About two dozen marchers protesting police violence spent a few minutes outside the entrance to the Cleveland Heights Police Department Tuesday afternoon, chanting and calling for someone to come out and speak to them.
Then word spread that Mayor Kahlil Seren would be coming down.
When he arrived, the first question was about the investigation into the death of 18-year-old Christian Thomas, who was killed by Cleveland Heights Police on August 29.
“We want answers today. We want to know what’s going on with Christian’s case,” one of the protesters said to Seren, who was elected mayor in 2021, the first to serve in that role.
Previously, Cleveland Heights had been run by a city manager and an elected council.
Seren told them it was out of the city’s hands. The state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations has taken control of the investigation.
Protesters were not satisfied with that answer.
The march started with around two dozen people — a mix of Christian Thomas’s family members, local activists and members of the Cleveland chapter of Black Lives Matter — at Thomas’ family home on Yellowstone Road, where he was killed by Cleveland Heights police.
Police responded to the home at around 10:30 p.m. on August 29. Christian was arguing with his father, Ferrel Thomas. He was allegedly brandishing a handgun, and his sister told police a shot was fired during the argument.
After police convinced Ferrel to come outside, and following a short standoff with Christian inside alone, Christian apparently crashed out of a screened porch window and was shot and killed as he ran through the neighbor’s yard.
A gunshot can be heard on body camera footage right before a large volley of shots from police. Police found a gun believed to be Thomas’s next to the porch Thomas jumped out of. No one else was injured.
It’s still unclear what happened at the moment Thomas was shot by police. One of the marchers asked Seren about that part of the bodycam footage.
“Why haven’t the tapes been released,” someone called out to Seren.
“So, as I’ve explained before, all of our video footage was immediately released to BCI,” he said.
Cleveland Heights has released hours of footage showing police arriving at the Thomas house and the aftermath of the shooting. They’ve released footage that captures the sound of Thomas crashing through the screen porch and the shots fired right after. And they’ve released some of the footage of the aftermath showing Thomas’s despondent family and their interactions with officers.
But they have not released any body cam footage showing the moments when officers shot Thomas. There are also gaps in the videos capturing the aftermath, an Ideastream analysis shows.
Seren pointed to an issue with the software the law department uses to make redactions to explain the close to 10 hours of footage that still hasn’t been released.
“And I’m only just learning the limitations of this software and as soon as I learned about the limitations of this software I instructed them to purchase new software so we can provide redacted public records more quickly than we have in the past,” Seren said.
The city did not respond to a follow-up question about how long that process would take or whether the city will wait to purchase new software before releasing all of the remaining footage.
There is no video from any officers that clearly shows Thomas at the moment officers fired at him, according to Mike Thomas, the city’s communications director.
After Seren spoke about the software, Brenda Bickerstaff, an activist with Black Lives Matter Cleveland, brought up her niece’s 2015 death in Cleveland Heights’ jail.
“Back then they indicated to the family, they said they had bad software, and they were going to change it back then,” Bickerstaff said.
In that case, Ralkina Jones was booked at the city’s jail and made it clear to guards she needed medication and had a heart condition. Medication was provided, but it’s unclear whether it was the right kind, because she died in her cell, likely hours before she was found, according to a federal lawsuit filed by her family that was settled in 2018 for an undisclosed amount.
In that case, the software controlling cameras at the jail was not working properly, contributing to the guards’ failure to notice Jones needed help.
Seren responded that, while he was not mayor then, he has tried since arriving to make many updates at city hall.
Those responses did not satisfy Christian Thomas’s aunt, Sara Thomas-Peterson.
“He looked like you, have you noticed? He could have looked like your son,” Thomas-Peterson to Seren.
“I know. You know I know,” Seren responded to her.
“Even more so, you should be willing and able to do the right thing here," Thomas-Peterson said. "Don’t do the political thing, I’m begging you."
After talking with Seren for a while longer, the marchers left for the half-mile or so walk back to the Thomas family’s house.
