11 Cleveland police officers indicted for civil rights violations

Source: Cooper Neill / Getty

The summer of reckoning in 2020 is largely accredited to the murder of George Floyd. A certain segment of the population felt the need to react to the global uprising by showing even more support to the abusive, blood-lusting, brigade of boys in blue. The righteous protest chant “abolish the police” was met with the disingenuous chant of “back the blue”. Let “them” tell it, police officers are pillars of the community and beyond reproach, as they are sacrificing their lives and well-being for the greater good. To that, we say “bulls#!t”.

According to Cleveland.com, 11 lil’ piggies have been indicted on civil rights violations and suspicion of public corruption as a result of a violent viral video that Cuyahoga County’s top prosecutor Michael O’Malley describes as torture. The charges ranged from felonious assault, interfering with civil rights, and dereliction of duty, to aggravated robbery, bribery, and theft. This batch of 11 brings the total amount of officers criminally charged over the past 7 months to 16 under O’Malley’s watch.

Things are so bad in Cleveland that there is literally a 13-minute “highlight reel” of multiple abuses and infractions including the punching, pummeling, tasing, kicking and stomping of Black citizens who had fully surrendered or hand their hands up. In one of the clips, you hear white officers cackling and congratulating each other on a “nice lil a** whoopin’”. You can see the video below, however, you should be warned that it is graphic

There have been so many bad cops fired or indicted that East Cleveland only has about 24 officers to patrol the streets according to O’Malley.

“Make no mistake, there has been a cancer growing in the East Cleveland police department,” O’Malley told reporters. “We’re doing our best to remove every tentacle of that cancer so that this department can build and grow.”

You can argue whether or not “abolish the police” made for sound political tactics during an election season but it’s impossible to convince anyone of sound and rational mind that they should in any way trust the police to do what’s right and honorable.