The Observation Deck

Yesterday we saw another senseless scene of violence invade our city. At 9:24 am, a young man frustrated with his mother's boyfriend stormed through the door and shot the man in the head killing him instantly. The shooter fled on foot to a car where he traveled east on Madison, witnessed by enough people to id the car. Of course inside the house people knew the identity of the shooter, so police were on to finding him within seconds of the murder.

Lakewood Police, called for gun shots, arrived within minutes, found the location and the victim and started going after the shooter. The shooter had a 15 minute head start and was caught by mid-morning. It would seem Lakewood Police, residents and neighbors did their jobs very well. It is nearly impossible to stop domestic violence without intervention by the parties early and often.

But then Lakewood's and the country's biggest problem falls in on us: the hundreds, literally hundreds, of social media plug-ins that people turn to, and start sharing bogus facts, bogus hows and whys, and of course, blaming and burning down the city. Depending on the point of view they are pushing it is "The Mayor's Fault," "City Council's Fault," "The Lakewood Police's Fault," "The Basketball Courts Fault" and off they go. Normally the drum of hate beats very loudly in this town. But during an election year it rings like the drums on Kong Island, deafening, and as we have often said, diffusion is a community's greatest enemy. Diffusion. Through diffusion, lies, crimes and unmentionable acts thrive. Four times over the last month police were called for online harassment, stalking and people using false identities. This is Lakewood's largest nightmare and will split the city in half as it has done the country.

Everyone needs to take a step back, take a breath and use critical thought.

A simple fact: Crime is down all over the country and in Lakewood.

You should ask yourself... Is this a crime between people that knew each other or a random act of violence?

While crime is going down, what has gone up is the rebroadcasting, and soap boxing of every little thing. And now with politics in high gear we get the echo chamber of how their person will fix it and the others are trash. This will indeed be a tough summer, four new Lakewood Safety pages cropped up over the last domestic violence at the basketball court. Four, none of them had a clue as to what had really happened when they clicked "New Group" on Facebook and off they went, demanding friends and family join them in their crusade. Quite frankly it is nuts.

What is even crazier is that no one applies critical thought and thinks, who started this? Why was it started? What is their goal? Do I really need a 50th Lakewood Group to check on daily? No, just a simple click, and onto the highway of bullshit and misinformation.

One of the best examples I know:
QAnon, 10 million plus Americans believing, repeating, and pushing some of the most stupid, outrageous stuff ever on the internet. My personal favorite was Hillary and the DNC running a child sex ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington DC. So many believed it that people went there to free the kids from the basement, Including one man, now in prison. The single biggest problem, the Pizza Parlor had no basement nor connection to Democrats or any involvement in anything but making pizza. 10 million lost souls in America needed to believe that and pushed it. That is how broke this society is. That is how out of control social media is.

Here is Q, the source of "real news and information" for 10 million Americans...

Qannon, Jim Watkins Pig Farmer, Porno Site owner, his son Ron (the poster), and original programmer Fredrick Brennan, founder of widely loathed forum 8chan.

This was Q, "the insider with the Q top secret clearance." 
For the record nothing Q stated would ever happen. Nothing.
Yet 10 million Americans followed them over the cliff of stupidity and loneliness.

So now let’s get back to Lakewood and some simple questions to ask in the hundreds of Lakewood Groups.
1) How were they stopping a car jacking in East Cleveland?
2) How were they going to stop a car-jacking in Garfield Heights?
3) How were they going to stop a fight between two 19-year-olds over a girl?
4) How were they going to stop a frustrated family member's attacking their mother’s boyfriend?
5) Stop a police chase that started in Elyria?
6) How would they stop this violence?

BONUS QUESTION 7 - All of these crimes, and many other were solved quickly and finally by Lakewood Police. Didn’t the police, and community do a wonderful job of working together?

Finally since starting the Lakewood Observer our attitude unlike most others was to provide information quickly, discussions slightly slower. But no matter what, get off your computers and go live your life. Try crazy things like eating food without taking a photo of it. Going on a date and not reading Lakewood sites, instead enjoy the company. Don’t look at other people's gardens, trips, meals etc. go out and live your own.

Look at the hundreds of Lakewood sites, then look at the names, then look at the same lonely names again and again, telling you how to live your life. Wanting you to be just as nasty and ill-informed as they are. This has become the Lakewood Brand. Instead of focusing on education, families and parks we are turning into a cesspool of hate and self-loathing.

Welcome to Neue Lakewood.

For your enjoyment...


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Updated post.

Man just found dead in a Lorain Apartment.

How is Lakewood City Hall going to stop that?

What about World Hunger?

Thunder storms this afternoon! City Hall what's the plan?
It is not raining in Arizona, why here?

These people are real slackers.


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Stabbing in Toledo last night.

Lakewood City Council hasn't even mentioned it?

Mayor sitting on her hands, no plan for fighting stabbings in Toledo.

Have the police started an investigation?

Has the city started another committee?

This is getting out of control!

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It has been 6 hours since this happened in Cleveland.

City is silent.

It could have come to Lakewood.



Please join my new group - Crimes that could happen in Lakewood someday soon, and kangaroo court on Facebook! Or CTCHILSSAKCOFB for short.

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Jim O'Bryan wrote:Updated post.
Thunder storms this afternoon! City Hall what's the plan? It is not raining in Arizona, why here?

It did rain in Arizona
Ever so briefly
Enough to move the dust around
On the hood of my car
I blame City Hall

As a former Lakewoodite and outsider looking in. I can't remember any year out of the 50 that I did like in Lakewood that there were this many killings. I can remember one here one there, many of the 50 where there was none. My point is that although I can agree that crime may be down, killings are certainly up. I don't do the social media thing for the Lakewood groups, the short time I spent on them was filled with misinformation and a very suprising amount of hate, so much so that I feel like the whole concept of having a group for Lakewood (or many) was pointless. Everyone complained about everything. What I will say for sure though is that something has changed with respect to the reputation of the police, bear in mind that I do not think they do a bad job. I am only saying that something has changed. When I was younger you could not step off the sidewalk to cross any main street outside of the crosswalk without having an officer say something to you. Traffic laws were followed because you were basically guaranteed to be ticketed. As someone that grew up in lakewood as a child to adulthood, you just knew not to mess around. Do I know how to fix it? I most definately do not! Law enforcement and city planning are not my forte. I do think that a discussion is needed to be had about how to at least make people feel safer.

jkocinski wrote:As a former Lakewoodite and outsider looking in. I can't remember any year out of the 50 that I did like in Lakewood that there were this many killings. I can remember one here one there, many of the 50 where there was none. My point is that although I can agree that crime may be down, killings are certainly up. I don't do the social media thing for the Lakewood groups, the short time I spent on them was filled with misinformation and a very suprising amount of hate, so much so that I feel like the whole concept of having a group for Lakewood (or many) was pointless. Everyone complained about everything. What I will say for sure though is that something has changed with respect to the reputation of the police, bear in mind that I do not think they do a bad job. I am only saying that something has changed. When I was younger you could not step off the sidewalk to cross any main street outside of the crosswalk without having an officer say something to you. Traffic laws were followed because you were basically guaranteed to be ticketed. As someone that grew up in lakewood as a child to adulthood, you just knew not to mess around. Do I know how to fix it? I most definately do not! Law enforcement and city planning are not my forte. I do think that a discussion is needed to be had about how to at least make people feel safer.

John

No need to "make people feel safer." Just make them safer, this is not even tough. There are tried and true methods to accomplish this. There are new ways to accomplish this. Look at Newark, NJ. No police firing guns, crime way down. Making police part of a community, instead of the police, makes us all safer.

But that has nothing to do with the shootings or crime. 3 out of 5 started in another community, and ended here, thanks to the police, and residents.

The other two crimes were basically domestic/rage shootings, that nothing could have stopped without looking into how they got guns.

But when they happened police were their in seconds, within minutes had taking control of the situation. Gathered evidence, talk to witnesses that were happy to work with the police. This is all exactly how it is suppose to work. Exactly. If you can solve those crimes before they happened you are better than I my friend.

Now there are problems here in Lakewood, catalytic converters, cars, petty larceny, breaking and entering. Crimes against strangers. This is the crime to focus on. This is the stuff that can be addressed.

Most of those can be addressed by residents using their yards, walking and observing.

John, this is the problem, a community goes off half cocked, looking for answers and solutions to problems they do not understand.

Back to where we started, if you merely make me feel safer without making me safer, how am I safer?

Perfect example, and one I support if the city has a large enough budget, Police on bikes. These are feel good police and at best a couple extra eyes on the street, which is good. They really cannot answer any real calls, they can lock no one up, take no one to the station, etc. All that is done by a second officer. But it seems nice, is great PR, does help with community building, but not really functional. After the Madison Park shooting local groups shouted "bring back community stations." In fact the station was 7 blocks away, and the officer would have been the fourth to arrive, compared to those on patrol.

Social media turns everyone into Magpies looking for shiny objects to fulfill their vision of whatever.

Cities have but two real jobs, Safe and Clean. Everything else is icing on the cake or misdirected energies.

peace


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Jim, I whole heartedly agree with you. I was in no way stating there were deficiencies in the police. I guess I was more comparing my experience as a young person in Lakewood and my awareness that you could not step out of line without consequences. This awareness helped to keep me on a proper path in life. Do you think the younger generation in Lakewood now feels the same? I'm not sure they do. I remember one time when I was like maybe 13 you brought a moped over to my house in the evening and let me ride it. I did not get two blocks before I had an officer on my tail. I don't believe that would happen now. My point was that in those days people did not come to Lakewood to commit their crimes, they knew better.