Dozens of protesters who were arrested in downtown Cleveland on Saturday night, after the acquittal of a white police officer charged over the November 2012 deaths of two unarmed black motorists, were arraigned in court on Monday.
Cleveland police arrested 71 people on Saturday, after a day of mostly small-scale and peaceful protests over the verdict in which Judge John O’Donnell found patrolman Michael Brelo not guilty of voluntary manslaughter in relation to the deaths of two unarmed motorists.
Fifty-eight people appeared before Cleveland municipal court judge Marilyn Cassidy on Monday morning, to be arraigned on misdemeanour charges. Most pleaded no contest to reduced charges and were sentenced to time served.
A handful pleaded not guilty.
Authorities had feared – and prepared against – the possibility that the verdict in Brelo’s case would provoke similar unrest to that which broke out recently in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, after the deaths of young African American men at the hands of police.
In the Cleveland case, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams died in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire after a 20-mile high-speed chase which began when an officer mistook their car backfiring for a gunshot.
Brelo fired 49 shots, 15 from the hood of the car. Judge O’Donnell found him not guilty in part because the prosecution had not proven that he and not another officer had fired the shots which killed Williams and Russell.
Brelo, who broke down in tears when the verdict was announced, was the only officer charged over the incident, though others have been disciplined. He remains on unpaid suspension.
The US Department of Justice announced on Saturday that it would review the “testimony and evidence presented in the state trial”. A statement said this review would be “separate and distinct” from an investigation by the civil rights division and US attorney’s office” into the use of force by Cleveland police.
The city remained quiet as Memorial Day weekend wore on, with an NBA playoff game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Atlanta Hawks passing without serious incident.
Some protests on Saturday mixed with marches calling for justice over the deaths of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was shot dead by Officer Timothy Loehmann in November 2014, while holding a toy gun, and Tanisha Anderson, who died the same month after being restrained by police.
The investigation into the death of Tamir Rice has not been completed. On Saturday a community leader, Reverend Andrew Clark Sr, told the Guardian: “I’ll tell you this for sure: if [Loehmann] is not brought up on charges, we could probably see a serious eruption in the city.
“We worry about the next thing and that’s Tamir Rice.”
