Could Cleveland be next?

Cleveland, the host city for the 2016 Republican convention, has its own Freddie Gray incident — the killing by police last year of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy who turned out to be brandishing a toy gun.


It has its own Ferguson-style Justice Department investigation, a damning 58-page report that found “the trust between the Cleveland Division of Police and many of the communities it serves is broken.” The report condemned the CDP’s widespread use of “unnecessary and excessive deadly force” symbolized by a militarized sign hung in one district station: “Forward Operating Base.” In one high-profile 2012 case, two motorists were killed during a 22-minute car chase in which police shot at the fleeing vehicle 137 times.

And Cleveland, like Baltimore, consistently ranks among America’s most segregated cities, with the country’s second-highest rate of children living in poverty — 54 percent, trailing only Detroit.

Hosting the Republican National Convention was a major coup, but city leaders now find themselves trying to avoid a nightmare scenario ahead of next year’s gathering: riots that could disrupt planning and hurt the city’s image.

On Tuesday, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson emailed a letter to “Community Leaders” saying city officials were “planning for a variety of contingencies and are being very proactive in both communication and outreach.”

“We are partnering with community and faith-based leaders, corporate entities and individuals to foster an environment that informs audiences about the changes taking place, while recognizing the importance of listening and engaging with all parties involved,” he wrote.

On Thursday, Jackson reprimanded Community Relations Board Director Blaine Griffin for tweets the board sent out on a now-deleted account asking Twitter followers whether the city should be “burned down” like Baltimore or Ferguson.

“Have heart! Don’t hide in the shadows! Should #ourcle be burned down? Speak up,” read another tweet, apparently an effort to get residents to speak up in favor of protecting the city.

Most city and community leaders say the convention will be fine.

“I don’t have any concerns that this is going to be somehow a dark cloud over the RNC or anything else,” said Kevin Kelley, president of the Cleveland City Council and a Democrat.

But some Cleveland community leaders told POLITICO that during the convention, Republicans need to acknowledge issues of police abuse and address the broader problems that inner-city neighborhoods face.

“If we have any respect for them at all, [these issues] would have to be addressed,” said Sybil Edwards-McNabb, the NAACP’s Ohio conference president. “How would you come into the city? That would be like walking into a fire and saying there’s no flames.”

Cleveland police conduct remains in the spotlight after the grim November death of Rice, who was fatally shot by an officer who thought the preteen’s pellet gun was real. The family sued, and the city’s response — blaming Rice in a legal filing for “failure … to exercise due care to avoid injury” — enraged many across the country and prompted Jackson to apologize. Small anti-police demonstrations broke out after the killing in a city park. Few people were arrested, and the city remained calm.

But the county’s sheriff office is still investigating whether charges should be filed against the officer involved, meaning the incident still looms over the city, unresolved. The question now is whether Cleveland residents will believe that justice gets served.

“I think that if there is a disappointing verdict and people are not held accountable for their actions,” warned Jawanza Colvin, pastor of the city’s 4,000-member Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, organizers would redouble their efforts and “could increase the magnitude and the volume, the intensity of those protests.”

Others raised a broader set of concerns that feed the African-American community’s sense of alienation.

Ronn Richard, president and CEO of the Cleveland Foundation, said: “The reason that there are problems with police-community relations is because of high unemployment, bad schools and all of these societal issues.”

Unlike several cities that have had problems, Cleveland has experienced an economic renaissance, with manufacturing coming back and the biotech industry adding jobs. And that gives some officials confidence that Cleveland won’t be the next Baltimore.

Kelley, the City Council president, said: “If you look at the Tamir Rice case and you look at how other cities have had police-community issues … we didn’t have riots — there was a total of three arrests for the whole period.”

“So we’re a big city, we have big-city problems,” Kelley added. “But we deal with them differently. We want our citizens to be involved, we want our citizens to care, we want our citizens to express themselves. But at the same time, we want them to do it respectfully.”

Kelley said the 2016 protests may be “a little bit bigger” than typical convention demonstrations, but there’s a plan “to allow people to respectfully express their opinions” in a First Amendment zone.

Richard, of the Cleveland Foundation, said: “I think there’s so much interest in having a perfect convention for the Republicans, even though most typically won’t vote for Republicans in the end.”

Colvin, the pastor and community activist, said both parties had to reexamine their platforms and implement reforms “to address the types of aggravation, frustration and in some respects, the sense of hopelessness” that leads some people to riot.

If they don’t, he said: “We should anticipate that there will continue to be all forms of demonstrations and protests across the spectrum in all forms, from civil disobedience and nonviolent protests to much more extreme and violent types of incidences, unfortunately. And I want to emphasize unfortunately.”

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