Brian Pedaci wrote:Doesn't the PD and Sun have full access to the police blotter? Is it a Mayor's responsibility to report crime in his city to the newspaper? At what point would over-sharing become detrimental to the image of the community and harmful to property values, as you accused Crimewood.com of doing?
Brian
Not sure who this was a response to. But let me open my big keyboard.
It is the Mayor's job to take care of the city, and in this role he is kind of like a miniature
president, coordinating/heading various services throughout the community. While I
rarely found myself agreeing with Mayor Cain, I could certainly understand why we want
to keep a lid on our dirty laundry.
If you look at the PD and Sun, they have always cherry picked the blotter to provide a
weird almost funny view of "crime" in Lakewood or other cities. Rarely is anything serious
there. That they chose to blow out in larger articles. So you get an almost palatable mix
of stupid crime and crime. One might ask what is their "duty" to Lakewood? One might
also ask what is the Observer duty to Lakewood? Other groups?
Other sites in Lakewood have been mostly started with hatred. Two because of layoffs to
themselves, or family members, the other pure hatred for me started by aka
Madison Drunk. Lakewood had no bigger enemy than Madison Drunk who would spend
his whole day online trashing Lakewood on Cleveland.com. When he was finally
laid off he has channeled this hatred to a full time commitment of bitterness. While hidden
now it will shine again I am sure. Look at his posts here, or at other sites.
I would say the secret is how is the "blotter" presented. When it was presented as
Crimewood it was pretty despicable. When you realize one person hated the department
so much they dedicated their lives to bringing them down, I am sure it made some
wonder, "Why would I move to this city?" Maybe not.
What I do expect the mayor/police to do is warn us if there are serial criminals working
the city. The other night while talking with someone in the know, they said, "They think
it is the guy that has been robbing fast food places all over the westside." To me this
might be something citizens might need or want to know. It is actually safe guarding
us the citizens. But again this is a call of the mayor, and it is his right. I was not calling
the mayor out, but when Ms. Jusko asked, I felt like I should respond.
Then we get into the Lakewood Way, which is proclaim something done like
"Lakewood is safer" only to find out later the comment was actually, "Lakewood is
safer in some categories..."
It should be noted that breaking and entering is up in cities west of us.
Lakewood is very much at a crossroads, and we are not doing anywhere as near good
as we need to. That is a fact.
I would say that applies to all of us.
Me included.
.
). We then went down again in the spring with some other moms when it was being discussed in the Ohio Senate committee. It has been Ohio law since September 2005. I am also on the board of a breastfeeding rights organization that collects reports of discrimination against families that breastfeed, and we have acted as mediators in a few situations (preventing some "nurse-ins" by accomplishing the education and organizational change without as much embarrassing media attention to the offending organization as a "nurse-in" brings). 