A Cleveland Officer involved in November 2012 shootout of unarmed civilians, Melissa Williams and Timothy Russell was dismissed, Cleveland officials said on Tuesday. Cleveland cop, Michael Brelo, who fired at least 15 shots out of the 137-shot barrage on Nov.29, 2012 in East Cleveland was fired from his post.
Brelo, 31, was acquitted of two counts of manslaughter charges in May, according to LA Times. The patrolman was the only one fired from work while the rest of the other five officers, who participated in the November 2012 shootout are facing suspension from 21 to 30 days. The Public Safety Director Michael McGrath claimed that 13 officers will be facing administrative discipline. A plan to dismiss the five other officers was also announced on Tuesday.
After the city of Cleveland announced the firings of the officers involved in the Nov. 2012 shootout, the president of Cleveland's largest police union, Steve Loomis, expressed his disappointment in the decision, News Yahoo claims. "It's tragic that it went down this way, but at the end of the day, two people high on crack cocaine, high on marijuana, one of them intoxicated, made the decisions that they made and we responded to them," Loomis said. "And we responded within our training."
The case of Nov.2012 shootout took a long way before the city of Cleveland made a final decision. Despite the fact that the officers will not be facing criminal charges, the city will be continuing the process to remove the six officers from their positions. Mayor Frank Jackson claimed that with the appeal, it seems that the case will be taking long years to settle, according to The Atlantic.
The Nov. 2012 shootout is one of the cases that Cleveland police is facing after the death of a 12-year-old black boy, Tamir Rice, who was fatally shot in 2014 in a playground by a Cleveland police.
