By Lucas Daprile
Source cleveland.com
CLEVELAND — Cleveland City Council members, expressing frustration, pushed Wednesday for greater police presence and the use of drones to fight the street takeovers that terrified residents last weekend.
Police Chief Dorothy Todd gave Council’s Public Safety Committee the most detailed account of the series of road closings that hit late Saturday night and continued into Sunday morning.
Her comments came as members sought a more visible presence on city streets, a move some said would provide a deterrent to those careening through streets, lighting fires and pointing weapons at drivers.
“They pick on the city of Cleveland because we don’t have any traffic enforcement,” Councilman Joseph Jones said. “If we had traffic enforcement, we could really make an impact.”
Todd said police first received a tip late Saturday from Cincinnati officials about a potential street takeover here. The initial tip did not include the addresses where motorists would be meeting, Todd said.
After receiving the tip, Cleveland police notified the five districts, dispatched a police helicopter and “began gathering additional resources,” such as reaching out to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, Todd said.
At 11:30 p.m., the first gathering of cars was reported at East 55th and Woodland Road.
“They weren’t going to just one location at a time,” Todd said. “They were hitting multiple neighborhoods, multiple streets, on different sides of the city, which does split up our resources when that happens.”
Initially, media reports said motorists met at six or seven different locations. On Wednesday, Todd provided a list of 16 intersections, parking lots or roads that were taken over during the weekend.
The incidents continued through the early morning. At 4 a.m., several people blocked traffic on Interstate 90 and attempted to light fires and set off fireworks, something that was dampened by the rain, Todd said.
Police received more than 100 calls for service, Todd said.
Though the stunt drivers took steps to hide their identities from police – many took off their license plates before taking over the streets – Todd told reporters that detectives have several persons of interest and plans to release photos in the coming days in hopes the public can help identify those involved.
“We have really good active leads,” Todd told reporters.
Thus far, Todd said, officers have made few arrests involving Saturday’s street takeovers.
One arrest involved the driver of a car who was nearby the street takeovers and had taken off the license plate and placed it in the trunk. The Ohio State Highway Patrol, which sent eight officers to assist Cleveland, also arrested some people who were leaving the events, Todd said.
Since the incidents, Cleveland police have formed a task force to investigate the street takeovers, Todd said.
Saturday’s incident was not this year’s first, but it was perhaps its most brazen. In May, drivers took over Playhouse Square, spinning their wheels at high speeds directly beneath the famed chandelier.
In July, more than 100 dirt-bike riders drove over the Detroit-Superior Bridge. When Cleveland police tried to stop the dirt bikes, one struck an officer and dragged him. An Ashtabula man accused of dragging the officer was charged with felonious assault.
Smaller incidents have become commonplace in Cleveland, City Council President Blaine Griffin said Wednesday.
“Every single day we get calls about these kind of takeovers,” Griffin said. “We are not arresting enough people and holding people accountable.”
Earlier this year, the Ohio lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill that aims to crack down on “hooning,” and it will go into effect Oct. 24. The law bans “stunt driving” and “street takeovers” and makes it a felony for someone to use a motor vehicle to flee police.
Under existing laws, Cleveland police have issued 34 citations for stunt driving this year, which is an increase from 20 in all of last year, Todd said.
During the meeting, Council members raised two main points of frustration with the police division. The first involved a police drone project that city officials approved funding for two years ago. Despite that, the project still is not up and running.
Council members Michael Polensek and Richard Starr also pushed officials to increase the amount of police visibility on the streets.
“Council wants traffic enforcement in the city,” said Polensek, the committee’s chairman.
The drone program has been grounded because the city is finalizing policies on how the devices will be used. Potential drone pilots still need training, and the project had some prior hiccups with the type of drones that officials initially planned to use, said Wayne Drummond, the city’s public safety director.
Council urged Drummond to speed up that process.
“I can’t stress enough the need to move forward on that,” Polensek said of the city’s drone program.
After the street takeovers, Todd said, she received messages from people throughout the city urging her to crack down more heavily on blocked intersections. Todd noted that the city has to balance enforcing laws and protecting officer safety.
During a recent street takeover in Indianapolis, Todd noted that crowds threw bottles of lighter fluid at officers and smashed their cruisers with baseball bats.
Since many of the suspects are from Cincinnati or Columbus, Cleveland officers are working with those departments, as well as local agencies, to arrest the people involved, authorities said.
“There’s a perception in the public that the division of police is not doing anything, that it’s just sitting on its hands,” Drummond said. “That is the farthest thing from the truth.”
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