115 Police Officers, 140 police issue bullets, 60 police vehicles, 13 officers firing weapons, 2 UNARMED DEAD.

Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? Except that very last part, it certainly was.

A November car chase ended in a “full blown-out” firefight, with glass and bullets flying, according to Cleveland police officers who described for investigators the chaotic scene at the end of the deadly 25-minute pursuit.

The only problem in this scenario, is that the police officers were not “firefighting” armed and dangerous suspects – they were essentially shooting at each other across a middle school playground, and at the run-down Malibu with a penchant for backfiring that was stopped in between them.

Soon after the shooting stopped, one officer rushed to check the two occupants of the 1979 Chevrolet Malibu that the cadre of Cleveland cruisers had followed into the lot.

Car of unarmed suspects after chase in Cleveland.

Officer Wilfredo Diaz, a former city EMS worker, had fired the first shots at the Malibu after bailing out of his car.

He felt for passenger Malissa Williams’ pulse.

There wasn’t one.

Diaz moved Williams’ leg slightly to look for a gun.

Again, there wasn’t one.

Dead next to Williams in the driver’s seat was Timothy Russell, 43.

No officers were injured.

Well. Thank heavens for that last sentence, at least…

A top police union official called a Nov. 29 police pursuit that included dozens of vehicles “the perfect chase.”

Jeff Follmer, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmans Association, praised the actions of the officers who he said made split-second decisions to join the chase, which ended with a dangerous crossfire and two dead suspects. The state attorney general has said they violated department policy doing so.

The Perfect Chase acc. to Cleveland Police:

– Suspects chased on inner city streets for 25 minutes.

chase_route — Chase route - click for full version

– More than 1/3 of the force on duty tied up with one chase.
– Coordination so bad that officers were firing on each other.
– Information so bad that the officers were killing unarmed suspects.
– Tactical training so bad that officers climbed on top of vehicles to fire on suspects.
– Bullets from police weapons were found inside police cars.
– Near on all officers in the chase violated permission-to-join and numbers restrictions on officers involved in a chase.

Attorney General Mike DeWine said Tuesday that police widely disregarded city policy that limits the number of officers involved in a pursuit and requires them to get permission from supervisors before joining in.

The city’s pursuit policy, which was last updated in August 2010, says that officers need permission from a supervisor to join a pursuit and that no more than two police vehicles can directly engage in pursuit “except under unusual and well-articulated circumstances.”

– Officers mistake Coca-Cola can for weapon.
– Officers mistake car backfire for gunshots.
– Officers enter chase and leave scene w/o making entries in logs, or calling it in.

So to sum all that up, it seems that the street gang-like behavior that the police have displayed is all up to par, and basically making as many rookie mistakes as possible while following none of the city’s policies makes for “the perfect chase” in the eyes of the police union. Which is simply a catastrophe.

Documenting the World’s Worst “Perfect” Chase

Since the “incident” – or should we say the outright murder of two decidedly unarmed suspects – was so out of the ordinary, the documentation, pictures, video, interview transcripts, officer reports, letters etc. have been made available to the public for some closer scrutiny. We strongly recommend everyone interested take a look at this page, and see for themselves what a textbook police fuck-up looks like – aftermath cover-up and glossing over included.