Pictured is Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) /

(www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio-A three-judge panel of the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals unanimously ruled on Thursday that Cleveland's red light traffic ticket cameras that take snapshots of speeding motorists for subsequent fines are unconstitutional and illegal because Ohio's municipal courts have sole authority or jurisdiction over violations of codified city ordinances under the the Ohio Constitution. In that same case that same judicial panel also ruled 2 to 1 that appellant Sam Jodka, the trial court defendant who prosecuted the appeal via his attorneys, could not retrieve the monies he paid for the camera ticket, a civil and not criminal infraction, because he did not appeal the ticket through the administrative appeals process. It is that administrative appeals process, which differs from a regular appeal of a lower trial court ruling, that the appeals court says is in discrepancy and that cannot take the place of Ohio municipal courts.(Editor's note: The Ohio Constitution created the judicial branch of government and gives the state legislature authority to establish municipal courts, which were created under state law, namely Ohio Revised Code 1901.02)

Jodka  of Columbus, Ohio, who got the digital speeding ticket when he was in town from Columbus and driving through Cleveland, is represented in the case by attorneys Andrew R. Mayle, Ronald J. Mayle  and Jeremiah S. Ray  of the Columbus law firm of Mayle, Ray & Mayle, and  Attorney John T. Murray of the law firm of Murray & Murray Co., also a Columbus law firm.

The decision reverses a Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas ruling against Jodka and in the city's favor.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, who supports the cameras as does Cleveland City Council per a now defunct controversial city ordinance, did not return phone calls seeking comment on whether the city will appeal, though sources say it is likely since the camera tickets generated millions annually for the impoverished predominantly Black major American city. The mayor's spokesperson, Maureen Harper, told reporters that the camera ticket program has been suspended as a result of the state appellate court ruling until further notice.

"We received the ruling late yesterday and the law department is reviewing the ruling," said Harper in a press release to Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper.

"At issue is how the appeals process for these civil violations is handled," said Harper, who added that "the city's  process for automated rulings traffic cameras  has been suspended while we continue to review the ruling and determine our next step."

The camera tickets at issue generate fines that start at $100 with additional fees if not paid within a specified period of time

Judge Kenneth Rocco wrote the 25-page opinion for the three -judge eighth district appellate panel in the case, which also includes judges Mary Eileen Kilbane, a former Cleveland Municipal Court judge, and Sean Gallagher.

The controversial ruling, that community activists applaud, puts an end to the city's traffic camera program absent either the reversal of the decision by the Ohio Supreme Court, if it agrees to hear the case, or if the Ohio Supreme Court reverses a similar decision against traffic cameras in the city of Toledo in a Lucas County sixth district appellate court case there that it has agreed to hear. City officials could also hope for a  long shot constitutional amendment of the provision for jurisdiction by the judicial branch, a costly endeavor that would require a voter adopted referendum after petitioners get six percent of signatures commensurate to the number of voters in the last gubernatorial election. Ohio voters must approve changes to the Ohio Constitution.

Thursday's decision also ends a similar traffic camera program that voters approved in neighboring East Cleveland because decisions by the Eighth District Court of Appeals, unless stated otherwise in the ruling,  are binding in Cuyahoga County, which includes the cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland, among other municipalities and villages. It also affects traffic cameras in other cities in the county that utilize an administrative appeals process relative to the camera tickets.

"We knew the appeals court would find them unconstitutional," said community activist Art McKoy," the founder of the grassroots group Black on Black Crime Inc who led protests around the traffic cameras in Cleveland and East Cleveland, a poor Black suburb of Cleveland, and who unsuccessfully fought a voter adopted referendum led by East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton to keep them in East Cleveland, one that is now likely null and void in conjunction with the eighth district's court decision.

McKoy said that "the money grabbing people, including Black city council members in Cleveland, lost."

Activists also opposed the cameras in Cleveland alleging that they may violate the equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because they are disproportionately situated in Black areas of Cleveland, partly because Black eastside council members support them, and the manner in which they are disparately applied.

The city of Cleveland, which has a population of some 400,000 people, is 58 percent Black, while East Cleveland, a city with some 18,000 people, is about 98 percent Black.

Cleveland Ward 6 Councilwoman Mamie Mitchell, a former assistant county prosecutor, said the appeals decision does not surprise her because issuing speeding and other infraction tickets by camera denies defendants getting the tickets due process as to "the right to confront their accusers." That issue of a potential violation of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution relative to Ohio traffic cameras is being taken up by Cincinnati courts and will likely end up before the Ohio Supreme Court also.

The Ohio Supreme Court does not have to hear an appeal of the appellate decision in the Cleveland case but could take up the matter anyway, sources say, since it raises a constitutional question, and is one of great general and public interest.

The seven-member all White and majority Republican Ohio Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, hears roughly three percent of the appeals filed annually, data show. But unlike the case at issue there are some cases the state's high court must hear such as capital murder cases and cases that originate in the state's appellate courts including some petitions for writs of prohibition, mandamus and procedendo. Likely though, the issue will be heard in a pending appeal before the Ohio Supreme Court that it has agreed to review titled Walker vs. Toledo, a sixth district court of appeals case in which a three-judge panel there also ruled that Ohio traffic cameras are unconstitutional, and thus illegal because jurisdiction rests with Ohio municipal courts.

If the Ohio Supreme Court upholds the sixth district decision, or otherwise determines the cameras unconstitutional,  it will be applicable for the state of Ohio.

A bill pending in the Ohio state legislature dubbed HB 69 that would make the traffic cameras illegal under state law passed the Ohio House of Representatives last year and is now in committee before the Ohio Senate. Whether the Ohio General Assembly will decide the matter before the Ohio Supreme Court does remains to be seen, though Thursday's decision also makes mention of  state lawmakers having authority to adopt a state law around the traffic cameras.

Cleveland City Law Director Barbara Langhenry could not be reached either for comment on whether city officials will ask the Ohio Supreme Court to accept jurisdiction to hear the Cleveland case as consolidated with that of Toledo though Harper, director of communications for the city,  said that the city is weighing its options.

Clevelander Angela Schmitt, a White west side community activist who supports the traffic cameras and writes for Streetsblog.net, an Internet website, told Cleveland Urban News.Com on Friday that she believes the traffic cameras are needed and that they save lives.

"A Black man is two times more likely than a White man to get killed as a pedestrian by speeding motorists in Cleveland," said Schmitt, who agreed that the city will likely have an uphill battle getting a reversal of the appeals court decision since it cringes upon a jurisdictional issue pertaining to the Ohio Constitution.

Schmitt, a former Toledo Blade Newspaper reporter, said also that placing the Cleveland traffic cameras disproportionately in poor Black areas of town is not something she supports.

Community Activist Larry Bresler, a trained lawyer turned community activist for the poor who leads the Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign and Organize Ohio, said that East Cleveland city officials are probably up in arms over the court ruling and the loss of revenue.

"I bet they are going bananas in East Cleveland because the money was to help balance the budget," said Bresler.(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

Cleveland Urban News. Com (Kathy Wray Coleman

is a 20-year investigative journalist who trained

for 17 years at the Call an Post Newspaper

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Community activists and victims and their family members gave testimony yesterday evening for the housing committee of the Cleveland Branch NAACP seeking state and federal legislation on foreclosure and mortgage impropriety and in support of the Restore Our Neighborhoods Act of 2013, a pending bill to tear down abandoned homes across the country that cannot be salvaged that was introduced last year by Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (D-11), Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-9) and Congressman Dave Joyce (R-14).

The next testimony session, organizers said, will be held on Cleveland's west side at the offices of the Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Campaign, which is led by Community Activist Larry Bresler, who also leads the grassroots group Organize Ohio.

Tuesday's gathering comes on the heels in recent years and in the last year more specifically of a mountain of missing women, three of their bodies found last March on Cleveland's east side in close proximity of one another, three murdered last summer in East Cleveland near abandoned homes, and the rescue last May of three young women from torture and rape from the then home of the infamous Ariel Castro on Cleveland's west side.

Community activists believe that Castro got away with holding his victims captive for 10 years in his partly boarded up home partly because of the climate abandoned homes bring to urban and impoverished areas throughout the country, and they testified to it at Tuesday's NAACP  meeting, which was held at Bright Star Missionary Baptist Church in East Cleveland.

Intriguingly, Castro's home was sold to the Cuyahoga County land bank as part of his plea deal and has since been demolished, and he was subsequently found dead in his jail cell after getting a life sentence after pleading guilty last year to a host of crimes, including multiple counts of rape and kidnapping.

East Cleveland is a colorful town, and a neighboring Black and impoverished suburb of Cleveland, a largely Black major American city where foreclosures have been rampant.

Ohio ranks fifth nationwide in foreclosures, data show. That data, among other information, also on violence against women statistics, was presented by activists during their testimonies.

Since 1995 Cuyahoga County has spent in excess of $52 thousand relative to unpaid taxes on abandoned properties, according to a 2013 report by Frank Ford, a foreclosure expert with the Thriving Communities Institute. And between 2009 and 2013 the number of foreclosure filings in the county averaged 8,000 annually, peaking at around 10,000 in 2010.

The activists also called for resources from President Barack Obama and Ohio Governor John Kasich to deal with the crisis of missing women and abandoned and foreclosed homes, and the disproportionate amount of  raped and murdered women of greater Cleveland across racial lines.

Steven Caviness, a housing representative from Congresswoman Fudge's office, also attended the event, which included a videographer to prepare a DVD of the respective testimonies for the NAACP, Fudge, Kaptur and affiliated community activists groups.

The Cleveland NAACP is led by the Rev Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland and a community relations vice president for Turner Construction Company. Sheila Wright is the local chapter's executive director.

The Cleveland NAACP housing committee is led by the Rev. David Hunter, senior pastor at Bright Star Missionary Baptist Church and president of the Baptist Ministers Alliance. It drew testimony from Hunter, Black on Black Crime Vice President Al Porter, Imperial Women Coalition Leader Kathy Wray Coleman, Oppressed People's Nation Chairperson Ernest Smith, Imperial Women Activist Group Member Bettie Simpson, and the Rev Pamela Pinkney Butts. Also testifying were David and Marva Patterson of the Carl Stokes Brigade, Dr. Stuart Robinson and Valerie Robinson of Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor and Imperial Women, Mariah Crenshaw of Communities United, and Christine Wilson, who testified that she had allegedly been raped 30 years ago and that her daughter had been abducted and raped in an abandoned home just last year, one of the alleged assailants pleading guilty to abduction and another to go on trial this year.

"We support the Restore Our Neighborhoods Act," Wilson testified.

Hunter said that the housing committee of the Cleveland NAACP will stand tall on foreclosure issues in support of Black people disenfranchised by irregularities pertaining to them and on other issues, including housing discrimination, abandoned homes, and unprecedented violence against Black

women in poor areas of Cleveland and East Cleveland and elsewhere.

Activists want both a state and federal law that precludes sheriffs from hiring appraisers for foreclosures saying that they are frequently violating the law and depreciating the values for sale when Ohio law requires that they are appraised like other residential homes, and that money remaining from a foreclosure sale must be returned to the prior homeowner, also per state law.  Activists said that state law allows a county sheriff to sale foreclosed homes for one-third off the appraised value but it does not allow a third off and then outright theft of the homes via deflated appraisals pushed by greedy judges and some other politicians, and corrupt county officials. They want appraisals for foreclosed homes to be based on the last county appraisal for property taxes.

Rev. Pamela Pinkney Butts testified that women that are outspoken on public corruption or are going through divorces are also targeted with foreclosure, and that when they complain in good faith, corrupt judges and other politicians will often harass them and arbitrary brand them mentally ill.

Activist Valerie Robinson testified that Blacks are disproportionately targeted with foreclosures and her husband, Dr. Stuart Robinson, testified that illegal foreclosures are lowering the property values in greater Cleveland communities.

Activists Marva and David Patterson of the Carl Stokers Brigade, a longtime local grassroots organization, testified about the need for a federal and state law that require that all reassignments of mortgages and the promissory notes are recorded in the county recorders office because  mortgage companies are foreclosing and many do not own the promissory note required to file a foreclosure complaint in common pleas court pursuant to Ohio case law, or in federal district court.

Activists testified that former county sheriff Bob Reid and his predecessor Gerald McFaul, who resigned office and was later convicted of crimes in office, stole foreclosed homes by having their appraisers illegally reduce the values in violation of state law. They testified that the 34 predominantly White judges of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas , politicians across partisan lines, and Black and White leaders alike either are condoning the impropriety, or overlooking it either due to the benefits they allegedly receive, or for fear of possible retribution. The testimony was replete with public records data to support the activists' claims of theft of foreclosed homes by Reid, who was fired last year as county sheriff by Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate for governor this year.

And activists testified that they want the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure to be amended to exclude the provision where if a foreclosure defendant is not served with a foreclosure complaint that once the mortgage company or bank puts a notice in the legal or daily news that defendant is considered served, and a default judgement can be rendered if they subsequently fail to appear in the foreclosure case.

"That hurts  Black and poor people," said Mariah Crenshaw of Communities United, who testified that Blacks and poor people rarely if at all read the daily news or the legal news to see if a foreclosure complaint or summons or any other civil complaint has been served on them and that the provision of being served by publication as to receipt of a civil complaint or foreclosure helps mortgage companies to take homes without an opportunity for the homeowner to be heard. And even if service by publication made sense, and it doesn't, said Crenshaw, it should be done fairly.

"They aren't required to publicize it in the Plain Dealer Newspaper or the Call and Post Newspaper," said Crenshaw.

Ernest Smith of the Oppressed People's Nation, a grassroots group out of East Cleveland, testified that mortgage companies were stealing homes from East Cleveland in abundance because of a disrespect for Black people. He talked of too many Black women found raped or murdered in or near abandoned homes.

According to a Case Western Reserve University study, one in five homes in East Cleveland, a city with some 18,000 residents, is abandoned.

Bettie Simpson said that she was indicted by a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury on several counts relative to mortgage loans and that she was exonerated of all charges in that trial. She said that while then Cuyahoga County prosecutor Bill Mason, who is now is a partner at the mortgage law firm of Bricker and Eckler, was maliciously prosecuting her and other Blacks, big banks and corrupt mortgage companies were getting away with illegally doing as they please.

Clevelander Al Porter, who testified in support of the Restore Our Neighborhoods Act and said that it is needed to get rid of abandoned homes that cannot be refurbished, recalled how he and other community activists, led by Community Activist Art McKoy, last year climbed through windows of abandoned homes  in East Cleveland looking for dead and missing women and children, an event covered in a subsequent CNN segment on serial murders and violence against women in greater Cleveland.

Porter said after giving his testimony that he and the activists thank Congresswoman Kaptur for sending a representative to the previous housing committee meeting and that they also appreciate the Cleveland NAACP and Congresswoman Fudge, whose representatives met with activists last week in addition to listening to yesterday's  testimonies.

"Community activists want to make presentations before the full body of the Cleveland NAACP, and before Rep. Fudge, Rep. Kaptur and possibly to Congress," said Porter. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

Cleveland Chapter NAACP will take testimony for the NAACP in efforts to promote state and federal legislation to address the problems of foreclosures, mortgage impropriety and the abundance of abandoned homes that draw crime and heightened violence against women of greater Cleveland and elsewhere. The open-to-the-public meeting in which all community members that want to testify, particularly victims and their family members are invited to testify is at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, January 21, 2014, at Bright Star Missionary Baptist Church in East Cleveland, 13028 Shaw Ave. For more information contact the Cleveland Chapter NAACP at 216-231-6260 and Bright Star at 216-249-5213. (For directions to Bright Star take Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland to Shaw High School in East Cleveland and Turn left on to ShawAvene and go down about one-half mile).

A stenographer and videographer secured by Cleveland NAACP will be present and everyone is invited said Cleveland NAACP Housing Committee Chairperson the Rev David Hunter, senior pastor at Bright Star and president of the Baptist Ministers Alliance. The meeting is a follow up to the housing committee meeting on January 14 that drew nearly 60 people including John Hairston  as executive director from the office of Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, and Nick Turner, a representative on mortgage and foreclosures from the office of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur's. Representatives of both Fudge and Kaptur will also be on hand at the testimony session on Tuesday, meeting organizers said.

The Cleveland NAACP is led by the Rev Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland and a community relations vice president for Turner Construction Company. Sheila Wright is the local chapter's executive director.

Participating grassroots activists groups or some of their group members include The Imperial Women Activists Group, The Carl Stokes Brigade, Communities United, the Cleveland African-American Museum, the Cleveland Black Contractors Group,  Peace in the Hood, The Task Force for Community Mobilization, The People's Forum, The Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network, Sister to Sister, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, People for the Imperial Act, The Fairfax Business Association and The Oppressed People's Nation, Black on Black Crime Inc.

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)