armed robbers in birdtown

[john crino]

At approx.2pm this afternoon (Tuesday) a tenent of mine was robbed at gunpoint at Lark and Madison by two "clean cut,neatly dressed, black men both wearing new baseball caps on" They do have a gun.
Police are on the look out for them so if anyone sees them give the copshop a call. The tenent was not hurt.

[Danielle Masters]

Thanks for the info. I was curious about all the police activity down there.

[Mark Crnolatas]

I support LPD totally, and I've been advocating that LPD needs OUR support as citizens, so they may increase manpower in the police dept., add a few more cars per shift and patrol more on the east end and frankly all over the city to city lines all around us, than in past years. Again, there isn't a wall built between Cleveland and Lakewood.

Just one opinion.

[Phil Florian]

Did they catch anyone yet?

[DougHuntingdon]

I was in a Westlake Cab and heard it on the scanner. One suspect was wearing a white shirt, and the other was wearing a blue (? I forget) shirt. It sounded like the police set up a road block on Madson.

Mark, how many more cars per shift do you want to add? Do you think more cars would have prevented this crime? How many cars total should there be?

I used to live in Birdtown. I didn't have any problems firsthand with criminals, except for the criminal amount of noise the neighbors (homeowners) next door were making, which is why I moved. I did notice in the papers, though, that there were frequent assaults or robberies along Madison in that area, although usually in the middle of the night.

Doug

[john crino]

Did they catch anyone yet?

No one caught as of 11am this morning according to LPD.

[Mark Crnolatas]

I worked alot over the last 25 yrs with CPD and many other PD's on certain levels. I'm certainly not saying that more cars would have prevented THIS crime, but they MIGHT have. One never knows exactly. Cleveland puts heavy visablity where they need to. You'll see less cars around certain areas, and a car every few minutes around other areas in Cleveland.

One thing that is a point in Criminology. Once the dam has been broken through, it's a lot harder to patch it if possible at all, than to build it strong in advance of the approaching storm.

Regarding how many? Since I'm not "in"on how many there are now per shift, and where and how they're assigned, I coudn't answer that. If I had the info, I could make a recommendation , but then I would have to invoice someone for those specifics, as a consultant : )

[DougHuntingdon]

Mark, I don't necessarily disagree. I was just curious as to the number that you thought would be sufficient. So many times, generally speaking, the default answer always seems to be MORE cop cars, MORE teachers, MORE fire trucks, etc. Sometimes, I am sure "more" is the best answer. Other times, the best answer may something else, such as the reallocation of resources.

For instance, when I check the LPD web page, I notice various programs of questionable value like vacation checks of resident homes, DARE, and home/business security surveys. Even if you give these programs the benefit of the doubt and consider them to have SOME value, perhaps resources would be better spent on a few more cop cars per shift, as you initially mentioned.

I know some police departments use some type of computerized modeling that tries to predict where crimes will occur before they happen. You may know a lot about this. I wonder if LPD uses anything like this.

The modeling is based not only on past crimes and locations; it is also based on the criminal history of the residents. Based on info from the modeling, police departments may increase or decrease marked or unmarked patrols/surveillance of certain areas, for example.

I know private ambulance companies have used similar software for many years, so that they can strategically place the ambulances where they will be needed ahead of time.

Doug

[Phil Florian]

I just started reading and posting a bit on a website called UrbanOhio.com. It is a neat site, what little I have looked at, if not ideal. Anyway, one of the ongoing threads is just an ongoing tally of crime in Cleveland neighborhoods and discussions around prevention, response, etc.

One of the folks took the recent crime data for shootings and created a Google map for it and posted it. On the large size map that he posted it was fairly useless but I have to wonder if a more narrow view map might show more patterns. Not sure of the use of it but it might be helpful to look and notice that most crimes of the mugging sort occur in position X, or near position X.

But in this case, how does one predict and prevent a crime at 2PM in broad daylight?? That's pretty tough stuff.

This brings up, what is safe and what is safe enough? Do we want to go the route of some British neighborhoods that have cameras in them that anyone, police or citizen, can look at at any time. This way there is the constant chance that someone is watching a particular part of a neighborhood and, if no one is, they have them recorded for later review. Would that be good? Too much? Barring that, what have been other deterents to crime? A random patrol by a cruiser at that point might have prevented it...or the perps might have waited and watched the cruiser go by and then make a grab at someone.

Why are we so certain these dudes were from "across the border?" I am on the West end of Lakewood and see plenty of cops driving to the end of our street for one reason or another. Only rarely to patrol, though...in 5 years at this location I have seen a cruiser just patrol this street 2 times...the other times they were clearly a) looking for someone (I knew because I called the police station to ask why cruisers were going slow in our 'hood at 2 AM) or b) heading to a home visit. I have been stopped one time while walking at night and asked for ID (not sure why). Otherwise, they are only around if there is some reason. In fact, off of the main drags I rarely see police. How many are on duty and on patrol at any one time? I am curious.

I agree that simply adding more cops to the mix isn't necessarily the answer but I ask again, what is safe and what is safe enough?

[Jim O'Bryan]

Mark, how many more cars per shift do you want to add? Do you think more cars would have prevented this crime? How many cars total should there be?
Doug

Doug

A Lakewood police officer once told me when I asked this if it would help? His answer was that he would rather have uptodate software in the cruisers and a make sure everyone had what they needed before hiring more officers.

On the flip side I have heard rumors that the city is officially near broke, and they will be looking for new taxes very soon.

I do agree that maybe it is time for citizens to take a little more of the watching under their caps.


.

[Mark Crnolatas]

Without naming the city, I'll describe how a police dept in one particular burb works it...
You and I will be the patrol officers in this example.
REMINDER to readers ...this is a fictional example and only using Lakewood as a way of describing ...so nothing negative is construed by this example. ok?


Each police car is assigned an area, made up of a block of streets. Let's call that area a "patch". Lets call Birdtown Patch 1 for now. One car might be assigned to patch 1, and that car's job is to wander up and down the streets, back and forth, up and down , back and forth, inside that patch for 8 hrs. If theres enough manpower, our patrol car would rarely leave that patch. We get to know each house, each car that parks on the street, each person we see every day by sight at least, each kid we see walking home from school...and every detail gets seen day to day. If a new face is walking down the street or a new car to that patch is seen, and we are driving Patrol car 5 , we might run that plate JUST because we havnt seen that car before and it just doesn't look "right". The car is too bling for this area. It's a Escalade in an area that usually doesnt drive Escalades. The plate comes back to an address in a high crime area deep in the center of Cleveland. No wants or warrants come back , so it might be of interest and it might not be, but I'll jot down the plate, and description of the car just "in case".

We drive on, change the pattern of how we cover our zone, you and I noticing that there's 5 teens hanging out at the corner of Clarence and Madison. We drive by slow, roll down the window and ask Dave hows things going. Dave says everything is cool, so we contine on. We get a call to go block traffic on the corner of Franklin and Clarence, so the Fire Dept
can do their thing. We leave our patch.

There isn't any other car available to go block that traffic, so our patch is left without coverage for awhile. A few home owners notice they havn't seen us cruise by their house for that time, while we're away from our area. It's now 8pm. We're cut loose and we return to our patch. The Escalade is gone, and 4 other cars we havn't seen before in our 2 yrs in that area are sitting in a drive. We just mention to each other about the 4 new cars in that drive, how nice it be able to drive a new Lexus, and just then as we're rounding the corner onto Lark, we see a fight break out between Dave and Ron, Ron's buddy jumping in on the fight beating Dave bigtime. You get out of the car, I call in the address, tell radio a fast description of whats going on ( thats what 10 codes are for, rather than spend 2 min describing, I can say 10-78 fight in progress, means need assistance and we exit the car and see whats up. Turns out to be a scrap that stops just by us showing up. NOW we're tied up getting names, ID's calling in for wants or warrents on each individual, getting details of what happend for our report, and again WHILE we're doing this, the rest of our patch is unattended. End of example.

WHILE doign this, the rest of the patch was uncovered again.

Sorry for the long example but see how when one car is tied up, unless theres another car slide in and cover our area ..it goes UNcovered?

Now, in Lakewood, maybe it's not needed. The odds of something WE are going to roll onto are almost nil. Maybe it IS needed tho'.

So ..the question is ..is there really such a thing as TOO many police cars out? I say no.

The age old problem is economics. Forever, a city is trying to make 10 police officers and cars do the job of 30 due to costs per officer/ per car/ per etc etc etc.

You can see why volunteer groups such as REACT around for the last 30 yrs, and others citizen volunteer groups are tacetly accepted in Cleveland, in general, because a police officer cannot be everywhere all of the time. Many crimes happen in an instant. If the volunteer group becomes a problem, they get told to mind their own business, get out of the way and go home.

Does high visablity help? To a degree yes. If it prevents ONE crime, then it was a help. But economics might say, well we have to stretch out 10 police officers to cover where 30 would cover alot better so we'll have to accept a certain percentage of whatever happens and write it off as " unable to be there because we were over there" ...type of thing.

So, once again, on another thread, we're asking for volunteers. Not to get involved in a fight or get involved and trying to stop a robbery we might HAPPEN to see. We just wander an area, be eyes and ears, and enjoy our city.. Maybe our being out there just MIGHT stop one kid from being grabbed. MAYBE it would stop just one car from being stolen. MAYBE...

Maybe's are just that, they are only "Maybe"...but they beat nothings.

So the long answer is yes, I support LPD, and would hope the city would get monies in to double whatever the amount of officers on the street it has now, and also outfit the officers with better equipement as Jim heard. Will that happen? Doubtful but not totally impossible.

Can we help as citizens? We can, in a lightweight but better than nothing sort of way.

As cited by the fictional example above, a police car cannot be everywhere all of the time. A problem, however, CAN happen anywhere, anytime.