The Cleveland Fire Department is investigating why firefighters who extinguished a burning car early Saturday failed to see the body of a man who had been shot to death and left inside.
The victim, who had not been identified Monday, was shot in the neck and died before the fire was set, according to the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s office.
The body was not discovered until about four hours after the fire was doused when police arrived to tow the vehicle. Officials would not say where the body was in the car.

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Cleveland fire officials to investigate why body was not found in burned car

business as usual in Cleveland

Most of those guys probably weren’t informants. Which is a pity because it means they are not getting paid a dime for all the destructive work they do. We might think of these misogynists as inadvertent agents of the state. Regardless of whether they are actually informants or not, the work that they do supports the state’s ongoing campaign of terror against social movements and the people who create them. When queer organizers are humiliated and their political struggles sidelined, that is part of an ongoing state project of violence against radicals. When women are knowingly given STIs, physically abused, dismissed in meetings, pushed aside, and forced out of radical organizing spaces while our allies defend known misogynists, organizers collude in the state’s efforts to destroy us.
The state has already understood a fact that the Left has struggled to accept: misogynists make great informants. Before or regardless of whether they are ever recruited by the state to disrupt a movement or destabilize an organization, they’ve likely become well versed in practices of disruptive behavior. They require almost no training and can start the work immediately. What’s more paralyzing to our work than when women and/or queer folks leave our movements because they have been repeatedly lied to, humiliated, physically/verbally/emotionally/sexually abused? Or when you have to postpone conversations about the work so that you can devote group meetings to addressing an individual member’s most recent offense? Or when that person spreads misinformation, creating confusion and friction among radical groups? Nothing slows down movement building like a misogynist.

— Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence in Movements Enables State Violence

1. All The Victims Were Black
2. Many Of The Victims Were Drug Users Or Had Run Into Trouble With The Law
3. Previous Reports Regarding Sowell’s Behavior Went Ignored
4. The Police Didn’t Take The Missing Persons Reports Seriously
5. His Neighbors Saw Sowell As Strange, But Non-Threatening

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5 Reasons The Cleveland Serial Killer Case Flew Under The Radar

The news about this has been so bizarre, but I was still kind of surprised to hear that it was a national story.

I use ‘violence’ in scare quotes because such a wide range of tactics are considered violent by the dominant culture, whether it’s breaking windows, setting fires, blocking intersections, or even dragging newspaper boxes into the street, irrespective of the fact that none of these things involve hurting people. More unnervingly, many ‘radicals,’ whether overtly or unconsciously, buy into this framework. How many times have you read accounts of street actions where the writers repeatedly refer to ‘peaceful protesters,’ ‘non-violent demonstrators,’ or hope to inspire outrage against incidences of police repression against ‘non-violent activists’? The presupposition here is that it would be totally OK for the police to smash the faces and ribs of people smashing windows. That, as soon as someone oversteps the bounds of law, in place to protect property and preserve privilege, they are making an ‘illegitimate protest’ and their concerns aren’t to be taken seriously and we aren’t to be concerned when they get a judicial smackdown.

— BAAM Issue #25 - Page 7 - Who You Callin’ Violent? By Adrienne

We are, and have for a long time, been in a much more precarious position than we sometimes realize; we have spent too many years defending an ever-shrinking number of clinics and doctors against the repeated harassment, blockades, vandalism and guerrilla violence of the antis. We owe it to Dr. Tiller to remember him — to remember him and to remember Dr. Gunn, Dr. Patterson, Dr. Britton, James Barrett, Shannon Lowney, Lee Ann Nichols, Robert Sanderson, and Dr. Slepian — to remember our dead. But more than that, we need to work in honor of their memories, and to make sure that there are no more of whom we have nothing left but names.

— Bleeding Kansas

One of the fables we live by is that some day the killing will stop. If only we rid ourselves of Chinese, white men will have jobs and white women will have virtue, and then we can stop killing. If only we rid ourselves of Indians, we will fulfill our Manifest Destiny, and then we can stop killing. If only we rid ourselves of Canaanites, we will live in the Promised Land, and then we can stop killing. If only we rid ourselves of Jews, we can build and maintain a Thousand Year Reich, and then we can stop killing. If only we stop the Soviet Union, we can stop the killing (remember the Peace Dividend that never materialized?). If only we can take out the worldwide terrorist network of bin Laden and others like him. If only. But the killing never stops. Always a new enemy to be hated is found.

— Derrick Jensen [via]