Three Cleveland activists, Antoine Tolbert, Austreeia Everson and Rameer Askew, have taken their fight from the streets to federal court, filing a civil rights lawsuit that says city officials tried to turn them into felons over a neighborhood dispute that a jury ultimately tossed.
The suit alleges that police and prosecutors “railroaded” the trio with criminal charges tied to a 2024 gas station confrontation that ended in acquittal. In their telling, officials did not just overreach. They allegedly engaged in malicious prosecution, fabricated or destroyed evidence, and trampled on the activists’ First and Second Amendment rights.
According to WOSU, the complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and names Detective Timothy Hannon and the City of Cleveland as defendants. The filing contends that investigators recast New Era Cleveland’s protected boycott and safety patrol efforts as felonious extortion, in an effort to discredit the group and chill its activism…