The mission of Right the Record, Exposing Police Violence in Cleveland, is to replace false narratives with truth about the reality of police brutality by documenting community and public accounts to be used as a resource for those seeking justice.
The heart of our work is the community archive, A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland. Its purpose is to contain and present narrative documentation of police brutality from the Greater Cleveland area in Ohio. We seek to provide a place of healing for impacted communities and shift systemic power back to The People through lifting hidden atrocities.
Our History
Launched in April, 2017, The People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland (PAPVC) was created through a collaboration between Puncture the Silence-Stop Mass Incarceration organizers and professional archivists. It grew out of widespread outrage at the repeated police killings and criminalization of young Black men and women, locally and nationally. These murders weren’t a new phenomenon for the community, but the use of cellphones to record them was. From Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was murdered in Florida by a neighborhood vigilante as he walked home from a convenience store–to Brandon Jones, the 18-year old who was murdered while being questioned about a petty theft, police, and vigilantes who committed these extrajudicial murders were almost always given complete impunity.
In April 2015, Puncture the Silence organized a People’s Tribunal of Police Brutality, fashioned after the tribunals elsewhere in this country and around the world where the oppressive rulers brutalized and murdered a section of their population. At the Tribunal, members of the public testified about the painful impact police brutality and murder had on them and their loved ones. In July, 2015, the organizers collaborated with archivists in town for a national meeting, on a Story Corps-type project interviewing people on the street about their experiences with police. Afterward, the idea of creating an archive emerged, and the development of a website began. It was called A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland (PAPVC) and was launched in April, 2017.
During the Summer of 2020, the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor renewed outrage over police brutality. In spite of the raging global Covid pandemic, solidarity protests emerged across the U.S. and around the world. The police response was brutal. In Cleveland, a police riot on May 30, 2020, left dozens of protestors wounded, and one man lost his eye. This event created renewed interest in PAPVC as a tool to expose police violence. One of the protesters who was shot with a non-lethal weapon became interested in working with the volunteer committee managing PAPVC. During the time between May 30th and the launching of the new user-friendly website, substantial energy and vision from new volunteers and funds from the community led to an expanded concept. PAPVC was renamed Right the Record, Exposing Police Violence in Cleveland. While the People’s Archive remains the heart of the project, Right the Record, Exposing Police Violence in Cleveland is a more deliberate activist effort.
Police Violence in Cleveland
Like most large cities in the U.S. Cleveland has a shameful history of police violence, particularly of Black and Brown people. The police are not required to provide a clear and accessible account of the majority of their violent acts. Not even official records of police killings are made public. Keeping the public in the dark is not a mistake. So, it’s up to us, the community, to collect the information on our own; the ongoing work of Right the Record contributes to this effort.
In an effort to provide some context for ongoing police violence in Greater Cleveland, our archive researchers have developed a thorough list of police killings in Cleveland. Our archive contains many stories of police violence. Going forward our aim is to get more community input to expand our coverage exposing police violence.
National Notoriety
Cleveland is linked to national trends in community uprisings against police brutality and police attacks on protesters. Some killings in Greater Cleveland have sparked significant community protest, some of which were attacked by police.
Two egregious cases earned Cleveland national notoriety. In November, 2012, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, two unarmed Black people, whose car backfired, were shot 137 times after a dangerous high-speed chase by 60 police cars through the city. In November, 2014, police pulled up within feet of Tamir Rice, an unarmed 12-year-old Black boy who was playing with a toy gun in a community center park, and fatally shot him in less than two seconds.
Cleveland police attacks on protesters on May 30, 2020, following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, have been somewhat exposed nationally, following a report by the city, as have other notable attacks on protesters which occurred previously.
After the 2015 acquittal of Michael Brelo (who stood on the car hood and fatally shot 49 of the 137 shots through the windshield at Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell), and following a long day of citywide protests, 71 protesters were “kettled” (a tactical maneuver used by the police to trap protesters) in an alley downtown and arrested. In 2016, at the time of the Republican National Convention, Cleveland Police attacked and arrested Greg “Joey” Johnson and 16 supporters who had surrounded him to protect the crowd as he lit an American flag. Johnson is the litigant in the 1989 case, Texas v Johnson, which affirmed the First Amendment protects the right to burn the American flag. In these instances of police repression, most, if not all, of the charges were subsequently dropped.
Systemic Injustice Persists After 2020 Uprisings
The murder of George Floyd sparked the largest, most widespread uprisings against police brutality in human history, around the world, and Cleveland was no exception. Since 2020 there were community protests in Cleveland around police killings in 2020-21 of 22-year-old Desmond Franklin, shot in the head by an off-duty Cleveland cop while driving his car; 19-year-old Arthur Keith, shot in the back in front of several children as he ran from CMHA police, and 19 year-old Vincent Belmonte, killed by the East Cleveland police while driving his girlfriend to work. In 2022 community protests followed the murders of Da’Twuan Catchings by Maple Hts. police, and Maalik Amir Roquemore on Cleveland’s westside.
In Cleveland, there is an internal Office of Professional Standards (OPS). There have been civilian review boards. There have been several iterations of police commissions, including the establishment of one through a charter amendment in 2021. Bodycams have been installed. Despite all of these official measures, police killings persist. Grand juries have thus far refused to prosecute any of the police involved. Families have received settlements, but money cannot bring back those they have lost. People have gone into the streets by the thousands in protest over and over again, often being viciously attacked by the police. Families joined by community activists continue to demand justice and an end to impunity for police who kill their loved ones.