Columbus Police Officers Survive Four-Year Ordeal; State Media Snooze

Here’s the report from the Columbus Dispatch (HT American-Experience):

After four days of testimony, a federal jury took less than four hours yesterday to rule in favor of two Columbus police officers accused of excessive force in the 2003 shooting death of Daunte Miller.
….. The officers testified that they fired at Miller when he pointed a handgun at Beard during a foot chase in the Franklinton neighborhood on the afternoon of Aug. 6, 2003. Beard said he fired the fatal shot into Miller’s back when Miller stopped in a courtyard at the Riverside-Bradley housing complex and turned his head as if he were about to shoot at the officer.

….. The officers said they remain bitter that when the case was filed, it included allegations that they planted the gun on Miller and that members of the Police Division conspired to manipulate evidence.

….. Beard and Luzio were cleared of criminal wrongdoing by a Franklin County grand jury three months after the shooting. A police investigation determined that their actions were within division policy.

In the past decade, shootings by Columbus police officers have resulted in 13 lawsuits. The Miller case was the third to be heard by a federal jury, with jurors ruling in favor of the officers each time.

Cornell McCleary at American-Experience, who was actively involved in investigating the incident after it occurred, weighs in with strong criticisms of “so-called black community leaders” and Columbus’s Mayor. Based on the absurdly quick result obtained from the justice system, those criticisms appear to be richly deserved.

Why this story appears to not even be showing up on the radar of Ohio’s other Old Media newspapers is a mystery. Who thinks that the rest of Ohio’s newspapers would be giving this story the silent treatment if the verdict had gone the other way?