Video shows men pointing guns at Cleveland police officer

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - A video that was posted to social media shows two men sitting in the front seat of a car waving around semi-automatic handguns, one with an extended clip, and then pointing the guns at a Cleveland police officer who was sitting in a cruiser.

Cleveland Police Union President Jeff Follmer said that something needs to change in the city, and quickly or “we’re going to lose the battle.”

Follmer said his officers will continue to do their job and will back each other up and the priority will be to go home safely each night.

“These kids have no fear and it needs to be stopped, police work needs to get a little aggressive right now and take back the city of Cleveland,” Follmer said.

The November passage of Issue 24, which will lead to a civilian review board of Cleveland officers, was just another step, Follmer said of handcuffing his officers who feel restricted while on the job, and has emboldened the criminals

The city’s officers have been working without a contract now for 3 weeks and Follmer said the city needs to offer a fair wage so that they can keep officers on the streets because according to Fullmer, the city is losing officers to higher-paying suburban departments.

As it stands, Follmer said the department is down 260 officers and will be hard-pressed to cover shifts once the summer months arrive.

Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin was beyond disappointed when he first saw the video.

“We all should be incensed, incensed that we got here as a society,” Griffin said.

A culture that glorifies guns and accepts that it is okay to post a video with that content on social media is problematic and leads to the deeper question of how did we get to point of where this is happening.

“Until we really understand and reflect upon what we’ve just seen as a community and as a society were going to continue to have the violence that we have in this city and it’s really appalling, it’s really, really shocking and totally unacceptable,” Griffin said.

Cleveland police are investigating.

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