By ideastream's Brian Bull
An internal review deemed no wrongdoing on the part of officers involved in a pepper-spraying incident between Regional Transit Authority (RTA) police and protesters last July.
For nearly an hour, Anthony Garofoli, RTA’s Executive Director of Internal Audit, presented bus surveillance video and police body cam footage showing the events leading up to the July 26 th incident.
“During a routine fare inspection, a child was discovered out of consciousness, with a partially-emptied bottle of alcohol in his possession,” he said to members of the RTA board.
In summary, Garofoli told the board that transit police properly handled the intoxicated youth when they removed him from a bus and held him in a squad car until his mother arrived, which included their response to a large, crowd that surrounded the vehicle.
“The use of pepper spray was proper,” said Garofoli. “The transit police incident commander and officer’s de-escalation actions, which is: slow the pace…wait out your subjects…enter into negotiations with crowd leaders.
“This is with the consent decree, with the City of Cleveland and the Department of Justice ….(which) resulted in a peaceful resolution to the incident, while achieving the objective of releasing the child safety to the parent, or guardian.
“Pepper spray was applied only on the human barrier that you’ll see in the video. Subjects are actively obstructing official business, and were in violation of the law.”
The internal review determined no disciplinary actions or retraining of RTA officers were necessary.
“I can’t say ‘ridiculous’ enough for lack of a better phrase,” says Malaya Davis. She’s with the Ohio Student Association and was an organizer of the first national Movement for Black Lives conference held on the Cleveland State University campus.
The event had just wrapped up when participants saw RTA police holding the youth in custody. Davis was at the site shortly after the pepper spraying. She’s skeptical of the RTA’s internal audit.
“Institutions will protect themselves and they will protect the folks within it,” says Davis. “Yeah, there could have been better communication in my opinion before the pepper spray was unloaded.”
RTA’s Garofoli said many of the activists had engaged in “serious criminal activity” during the incident, though no arrests were made at the time.
The boy’s mother came for him after he was cleared by paramedics.
The officer who used the pepper spray was placed on administrative duty during the internal investigation, but is expected back on active duty Tuesday.