Last month, a court acquitted Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo of voluntary manslaughter charges, despite the fact that investigators determined that he fired 49 shots at two unarmed black victims. Less than two weeks after his acquittal, however, Brelo is facing criminal charges again — this time for assaulting his own brother.
The new charges are laid out in a brief criminal complaint filed in an Ohio municipal court on Wednesday. According to the complaint, Brelo “did knowingly cause or attempt to cause physical harm to Mark R. Brelo, to wit, by striking/punching Mark R. Brelo in the head, face, and body.” The detective investigating this alleged assault also says that he observed “visible injuries” to Mark Brelo.
Brelo was one of many officers involved in the shooting incident that led to him previously being charged with a crime. The shooting occurred after police conducted an unauthorized 59-car chase targeting two unarmed black individuals, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. At the conclusion of the chase, 13 different officers fired a total of 137 shots at Russell and Williams. Brelo, however, was the only officer who faced criminal manslaughter charges due to this incident. Prosecutors claimed that Brelo stood on the hood of his car and opened fire on Russell and Williams, even after his fellow officers ceased fire.
The judge who acquitted Brelo reasoned, in part, that he could not determine beyond a reasonable doubt that Brelo had caused Russell and Williams’s deaths, because some of the dozen other officers who fired open the two victims could have also contributed to their deaths. Judge John O’Donnell also claimed that the officers’ actions were justified by a reasonable fear of death or bodily harm, despite the fact that Russell and Williams did not have a gun in their car.
The 59-car chase that culminated in Russell and Williams’s deaths began with a routine drug patrol.