Judge Gwin called “mad” by Hemmons as she deceives council to keep contract

CLEVELAND, OH – Municipal lawyers Willa Hemmons and Heather McCollough may learn after the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Bar Association investigates whether or not to let them keep their law licenses that some of their more emotionally-crazed personal thoughts shouldn’t be put in writing.  Hemmons calling U.S. District Court Judge James Gwin “mad” while lying to officers of the municipal corporation she’s supposed to guide to perform their official duties and give legal opinions to as one of them. 

The same with McCollough as Hemmon’s “deputy” for writing that Ward 2 Councilwoman Juanita Gowdy should be “recalled” for asking either of them for a legal opinion about the effect of the facts and information I’ll be sharing as you continue to read.  Hemmons retaliated with a threat to Gowdy of criminal prosecution after she demanded answers about the impact of Gwin’s ruling on the city.  

Hemmons had written to council that Gwin was “mad” because a state supreme court had overturned the federal judge’s ruling on a case involving Derrick Wheatt who’d been framed for murder by Vincent Johnstone and Karen Alexander-Perry.   Both had once worked for the city as law enforcement officers.  When Gowdy asked for the case she was citing and wanted to know how a state supreme court could overturn a federal judge’s ruling, McCollough emailed a crazed response  on behalf of Hemmons that she should be recalled.

Ward 2 Councilwoman Juanita Gowdy is not backing down in using her office to expose the evil corrupt activities taking place in East Cleveland city hall despite the vicious threats of criminal prosecution and obstruction of the rights of the public office she holds by Mayor Brandon King, Michael Smedley, Belinda Kyle, Willa Hemmons, Heather McCollough, Maxine Eberhardt, Khadijah Guy and other officials known to be engaged in theft and misuse of public funds. Gowdy and activist Justyn Anderson publish and edit the East Cleveland Sunrise as a tool to keep residents informed. In it they’ve detailed how King’s given individual friends like Wendell Lovelace, Darrell Moore and Daniel Peacock over $1 million in no bid, council unapproved and unsigned contracts. Vanessa Veals left East Cleveland city hall after signing Melran Leach’s name on a demolition contract Norton wanted. If these fools don’t think authorities know who and how they’ve stolen federal funds they’re the dumbest bastards on the fucking planet. Whatever Gowdy asks for and the other legislators don’t co-sign is putting their asses further into the “federal” perspective of being “complicit.” For Timothy Austin and Korean Stephenson. You two had better get on the right side with a quickness. You have no idea what’s already “around” you.

In addition to determining that Hemmons was unethical for defending the actions of Johnstone and Alexander-Perry for framing Wheatt into prison, he addressed a lie she told without knowing he’d been deceived and that she’d presented false information to a tribunal during a legal proceeding.  His order claimed the city had agreed to indemnify both Johnstone and Alexander-Perry so the indemnification issue the other side raised had been moot.  Not so.

Hemmons never discussed an indemnification resolution with the city council and only the city council would have the authority to accept the blame and financial responsibility for the unlawful conduct of the two dirty cops. There is no record of lying Hemmons asking fiscally responsible legislators to do anything that stupid.  The lie to the judge is now a lie Gowdy sought answers to from the private attorney law director abusing a public office to cover her incompetent trail to keep a contract.

Hemmons was ordered by Gwin to end her private representation of the ex-employees whose conduct she failed to determine was in bad faith and outside the scope of official duties; and who should have sought a resolution from council to file a civil cross-claim against them to mitigate the city’s damages and make them personally responsible for their own wrongdoing.  Gwin cited an Ohio law found in R.C. 2744.07(2)(a)(b)(c) that required Council to ensure that both Hemmons and McCollough do so in their official legal capacities. Neither of the attorneys explained this in writing to the city’s legislators they were supposed to advise on how to deal with it.

“A political subdivision does not have the duty to provide for the defense of an employee under division (A)(1) of this section if any of the following apply:  (a) The act or omission occurred while the employee was not acting in good faith.  (b) The act or omission occurred while the employee was acting manifestly outside the scope of the employee’s employment or official responsibilities.  (c) The civil action or proceeding is commenced by or on behalf of a political subdivision.”

Johnstone is currently employed at Case Western Reserve University in the police department as a facility manager who doesn’t have to come out of pocket for the losses he caused East Cleveland thanks to Hemmons.

This writer hired Hemmons and administered her an oath of office in 2008 to discharge the duties of a part-time deputy prosecutor upon the advice of my late Director of Law Almeta Johnson. She taught a law class at Cleveland State University’s John Marshall College of Law. 

Hemmons was employed as Johnson’s deputy when police officer Todd Carroscia unlawfully entered Cleveland’s borders and crashed into a vehicle driven by Charles Hunt who was transporting a passenger.  He was also criminally driving a public safety vehicle with a suspended drivers license and no personal responsibility insurance.  So she knows the city’s past practices were to obey the state’s “indemnification” statute.

I fired Carroscia and instructed Almeta to have deputy law director Ronald Riley file a cross-claim against him.  She was working on charges against Carroscia because the city of East Cleveland did not have an agreement with Cleveland city council to enter its borders during a warrantless pursuit pursuant to R.C. 2935.03. 

I’d told cops “no chases.”  I wasn’t playing that racist “slave catching” bullshit cops get into in a 94 percent American Negro populated city as a very hard core civil rights-defending Protestant Christian American Negro mayor.  Any American Negro mayor or municipal legislator who allows religious and ethnic racists to chase our people to death over minor offenses when they have the full and unquestioned authority to stop it is a fucking disgrace.  

During our depositions in attorney Robert DiCillo’s Mentor office as he represented Hunt, Almeta told Riley while he sat crying after our video-recorded interaction, that he had an “ethical” problem. DiCillo told me she handed him a tissue to wipe the snot from his nose and rubbed his shoulders to console him.

This writer fired Todd Carroscia as East Cleveland’s mayor and safety director for a warrantless pursuit of no one. He decided to join an officer who’d pursued outside the city’s jurisdiction as back up. On the way he struck Charles Hunt and a passenger. I fired him. I intended to prosecute him before voters chose another mayor in 2009. The mayor they chose rehired Carroscia and accepted the liability for his unlawful actions. He covered his crime instead of prosecuting it.

Riley had written and signed the cross-claim and then withdrew it upon the request of then Mayor Gary Norton and police chief Ralph Spotts.  Riley’s decision was made without city council approval during Dr. Joy Jordan’s tenure as council president.  Spotts cost the city $50 million in another case Hemmons lost as she tried to defend him and another civil rights abuser of American Negroes, David Hicks. 

Carroscia was rehired and Riley now had to trash his own cross-claim that the duty-exceeding cop I’d fired was actually in the right and I was wrong.  It’s one of the reasons he was crying after our video-recorded interaction.  Depositions are public records pursuant to R.C. 149.43.  Riley said he felt “intimidated” when I stood to leave and told him to “sit your old azz down.”

East Cleveland lost $2 million to Hunt and Carroscia’s still stealing from the city’s taxpayers as a non-Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy (OPOTA) certified private individual impersonating a law enforcement officer.   He hasn’t had to pay a dime of the $2 million his recklessness cost the city now with Hemmons and McCollough presenting cases of arrests he and 24 other cops have no legal authority to make to Judge Will Dawson and judges in state and federal courts.

In the case involving Hicks, the violent ex-cop arrived armed and drunk on an overtime call and hit a handcuffed Arnold Black. Hicks did this in front of other cops and told him he’d fucked up his high.  Ex-cop Jonathan O’Leary – former Cleveland housing court Judge Ronald O’Leary’s brother – erased the attack from the deskcam.  He’s now a deputy sheriff.   

Had council read Hicks’ case file and the transcript to learn how Hemmons represented the city they’d all, if any of them cared about their people, see her as the same type of sellout who captured our ancestors and sold them to life-stealing human traffickers to these shores as slaves.  Spotts would be viewed in the same sellout perspective as the character Samuel L. Jackson played named “Stephen.”  He and Cleveland police chief Calvin Williams are no fucking different.  

These vicious, racist, self-hating and civil rights violating animals locked Black, an American Negro, in a closet in a city with all American Negro elected officials, at the time, but one.  Now every elected and appointed office in the city is held in shame by an American Negro who’s not mastered the governing documents of their elected offices to protect their people from this type of evil insanity.  East Cleveland should be the most civil rights loving of American Negro rights in the fucking nation; and all we have are these disgraceful curve-graded learning disabled “niggas” stealing from and conspiring against them.

I’m glad to have been raised in East Saint Louis, Illinois and attended Webster Elementary school with four American Negro female and four American Negro male teachers from the 1st through the 8th grade. When Catholic ethnics on the city’s school board wanted to grade us on the curve my teachers met with our parents and told them, “We do not teach Negro children that way.  It will demean our race.  Our standard for an A for Negro children is 95 to 100 percent.” 

Cleveland’s American Negroes went for the curve because it made them have to work less.  They didn’t realize we’d uplifted ourselves from zero percent literacy in 1865 after the Civil War to 98.4 percent in 1970 teaching our children that way.  The other ethnics couldn’t compete so we needed to be dumbed down.

I was ex-mayor when I learned from East Cleveland council vice president Chantelle Lewis that Arnold Black had been beaten in the city’s jail. I told her to go visit him and she did. Her decision to follow-up is what put the beginnings of the public spotlight I wanted on his case. I’d appointed Spotts and assigned Hicks to the detective bureau at his request. I really didn’t know either. They weren’t getting away with this shit even though I was out of office. I had already gone to the FBI as mayor about Hicks’ involvement in the murder of Sandra “Little Bit” Varney. Gary Norton brought out the dirtiness in people.

Booker T. Washington and not Martin Luther King is my leader.  I revere Dr. George Washington Carver.  He learned 326 ways to use the peanut a white man could only eat without a degree.  He’s the example of why the curve was needed to diminish our “collective” intellects.  How can you compete, intellectually, with an American Negro who’s knowledge of how to use only one plant is 326 levels beyond the average human? Curve grade and tell them it’s okay to be a “nigga.”  Separate them from their Protestant Christian faith. 

Our ancestors didn’t bring “Jesus” to these shores.  They brought “faith.” The church was the conduit for the faithful who worked towards our uplftment and liberation. American Negro preachers didn’t use us and cut deals to strip us of the power of our vote as self-dealers like some of these nigga preachers do. They fought for us.  It’s why this shit in East Cleveland angers me and I offer aid to “only” those who do right.  If my name’s not attached to an EC politician they’re not my kind.

Pursuant to R.C. 2938.13 Hemmons has been a private attorney since January 25, 2014 and Judge Will Dawson has unlawfully allowed her to present cases while impersonating a prosecuting attorney in his court.  This is yet another law Gowdy knows Hemmons has violated and complained of to authorities that has caused her concern for more liabilities as citizens learn about the certification and oath issues. 

East Cleveland has operated without a sworn director of law since January 25, 2014. Even in her email Gowdy viewed Hemmons’ claim on it as “director of law” to be impersonation of a law enforcement officer.

Judge Will Dawsons knows 24 East Cleveland cops lack credentials to make arrests but he lets them arrest and charge citizens instead of ordering them arrested and charged for violating their constitutional rights with the help of the private attorney he lets prosecute them in his court in violation of R.C. 2938.13.

“In any case prosecuted for violation of a municipal ordinance the village solicitor or city director of law, and for a statute, he or the prosecuting attorney, shall present the case for the municipal corporation and the state respectively, but either may delegate the responsibility to some other attorney in a proper case, or, if the defendant be unrepresented by counsel may with leave of court, withdraw from the case. But the magistrate or judge shall not permit prosecution of any criminal case by private attorney employed or retained by a complaining witness.”

The threat to prosecute Gowdy came after she warned the mayor and her colleagues that employees in the law department under Hemmons’ supervision had released to her the social security number of a cop in a stolen job named Larry McDonald.   Hemmons responded with a retaliatory claim that Gowdy’s delivery of her warning over the email, not the “internet”, violated a state law.

Gowdy responded that the email she sent to the city’s officers was to their secure addresses and that to obtain it a public records requestor would have to get it from either her and the employees in the law department who violated McDonald’s rights to privacy by giving her his sodcial security number.  Hemmons suggested that McDonald could file a criminal complaint against her.  Gowdy responded that the investigation would begin with herself and the two law breaking employees she supervised.  McCollough and Maxine Eberhardt.

Gowdy has been relentless in questioning the two municipal lawyers in writing about the impact of the judge’s ruling on their ability to competently advise the city’s officers.

It doesn’t matter that “advising the officers of the municipal corporation on the performance of their official duties” is written into Hemmon’s 2014 contract and in their Title 7 job duties; though the oaths they took to perform its duties don’t exist in the office of the council clerk as required by Section 705.28 of Ohio’s Revised Code.  Without an oath of office another Ohio law declared Hemmons as having “refused” the appointment to law director within 10 days if she wasn’t administered it.  

Chief of police impersonator Michael Cardilli privately controlled East Cleveland’s police department without OPOTA credentials and directed other private individuals to carry weapons and perform law enforcement duties “under the color of law” without them. Cardilli’s organized crime gang submitted fraudulent payroll records, negotiated a collective bargaining agreement from an IRS de-certified labor union; and submitted a roster of private individuals who’d never taken OPOTA tests to the attorney general’s office for a $10,000 class reimbursement.

That’s in Section 3.30 of Ohio’s Revised Code the lawyers are supposed to make sure council knows.  Had Hemmons instructed council or the mayor to perform their official duties, by January 25, 2014 there would be in writing a letter to the mayor instructing him that as far as her contract was concerned,Such office shall be considered vacant and shall be filled as provided by law.”  Instead Hemmons continued to discharge the duties of a vacated office she had refused for the next seven years.

Gowdy took office on January 1, 2020 and asked Clerk Khadijah Guy to deliver all the oaths of the city’s officers and workers for her to review before communicating with them.  She intended to communicate with individuals who were legally authorized to discharge the duties of the offices and jobs they held; and she wanted to identify and authenticate the usurping of the usurpers.  Title 18 and Section 4 of the United States Code is identified as “misprision of felony” and it’s three years in jail for a person who knows a felony is being committed not to report it. 

Michael Smedley is a private friend of Mayor Brandon King’s who plays no official role in the city’s governance pursuant to the salary ordinance. There’s no line item or authorized wage for the title of “chief of staff” that he calls himself; so the thief has no business on the city’s payroll, occupying an office in city hall or directing city employees. Employees accepting orders from Smedley are engaged in obstruction. Charles Iyahen, the director of finance, should find himself soon facing criminal charges for paying him wages that are not authorized by law. It’s the problem with getting a degree in finance online.

Gowdy knew that interacting with unsworn usurpers is a crime and makes the public officials who know negligent criminal conspirers.  She also knew police under Cardilli and Gardner have engaged in racketeering-like activity to conceal their lack of OPOTA credentials from council.  She knew from attending council meetings with activist Justyn Anderson when the credentials scandal was revealed that Hemmons had never advised the city’s officers to immediately terminate them for impersonating law enforcement officers. She operated without oaths the same as attorneys Thomas DiCaudo and Marshall Pitchford in Boston Heights.

Gowdy’s been critical of clerk Guy’s performance since learning the post-doctorate and over-educated worker was negligent and derelict in the performance of duties with her extended two hour lunch breaks and meeting minutes that didn’t accurately describe public meetings..  All that education and four years on the job; and Hemmons asked council to re-do a meeting because Guy couldn’t correctly cut and paste the language in the preamble of an ordinance to the announcement she was required to publicly-post of the council meeting. 

Guy called herself siccing an attorney on Gowdy for daring to chastise her criminally-derelict performance of official duties.  Gowdy snapped back to attorney Kathleen Carr’s son that he “couldn’t be the grandson of legendary Cleveland Councilman Charlie Carr; and that he should file a claim if he can find a cause of action that prevents a municipal legislator from reporting the criminal misconduct of a derelict employee or mind his business.  

After confirming that individuals like Hemmons, McCollough, Charles Iyahen in the office of the director of finance, Scott Gardner and Michael Cardilli as police chiefs, and 24 cops with OPOTA certifications were discharging the duties of public offices without oaths, Gowdy forwarded a more than 100-page, well-exhibited complaint to Auditor of State Keith Faber asking for an investigation. 

East Cleveland Sunrise publisher Justyn Anderson recently confirmed that Gowdy presented a complaint to the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association about Hemmons’ and McCollough’s malpractice; hence the venom in their malicious and duty-avoiding emailed responses to the city’s corruption-fighting legislator.

Council Clerk Khadijah Guy should be criminally prosecuted for dereliction of duty for the way she’s failed and incompetently performed the duties of a municipal clerk of council.

Anderson said McCollough even extended Hemmons retaliatory threat of criminal prosecution against Gowdy for exposing her criminal dereliction in overseeing the release of public records that contained McDonald’s social security number. He said McCollough told him to tell Gowdy to “be careful” as additional uncited legal advice that had no basis in law coming from one of the city’s two municipal lawyers.

It’s not the  first time the city’s lawyers have abused the authority of the vacant public offices they’re usurpingto harass the right-thinking legislator.  Gowdy was recently threatened with arrest by Mayor Brandon King and his off-the-books “chief of staff” after an employee gave the senior citizen legislator a box of food to deliver to other seniors like every other member of council. 

Belinda Kyle, a human resources director being paid to perform more than one job in violation of an ordinance that says payment for one job only, called police to make a false report of a crime. It’s on the city’s computer aided dispatch for 911 calls that any conscientious prosecutor can obtain after confirming the date with Gowdy or Anderson.  He recorded the interaction.  

Leading East Cleveland public watchdog Justyn Anderson backed Juanita Gowdy for council and now publishes the East Cleveland Sunrise so she can deliver fast information to the city’s residents about the serious theft of their tax dollars.
Justyn learned the city’s cops were defying an order from the attorney general to stop performing law enforcement duties, so he filed an R.C. 2935.09 and 2935.10 complaint with Judge Will Dawson’s court to protect the 96 percent American Negro populated community from the criminals. “Sellout” Dawson lost the gotdamned complaint and continued to allow them to impersonate law enforcement officers knowing they were violating the civil rights of American Negroes.

Anderson and Gowdy recorded the cop Kyle called drawing his weapon as he entered the building where the free food was being distributed.  He then approached Gowdy with Hemmons as a witness and heard an employee say she’d committed no crime because she’d given her the food; and h he heard Smedley intimiate the employee witness by telling her to shut up.  He didn’t care.  Norton and now King’s bag man wanted her arrested. 

The cop appeared to know  better though he committed a kidnapping offense when he demanded she stay.  Hemmons didn’t say a word, then, just like she was silent at council’s most recent Zoom meeting, as she witnessed the crime and violation of the councilwoman’s rights.

She hasn’t responded to Gowdy’s last letter in writing.   She may have known better.  Gowdy’s not playing and neither are the people helping her.

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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