# Fuck You Cleveland P.D. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 8, 2013, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766 "2013-05-08T02:40:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/41 "2013-05-10T19:00:53Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Just a glance at the other side of the ledger: how much has the budget of Cleveland PD been cut to economize in the past 10 years\*? Non-essentials, perhaps, like record keeping, or coordination of police reports, cold case investigations, and so on. > > The people of Cleveland probably have precisely the police force that they are willing to pay for. Fallout from the Sowell case notwithstanding. > > \*I could be wrong, I have made zero attempt to find out the answer to the question above. It’s just that this is something that the public seems to forget about, until something ugly like this comes to the surface. > Roddy Cleveland doesn’t have any money or anywhere near a sufficient tax base to pay for proper policing, IMHO. Saying you get what you pay for is fine for those in the wealthy suburbs (which around Cleveland are named Westlake, Rocky River, Bay Village, Brecksville, etc, etc.) but just hangs the poor people actually living in the city of Cleveland proper out to dry. Saying that you get what you pay for when you don’t have any money is government by tired cliche and doesn’t solve anything for anyone. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/42 "2013-05-10T19:11:57Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > Cleveland-area law enforcement have not been covering themselves in glory as of late. That’s the hole truth. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/43 "2013-05-10T19:17:23Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > That’s a foolish objection. The victims are free: they will at some point give their story to reporters, authors, Oprah or Ellen. There is no reasonable way the police could hope to manufacture testimony from them and have it remain unknown. Doesn’t mean they won’t try. Virtually everyone guilty of wrongdoing doesn’t admit it until evidence overwhelmingly indicates otherwise, if ever, right? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/44 "2013-05-10T19:26:29Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > Doesn’t mean they won’t try. Virtually everyone guilty of wrongdoing doesn’t admit it until evidence overwhelmingly indicates otherwise, if ever, right? That’s _argumentum ignoratium_ – the argument from ignorance: “We don’t know they AREN’T doing it!” What you say is true, but it doesn’t apply here. Most people guilty of wrongdoing don’t 'fess up until the evidence against them is clear, yes. But most people don’t _undertake_ wrongdoing when it’s clear that they’ll be exposed, either. And that’s the more accurate picture of what’s going on here: we could assume the police falsified the claim that there were no calls reporting the supposed backyard excursions, because there own records are the only thing that could definitively prove them wrong --unless someone recorded the call, a pretty remote possibility. But we can’t assume the police chose to falsify the victim’s current statements, because they can see that this would shortly collapse in front of them as other people interviewed the victims. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/45 "2013-05-10T19:47:50Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > …Still, I absolutely guarantee you that if the caller had said, “They’re shooting at cops out here; there’s a cop lying in the street bleeding!” the reaction would not have been to say that the police would arrive as soon as a car was free. An old urban legend: [Response Time | Snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com/crime/safety/response.asp) ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/46 "2013-05-10T19:52:28Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > we can’t assume the police chose to falsify the victim’s current statements, because they can see that this would shortly collapse in front of them as other people interviewed the victims. Unless they’re desperate enough to attempt covering their collective ass after mishandling Sowell. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/47 "2013-05-10T20:13:22Z")
[Cleveland Chief of Police Michael McGrath told the Today Show that the women were indeed let out into the backyard once in a while.](http://texomashomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=273802) Those statements, present in [this cached article](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5PCnFV2lfIEJ:usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/08/18123601-women-in-cleveland-house-were-bound-with-ropes-and-chains-police-chief-says%3Flite+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a), is curiously missing from [the current NBC News article.](http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/08/18123601-cleveland-man-charged-with-kidnapping-rape-no-charges-for-2-brothers?lite) ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/48 "2013-05-10T20:21:29Z")
> [@zamboniracer](#): > > Cleveland doesn’t have any money or anywhere near a sufficient tax base to pay for proper policing, IMHO. Saying you get what you pay for is fine for those in the wealthy suburbs (which around Cleveland are named Westlake, Rocky River, Bay Village, Brecksville, etc, etc.) but just hangs the poor people actually living in the city of Cleveland proper out to dry. Saying that you get what you pay for when you don’t have any money is government by tired cliche and doesn’t solve anything for anyone. And the imprisoned women hadn’t been voting down any police budgets, either… ---
**Author:** ![miss\_elizabeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@miss\_elizabeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/miss_elizabeth)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/49 "2013-05-10T21:46:39Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > [Cleveland Chief of Police Michael McGrath told the Today Show that the women were indeed let out into the backyard once in a while.](http://texomashomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=273802) Those statements, present in [this cached article](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5PCnFV2lfIEJ:usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/08/18123601-women-in-cleveland-house-were-bound-with-ropes-and-chains-police-chief-says%3Flite+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a), is curiously missing from [the current NBC News article.](http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/08/18123601-cleveland-man-charged-with-kidnapping-rape-no-charges-for-2-brothers?lite) The women said they were allowed into the yard occasionally while fully dressed and wearing sunglasses and wigs. They denied ever having been in the yard naked and on leashes, which is what the neighbors reported seeing. Now, who know why the neighbors said that. Maybe there were women on leashes, and they were just different women somehow. It seems nuts, but hey, the whole story is nuts. Maybe they made it up for attention. Maybe they are misremembering or something. I dunno. But the 3 kidnapped women deny ever having been in the backyard on leashes, and the Cleveland PD denies ever having gotten any calls about it. So I’m most inclined to say it never happened, but as the case continues, we’ll see. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/50 "2013-05-10T22:47:55Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > An old urban legend: [Response Time | Snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com/crime/safety/response.asp) No. Did you read the article? > [@](#): > > In September 2003 a minister in Odessa, Texas, who felt police were not responding quickly enough to his call about a burgled church 40 minutes later followed up with a second phone call in which he reported he was holding hostages and threatening to kill them at that location. The three police officers who were pulled off other cases to converge on the hostage call were not amused by the ruse, and arrested its perpetrator, Paul Weymouth, the 63-year-old pastor of Heights Christian Church, on charges of filing a false report. > > In November 2009, an East Texas man called 911 to report that he’d just committed a murder and was still armed. Several officers from the Tyler, Texas, police force sped to his address in cars with emergency lights and sirens blaring, only to find that the 911 dispatch had been a ruse: the caller had been assaulted earlier in the day and wanted to file a complaint, so he’d fabricated his claim about killing someone in order to prompt a quicker response from police. Officers took Mark Anthony Johnson into custody on charges of filing a false report. They go on to point out it’s not sloth that creates the slower response, but triage: > [@](#): > > Police have to prioritize calls for assistance based on the comparative severity of presenting events and/or the potential for further harm to those involved. Under such a formula, investigating a stolen car report will never be on par with breaking up a domestic disturbance, because the vehicle will remain just as stolen even if the investigation does not begin for another two hours, whereas the screaming and shoving match may turn into an assault with a deadly weapon if not broken up immediately. And this case, with a kidnap victim who’d been held in captivity for ten years and feared the imminent return of her captor, should have be triaged as urgent. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/51 "2013-05-11T04:06:56Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > No. Did you read the article?.. Yes. And yes, I did. The original story, attributed to a Mississippi paper, is an urban legend. There have been similar cases, as you see. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/52 "2013-05-11T04:52:34Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > This is sad, but, unfortunately, not surprising. > > After Anthony Sowell, (11 confirmed murders based on bodies in yard and home), was finally caught and people started examining his actions over the previous few years, there was at least one report of a woman who had escaped from him after an attempted rape and strangulation, (a repeat of a crime for which he had already served time in prison), whose story the police dismissed because she had been a prostitute along with multiple missing persons reports that family members claimed the police had not taken seriously. (He was finally apprehended after a second woman also escaped a similar situation. I am not sure why they bothered to believe the second woman, although it took them over a month to follow up on her complaint.) Ariel Castro is not a nice man at all, but I’m looking up Anthony Sowell and [holy shit](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/08/cleveland-kidnapping-anthony-sowell-case-linked-by-indifferent-police.html). That guy makes Castro seem like Strawberry Shortcake. > [@](#): > > At least some of [Sowell’s] murders and rapes could have been prevented if the police had not reacted so indifferently when a distraught woman called them in September 2008, after being repeatedly raped, beaten, and choked by Sowell. She had at one point sought refuge in a bathroom, where she saw a headless body wrapped in plastic and positioned in a sitting position in the bathtub. … She called the police. > > “They told me I had to come in and make a report,” she would testify. > > She further testified that she asked the dispatcher, “How do I get there?” The dispatcher told her: “Come in and make a report. We can’t take a report over the phone.” Man, how bad are things if you can’t spare an officer to check out a report like that? Cleveland’s finest can’t really be that short on personnel, right? Of course, it gets even better. Apparently the police didn’t actually catch on to Sowell’s misdoings until a routine sex-offender address check revealed a house full of decaying corpses. > [@](#): > > On September 22, 2009, two county deputies visited Sowell’s house to check that he was accurately reporting his address as a registered sex offender. The deputies almost surely noticed an overpowering stench emanating from the house that had the whole neighborhood complaining for months. It was so bad the workers of the sausage factory next door kept the windows shut, preferring the odors inside. If absolutely nothing else, it seems like the police in Cleveland could really use some more ears on the ground. I mean, how the hell do you miss something like that? In case anyone was wondering, yes, the survivors whose allegations were apparently put on the back-burner by police investigators were both black, as were all eleven of Sowell’s confirmed victims. Some of them had been reporting missing for years before their fates were finally uncovered… Seems that the Cleveland PO didn’t even really consider the disappearances particularly suspicious. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/53 "2013-05-11T07:50:59Z")
> [@miss\_elizabeth](#): > > The women said they were allowed into the yard occasionally while fully dressed and wearing sunglasses and wigs. They denied ever having been in the yard naked and on leashes, which is what the neighbors reported seeing. > > Now, who know why the neighbors said that. Maybe there were women on leashes, and they were just different women somehow. It seems nuts, but hey, the whole story is nuts. This guy could well have hired a prostitute to fulfil his fantasy of parading a woman naked like a horse in his backyard. There’s no reason to assume kidnapping and locking up young women is his only kink ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/54 "2013-05-11T12:44:48Z")
I’m not sure anyone can appreciate how nutty people are until they work in public safety. For every true emergency, there are dozens non-emergencies called in by crazy people. My uncle worked as an EMT in the 70s and 80s. He has tons of stories about nutty patients. They had to deal with everything from the dude who’d complain of “chest pains,” then refuse admittance every time he wanted a ride up to his girlfriend’s house, which was a block from the hospital (after hundreds of rides, city council had to actually pass a new law to deal with him), to battered and bloodied women who refused assistance because they didn’t want to get their abusive boyfriend into trouble. Then you have the crazies who call in for fairly routine requests, when it’s another but. For instance, one time the police dispatched him because a man had cut himself badly. As my uncle was bandaging him up, the police searched the house. As it turns out, the patient had cut himself while decapitating his friend. His body and head were in the bathtub. If all people were rational and honest and sane, it’d make filtering and triaging these calls a lot easier. But they’re not. People are freaking nuts. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/55 "2013-05-11T15:21:35Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Yes. And yes, I did. The original story, attributed to a Mississippi paper, is an urban legend. There have been similar cases, as you see. I wasn’t referring to any “original case.” I was referring to the use of a tactic to ensure quicker police response. And that fact is that using that tactic works. Correct? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/56 "2013-05-11T20:21:52Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I wasn’t referring to any “original case.” I was referring to the use of a tactic to ensure quicker police response. And that fact is that using that tactic works. > > Correct? No. I didn’t write about an “original case,” either. I wrote, in first posting the Snopes link, “An old urban legend.” You wrote “No.” The 2001 urban legend predates the 2003 and 2009 similar real stories. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/57 "2013-05-11T22:40:06Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > No. I didn’t write about an “original case,” either. I wrote, in first posting the Snopes link, “An old urban legend.” You wrote “No.” The 2001 urban legend predates the 2003 and 2009 similar real stories. So what you intended to convey was: “That was once considered an urban legend, but subsequent events actually paralleled the urban legend fact set and now it’s fair to say the tactic works?” ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/58 "2013-05-11T23:51:38Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > I wonder what the police response would have been if a neighbor called and said they saw a few marijuana plants in his back yard. You know they would have dropped every-freaking-thing, and enlisted a photographer! ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2013, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/59 "2013-05-12T00:05:22Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > So what you intended to convey was: “That was once considered an urban legend, but subsequent events actually paralleled the urban legend fact set and now it’s fair to say the tactic works?” If by “the tactic works” you mean “you can get arrested if you try this,” and if I wrote such a lengthy intro to every link I provided, then yeah, sure, I guess so. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2013, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766/60 "2013-05-12T01:06:44Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > If by “the tactic works” you mean “you can get arrested if you try this,” and if I wrote such a lengthy intro to every link I provided, then yeah, sure, I guess so. Here’s my original comment: > [@](#): > > Still, I absolutely guarantee you that if the caller had said, “They’re shooting at cops out here; there’s a cop lying in the street bleeding!” the reaction would not have been to say that the police would arrive as soon as a car was free. Do you agree that what I said is true? Or is what I said an urban legend? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-cleveland-p-d/657766.md?page=4)