Zack Reed has no more patience with Calvin Williams as Cleveland’s incompetent and adulterous chief of police

CLEVELAND, OH – Zack Reed wanted to elevate Calvin Williams from chief of police to director of public safety had he defeated Mayor Frank Jackson in November 2017.  Today Reed wants Williams to either resign on his own or be fired by Jackson.

“All he’s doing is collecting a pay check,” Reed told EJBNEWS when he called after reading the story I’d written about the $184,000 a year cop boss’ domestic disputes.    The exclusive story with pictures of Williams “cop baby mama” came after EJBNEWS revealed Williams’ wife had filed for divorce.

Reed said he’s campaigning for Cleveland mayor again and sees no improvement in the mitigation of violence in the city.  1o  homicides for the month of January 2021.  177 homicides in 2020.  Over 60 percent unsolved and far below the national average.

Reed now sees Williams as incompetent as he sees staffing in the homicide unit with only 24 police officers covering two shifts.  The late Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich ended the 3rd shift for the detective bureaus after Governor Richard Celeste made good on his commitment to let police unions negotiate wages and benefits in 1983.  Cleveland taxpayers couldn’t afford the cost of negotiated wages and benefits so the cuts in services began and never stopped.

Thanks to collective bargaining Cleveland police captains are set to earn $101,000 each before overtime in 2021.  Public employee unions in Ohio are out-of-control; and so is the widespread theft of “unwatched” public funds during the cold and flu season pandemic mayors like Jackson are using to circumvent and obstruct the enforcement of constitutions and laws.

Reed told EJBNEWS he observed Councilman Blaine Griffin’s “Zoom’d” safety committee hearing and was completely unsatisfied with Williams’ smug response to the violence police directed at protestors after George Floyd’s death.  Reed was at the protest and saw first hand how police instigated violence with tear gas and rubber bullets.

He said Williams’ was lying with claims that protestors had tried to enter the Justice Center.  He said police provoked the destruction of downtown Cleveland.

“Either they won’t let him do what he knows or he doesn’t know what he’s doing.  He’s managing the department just like McGrath [Michael].  All these specialized units are not working,” Reed said.  “No one’s being held accountable.”

Reed said Williams and Jackson have also been weak in sending the message that Timothy Loehman, Tamir Rice’s killer, is not going to work, again, as a Cleveland police officer.  He praised former Cleveland Mayor Michael White for being louder about his thoughts on cops like Loehman.

Reed placed second behind Jackson in the 2017 primary election.

Eric Jonathan Brewer

Cleveland's most influential journalist and East Cleveland's most successful mayor is an East Saint Louis, Illinois native whose father led the city's petition drive in 1969 to elect the first black mayor in 1971. Eric is an old-school investigative reporter whose 40-year body of editorial work has been demonstrably effective. No local journalist is feared or respected more.

Trained in newspaper publishing by the legendary Call & Post Publisher William Otis Walker in 1978 when it was the nation's 5th largest Black-owned publication, Eric has published and edited 13 local, regional and statewide publications across Ohio. Adding to his publishing and reporting resume is Eric's career in government. Eric served as the city's highest paid part-time Special Assistant to ex-Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White. He served as Chief of Staff to ex-East Cleveland Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor; and Chief of Communications to the late George James in his capacity as the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's first Black executive director. Eric was appointed to serve as a member of the state's Financial Planning & Supervision Commission to guide the East Cleveland school district out of fiscal emergency and $20 million deficit. Former U.S. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson told Eric in his D.C. office he was the only mayor in the nation simultaneously-managing a municipal block grant program. Eric wrote the city's $2.2 million Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant application. A HUD Inspector General audit of his management of the block grant program resulted in "zero" audit findings.

As a newspaper publisher, Eric has used his insider's detailed knowledge of government and his publications to lead the FBI and state prosecutors to investigations that resulted in criminal prosecutions of well-known elected officials in Ohio; and have helped realign Cleveland's political landscape with the defeat of candidates and issues he's exposed. Eric's stories led to the indictments of the late Governor George Voinovich's brother, Paul Voinovich of the V Group, and four associates. He asked the FBI to investigate the mayor he'd served as chief of staff for public corruption; and testified in three federal trials for the prosecution. He forced former Cuyahoga County Coroner Dr. Elizabeth Balraj to admit her investigations of police killings were fraudulent; and to issue notices to local police that her investigators would control police killing investigations. Eric's current work has resulted in Cuyahoga County Judge John Russo accepting the criminal complaint he guided an activist to file against 24 civil rights-violating police officers in the city he once led for operating without valid peace officer credentials. USA Today reporters picked up on Eric's police credentials reporting from his social media page and made it national.

Eric is the author of of his first book, "Fight Police License Plate Spying," which examines the FBI and local police misuse of the National Crime Information Center criminal records history database. An accomplished trumpet player and singer whose friendship with Duke Fakir of the Four Tops resulted in his singing the show's closing song, "Can't Help Myself": Curtis Sliwa of New York's Guardian Angels counts Eric among his founding chapter leaders from the early 1980's role as an Ohio organizer of over 300 volunteer crime fighters in Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown, Ohio. For his work as a young man Eric was recognized by Cleveland's Urban League as it's 1983 Young Man of the Year.

Known in Cleveland for his encyclopedic knowledge of government and history, and intimately-connected with the region's players, every local major media outlet in Cleveland has picked up on one of Eric's stories since 1979. There is no mainstream newspaper, television or radio outlet in Cleveland that does not include an interview with Eric Jonathan Brewer in its archives over the past 40 years.

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