The Nov. 29, 2012, incident left driver 43-year-old Timothy Russell and a passenger, 30-year-old Malissa Williams, dead after a 20-plus-minute chase that involved 62 police cars and more than 100 officers who wrongly believed that occupants of the vehicle had fired a weapon at them.

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More than a dozen officers fired 137 shots at the vehicle, striking Russell 23 times and Williams 24 times. No guns or shell casings were recovered from the 1979 Chevrolet Malibu that Russell was driving.

After the incident, the officers who filed the lawsuit were suspended with pay for three days and ordered to serve a 45-day “cooling off period” before they could return to active duty.

But the lawsuit alleges that the nine officers were denied opportunities for promotions and transfers to specialized units and did not return to active duty for 16 months. They were subjected to ” ‘unofficial punishment’ in violation of their constitutional rights” that resulted in permanent lost wages, lower earning capacity and damage to their reputations, according to the court filing.

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The police department places “onerous burdens” on non-African American officers, according to the lawsuit, because of “their race and the race of persons who are the subjects of the legitimate use of deadly force.”

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“All of the plaintiffs felt as though they had no other choice other than to discharge their firearms in order to deal with what they believe to be an imminent threat to their safety and the safety of other officers,” the lawsuit stated. “Additionally, other officers from the scene stated that they too felt deadly force was justified, despite not firing their own weapons.”

The victims’ families have said that the officers might have believed they were fired upon because the car backfired.

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Daniel Williams, a spokesman for the city of Cleveland, said Monday morning that the mayor’s office does not yet have a response because it had not officially been served a lawsuit.

The fatal 2012 car chase prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation into the Cleveland Police Department, based on allegations that its officers use excessive and “unreasonable deadly force.” The federal probe, launched in March 2013, is ongoing.

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On Saturday, marking the second anniversary of the deaths of Russell and Williams, their families gathered for a vigil at the Heritage Middle School parking lot where the car chase came to an end.

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They were joined by relatives of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American whose killing by a white police officer in a Cleveland park Nov. 22 has garnered national attention.

Rice was playing with a toy replica of a semiautomatic weapon that officers believed was real. Video footage shows a Cleveland officer exiting a still-moving patrol car and firing on Rice moments after arriving on the scene.

“You’re at the start, where we were two years ago,” said Walter Jackson, Malissa Williams’s uncle, according to Cleveland.com. “You need to be strong. God is watching, and he’s going to bring you through the situation.”

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The officers’ lawsuit comes at a time of heightened tension nationwide, touched off by the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., over the summer.

Brown, a 19-year-old African American, was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson. Conflicting accounts by eyewitnesses say that Brown was either advancing aggressively toward the officer or was surrendering with his hands up. Last week, a grand jury declined to indict Wilson, fueling more protests across the country.

Wilson resigned from the Ferguson Police Department over the weekend.

In the Cleveland case, the families of Russell and Williams reached a $3 million settlement with the city in July.

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Patrolman Michael Brelo, who is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, was indicted on charges of manslaughter. Prosecutors say that Brelo fired 49 shots into the vehicle, including 15 into the windshield from the hood of the car after it came to a stop, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

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Brelo has pleaded not guilty; if convicted, he faces up to 22 years in prison.

Five supervisors were charged with dereliction of duty for failing to manage the chase. And 63 officers were suspended for up to 10 days each for their roles in the chase.