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Mayor Frank Jackson – he of unending civic wisdom – shot back at Attorney General Mike DeWine’s independent assessment of the Cleveland Police Department’s deadly chase and shootout.

DeWine’s office and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation released a report earlier this year that blames the event on a “systemic failure” of the entire department. Jackson didn’t agree; he and Police Chief Michael McGrath this week punished several supervisors for lack of individual oversight and overall inaction. One sergeant got fired. It was what we in the biz call “weak sauce.”

As Jackson tells the PD, however, DeWine’s office is the “systemic failure.” He blasted what he sees as an impediment to due process in DeWine’s office’s report. Here’s a line from Jackson that does little more than obscure the point he thinks he’s making:

“If those two victims were dogs, there would have been more attention paid to them, and they would have been given more consideration to due process,” Jackson said. “The process can’t be relied upon for fairness.”

And here’s DeWine – again, via the PD’s John Caniglia:

“The alternative was to let rumor and innuendo float around Cleveland for months and months,” he said. “We had a moral obligation to do that. The public had a right to know.”

It’s strange par for the course that Jackson and the gang are hammering their opinions on the matter via press conferences and interviews. Flipping the “systemic failure” bit back on DeWine’s office is amateurish at best and a pure straw-man fallacy at worst.

…Meanwhile, there’s also the criminal investigation into the shooting, headed up by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty.

This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2013.

Eric Sandy is an award-winning Cleveland-based journalist. For a while, he was the managing editor of Scene. He now contributes jam band features every now and then.

9 replies on “Frank Jackson: YOU’RE the ‘Systemic Failure,’ Mr. Attorney General”

  1. Jackson is mad because the typical back-room dealing inside City Hall was thwarted by Mike DeWine.

  2. like the groundhog he comes out of his hole, does/says something obscure that makes you go Huh?, the scurries back….get your head out of the sand, mr mayor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. It would have been nice if they would hold the appropriate parties responsible. Not firing someone that should not have been fired. Why wasn’t this type of chase already in a handbook with guidelines? Who is truly the leading supervisor when this type of event unfolds? Why do we choose one person to have his life changed, while others with more seniority just get demoted? It is a sad day when you fire someone…instead of resolving this issue so that it WON’T unfold this way. The Police Department were just trying to protect and serve. Where would we be without them? and why didn’t the people in the car stop?

  5. Where are the guidelines and training to ensure that the officers are supplied with the right tools to do their jobs? How to handle, who should be in charge? etc.

    Let’s have resolution…not tarring and feathering of the police force. With all the murders we have in this city and missing children, we should not take away their power, but should be more proactive in the approach.

  6. Cleveland is a great place to live, but we need to start working together to make it a better place to live. Look at all of the resources going to waste…and the amount of people that flee our City to go elsewhere. Look at the abandoned houses, either in default or just abandoned. We have let companies from other countries buy our land that don’t even know what they purchased and then just have the buildings empty for years.

    Cleveland is a land of opportunity. Let’s work together and make it truly the place to live and raise a family. We have culture, nature, sports, etc. We have it all, let’s use it to our advantage. Let’s not only focus on downtown and the eastside where the mayor (no matter who) always seems to reside. Let’s focus on Cleveland!!!!

  7. Truthfully they should Reduce the size of Cleveland. It obviously can handle its affairs. I’d like to see Ohio City Become its own town. Lakewood Annex everything between Detroit and the Shoreline All the way down to West Blvd. Tremont become its own city as well. Thats just for starters.

  8. Let’s Face It , The Police Are Nothing More Than A”Necessary Evil”. They Are The Most Corrupt Organization On The Face Of America. Justice, JustAin’t. It’s More Justhem.

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