Speaker 1: Don't want to be an American. All right, Friday morning,
Speaker 1: floading here seven hundred WLW, and not all the news
Speaker 1: is good. Great day yesterday, Opening Day at the Holy
Speaker 1: Grail with me and Moe and Tom Brenneman, and of
Speaker 1: course with that all day, great game. Of course, the
Speaker 1: outcome was not as as good as we'd like, with
Speaker 1: a three nothing shut up by the Boston Red Sox.
Speaker 1: And of course after the game is the big new story,
Speaker 1: because all hell started breaking loose at the Banks right
Speaker 1: around eight thirty or so. Opening Day turned into pretty
Speaker 1: much an evening of fights downtown, not just at the Banks,
Speaker 1: but downtown. And just think about it, we're not if
Speaker 1: this is not even spring break yet. For crying out loud,
Speaker 1: for CPS students on, this is FOP president Ken Kober
Speaker 1: joining the show. Ken welcome, Hey, good morning.
Speaker 2: How are you, Scott.
Speaker 1: I'm doing fine. I thought CPS not until spring break
Speaker 1: till next week. I mean, I'm looking at this thing going.
Speaker 1: I was down there. It seemed like it was a
Speaker 1: huge crowd mass that we expect when it's eighty degrees
Speaker 1: in sunny, and it turns into this nonsense. I guess
Speaker 1: the big question everyone's mind this morning. Is it's pretty
Speaker 1: clear that Terry Siegs you should be fired for this, correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean certainly a theory. I guess you could
Speaker 2: try to eat these somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd be unbelievable that report came out in the
Speaker 1: next couple of days. You know, it's a much bigger
Speaker 1: problem than the chief I think. So let's start this.
Speaker 1: You were tracking this in real time, started around eight thirty.
Speaker 1: Walk us through what your officers are dealing with, and
Speaker 1: when it became clear this is going to be a
Speaker 1: serious situation.
Speaker 2: Well, it actually started much much earlier than that. I
Speaker 2: mean as early as three three point thirty in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: they had a bunch of kids fighting in Washington Park,
Speaker 2: able to get that kind of calm down, and then
Speaker 2: by a little bit after seven, there were five six
Speaker 2: hundred people at vying in Liberty Right and over the Rhine,
Speaker 2: once again engaging in criminal behavior, fighting each other, just chaos.
Speaker 2: And then that just truckled on and they made their
Speaker 2: way south into small park in the Banks, and it
Speaker 2: was just for them. We had, you know, bike officers
Speaker 2: that were in their riot year, you know, to make
Speaker 2: sure that they're they're protected but it was something that
Speaker 2: they were able to eventually get a handle of that.
Speaker 2: I applaud the police for, you know, the work that
Speaker 2: they did to take what was an absolute chaotic scene
Speaker 2: and be able to do it with relatively you know,
Speaker 2: minor injuries of anybody involved.
Speaker 1: So the way you were it, Ken, was it like
Speaker 1: the same large group of kids that were just going
Speaker 1: from area to area You mentioned Washington Park and then
Speaker 1: on the Smale and then the banks. Was it large
Speaker 1: of the same people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it just your groups of four or
Speaker 2: five hundred kids just out just trying to create chaos,
Speaker 2: trying to disrupt any bit of normalcy, you know, between
Speaker 2: over the Rhine and downtown and the banks. And of
Speaker 2: course as we see or the banks you have closed
Speaker 2: at eight thirty and the amount of money that businesses
Speaker 2: are out of because parents don't want to be parents,
Speaker 2: and you have a court system that just doesn't want
Speaker 2: to hold kids accountable.
Speaker 1: These are pretty much up under the age of eighteen,
Speaker 1: pretty much the entire group we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, largely teenagers. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: The last April, the bank started their restrictions to anyone
Speaker 1: that are twenty one and you had to be accompanied
Speaker 1: by a parent after ten o'clock on the weekend. A curfew, though,
Speaker 1: was lifted for opening day only, and the banks in
Speaker 1: the city announced that saying, yeah, it's a special one
Speaker 1: day kind of thing. Was that a mistake, you know?
Speaker 2: I meanindsight it's always twenty twenty, you know, I mean
Speaker 2: you could argue that, you know, Metro being free yesterday
Speaker 2: was a mistake. I mean, the sentiment was absolutely there,
Speaker 2: give opportunity, Give people the opportunity to ride on a
Speaker 2: bus instead of parking and dealing all these things. It
Speaker 2: sounded great until you realize that your kids can come
Speaker 2: from all over the city downtown together together to act foolish.
Speaker 1: One of the things that happened following last summer was
Speaker 1: that Metro said, hey, we're going to restrict access here,
Speaker 1: so break no no free rides the kid. You can't
Speaker 1: use your bus pass all over the place. You can
Speaker 1: only use it to to and from school. We saw
Speaker 1: what happened in Blue Ash with the fireworks up there,
Speaker 1: Red Right and Blue Ash in some other areas as well,
Speaker 1: that that seemed to stop all this. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: hindsight is twenty twenty for sure, and you want everyone
Speaker 1: to come down and have a good time. But I
Speaker 1: guess in retrospect they saw that opportunity of going, Hey,
Speaker 1: free buses and we can go downtown with no curfew.
Speaker 1: Let's do this all over again. The curfew is largely
Speaker 1: worked after last April, and we just undid it for
Speaker 1: opening day. That's I guess somebody's gonna look at this
Speaker 1: and go, wow, we really screwed this up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and it's a shame. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: shame that you know, this entire day, I mean, what
Speaker 2: a great day. The weather's beautiful, baseball's back in Cincinnati,
Speaker 2: and of course as soon as the game's over and
Speaker 2: you have all this nonsense occurring, and it's just there's
Speaker 2: there's no excuse for it. And until someone is held accountable,
Speaker 2: whether it's the parents, the kids, both, this is going
Speaker 2: to continue. And like you said, we're we were just
Speaker 2: in March. Just wait till June and July and August.
Speaker 1: Come Ken Kober, president of the FOP, on with Scott's
Speaker 1: loan this morning on seven hundred WLW. It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't prepare at all for this thing.
Speaker 1: It was we had swat, we had extra patrols, bikes, undercover,
Speaker 1: you had drones. I don't know if you could prepare
Speaker 1: any better than we did for yesterday, and yet look
Speaker 1: what happened. That's and I'm gonna sign with the summer
Speaker 1: months coming up.
Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt. I mean, we were adequately staffed
Speaker 2: for the event. We had all the resources that we needed.
Speaker 2: It's just when you have five hundred kids, pockets of
Speaker 2: five hundred kids at a time, you know, running around
Speaker 2: creating chaos, it just becomes very difficult to manage it.
Speaker 2: I said. I applaud the officers for what they had
Speaker 2: to endure and how they endured it.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, it wasn't like we didn't have
Speaker 1: enough officers either, as I mentioned all those teams, but
Speaker 1: there are plenty of boots on the ground. From a
Speaker 1: perspective of the offenders in this case, they just simply
Speaker 1: not care. The police officers and in some cases officers
Speaker 1: with tactical gearroun like the swats, they just simply don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't care because there's five hundred of them,
Speaker 2: and I mean, how many how many can you grab
Speaker 2: at a time? You know only a couple are going
Speaker 2: to be arrested, So the rest of them are just
Speaker 2: going to take off running and then they just regroup
Speaker 2: and they just continue to do the same thing over
Speaker 2: and over.
Speaker 1: What kind of stuff were they doing? What were they
Speaker 1: were they were they pretty much attacking other youth people
Speaker 1: within their group. Was it just going after other individuals?
Speaker 2: Yeah, primarily just I mean fighting in groups. You know.
Speaker 2: Of course they're opportunists, so you know, ether victims laying
Speaker 2: there or victims walking down the street, and they can,
Speaker 2: you know, take advantage of them real quick. They certainly have,
Speaker 2: and there were some crimes that were actually reported, some weren't.
Speaker 2: It's just just chaos going on and it's absolute nonsense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they hit you from behind and then then
Speaker 1: run away. And reports also say that your officers ken
Speaker 1: Cobe were sometimes unable to reach victims because the crowd
Speaker 1: was preventing them from getting and undering aid to people
Speaker 1: who have been struck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean you have a victim in
Speaker 2: the middle of three or foreigner people, the police are
Speaker 2: trying to get to them, and in the meantime, you
Speaker 2: have these people trying to fight the police to get
Speaker 2: the victims. So it's just the entire thing just showed
Speaker 2: the lack of accountability that these kids have.
Speaker 1: All right, so kid gets hooked. Do you know how
Speaker 1: many off top of your head, am I wrestler and
Speaker 1: acted last night?
Speaker 2: I think they're still counting them. I'm not sure. I
Speaker 2: know the radio traffic that I heard last night, they
Speaker 2: were asking for prisoner vans NonStop. But you know that'll
Speaker 2: all shake out here in the next coming couple of days.
Speaker 1: And then they show up to juvenile court and then what.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they were released last night. There's there's absolutely
Speaker 2: no doubt. And you know a lot of these manned
Speaker 2: up on an unofficial docket and just out of luck.
Speaker 2: That's how it is.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the resistance and attacking, you know, armed police,
Speaker 1: of uniform police officers and just random individuals out there.
Speaker 1: We also had reports of civilians using chemical irritants and
Speaker 1: maybe tasers on each other in those crowds as well.
Speaker 1: It sound to me like they were coming there to disrupt,
Speaker 1: essentially to cause violence. It wasn't like, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: we just got caught up in the moment. It sounded
Speaker 1: like this was planned.
Speaker 2: I'm sure it was. This is just like what two
Speaker 2: weekends ago we had it over at Glenway in Warsaw. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't surprise me. These things, unfortunately, are going
Speaker 2: to continue to happen.
Speaker 1: Juveniles are reportedly involved in fights, it's mail of a
Speaker 1: front park, as you mentioned too, it's used violence in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: Is it a problem that you feel that the leadership
Speaker 1: is not acknowledging.
Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt, there's no acknowledgment
Speaker 2: that it's going on. There's no acknowledgment that we have
Speaker 2: to do something to hold these kids accountable as well.
Speaker 2: Now they're just kids, they're just kids being kids, or well,
Speaker 2: you know, they come from a bad background, so we're
Speaker 2: not going to punish them. And you know, the lack
Speaker 2: of accountability that continues to build up. And now you
Speaker 2: see here here's the end result, the culmination. And this
Speaker 2: really started in twenty twenty during COVID when they decided,
Speaker 2: how well we're going to shut down courts, we're gonna
Speaker 2: do this, We're gonna do that, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you know, for the last six years you could just
Speaker 2: see that it's building and building and building and just
Speaker 2: certainly not getting any better.
Speaker 1: You know, we had the three takeovers recently of course
Speaker 1: what happened last summer. The Robling Bridge had to be
Speaker 1: shut down last night because of this Fountain Square oats
Speaker 1: you are the Banks, Melvver Hunt Park, pretty much city wide,
Speaker 1: and it's a steady drum beat that Cincinnati is not
Speaker 1: safe on major event nights. And my heart breaks for
Speaker 1: you know, people like Jim Marrying at the Holy Girl
Speaker 1: Banks and other entrepreneurs down there because it was a
Speaker 1: long cold winter. Don't have a lot of foot traffic
Speaker 1: down there. People didn't want to go out because so
Speaker 1: damn cold, was an ugly, ugly winter. And then this
Speaker 1: chance to maybe get in the red a little bit
Speaker 1: here too, and what winds up happened or out of
Speaker 1: the red, I guess I should say to the black
Speaker 1: and what happens is this, and it shuts down while
Speaker 1: beer sales and everyone having a good time simply because
Speaker 1: of a pack of feral kids. And it scares me
Speaker 1: because the message continues to be sent to people like
Speaker 1: me and suburbs is you don't want to go downtown
Speaker 1: because it's dangerous. At some point the business community is
Speaker 1: going to go enough of this nonsense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, that's that's the sad part, you know, these
Speaker 2: kids think this is all fun and game. The lack
Speaker 2: of accountability is all it's just is what it is
Speaker 2: until it starts affecting Cincinnati economically, you know. And unfortunately
Speaker 2: it's going to get bad and they're not going to
Speaker 2: be able to recover from it, or it's going to
Speaker 2: take years and years to recover from And it's not
Speaker 2: fair to businesses that are down here. They're just trying
Speaker 2: to make a living, you know, trying to have a
Speaker 2: safe place for people to go and enjoy themselves, you know,
Speaker 2: and then get caught up in this at the end
Speaker 2: of the night. Just it's a bad, bad thing for Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: Does everything else can be done outside of the It
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the judges are going to be accountable
Speaker 1: anytime soon. We had that report come out that said
Speaker 1: from city residents that worry about the dan potholes and
Speaker 1: worry about the crime as opposed to other things, that
Speaker 1: there's a disconnect between alleged leadership of this city and
Speaker 1: what the residents want, and now you have more and
Speaker 1: more violent crime happening. Things like this are going to
Speaker 1: just wait people from coming downtown, going to Reds games,
Speaker 1: eventually Bengals games, young people still continue to do it,
Speaker 1: I think, but you need those people from outside the
Speaker 1: city to spend money in Hamlin County because that's what
Speaker 1: really lifts a ship. If we're missing the boat on
Speaker 1: that one, You're right. I think we're going to see
Speaker 1: a decline in downtown, which is sad because of how
Speaker 1: much time and effort and money we've invested in its renaissance.
Speaker 1: And something's got to give here at this point. If
Speaker 1: you get to waive your magic wandcan Coober president the FOP,
Speaker 1: what would that be?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm looking forward to see what city
Speaker 2: leadership has to say today, and today's the day that
Speaker 2: they have a great opportunity to put their foot down,
Speaker 2: take a stance and say publicly that we're not going
Speaker 2: to tolerate this. We want judges to hold these kids accountable.
Speaker 2: We want judges to hold any criminal in this city
Speaker 2: or this county accountable. That could be the first step
Speaker 2: to actually turning this around.
Speaker 1: Do you think that'll happen? Do you think sure Along
Speaker 1: or may or have to add Pureval does a press
Speaker 1: conference or at least issues a statement.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll see. I mean I want to see if
Speaker 2: they put something out at all, that's gonna be the
Speaker 2: first step. Well, Andy, who knows. I mean, we'll see.
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean it is Friday, so you know generally
Speaker 1: you don't want to make big news cycles. It's really
Speaker 1: something on Friday. It's a gesture, I suppose. But I
Speaker 1: just wonder how many you know, panels and how much
Speaker 1: money we're going to take and give to affected groups
Speaker 1: to try and curb this kind of behavior. And we've
Speaker 1: got to spend money, we need resources in mind. What
Speaker 1: you need to do is start locking people up and
Speaker 1: setting an example and saying, listen, we're not going to
Speaker 1: tolerate this anymore. You know when I keep getting back
Speaker 1: to it. But I think it's part and parcel WL
Speaker 1: we're talking about. You know, when you have someone cut
Speaker 1: an ankle, monitor off and go commit crimes, you have
Speaker 1: an opportunity the minute that's cut off to determine who
Speaker 1: that is. And we don't even look at the data
Speaker 1: because we're so overwhelmed, maybe understaffed, but it's not a priority.
Speaker 1: If that sends a message, I think that trickles down
Speaker 1: to young people going, well, they don't care about us.
Speaker 1: I'm a juvenile to get a slap on the wrist
Speaker 1: oh or might have to write a book report. But
Speaker 1: I can go and run rampant and be fairal all
Speaker 1: over the city and disrupt things because I get some
Speaker 1: sort of perverse thrill.
Speaker 2: Out of that.
Speaker 1: You know, I get being young and you know, being disruptive,
Speaker 1: and you know we tp stuff. We weren't going randomly
Speaker 1: punching and pepper spraying people downtown. Are there for a
Speaker 1: Reds game and if a cop came along, you'd run.
Speaker 1: Now they run at the cops.
Speaker 2: It's crazy, Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, these kids
Speaker 2: are out of control, and you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: I guarantee you it's going to get worse before it
Speaker 2: gets better. And that's that's the sad part.
Speaker 1: What do you expect this summer? When you talk to officers,
Speaker 1: what's your greatest fear.
Speaker 2: The greatest fear is that they're going to encounter one
Speaker 2: of these kids with a gun that's going to point
Speaker 2: it at a policeman and they're en end up killing
Speaker 2: a kid. That is by far the biggest fear. Without
Speaker 2: a doubt. You know, they'll deal with these kids out acting,
Speaker 2: you know, unruly and you're just committing criminal behaviors. What
Speaker 2: this is disorderly conduct, all of these things. But the
Speaker 2: biggest fear is that one's going to be armed.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing is our culture can and
Speaker 1: you've noticed his shift as well as it's become a
Speaker 1: society of zero accountabile. I've always kind of talked about that.
Speaker 1: But a case in point of the Hinton family. We
Speaker 1: know what the Hinton family is about, and yet they
Speaker 1: are suing the city for wrongful death and death of
Speaker 1: Ryan Hinton, who pointed a gun at police officers last year.
Speaker 1: You can't get any more ballsy than that. And now
Speaker 1: we have young people, kids that are attacking police officers
Speaker 1: and expecting that somehow that's okay. It is a bizarre
Speaker 1: world in what you lived, and we kind of fell
Speaker 1: off a cliff societally speaking, I think, and that's really
Speaker 1: what we're fighting here. You know, we could talk about
Speaker 1: judges and rules and laws and law enforcement all that,
Speaker 1: but I guess the model for a lot of these
Speaker 1: young people is like, if it feels good, do it,
Speaker 1: and if someone tells you to stop, that should be
Speaker 1: offensive to you and you should take up arms with them.
Speaker 1: Or whether it's a police officer, a judge, an older person, whomever,
Speaker 1: they're standing in your way of a good time.
Speaker 2: No, without a doubt. I mean, it's just it's become
Speaker 2: a societal problem and I don't know how you fix it.
Speaker 1: I don't either, but.
Speaker 2: It certainly it needs to be fixed pretty darn soon
Speaker 2: before you know, we start seeing they said the negative
Speaker 2: effects of Cincinnati people not coming down here. Wouldn't blame them. Yep,
Speaker 2: it's got to be fixed and six quickly.
Speaker 1: No question. All right, Ken, I know you got to
Speaker 1: get going. I'm sure we'll hear it back on later
Speaker 1: today as well with an update on this whole situation.
Speaker 1: Hopefully someone down at city Hall is paying attention and
Speaker 1: addresses this issue. But Ken Kober, president of the FFP,
Speaker 1: thanks as always for jumping on this morning.
Speaker 2: Sure, thanks thanks for having me here.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, be well. Update coming up in the just
Speaker 1: minutes full news update. Sadly Red's lows and even more
Speaker 1: sad what just happened last night at the banks because
Speaker 1: we were down there broadcasting The line was great, absolutely packed,
Speaker 1: beautiful day and marred by this nonsense. Welcome to Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: And I feel so badly for the businesses too, because
Speaker 1: they've invested so much, lost so much over the cold
Speaker 1: winter months and for everything to get shut down at
Speaker 1: eight thirty on opening opening evening. I guess I should
Speaker 1: say it's just it's terrible, and we'll see what happens
Speaker 1: with crowds and everything else this summer. Scott's Loan Show,
Speaker 1: seven hundred Widioth