Don't want to be an americandio shorright here we go, Here we go slowey seven hundred WLW. Very sad and horrible story here. As you know, we had a casualty on New Year's Day, the first shooting of twenty twenty six, and it happened to be an eleven year old girl who was committing the deadly sin in areas since in some aria of Cincinnati of actually playing at a playground.
That's a horrible story in a horrible way, horrible thing for any parent or grandparent or family member to go through, but especially on a New Year's Day with a child who just celebrated Christmas. So another shooting at or near
Laurel Playground on the West End. If you go back a couple of years, there's a promise to put more cameras up, and cameras are on us specifically in that area because there have been shootings and kids being struck, and the inquirers of Scott Warpman reported the stories when being confusion and contradictions, lack of accountability. If you budgeted the money council did to put those cameras up, how come the cameras aren't up that is a good question.
She sits on public Safety, the Committee of Public Safety, and that be council member. And I'll be on the Scottsland Show this morning on seven hundred W out of and a happy new year. How are you.
Good morning? Thanks for having me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the mayor said we will spare nothing to put a stop to this after the shooting death of this eleven year old, and it sounds like, you know, that's again more important things to say, more things to say, and giving lip service to this. But if two years ago you on council approved one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for cameras to go up in the West End as part of that four and a half million dollar public safety package, what's going on the camera's up?
I wish I had a better answer for you, but it appears that there's still work to be done to get those dollars out the door and those cameras installed.
So, just to set.
A little bit of context through listeners, in early September, city Council past a five point four million dollar public safety package. It's part of that, there a bunch of different things which included one hundred and fifty thousand dollars specifically for cameras in the West. And additionally, there was another one point two million that was meant to be for lighting and cameras broadly city wide.
And those are.
Two line items in that bill that I was personally very passionate about because while we know sometimes you know, cameras can't stop a crime necessarily, it sure makes it a lot easier to solve the crime and in this case, to apprehend a killer, someone who shot and killed an eleven.
Year old on New Year's Day.
So this is a moment of urgency for myself, for my colleagues, and the mayor and the city manager. We are all eager to get those dollars out the door. And frankly, we're looking to CPD at this moment.
You know, those.
Dollars, those at one hundred and fifty thousand for Western cameras, sits within the police budget, and we need to get those dollars out the door.
Okay, So that was September of last year. I mean, here we are in January. Should it take that long?
No, it absolutely should not, and I think everyone should be.
Mad that it has.
We should be able to move a lot faster especially since you know, council passed that package at five point four million with the urgency of responding to the moment over the summer when we had a series of incidents as well. So if we're moving with urgency, we should expect that of every single person administration, including some side police. Right we are trying to make it easier to prevent crime and solve crimes that are happening. So those dollars
are sitting there. My understanding is we need to get with some you know, business owners so we can have permission to put cameras on their property.
So you know, my ask is, if you are a business owner.
In that area and you are willing to have a camera or lights put on your building, email my office let me know and I will make sure since I police that reaches out to you as soon as possible.
Well, and I'd imagine there isn't a business owner down there that wouldn't go, yeah, I'd love a camera up, no problem, because it affects their quality of life, their business, their bottom line with this crime continuing, and you know, it's I guess it's going to take a little bit of time, but it seems reasonable to have this done at least by the first of the year, for sure.
And it's not the first time we've had a shooting or violent crime happen around this playground, for God's sakes, and now the end result is because of I don't know, lack of accountability or confusion, contradiction or incompetence or a combination of all of those. You have an eleven year old. It's dead. There's literally bloods blood on the hands of elected officials because of the lack of movement on this project.
You are not wrong that we need to move faster. I completely agree with the urgency of the moment. You know, there are a lot of questions. You know, the council is asking around why these dollars haven't moved faster. And at the end of the day, you know, actually we cannot turn back time, which is a heartbreaking reality. So from this moment on, it's what can we do going forward? And to me, it's the camera as well as lighting.
I went down to that playground for the balloon release of the Little Girl and you know, it was round five o'clock, stayed there until after six. The right is the sun setting and it's dark. It is not lit there, and we know that you know, places that are well lit, especially ones where kids are going to be playing. You know, early evening six o'clock is not that late, but then
the middle of winter it's dark out right. We need to have these spaces well lit so that they are states and then you pair that with the cameras and make sure that there's that monitoring there.
And that's what we need.
And I'll tell you right now, all council, the mayor or even the city manager, we are all moving on this with complete urgency. So again my ask is if you have owned property in that area and you're willing to raise your hand and have a camera or have lighting, reach out to me my office. I'm Anna dot Albi at cincinnatidshoh dot gov, and I will get you in contact with Cincinnati Police because at the end of day, like, we need a police out there.
And if that means going door to door and.
Knocking and asking who's willing to do this, like it's time to do that work.
Yeah. I mean two years ago, three well three now we had Dominic Davis killed another eleven year old all the same place ground right, and you know, okay, now let's get this thing fast tracked. It took till September of last year for you to allocate one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the camera expansion. And we spend a ton of money based on the crime that's happening downtown,
on public safety. From a council person's position, an alby, do you look at it going Okay, well we order the money, here's the money, we're going to appropriate it, and then do you just move on to the next thing and the it's not finger pointing at you or council for that matter, about a simmer Fire council member, I would think we voted and passed something, hand that off to the city manager, the mayor's office, or whoever the police department, that there's going to be action on this.
Should you have to follow up on everything you guys appropriated. From a funny.
Perspective, I'm not here to dodge blame. I'm really not.
But typically when council does the voting and the allocating, that is our part of the job. We have a city manager, former government, and we have you know, in this case it's the police chief, but in other departments it's directors. Right, we have a city indministration whose job then is to then execute on what we have allocated the vision. Right, So that's typically how it goes. Now in this situation, right, the buck stops with us elected.
So I am not going to dodge the responsibility that I can, and I will be doing a better job checking in and making sure those dollars are out the door. In fact, you know, right before Christmas, I had multiple people ask me about the Feusist camera technology, which allows private camera owners to kind of connect their feed in with Cincinni Police.
My people come up and being like, hey, we want.
To do this, but we have no idea how So I literally got an email on Christmas Eve back from the assistancity manager being like, oh, yeah, the funds are there, and you know what, I should have followed up them and be like, great, we need to do more. So you know, I'm not going to duck and dodge responsibility. Yes, it's true that typically when council allocates the dollars and puts for the vision, it's then the administration's job to execute.
But in this case, when it's life or death, I'm going to get my hands dirty and make sure we're in there. And making sure that we get those cameras up, get better in lighting. Those are all urgent, immediate actions.
Okay, And I think that is a respect you for that and saying, hey, listen, you know we passed UF it's up to someone else to make sure it's the plan is executed. It doesn't seem fair that you'd have to go back and make sure that people follow your orders. So and you're saying, okay, the buck stops with us elected. I get that. I appreciate that, But where's the weak link here? Who's dropping the ball, who's not doing their job to make sure this money is being spent in
those cameras being put up? Who is that on the city manager?
That's a fair question. I'll say.
You know, my dad owned a business for forty years and he had a problem solving process and it first started with solved the.
Problem in hand.
So the first step here is to solve the problem. So how do we get those cameras up? How do we get the lights installed? So once we solve the problem,
we can go back and analyze what went wrong. But I'm here in the immediate moment, which is let's get these up, and in fact, just yesterday coming out of kind of a meeting with CPD and I think the City Manager's office we got camera tower with lights into Laurel Playground into that park area, right, So we are in the moment where we are solving the problem and we can go back and analyze after it's taken care of.
I hope there is, because someone shouldn't have to be covered in this whole thing. I mean, I don't want to speak out of turn because I don't know the anal workings, but it seems like once you approved that one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, it goes to the city manager and then to the police department as well. I can't imagine the cops don't want to get those cameras up. It helps them do their job. Is the week length the City Manager's office?
No, those dollars are in Cincinnati Police budget, so they're now fully under Sincinnati Police kay area. So now I don't know the bureaucracy within the police department well enough to know who's the person doing outreach to those business owners, right. So again, I'm not in the spot at this moment where I'm trying to pick apart who's exact fault. I'm in a situation now where it's saying, Okay, how do we fix it? How do we want it forward?
You know, So that's that's my priority at the moment.
Now it might be because of the you know, the confusion after Chief Fiji. I mean, when you don't have a direct leader, you've got an interim chief. You know, there's a lot of confusion, a lot of people looking over their shoulder and there. Do you think that contributed to this?
I hope not.
You know, I don't.
Again, I don't know the inner workings of since my police bureaucracy not my area of expertise. But again, at the end of the day, right, we know that there's this problem, and if there are people in the West End, and I know the community Council has been kind of speaking a little bit about trying to get these cameras up as.
Well, So email me.
I will be that connector at this moment and make sure we get this done. We need to push hard at this moment. And it's not just this one one part, right, I firmly believe all of these play spaces that are supposed to be for kids, we need to make sure that they are well lit, have those cameras.
So that kids can be outside.
Right, It is every mother's grandmother's parents worst nightmare to have their life year old shot and kids while filming TikTok videos and playing in the park.
Like, how horrific.
Yeah, if you're an eleven year if you're a kid and can't be safe in a public park, I don't have an answer for that. I especially what angers I think everyone listening, Anna, i'llbe is the fact that we had an eleven year old shot and killed two years ago, and here we are again doing the same thing over and over. And when you talk to the city manager or the police department, they can't answer basic questions about whether or not the cameras that you guys ordered in
September have been put up or not. We don't even know if they even do we know they even have any footage whatsoever of what transpired on New Year's Day.
I know there is a camera in the area, I don't know more than that. I would kind of have to direct questions back to the police communications. You know, leader there again, this is clearly a breakdown and kind of getting dollars out the door and Frankly, this is a problem we have across the board with different city you know, initiatives, right, Council allocates dollars and then it can take weeks, months, maybe you know, longer, to get
dollars out the door for projects. So when we think about making government work for people, it's got to be a priority for us to cut through that red tape so we can actually get the work done. And so that's something I'm going to be focusing on hard this
next term. The second term here is Okay, we can have all the great intentions in the world, but if we can't get dollars out the door to get think initiatives up and running, intentions don't matter for anything, right, So we've got to be able to cut through the red tape and make government work for people.
Right.
Our residents should absolutely expect that if Council allocates dollars for cameras, those cameras get up and I again will take responsibility for that. We've got to be able to work faster and get things out the door.
Yeah, But in all fairness to you, Anna Albe and other members of Council, whether it's Mark Jefferies or Seth Walsh, or Scottie Johnson. The fact of the matter is you shouldn't have to follow about everything. You guys pay as
to make sure it's actually getting executed. And I hope and I think the public deserves quite honestly, and no more so than those in the West End, because you know, we're told two and a half years ago, after the first eleven year old was shot to death, that this is intolerable, it's not going to happen, and we have yet another death, the same age, same situation, same location of something that we told We're told two and a half years ago that this isn't going to happen again.
We're going to put the cameras up, and the cameras aren't up. And I think the public demands that. I think they deserve to know where the problem was. And you know, I know generally folks like yourself don't want to out others, but I think the public deserves that, because if I'm in the West End right now and you're telling me, and the mayor goes, hey, look we were after this one. We'll spare nothing to put a
stop to this whole thing. Well, you said that two and a half years ago, and now we got another baby dead. I think we deserve to know what went wrong, where the fault was, what happened, and why it didn't happen. And not only that, I think an apologies in order for those in the West then, and specifically if you're a West End resident, I is it fair for someone to go a look, I just don't trust you guys anymore. This is twice now.
It's heartbreaking, right, And I know nothing I'm going to say to you is going to make a difference to the family, right, I know it, But I think you're absolutely correct. We need, frankly, a full audit of that entire five point four million dollars. We need to know how many of those dollars are off the door, what programs and processes are.
Up and running because of it.
I believe, but don't quote me on it, that this month or early next month, the Assistant City Manager over Public Safety APM. Bresina was going to come in and give us kind of a report out on those dollars. So if that's not on the agenda yet, I'm going to be pushing Public Safety Chare Council Number Johnson to make sure we do get.
That full audit. And report out about where those dollars were.
Because I know last time I talked to this assystem city manager, it was slow to get dollars out the door, which again speaks to the broad process of how hard it is to cut through the red tape. You know, how tedious our pecurement processes are.
All of that. So we got to be able to work faster.
Especially in these urgent, critical life and death moments. So I one hundred percent agree we we counsel you. The public deserve a full readout of how that five point four million dollars has been spent already or what needs to still be get out the door and implemented.
Yeah, okay, so this is one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the five point four million that was allocated September for public safety. That's a small percentage. I'm not smart enough to do that math off the top of the my head without a calculator and a slide rule and an advocacy and all, but you probably are. But I look at this and go, okay, well, if we don't know how one hundred and fifty was spent, how can we trust that the other five five point four
and change is being spent properly. You have to go back and literally look and make sure every dollar that you guys allocated is being spent properly or at the very least the plan's been implemented. I mean, who the hell has that kind of time to follow up.
And that's where we are at the moment, to be honest, and I don't think I don't want to be careful with language. It's not being spent properly. Dollars are not being improperly spent, right. It's a matter of getting through the red tape and the governmental procedures to actually get dollars out the door, right. And that's so I don't want people thinking that there's dollars going missing or anything like that.
That's not what I'm talking about whatsoever.
It's Minnesota, for god's sakes, it's Cincinnati, Okay.
I just I want to be really careful with my language there. I don't want anyone to think something the serious is happening. It's just a matter of cutting through
you know, processes here and get dollars out the door. So, yeah, again, we need to get an update from the city administration, whether that's the police interim police chief coming in and giving a report out about how those dollars that were allocated to since my police because a big chunk of that five point four million, and that's why I don't have to listen for to me was to police over time and other you know, police functions, including these cameras.
You know, some of that also was for department transportation getting lighting up around the city. You know, there is other technology in there like the drones expansion and fusis and licensed plate readers. Right, we do need to know where we are on that securement process. You know, our contracts signed, Have we you know, signed the check our
dollars out the door? Have things been implemented? So you know, I am looking now to the city administration for that complete rundown, whether that's from the city manager's office or from the department heads or in this case the interim police chief to know exactly where those dollars are and have they been spent yet?
Yeah, I don't know. Once again, we have I think the biggest issue facing our government here locally, and I'll be is transparency and accountability, and those two things we get failed yet again. And this is I don't have enough fingers and toes to count how many times I've felt have had that feeling. And I'm sure people listening also going where's the accountability? Where's responsibility when you can't fulfill basic open records requests I mean, Scott Warman, the
inquirement to try to figure this out. No one has any answers about how many cameras are up, which ones are working, where the money went, if it was spent, where the documentary. No one knows anything. That's not a good look for city government. And I know you're part of the solution, not the problem, and you're a good Again. I appreciate you coming on the show this morning, absolutely.
Well, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it.
And again for everyone listening, I want them to walk away understanding that this council, of this mayor the city manager, who frankly has lost a member for family two gun buyers, we are all committed to making things right, making things better, making sure people feel safe, and this is an overfixed tragedy, and I feel the heartbreak, and you know, my heart really goes out to the family and everyone in the community is acted all.
Right and all the best, and thanks again, for joining me.
Well, thank you, take care all.
Right, council member, and I'll be sitting on public safety. And you heard it here. How many times you a red tape, red tape, red tape And yet the mayor, we will spare nothing to put a stop to this. And you could have prevented this. And I think the blood is on the hands of I don't know. It could be the police, it could be the city manager's office, could be another entity in there, but damn it for once,
how about some accountability. How about hey, here's where the weak link was and name names instead of because if not, you just continue to create the same pattern over and over again. And that is in competence, that is a lack of transparency and account of There's got to be some accountability with this death. Your thoughts five three, seven, four nine under the Big One talk back the the iHeartRadio app if you're extreaming the show there Scott Sloan show Back after News on seven hundred w Weld