excuse the times — no matter how few they are — when officers knowingly and with malice aforethought commit brutality under color of authority. That dog just ain’t going to hunt… these incidents are not some kind of freak accidents — they’re the actions of a few mad dogs the chief or no one else bothered to muzzle.

Thankfully, the vast, overwhelming majority of police officers are truly dedicated to doing their job in a professional manner, just as the vast, overwhelming majority of the citizens of Cleveland are law-abiding and peaceful. But that has not stopped a handful of police officers from treating many of the citizens they come into contact with as if they’re an outlaw or thug. It’s the twisted mindset these few rogue officers bring to the job, and they apply it to everyone — even though the number of true outlaws and thugs in our community is as small — percentage wise — as the number of rogue officers on the force.

But Chief McGrath has to defend the rogues and their actions for one main reason: To forestall lawsuits. Virtually no police chief ever can admit an officer has done wrong, even when strong evidence points in that direction… and the rank and file officers know and take advantage of this. But in essence they become the “Chief Enablers.”

The answer (which is always fought off tooth and nail, just like cameras in cars are) is to take McGrath and the safety director off the hook by establishing a true Civilian Review Board, one with teeth. It’s the only real solution, and once the City of Cleveland starts getting sued so many times its insurance carrier threatens to raise our rates through the roof, perhaps reasoned reforms will be given serious consideration.

The fact is, every officer on the force knows who the bad cops are, but the “blue wall of silence” protects them, and the command structure never does anything to rein them in or get them off the street… especially if their father, grandfather or uncle was a cop.

These sick brutes feel they’re entitled; that they have a God-given right to do whatever they want in the streets, and that they will be able to get away with it simply because they always have before. But sometimes luck runs out.

And, as for those “strict, clear guidelines” on use of force by officers mentioned in the chief’s letter, they didn’t do Edward Henderson much good when his head was being used for field goal kicking practice, now did they? The video of the incident (which, supposedly, is truly sickening) clearly demonstrates some officers don’t give a good goddamn about what’s written on a piece of paper tucked away somewhere at headquarters.

After each such incident, when there is no way to cover up the wrongdoing (in spite of police apologists telling us not to believe what we are seeing), the cry of “anomaly, anomaly” again goes up. But how many “anomalies” does it take to establish a pattern? In the end, covering up for rogue officers are not doing them any favor… it’s only setting them up, enabling them if you will, to eventually go too far, as in the Henderson case. And now their asses are in a sling.

I sincerely respect and even empathize with Chief McGrath; I just wish he wouldn’t treat the citizens of Cleveland as if we all have oatmeal for brains. There is a pattern of bad policing in Cleveland (similar to many other cities across the country), and any honest broker knows it. Cases like Henderson’s happen all too often; no cop — indeed no decent human being — could treat another human this despicably without some practice, without some prior brutality conditioning… and without someone up the chain of command knowing what was going on. If they didn’t know this type of culture existed among a small percentage of officers… that perhaps is worse than them knowing about it and doing nothing.

With the feds watching, this case could very well afford us the opportunity to seriously change for the better how policing is carried out, how cops interact with citizens in Cleveland… and if we don’t seize this opportunity to improve our city, we’re either cowards or fools — or perhaps both. Sorry chief, no amount of explaining is going to make this go away, not this time.

It was all about Art

As Congresswoman Marcia Fudge and over a dozen local pastors and political leaders from Greater Cleveland’s Black community attempted to hold a press conference across the street from Huron Road Hospital to address the upcoming closing of the institution by Cleveland Clinic, the event was undermined — hijacked is a more appropriate word — by a megalomaniac with a microphone: The infamous Art McCoy… the man with a Napoleonic complex who’s a legend… but only in his own mind.

One has to wonder if any nefarious, underhanded individual or organization paid the diminutive demagogue to disrupt the press conference. If so, they got their money’s worth… while the needy people of Cleveland and East Cleveland that McCoy claims to represent got screwed out of having their real needs and issues addressed.

As soon as the TV cameras began rolling, McCoy turned on his microphone and began yelling at the top of his lungs, “Sellout! Sellout! I know a sellout when I see one!” and he would not stop hollering this and other nonsensical statements as long as there was one cameraman remaining on the scene. The minute all the media left — he immediately quit.

But during his rant he unknowingly told on himself: “I know you don’t like me,” McCoy constantly repeated over and over to those assembled, attempting to keep the event about himself, not about the issue… as all camera whores and media pimps attempt to do.

McCoy’s performance was truly scandalous, a grotesquely obscene tirade carried out only to stoke his own sense of self-importance… not caring that all the while his buffoonish show served as a tragic setback for the goals and aspirations of the larger Black community. However, when so-called legitimate Civil Rights organizations are conspicuous by their absence… they abdicate the protest field to twisted fools.

McCoy did everything he could to make sure that he — not the Congresswoman or other speakers — would be the feature of the evening news, which, of course, meant the real issues would not be given a fair public airing… and to a degree he succeeded. More than one station focused on his antics rather than the issues.

This poseur, in any other setting, would have been comically entertaining — in a minstrel show sort of way — but given the gravitas of the situation the press conference was called for (to address the potential loss of a hospital to a marginally poor community) McCoy’s actions were those of a race traitor: He hurt his people rather than helped them, and it appears as if he did so intentionally. The only questions remaining is… did someone pay him for his treachery, and, if so, how much?

Another grudging agreement

For the second week in a row I find myself in agreement with someone I usually don’t share common ground or a similar world view with: This time is the PD’s Kevin O’Brien.

He accurately wrote that while the new CEO of Cleveland’s schools, Eric Gordon, seems to be a very bright, dedicated and decent chap, he too will ultimately fail to have any meaningful impact on outcomes… and that it has everything to do with how our schools are setup to fail. As Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) often says, “Superman ain’t coming.”

O’Brien is right again when he places the blame for the educational failure right where it belongs: on dysfunctional families. Gordon can’t be in every household every evening making sure homework is being done. Public schools simply are not designed to become the parent, that won’t work… but for over 20 years HCZ has proven what does work — and works magnificently.

But right-wingers like O’Brien like to slyly suggest that the “problem” is there’s simply something genetically wrong with some Black folks… that the Black underclass actually likes their diminished condition. Wrong.

No, Kevin, there’s nothing wrong with us, something was done to us, and you know what it was. The 16-year-old high-school dropout mother… of a child by an 18-year-old dropout father who’s on his way to prison, are simply who they were raised to be… by parents who were as devoid of education and aspirations as they are. Why? Because their parents were the same way, and so too were the parents before them, and the parents before them too… until we arrive at the door of the slave cabin where it was against the law to teach a child to read. Sadly, some Blacks were so broken, so intimidated by the lash, they gave up hope and succumbed to the demands of the slavemasters that they remain ignorant. And this condition has been passed down, unbroken, from one generation to the next among some families.

Of course the O’Brien’s of the world cannot admit that slavery is the real cause, because to do so would mean owning up to the debt owed, which could lead to someone uttering the dreaded “R” word: Reparations. Now, two-thirds of the descendents of slaves in this country are doing just fine and dandy, so we don’t want or need one goddamn dime for the centuries of free labor that built fortunes for companies still around today.

But what we do want, what we should want is for programs like the HCZ to be funded, for all members of the underclass (poor Whites and Native Americans also) across this nation until every child is given an honest, fair shot at life… which starts with a decent education.

Over 100 years ago W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground.” In this respect we Black folks (myself included) have been deficient; we have not done enough to help the underclass of our race.

It’s not time for the well-off portion of the Black race in America to sit around the pool at the country club — margarita in hand — engaged in earnest discussion over which car handles best… a Cadillac Escalade or a Lincoln Navigator. We have a duty, an obligation, to reach back and help those of our race still left behind, and if we shirk from that responsibility shame on us.

However, Michelle Alexander, in her brilliant book The New Jim Crow, has pricked the conscience of the Black middleclass. She calls us out for turning our collective back on the poor, the formerly incarcerated, and the under-educated of our race. What she is saying is that it’s really up to us to prove the O’Brien’s of the world wrong.

We have to demand that the űber-rich of our race — the athletes, celebrities and entertainers we all slavishly worship — take more responsibility to do what Braylon Edwards did, and invest some of their wealth in children and their education. And those of us who do not have large, disposable incomes can find ways to give of our time by volunteering — the opportunities and the needs are endless. Sitting around complaining about conditions just ain’t cutting it anymore.

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://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.