BURGLARY, WHITNEY ROAD: A man reported to police at 7:28 p.m. Jan. 31 that someone had broken the door on his locked apartment and killed his fish.
…
PSYCHIATRIC, MEADOW NORTH COURT: Police received a complaint from a man at 11:42 a.m. Feb. 1 in which he stated that his neighbors were removing the panel from his house, and replacing the hot air in the pipes with cold air. Police determined there was no evidence to support this claim. The man then advised that he no longer wanted officers there.
…
SUSPICIOUS SITUATION, PEARL ROAD: At 12:37 p.m. Thursday, an employee of an apartment building reported that bras and panties had been found in multiple laundry rooms featuring notes and e-mail addresses on them. The caller stated they knew who was behind the incident, because a similar incident happened last year.

SUSPICIOUS SITUATION, THE BLUFFS: A female caller told police at 5:59 p.m. Thursday that while she uses Skype, unknown males appear on her screen and perform lewd acts. The responding officer reconfigured her computer settings to prevent this unwanted contact.

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Strongsville Police Blotter

seriously.

POSESSION OF MARIJUANA, MORTON AVENUE: On Jan. 28 tenants complained to police about a strong smell of marijuana emanating from one of the apartments. Upon arrival police were immediately struck by the smell in the hallway. They were able to locate the apartment. A male answered the door and without hesitation gave the police his marijuana. He told police he only buys the best. The 21-year-old male and his roommate were cited for misdemeanor possession of marijuana.

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Man tells police he ‘buys only the best’ marijuana: Fairview Park Police Blotter

love the cleveland metro police blotters

A 40-year-old Cleveland man died after he was Tasered by police following a traffic stop.
According to a police spokesman, patrol officers stopped Rodney Brown Sr. about 8:40 p.m. Friday at East 113th Street and Benham Avenue, near his home.
Brown “became uncooperative and combative,” Sgt. Keith Campbell said.
He then ran. Officers caught him a block and a half away, where he resisted arrest until more officers arrived and Brown was stunned with a Taser.
Paramedics were called, which is routine after a Taser is used. Brown appeared to suffer from cardiac arrest and was taken to University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:25 p.m., medical examiner’s spokesman Powell Caesar said.

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40-year-old man dies after Cleveland police use Taser on him

More high-caliber policing by the CPD. I am still bewildered as to why cops carry these things and act like they are non-lethal, or even ‘safe.’  And even if they are ‘non-lethal’ (which they clearly aren’t) it seems like the potential for confusing a gun and a taser is reason enough for police to only be carrying one thing that looks and feels like a gun.

The Cleveland Fire Department is investigating why firefighters who extinguished a burning car early Saturday failed to see the body of a man who had been shot to death and left inside.
The victim, who had not been identified Monday, was shot in the neck and died before the fire was set, according to the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s office.
The body was not discovered until about four hours after the fire was doused when police arrived to tow the vehicle. Officials would not say where the body was in the car.

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Cleveland fire officials to investigate why body was not found in burned car

business as usual in Cleveland

Policing is the practice, empowered by the state, of enforcing law and social control through the use of force. The roots of policing in the United States are closely linked to slavery, the capture of escaped slaves, and the enforcement of Black Codes and Jim Crow. Police forces were also routinely used to keep new immigrants “in line” and to prevent the working classes from making demands. Clearly, not much has changed. Policing is still set up to target poor people, people of color, immigrants, and people who do not conform to socially acceptable behavior on the street or in their homes. For example, police frequently target women, queer and gender non-conforming people, people of color, and young people just based on their appearance or behavior. The choices police make about which people to target, what to target them for, and when to arrest and book them play a major role in who ultimately gets locked up.
Some of us are comforted by the option of being able to call someone when we need help. Some of us are told from a very early age that the police are our friends who will help us when we’re in “trouble”. But the impact of policing on many of our communities — more people beaten and killed by cops and the growing number of our friends, family members and loved ones being locked away behind bars — shows us that the police hurt rather than help us.
Policing is, in its very nature, in opposition to self-determination. The practices of watching, questioning, intimidating and arresting people through the use of force are violent practices. Not only do cops use threats of violence — the guns on their hips, the billy clubs on their belts — to control people, they often use force in making stops, inquiries, and arrests. Harassment of people on the street or “stop and frisk” practices — stopping people to frisk them for drugs or weapons — are tools often used to intimidate, monitor, and control poor people and people of color. While we’re told the police are on the street to stop or solve “crime”, their very presence is a way of enforcing social control, and actually creates more violence.
When people die at the hands of the police, more often than not, the state concludes that the use of force was reasonable. Police review boards are completely useless. And even though some people argue that police abuse is an isolated problem that can be blamed on the actions of rogue officers, it is really a systemic problem that is fundamental to the way the policing system in the US is built and maintained.
In recent years, the militarization of the police has increased dramatically. Not only has US law enforcement come to resemble the US military more closely, but it has also begun to be equipped with the same technologies. From providing training in tactics and instruction in using certain types of equipment to the cooperation between the military and domestic law enforcement at the US/Mexico border, militarization of law enforcement has meant that the US has become another space within which the military can operate and has meant that residents of the US are potential military targets to be eliminated.
The same way that locking people in cages does not help us build the healthy, stable communities we want, relying on the state to force people into acting in ways that serve the state doesn’t encourage the kinds of cooperation, trust, and accountabilty we know are at the heart of building what we truly want.
Instead of relying on the violent establishments of police and prisons, what if we got together with members of our communities and created systems of support for each other? We are capable of looking after and caring for one another, providing each other with our basic human needs, creating community self-determination. Relying on and deploying policing denies our ability to do this, to create real safety in our communities.

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This statement was written by members of Critical Resistance [via]

For more information please contact us at: 
510.444.0484
croakland@criticalresistance.org

I can imagine lots of African-American families would think it is not fair to put a disproportionate number of black families under permanent genetic surveillance

— Jeffrey Rosen, quoted in ‘Grim Sleeper’ Arrest Fans Debate on DNA Use

“I’m extremely angry, I’m extremely disgusted that this is what our money our tax dollars are going to do to put armed thugs on the streets of every intersection of Toronto to target community organizers, the people who are out on the streets to talk about poverty, to talk about racism, to talk about homelessness. This is what we are here to do and we are being targeted before we even get to the streets…

I’m leaving this press conference and going to the streets. I encourage people watching if you don’t agree with this if you don’t agree with this kind of policies intimate if you’ve lost your jobs, if you’re living in poverty, if you’re upset that over a billion dollars of your money was spent on this armed camp in this fortress in our city then please join us in the streets. The only way we can tackle these issues that we’re hear to tackle is if we refuse to be afraid if we refuse to be silent and we continue to get on the streets.”

— Farrah Miranda quoted in Community Organizers thrown in Unmarked Police Vans en Route to Press Conference on Targeted Arrests [via]

In Ohio, if a cop says it looked like you were speeding, he can write you a ticket - no proof needed. Makes things so much easier for law enforcement if they don’t have to be bothered with the burden of proof. True story.

The state’s supreme court ruled five-to-one that independent verification of a driver’s speed isn’t necessary… things like laser guns or radar or actually clocking how fast you’re going. The court says an officer’s visual estimate will work as long as the officer is trained, certified by a training academy and experienced in finding speeders.

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Police can give speeding tickets if they ‘think’ car is going too fast

addam:

This is an unbelievable law. Officers will undergo training where they are taught to guess how fast a car is going and that will be a legally viable reason for a ticket. Count me as one of the Michiganders who will never drive through Ohio again…

And to think! All of these people in Cleveland are angry about cameras giving speeding tickets! I would rather have a robot be responsible for whether I get a ticket any day than a cop when this is how it is!

I wonder why all those cranky white dudes aren’t getting tickets when the cameras aren’t there… I guess its probably hard to just calibrate human beings for speed perception.