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When he shot and wounded Greg Love in 2013, Vincent Montague was a patrolman with a stressful traffic assignment in the hectic heart of downtown Cleveland’s nightlife scene. After Love tried to turn down a closed-off street, Montague approached his car with a Glock in hand. A few moments later, Love’s fresh white T-shirt would be drenched in blood. Both men are Black.
Montague was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing and only served a one-day suspension related to the incident. But the U.S. Department of Justice called the shooting an example of “poor tactics” and “unnecessary and unreasonable use of force” in a sweeping investigation that led to the federal consent decree still in place today.
In 2020, Montague’s name was back in the news — as an example of how Black officers could reform policing. In the years following the shooting, Montague had become president of the Black Shield, a storied Black police organization that sued the city in the 1970s over its discriminatory employment practices. The lawsuit led to a hiring consent decree that lasted until the mid-’90s and greatly increased the department's diversity.
For Wilbert L. Cooper, a staff writer for The Marshall Project, reading about Montague’s activism was surprising. Cooper grew up in Greater Cleveland and has “blood in blue.” His family members have served as police officers in Cleveland across three generations, and paid dues as members of the Black Shield. As he puts it,“There is a part of me that desperately wants to believe that Black cops like Montague could change law enforcement from within.”
Nearly four years ago, Cooper set out to truly understand how Black cops can change their police departments — and how their police departments change them. He immersed himself in Montague’s world, conducting countless interviews with him, Black Shield members and Montague’s newfound allies in Black Lives Matter Cleveland.
Then, in the midst of the reporting, Montague’s career and life started to unravel.
The story of Montague’s unceremonious downfall has been told in bits and pieces before. Some of the characters who weigh in will be familiar to Clevelanders who have followed the roller coaster of police reform in recent years. Cooper’s story for The Marshall Project weaves a narrative that adds historical insight and offers an expansive look at the promise and plight of Black cops in Cleveland — and whether their presence in law enforcement makes our city’s Black community any safer.
The urgent themes touched on in this story will be explored in more depth in “The Black Shield,” Cooper’s forthcoming book published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
‘We did our time, let us go’
Hundreds gathered at the Huntington Convention Center in downtown Cleveland on May 19 for a half-day event to raise awareness about the barriers faced by Ohioans with criminal convictions. Speakers shared their struggles to find housing, run a business or even open a bank account because of a felony conviction.
Building Freedom Ohio hosted the function, which focused on building political power to remove those barriers through voter registration and mobilization. The group is also lobbying for legislation, including what’s been dubbed the GROW act — Getting Rehabilitated Ohioans Working. The bill, introduced in March by two Republican lawmakers, would make it easier for some people with felony convictions to have their records sealed after a crime-free period. The group plans to rally in support of the law at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus on June 12.
Following the event, the group headed to the city’s symbolic Free Stamp and chanted, “We did our time, let us go. We did our time, let us go.”
—Rachel Dissell & Doug Livingston
Relief one step closer for drivers with suspended licenses
Last year, The Marshall Project - Cleveland and WEWS News 5 revealed that hundreds of thousands of Ohio drivers were blocked from getting a valid driver’s license because of suspensions for not having proof of insurance, failing to pay court fines or missing child support payments.
A proposed law that promised to ease pathways to restoring driving privileges passed the Ohio Senate unanimously last week.
Provisions of the bill that were removed or tweaked before the vote include that:
- Drivers would still face suspensions for failing to appear in court. But first, courts would have to send an additional citation and drivers would have 30 days to contact the court before a license would be suspended.
- The bill would not eliminate costly reinstatement fees for drivers who don’t have proof of insurance, but it would make it harder to rack up repeat suspensions that can escalate the total amount of reinstatement fees.
- Ohio would retroactively eliminate penalties related to a driver’s failure to pay court fines and fees that would be automatic if the bill is passed.
- Any remaining suspensions or financial penalties linked to a now-defunct program that sent letters to verify that drivers were insured would be eliminated.
The timeline for the Ohio House to pass the bill is short, though the bill does have broad bipartisan support, Zack Eckles of the Ohio Poverty Law Center said.
“Hopefully they will move it quickly,” he said. “But I would not dare to predict anything.”
Around the 216
- Two young leaders from New Era Cleveland share what they’ve learned about gun safety and how adults can better support kids traumatized by gun violence. Both were among a group of young Clevelanders who recently gave public comment at a Cleveland City Council meeting and told Signal Cleveland why the issue is important to them.
- Ohio lawmakers are exploring new methods of carrying out executions amid a six-year unofficial moratorium fueled by botched lethal injection attempts and access challenges to drugs used previously, the Ohio Capital Journal reports.
- The Cuyahoga County Agency of Inspector General conducted an “autopsy” to explain how the county wasted $1.1 million paying Securus Technologies for a jail management system that was never put in place.
- Efforts to strip law enforcement of its qualified immunity protections from lawsuits through amendments to the Ohio Constitution are continuing in federal court, despite legal objections by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, Cleveland.com reported.
