Not to be out done by flagrant two-tier justice on the national level, Cleveland demonstrates that it too can protect Democrats and their family members. Case in point involves the grandson of four-time Democratic mayor Frank Jackson.

From the September 3 Cleveland Plain Dealer:

A veteran city prosecutor declined to bring criminal charges against Mayor Frank Jackson's grandson after a woman accused him of chocking her and hitting her several times with a metal truck hitch.

Assistant City Prosecutor Aric Kinast who has worked in the city prosecutor's office for 18 years declined to proceed with criminal charges despite two eye witnesses and the victim all naming the Mayor's grandson, Frank Q. Jackson, as the attacker. 

Lest you think this is a simple assault case, the Plain Dealer goes on to provide a more thorough description:

The beating happened about 6:45 p.m. June 10, according to Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority police reports. Frank Q. Jackson was in a truck with four other people, including an 18-year-old woman, parked at a gas station on East 40th and Quincy Avenue.

The woman asked her friend to buy her something at the gas station. She left and Frank Q. Jackson turned around and punched her in the face several times, according to police reports.

He choked the woman “profusely” with both hands around her neck, according to police....

The woman’s 16-year-old friend told police that she returned to the truck and found her friend gasping for breath while Frank Q. Jackson attacked her, according to police reports…

Frank Q. Jackson stopped and said he’d drop both the woman and girl off at an apartment building on East 49th Street. While driving to the apartment, he attacked the 18-year-old woman a second time, the report says.

At the apartment, Frank Q. Jackson dragged the 18-year-old woman out of the truck by her hair, across the grass and onto the sidewalk...

He choked her again and punched her in the face and body, police reports say. He went back to the truck, grabbed a metal hitch and struck the woman several times...

Jackson ran away before the police arrived... sort of. 

Though he initially fled, after officers appeared, Jackson returned to the scene in a truck driven by a third party. When officers approached the truck, it backed up and headed the wrong way down a one-way street.

The victim declined medical attention though suffering from several injuries. When police officers noted that Frank Q. Jackson's family members driving around the area, the woman said that she feared retaliation if officers left. She later signed a nonprosecuting form saying that she did not want to pursue criminal charges against Jackson.

As of this writing, Mayor Frank Jackson's office has not issued any comment.

This incident was hardly Jackson's first brush with the law. In May, he was arrested and pled guilty to driving a truck in which the passengers shot paint balls at other cars. The arresting officers also found two guns and prescription painkillers in the truck. For this, the mayor's grandson pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and was given two years on probation.

In July, Frank Q. Jackson was charged with aggravated menacing, aggravated disorderly conduct, and attempted drug use stemming from a traffic stop in May. He was convicted on all counts. The charges were misdemeanors. 

A few weeks later, a truck registered to Jackson was spotted speeding away from a crime scene where a 30-year-old man was shot dead. A vehicle matching the description of Q's was found torched two days later next to an abandoned building. 

It seems Q is not the only bad apple in the mayor's family tree. In June, his 16-year-old great-grandson was arrested and accused of driving a car carrying a passenger who fired several shots at Cleveland police officers. That case is still pending.

Mayor Frank Jackson seems to have a soft spot when it comes to lawbreakers. Consider the case of Lance Mason, a former Cuyahoga Common Pleas Court  and his wife Aisha Fraser. This is a telling story if you haven't heard it before. 

Mason left the bench in 2015 after receiving a two-year sentence for brutalizing his wife in a car in front of her children. Mason punched Fraser more than a dozen times and slammed her head into the dashboard and window of their SUV. He then chased her out of the car, struck her again, and bit her. The attack left her in need of facial reconstruction surgery. 

Mason, a one-time powerful Democrat, was release from prison after serving only ten months and was promptly hired by Mayor Jackson in a $45,000 a year job with full benefits as Cleveland's minority business development administrator. When criticized about this hire, Mayor Jackson brushed it off by saying he 'believes in giving people a second chance.'

A second chance all right, for in November 2018, Mason was charged with stabbing Aisha Fraser, who was by then his ex-wife, to death. Fraser, sixth-grade teacher, was found dead in her driveway. Amazingly, Mayor Jackson told Fox8 afterwards that he still stands by his decision to hire Mason, reiterating his belief that people deserve a second chance. 

Last month, Mason pleaded guilty to his ex-wife's murder. He faces a mandatory life prison sentence. It will be up to the judge to decide whether or not to give Mason a chance of parole after 20 years. If not, it's life without parole.

Jackson's fourth term as mayor ends in 2021. Many in Cleveland -- like Norman Edwards, founder of the Black Contractors Group -- want Jackson to run for a fifth term. And the white establishment of Cleveland, including the Plain Dealer, has always been solidly behind this do-nothing mayor. From the vantage point of the suburbs, it looks as if Jackson could continue on as long as he wants.

So what's the scarier thought -- that Cleveland would actually re-elect this man, or perhaps that Jackson is the best that's available in Cleveland?

As for Jackson's long reign, what does Cleveland have to show for it? The city continues to lose population each year. The state report card gives the Cleveland school district an F in all categories except one, and this despite the fact that the state pours tremendous amounts of money into the district. Cleveland has a crime rate of 65 per one thousand residents, one of the highest crime rates in America. 

It is politically incorrect to say it, but democracy can work only with a moral people and where only a relative few of the voters are dependent on government, either directly by the dole or in some government job. If those two requirements aren't met, decay and corruption are sure to follow.