The Observation Deck

I used to use a quote that said something like this: A society only exists to the same degree that peace dominates that society.

After 25+ years in law enforcement, I have to say that statement is fairly on the money.

Let's get some peace flowing.

Mark Allan Crnolatas

Mr. O'Bryan, this was your quote;

Positives to take from this.
Punk kids - not pros.
Knives not guns

Positives to take from this? Can you understand that someone whose home and property have been involved in a felony in the last 24 hours might feel that there are NO positives at all to take?
A "punk kid" with a knife can kill my child as easily as a "pro" with a gun.

There will surely be a spirited discussion as to whether time on one's porch is either a leisure or law enforcement exercise but I just dont think you can dismiss the very real fears of some people in the city you obviously care for so much.

Dee Martinez wrote:Mr. O'Bryan, this was your quote;

Positives to take from this.
Punk kids - not pros.
Knives not guns

Positives to take from this? Can you understand that someone whose home and property have been involved in a felony in the last 24 hours might feel that there are NO positives at all to take?
A "punk kid" with a knife can kill my child as easily as a "pro" with a gun.

There will surely be a spirited discussion as to whether time on one's porch is either a leisure or law enforcement exercise but I just dont think you can dismiss the very real fears of some people in the city you obviously care for so much.

Dee

I am one of the two that has put forth safety concerns and fears since this board started. While so many laughed off the very easy way to keep this crime to a minimum. So now that crime has touched other's lives it becomes a big deal! For some of us it has been a big deal before this. Go back to Harbarger Adminsitration where a musician was killed by Cleveland kids for a dollar, no wait, it was for sport. It was a big deal then for me as well.

I am not trying to dismiss anything.

Let's play your questionaire

Knife or gun

mixed up kid or pro

You tell me which is better.

Neither works in my camp which is why I have advocated 30 more police, working hand in hand with police on crime and now crime watches, applauded and featured Councilwoman Mary Louise Madigan's Beach block watch story. I just offered to help underwrite any and all block watches being formed in Lakewood, and personally filed for a carry and conceal permit.

You tell me who is serious and who is not.

Now I could go off on my leacture again about how I have voted for every school levy and now I have to pay for more police to save me from your and other peopple's kids, but that serves no purpose.

.

I dont know whether you have children (it sounds like you dont) but even if not, you may have elderly parents or close friends who desire the safety of police protection. I agree completely that we must look at investing in more police in our city.

however this sort of thing that the Masters family experienced, along with what appears to be a definite uptick of nuisance crimes, DEMANDS some kind of immediate official reponse and none appears to be forthcoming.
Knife or bullet in my heart by a 13 or 53 year old, Im just as dead, so thats not an argument worth having.

Your going to have two camps here. Camp 1 will dig in their heels, buy security systems, join blockwatch groups, and patrol the streets. Camp 2 will say Lakewoods positives dont warrant all that effort and will move on. This is what developers in distant suburbs pound every day.
I cant criticize those who choose #2

Dee Martinez wrote:Your going to have two camps here. Camp 1 will dig in their heels, buy security systems, join blockwatch groups, and patrol the streets. Camp 2 will say Lakewoods positives dont warrant all that effort and will move on. This is what developers in distant suburbs pound every day.
I cant criticize those who choose #2

Dee

I am not faulting anyone in the second group. I have never faulted anyone for leaving with a good reason. If they are leaving to get away, before they go I would like them to take a long hard loook at facts. I think everyone wants to come home from work and relax and feel good and safe in their community. The slogan Clean, Safe, Fun is 100%, not kind of clean, kinda of safe and could be fun. Many people do not want to live an Urban existence, this I understand completely.

Between 1990 and 2000 my wife and I would drive into the country looking for the perfect little farm. 10 acres, pond, trees, maybe a creek for the dog and I to walk. Paradise. For some that still is paradise. In the end I realized I was chasing a figment of my imagination. This is not to say it is not a very real in someone else mind, me I was chasing windmills. I could find very solid reasons to pass on most places that were just as real. I was not running from anything, just trying to move to a better life.

When you look at the facts, the choices become difficult. When you throw in an engaged city like Lakewood, it should be even tougher. So let's pretend you like the semi-urban lifestyle of Lakewood but do not need the walkability. By the time you are done selling, moving and paying more, are you that much safer? Statistics say no, and not just crime, but health, services, and expenses. Moving in this day and age buys your little more. Different yes, but more no. Different is a legitimate reason to move, there are hundreds of legitimate reasons to move, just do not tell me taxes or crime.

Back to crime in Lakewood

Three years ago if the paper could have run full page article after article about Lakewood residents going on the offense, much of this could have been stopped. simply stated as Joe so well put it, Crime takes the direction of least resistance. In the old days Lakewood was safe because of the attitude we would like to bring back. Lakewood police tolerate nothing and they are everywhere. One thing i have been working at is building a relationship between the paper and the police. You have to understand, this is not an easy realtionship to build as the police tend to distrust the media, or at least distrust their sense of stories and angles.

What we were trying to accomplish 3 or more years ago. Friendly walks with no urgency. Walk the walkable city, sit on the city of porches porches. No stress all fun. Now it can be just as enjoyable, but we need to work quickly.

A worthwhile alarm is going to cost $500 to $1000 a year, and it would not have stopped the Master's encounter, nor the Library encounter. The police levy for equipment, training, and 29 more police is $300 per $100,000 as we figure it. Seems like a no brainer to me. You buy a burglar alarm, and you the only people that know are you the alarm company and maybe the guy breaking in.

You hire 30 police right now, and the entire state will know! A burglar alarm tells you when some is breaking in and maybe a fire. Police will come to the call, give you health care, deliver your baby, help get your son out from being stuck in the banister, tell your neighbors to quiet down, and drive past your house.

Which makes more sense? Hiring police to solve crimes, or Hiring police to stop crime? If you believe the second choice is the wiser, than there is no such thing as too many. Too many is the game of a city that is extremly safe can play. I believe it is a fools game in Lakewood.

Solid block watches that are publicized, citizen eyes on the streets, more police, more arrests, stiffer sentences and the word will travel fast. Lakewood a great place to live, a bad place to screw around. In effect building a brand of SAFE, CLEAN, FUN. Property values stabilze, home sales go up, EVERYONE WINS, even those that want to sell and move.

We have Lakewood's brand on our side already. Every house in Bay has a plasma TV, CD recorder, a million CDs, TVs, Playstations, IPods, etc. I Lakewood I think you might break into some homes and find VCRs, and TV with Tubes. Let's be honest not the motherload criminals look for. So add in more police and it becomes very unappealling to real criminals.

Didn't mean to carry on, but it really gets frustrating. While some of the brightest minds in Lakewood have worked endlessly on making the city better and safer without fanfare, or publicity. The group is branded as some form of secret society run by Masons and Jesuit Warriors!

---

OK Lat's play the game Dee started and I think is good.

These choices are out there right now.
Malls or Homes?
Gated Community(Lakewood) or Regionalism Cleveland's large burrough?
City Buses or Regional Buses?
Education Grants or Section 8?
Help criminals or eminent domain?(Farris family, trust me on this one)
Hire more Health Workers or More Police?




.

I'm sorry but nobody is selling me on the Lakewood is safe. I will say that it isn't as bad as some other places.

When normally I would leave my kitchen door open for the fresh air, it will be closed and locked come sundown, the garage that once would be open with children's bikes and toys being pulled out and put away several times a day will now be closed with a lock, the car that sat in my driveway not always locked will always be locked, and a stay at home mom that would normally feel safe will have sleepless nights worrying for the safety of her family and wondering when those same punks that brought this stress on her family will do it to another.

Having something like this hit so close to home makes you realize many things. All though the safety for my family has always been a concern to me, now it isn't just a concern it is a worry and a fear.

Jim O'Bryan wrote:[

OK Lat's play the game Dee started and I think is good.

These choices are out there right now.
Malls or Homes?
Gated Community(Lakewood) or Regionalism Cleveland's large burrough?
City Buses or Regional Buses?
Education Grants or Section 8?
Help criminals or eminent domain?(Farris family, trust me on this one)
Hire more Health Workers or More Police?




.

It wasn't a game. It was a sliding scale series of questions that I believe are asked over kitchen tables and pillows every night around northeast Ohio.
Maybe some people talk about regionalism with their spouse late at night after the kids are in bed, but not me.
If you dont believe that a thousand times a year, a Mrs turns to a Mr and says, "maybe we should think about moving" youve lost a bit of touch with your neighbors

Hate to interupt a good discussion, but our soon to be born community watch is now numbering 10 or so. It's not an organization or anything more than a few neighbors talking about it at this point, but it is 10 people from various areas of the city making watching over our own areas a priority rather than just coincidence.

Mark Allan Crnolatas

I have begun a reply to this thread several times. For a variety of reasons I have bit my tongue and hit the delete button. For what it's worth, here are my thoughts and be prepared, sometimes when I hop on the soapbox it takes forever to get me back off of it.

I will start with a few loosely related thoughts and then try to explain my thinking on each. As a bit of background, I am one of those who grew up in "old" Lakewood where if a cop caught you goofing around they just smacked you upside the head and sent you home. In those days you did not repeat your actions or you would be arrested. YOU absolutely did not go home and tell your parents that a policeman smacked you upside the head. If you did, you picked yourself up after getting clobbered for embarrassing the family, and began your grounding. Your parents did not run to the police station and report police brutality. Some of you on the same side of fifty as me might recall the days of Officer O'Grady or Hazzard behind Manner's.

When it came time to buy a house and raise a family, I chose Lakewood.
This was shortly after starting with the Lakewood Police Department. The cops I feared as a kid were the grizzled veterans who trained me. There was a lot of head shaking at the department as it became apparent that "times was a changin'".

My last several years on the job I was responsible for the annual allocation of personnel report. What that meant was that I did a statistical analysis of calls for service to determine the times officers were most needed as well as the need for officers. It was my job to say how many were needed to keep levels of service the same and to determine how services would be impacted at different levels of staffing.

I am going to put this in very simplistic terms so as not to bore you but imagine something called a performance factor(Pf). That stands for the time an officer is availble to answer a call. If you start with a Pf of 1.0 it means that every officer has ALL of his time committed. This means he leaves roll call and goes on a call. For the rest of his shift he or she is going from call to call or is writing reports or is booking a prisoner. 2.0 means that one half of the officers time is available. Obviously the higher the Pf, the better. According to Northwestern University (Where the city sent me for the training.) the tipping point when calls for police require some waiting is 2.0. As the number decreases more calls have to wait. When it hits 1.0 all calls have to wait until someone clears. When I left seven years ago we were between 1.7 and 1.8 and dropping. I don't know what it is now but I would be amazed if it did anything but continue to drop. It should be noted that you can't look at the numbers in a vacuum. Even at 2.0, if all hell is breaking loose then there may not be anyone available. Even if the department averages five calls an hour, fifteen may come in within 10 minutes and two hours may go by with just one or two calls.

I also spent a few years working crime prevention so I will end up with some comments along those lines.

Punishment for juvenile crime has changed in the following ways over the past 40 years: Juvenile committed a crime and if it was serious they were given the option of joining the armed services knowing Viet Nam was calling or going to juvenile prison. then The draft ended and Viet nam ended and the juveniles simply were locked up. then Juveniles went to jail for the night and the parents showed up the next day for a hearing and the kid was sometimes sent home until court and sometimes they were held. then Juveniles were released to their parents if they "only" committed a misdemeanor like breaking into cars or stealing bicycles. Felony arrests resulted in the kids being locked up in the detention center. then "Minor' felonies like breaking into your home, stealing a car, or breaking an old woman's hip knocking her down while stealing her purse meant that the kid was released to his parent until a notice is mailed out a few weeks later giving the kid a court date a couple of months after that. To get locked up the kid had to have a weapon. then Next step was that the weapon had to be a gun. All of this was just until 2000 when I retired. Again, I can't imagine that this situation has improved since I left. ***For truth in reporting***, the murder Jim O'Bryan referred to where the musician was knifed to death for one dollar was committed by Lakewood kids. We had arrested them several times that year and they were simply released to mom each time because they never crossed the ever changing line of what was needed to be incarcerated.

My biggest gripe with this is that if you tell a toddler not to touch the candle because it is hot and he reaches anyway and burns his hand, then that child learned the consequence of doing something they were told not to do. If juveniles can commit any number of felonies and there are no negative consequences, why would they stop? My second biggest gripe is that we could have 100 more police and it will not impact the juvenile problem. Our county commissioners want to increase taxes and they don't have a planned use for half the money. GRRRRR, quit whining about where to put a detention center and hmmm, if we only owned a large vacant building that we could use millions of uncommitted dollars to convert it to a juvenile holding facility. Where could we find such a building?

Even if it doesn't change individual kids two things will happen. Those kids that violated the Masters home would be locked up and at least for a while they would not be able to commit another crime. Secondly, some kid somewhere will hear about how so and so got caught AND IS IN JAIL. An additional benefit would be that the police time involved when these kids are caught the next time would be saved.

With all that being said I would like to address the hiring of thirty additional officers. This may get me in trouble with my union brethern but I have a possible solution. Bear in mind that I was a union rep for the police and feel strongly about the need for a union. Because of this I feel that the adminstration should sit down with the union and hammer out an agreement to let this happen. They are reasonable and if included in the process I think it might work.

The city of Cleveland Hts. has BPO's. These are additional non-union basic patrol officers that are paid less than the regular officers. They are not eligible for promotion until they pass the civil service exam and fill an opening in the existing ranks. These additional officers would be available for traffic enforcement, (speed traps anyone?) handle school crossing when fill-ins are needed, traffic and crowd control at the park during the fourth as well as at the band concerts, foot patrol around the bars, guarding prisoners at the hospital, ect.. This would free up the "regular" cops for criminal investigations and we could increase our detective bureau so that someone could be dedicated just to gangs, 2 or 3 to handle nuisance type crimes and then a combined unit could supplement the special operations unit. That unit used to have the time to do the bike theft sting, special attention to parks, or to attack specific problem areas. The carrot for the union side would be a few more people promoted to investigator, and a couple of sgts. and a lt. would be needed for the bpo's. The benefit for us as a city would be less cost for the thirty new officers AND I would want these new officers to live in Lakewood. If we couldn't get that then a two-tiered pay scale where the new officers get a lower base pay and a healthy financial incentive to live here.

I would supplement that with a video surveillence system of the city. Every road out of Lakewood would have video monitoring and a variety of intersections would also be covered. I'm no computer whiz but I'm sure one of you here would know how to make a set-up like they have in vegas casinos where someone can rewind-freeze frame-or zoom in. With a one week (or pick a usable time frame) memory these could be gone over the next morning if a crime is reported and the victim says an old blue van was involved. The tapes would be checked and if no blue van left the city during that time frame then we would know that the suspects may very well still be in Lakewood. You could even have a retired cop at the monitors round the clock and if the detectives had not requested a specific review, then the retired cop could be randomly switching around the city to catch a crime in action. Finally, I would advertise that system loud and clear. Signs would be all over the city telling people that public spaces and parks are under video surveillence.

Finally, and I'll try to do it briefly. From a crime prevention standpoint, the point has correctly been made here that criminals, like water, will follow the path of least resistance. Motion lights are a plus but can be aggravating when they are set off by animals. I do now and always will have a large dog. Unless your house is being specifically targeted because someone knows you have something of an extreme value, a burglar is going to go down the street where they don't have to worry about that german shepard. When out and about, be alert. If you look at someone, nod, and say hello it often puts them off their game.

Well, I got that off my chest. In closing. More police or not, Jail space must be increased. [/i]

*applause*

Thanks for having the gumption to hit 'submit' instead of 'delete' this time.

Kevin,

Are BPO's similar to SPO's? Does lakewood hire specials or part time officers?

Dave

I having been reading the posts on this thread since it was opened yesterday and first I must offer my heartfelt sympathies to Danielle and her family for the crimes that she and her family fell victim to early Monday morning. But my question to Suzie and the other Observers is if Lakewood is so “unsafeâ€Â￾ than what community is “safeâ€Â￾?

The outrage that is felt at hearing juvenile offenders are released to the custody of their unfit parents within hours of committing a crime is not limited to Lakewood, last time I checked the juvenile court system is a COUNTY system so leave Lakewood for the $300,000 house is Mayfield Hts., of Strongsville and if a knife-wielding juvenile targets your car or garage your going to hear the exact same answer over the police radio because it is a COUNTY problem not a Lakewood problem.

When we start making comparisons between Lakewood and other Greater Cleveland communities, I still beg an answer to the question where is this safe haven. Certainly not Westlake where last year an au pair (nanny) visiting this county was kidnapped out of the Crocker Park parking lot and brutally raped and Westlake police have managed a number of large scale, high-profile drug busts in the hotels off of I-90. Before anyone questions Lakewood’s police and their crime fighting abilities and commitment to Lakewood let’s remember Bay Village’s police department has yet to solve the murder of Amy Mihaljevic a mere 17 years after her body was discovered and 18 years after her disappearance.

As the media has reported heavily over the past week other communities, namely Wickliffe are having same problem with unruly youth and rowdy behavior at basketball court that led them to take down their basketball hoops, so again I ask where shall we go to avoid these problems.

People are flocking (granted it is usually not families with small children) to Cleveland’s Ohio City and Tremont neighborhoods to find the sidewalk communities and nightlife that Lakewood has to offer, only they deal with higher crime rates and play double of what a Lakewood home would cost in an attempt to create a lifestyle that Lakewood offers at a much lower cost.

As I have stated in earlier threads the problems that are plaguing Lakewood are problems that are bigger than just one community. The problem predatory lending that leads to vacant homes, sectional 8 rentals and destruction of the housing certainly cannot be solved within the walls of Lakewood City Hall. In an area that is bleeding jobs and residents is it possibly for Lakewood or any other community not to be affected by larger regional issues.

If Dee is correct that the topic of conversation at many kitchen tables and pillows in Lakewood is the comparison of communities and which community is safer, I would to ask everyone to quit bluffing and lay their cards on the table. Which city is safer than Lakewood? Which city is a better place to raise a family than Lakewood? And finally which community offers a better overall quality of life than Lakewood?

Todd Shapiro wrote:I would to ask everyone to quit bluffing and lay their cards on the table. Which city is safer than Lakewood? Which city is a better place to raise a family than Lakewood? And finally which community offers a better overall quality of life than Lakewood?

Yes, I agree there is crime in other cities as well. I lived in Rocky River for five years. And yes we did see crime in our neighborhood, BUT it didn't seem to be as often or as serious as it is here. I know I'm going to get an ear full for this one...but we also didn't have as many "races" as there seems to be here in Lakewood. The calls in our neighborhood were more of the young kids who mommy and daddy bought them a brand new car were speeding down the street. I never saw nearly as many police cars patrolling the neighborhoods. It didn't seem as bad as it is here in Lakewood. But on the same hand I don't know the stats.

My kids are happier here, they "fit" in here. They have more friends. They aren't worried of having the right name brand clothes or being in the right "click". Yes even in kindergarten they had there little groups, and it was obvious to me who was in what group. There are so many different financial groups in Lakewood that name brands aren't as big of a deal to a kid as they are in Rocky River. Lakewood schools are so more inviting. Parent friendly. I often volunteered in River but wasn't always called. Here I'm called often and are never turned down.

I love Lakewood, obviously I moved back, but as was said before it isn't the "old" Lakewood that I grew up in. It's different.

Kevin Galvin wrote:If juveniles can commit any number of felonies and there are no negative consequences, why would they stop?

The thing that bothers me the most is that those "juveniles" got to go home because there was no room in the county "inn."

There's very little room in the Lakewood jail.

Where are we going to put the criminals if we have more arrests?

Suzie I truly appreciate the straight forward and honest response to my post. I did not grow up in Lakewood but spent a lot of time here in my teenage years (the early to mid 90’s) and your right Lakewood is not the same city it was 10 or 20 years ago. However, that is true of anywhere or any situation. Neither you nor I are the same people we were 15 years ago. Going back 15 or 20 years many of today’s outer ring suburbs were still farmland. So I agree Suzie Lakewood is not the same now as the “oldâ€Â￾ Lakewood you wistfully remember. I would just ask that we all put of views of the problems facing Lakewood today in 2007 terms. You can’t go home again and we can’t turn back the hands of time but we can make today’s Lakewood the city that future generations will fondly recollect as the “oldâ€Â￾ Lakewood.