CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Three years of investigation and judicial reviews into the death of Tanisha Anderson ended Friday when a Cuyahoga County grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Cleveland police officers who handcuffed her and let her lie on the ground shortly before she died.

The grand jury on Friday issued no-bills on all criminal charges that could have been filed against Cleveland police officers Scott Aldridge, 49, and Bryan Myers, 33.

Myers was in his probationary period as a new police officer and was still in training at the time of the incident, according to the Attorney General's investigative report. Aldridge was his training officer. City and police officials will now begin the process of deciding whether they'll face discipline for their roles in Anderson's death on Nov. 13, 2014.

Both officers have been on restricted duty since Anderson's death.

Henry Hilow, the attorney for the Cleveland Patrolmen's Association, said the union always believed the officers were not criminally liable for Anderson's death. Hilow said police officers are not mental-health experts and that, in this case, they only tried to help Anderson and her family get her to a hospital.

"Before the city disciplines anyone, they should read the report," Hilow said. "She died of a heart attack and medication that she took. Their conduct did not cause her death. That message is resounding in that coroner's report."

Hilow called the death tragic and said the city "scapegoated" the officers. The city had not at that time properly trained officers to deal with someone in the throes of a mental-health crisis, Hillow said. Anderson's death sparked that change and officers now regularly are trained in how to deal with the mentally ill.

David Malik, an attorney for the Anderson family who negotiated a $2.25 million wrongful-death settlement with the city, referred questions to the family. They said they would comment at a later time.

The long investigation

Anderson's death highlighted the difficult nature of handling someone in the midst of a mental health crisis.

The case also highlighted it can be to investigate such incidents. Witnesses often remembered things incorrectly and some witnesses, including a Cleveland police supervisor and Anderson's family members, did not fully cooperate with the investigation, according to the attorney general.

There are also questions that remain unanswered, including how Anderson ended up on the ground and how long she was handcuffed.

Ohio Attorney General Special Prosecutions Chief Matthew J. Donahue - in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Stephen Schumaker and Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Administrative Judge John Russo -- criticized the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office for using prohibited information called Garrity material in determining Anderson's initial cause of death.

Garrity material is information obtained from a police officer's statement given in an internal affairs investigation and is barred from being used in a criminal case against the officer.

"Tanisha Anderson's death was tragic, and the investigation that followed was unnecessarily constrained by legal complications that, quite frankly, should not have ever happened," Donahue's letter says. "By the time the investigative file reached the Attorney General's Office, two years and eight days after Ms. Anderson's death, there was much work to be done before the case could move forward. And there was only so much that could be done because of what had (or hadn't) occurred in the past. Never before has the Special Prosecutions Section been presented with such a complicated legal mess."

Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner Thomas Gilson said in a statement that he stands by his office's work and that they used the industries best practices in determining Anderson's death.

"The legal circumstances that followed do not reflect upon the quality of the investigation, were after the fact, and not under the control or purview of this Office," the statement says.

Donahue's letter cites several missteps in the investigation, including that information obtained through the Cleveland police use-of-deadly-force investigation team was improperly used by the medical examiner in determining Anderson's cause of death.

Donahue's letter said the attorney general's office was asked to take over the case because that Garrity material had tainted the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office's review of the case.

Because of that, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's ruling that Anderson's death resulted from homicide was removed from the investigative files.

That caused a significant delay in the case. Donahue's letter said his office had never before conducted a suspicious death investigation without having a full autopsy and cause of death.

"The Garrity issue created the most legally difficult and complex incidents involving a death in police custody that the AGO Special Prosecutions Section has ever faced," Donahue wrote, later adding that "The Garrity contamination and the problems that it caused cannot be overstated."

He recommended that the county review how this happened to ensure it never happens again.

The encounter

Anderson died during an encounter with officers who had been called by her family to help her during a mental-health episode at a family member's home on Ansel Road.

At the time, Anderson was 12 days removed from getting treatment at the Windsor Laurelwood Center for Behavioral Medicine in Willoughby. The center treats people with mental illnesses, according to the attorney general. It was her second stint at the facility in two months.

Her brother, Joell Anderson, called police about 8:15 p.m. and told dispatchers the family needed help because she was "belligerent, and family members were afraid," the attorney general said. Two officers arrived and determined that the situation calmed down. They left by 10 p.m.

Some 45 minutes later, another family member called police and said that Anderson was turning on lights and trying to leave the home only wearing a nightgown.

Aldridge and Myers responded and were let into the home. Anderson agreed to go to the hospital. The officers walked her outside, and she sat in their cruiser with her feet still on the ground.

What happened next is disputed by the officers and witnesses, according to the attorney general's review.

Anderson got upset. Her brother believed it was because she was in a confined space. The officers told investigators it was because her brother was yelling at her and telling her she was going to jail, which Joell Anderson disputed. The officers noted that they were not taking her to jail, but to a hospital.

A scuffle ensued. Witnesses accounts differed on how Anderson ended up handcuffed and on the ground.

The officers said Anderson went on the ground on her own and kicked at them while she was on her back, according to the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's investigative file. Family members said she was slammed to the ground.

The two officers both told investigators that Joell Anderson told them his sister was "fake sleeping." One witness told investigators that it was the officers who claimed she was sleeping.

It is also disputed as to how long she was on her back and when she was turned over on her stomach, still in handcuffs.

Cuyahoga County Sheriff investigators estimated that Anderson was handcuffed on the ground for about 21 minutes, based on a timer on one of the officer's stun gun which was activated but never used.

The officers requested an ambulance at 11:34 p.m. The ambulance arrived seven minutes later and took Anderson to the Cleveland Clinic where she was pronounced dead at 12:30 a.m.

Most of the witnesses agreed that the handcuffs were removed before she was loaded into the ambulance, the attorney general said. The EMS employees who arrived told investigators they had to request that the officers remove the handcuffs so they could give her medical treatment at the scene.

Problems with the investigation

Cleveland police's use-of-force investigators first handled the case. Seven months later the Cuyahoga County sheriff took over and gave their findings to then-Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner ruled her death a homicide from "sudden death associated with physical restraint in a prone position." Her heart disease and bipolar disorder were also considered factors that increased her chance of sudden death, the report says.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John Russo, however, found fault with the medical examiner's report because of the Garrity material.

He ordered that first page of the autopsy report be removed, which contained the cause and manner of death. McGinty requested the attorney general take over immediately after his office got the case.

The Attorney General's Office ordered a second autopsy in January 2017.

Montgomery County Corner Dr. Kent Harshbarger was asked to review the autopsy and make a ruling on Anderson's death.

Harshbarger, according to the attorney general, found that her cause of death was a "cardiac event." He found that one of Anderson's arteries to her heart was 70 to 80 percent closed and another was 50 percent closed. Anderson suffered from heart disease and was taking prescription medication -- Resperidol/risperidone-- that increased her risk of having a heart attack.

He reported that the autopsy did not show any significant injuries, other than a chest injury that was likely caused by medics giving her chest compressions at the scene. Harshbarger also noted that Anderson had several other medical issues that contributed to her death, including diabetes, obesity and bipolar disorder.

The delay in the case also hindered the attorney general's ability to interview or re-interview witnesses, Donahue's letter says. Some witnesses were uncooperative, including some of Anderson's family members and Cleveland Police Sgt. Rochelle Bottone, according to Donahue's letter.

Anderson died shortly before the U.S. Justice Department issued a 58-page report that found, among other things, many Cleveland police officers are not properly trained to handle encounters with residents with mental illnesses.

The report found that officers often do not practice proper de-escalation techniques to keep a situation from getting out of control and wind up using cruel and excessive force against the mentally and medically ill.

The report led to the consent decree and mandated changes in the way police officers deal with calls of people suffering from mental illness.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post said that Anderon's case was specifically mentioned in the U.S. Justice Department report. She died shortly before the report was issued.

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