My Billy Cunningham, the Great American. Welcome to this Friday afternoon in the Tri State rech Baseball get back out of tonight in New York against the Metropolitans. Coverage begins about six oh five tonight the last time. I'm doing my duty as a great American watching bright Barts and other left wing websites, and I'm getting text from friends of mine in Covington saying, you can't believe what's happening on the suspension bridge. And so I tried to get
some video Facebook, et cetera. Couldn't locate a lot, and then I find out at ten o'clock news at all Hell broke loose there was a protest. There were two dueling protests yesterday. One was the July seventeenth issue relative to a twenty first relative to the death of John Lewis. The other one was the free the E Mom, Free the e Mom that's in the Butler County jail. And so at one point the one freeing the emon said, let's let the people of Kentucky know what our viewpoint is.
So they marched from from the riverbanks in front of the suspension bridge, and they marched over the bridge in mass some one to two hundred people singing we shall overcome, mainly white old females who listen to NPR and a bunch of younger females with purple hair, and they discover that the laws in Covington shutting down public thoroughfares are not quite the same as shutting down thoroughfares in the city of Cincinnati. Joining you and I now is Rob Sanders,
Kent County Prosecutor. First of all, if you can, Rob, tell us what happened last night about between eight and nine pm on the suspension bridge with these well intended NPR listeners.
Willie, I think you said it best when you said all hell broke close, apparently because I don't know who this emam is. I don't know that he's ever even set foot in Kentucky, or what this protest about the Butler County Jail and our good friend Sheriff Jones out there, what that has to do with us on the south side of the river or the Covington riverfront, or the Covington police or anything that these protesters tried to involve
in their demonstration. But what I do know is that they were blocking down or blocking all of the traffic lanes on the suspension bridge, which of course is a state route. It's Kentucky seventeen. It's a highly traveled roadway. This was not in the middle of the night, of the cover of darkness or anything like that. This is while people were up and about and still doing business and trying to get back and forth across the Ohio River, and here they're trying to shut it down, I guess
is some form of civil disobedience. But part of the problem with civil disobedience is when you start breaking laws. At least in Kentucky, we enforce those laws. And so fifteen people, at least fifteen people that I'm aware of, were arrested and charged with an array of offenses for everything from assaulting police officers to criminal mischief, to trespass, to failure to disperse to rioting, which is a felony in Kentucky Willia. It carries a possible risen sentence of
one to five years. And they sent me the arrest citations today. And I'm sure this will shock you, but out of the fifteen people that are charged with riot first degree felony, only thirteen, or I should say only two were from Kentucky. The other thirteen were from Ohio
or Indiana. We've got one from Rising Sun, Indiana, twelve from Ohio, everywhere, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Cincinnati, a couple more Cincinnatis, Brooksville, Ohio, wherever that is, another Cincinnati, and Cleveland Heights, Ohio, which I assume is in Cleveland.
But that's an awfully long way.
You know, two people drive all the way down from Cleveland to Cincinnati just to come march around Covington and trying to shut down.
Our bridges just to get arrested.
It's a very expensive form of protests when you have to go out and hire yourself criminal defense attorneys to defend you on a felony riot charge and hope that they keep you out of prison. It seems to me that it would have been much more advisable to just hold the protest on the sidewalk him, march around, protest all you want, shout whatever it is you want, hold your signs, wave them around. That's fine, you can do
all that stuff. We believe in the First Amendments, but we don't believe in shutting down bridges all.
Right now, I understand from media accounts there were injuries to the police in northern Kentucky, which is a different part of the tri State than the city of Cincinnati. The idea of fighting with cops on bridges, it can be extremely dangerous. What damages injuries, if any, did the police suffer.
Fortunately, Willie, I believe the injuries to the police officers were minor. I think we've got some cuts and bruises and scrapes. I do see some photographs of some bloody elbows, bloody knees, bloody hands, but minor injuries. Fortunately, I'm not aware of any offer or that was seriously injured, nor am I aware of any protester that was seriously injured. But you know, when you're doing this stuff on a bridge,
it really raises the level or the intensity of the confrontation. Because, as you well know, as we've discussed many times, the only Covington police officer to die in the line of duty in my lifetime, thank god, there was only one.
But the one was Michael Parton, who of course fell from a bridge to his death in January fourth, some twenty six years ago, I believe, but that's still fresh in the minds of I think all the police in northern Kentucky, and they're very aware of how dangerous it is to be pursuing criminals, are dealing with criminals, they're tussling or otherwise fighting with criminals on a bridge because you know, I don't know, if you watched the videos,
some of those cops aren't that big. They're just they're not. They're doing a heck of a job dealing with some people that are much larger than they are. But some of these cops, you know, they got to be concerned about whether or not they're going to be tossed over the bridge. I know, I've seen video of at least one guy hugging the bridge rail for dear life, and the police are having to deal with him right there over top of the water. I know that there was
police gear that went missing in the struggles. There were personal property of police officers, watches and things of that nature that were lost or damaged or destroyed.
Some of that stuff is believed.
To have fallen in the river during struggles with these protesters. You know, it's understandably a very tense situation for police officers when they're so many stories up above the Ohio River, and I don't think anybody can reasonably assume that they will survive a fall from that height, much less into the water. And there's no reason that anybody should be up there protesting, much less fighting with the police above
the water. It seems I don't know what it is about that suspension bridge, Willie, but first we got people hanging banners from it and forcing our police and our firemen to go up there and take those down and deal with them. And now we got people, you know, wanting to engage in riots up there. So I've had enough with the bridges and the crimes on the bridges
and people fighting with the police on the bridges. They need to find a better place to hold their protests, preferably on the north side of the.
River, you know, Rob Sanders. On Channel five, they had this older white woman. She was in her seven is. She was skinny. Most of the protesters are morbidly obese, but that's a different issue. Looked like the marshmallow manner, and this one woman had to weigh three hundred pounds. But this particular one was saying, you know, I didn't do anything wrong.
I'm just exercising my rights and a coming to police officer picked me up and slammed me to the pavement, took away my dignity. And all I'm doing is trying to exercise my rights and coming to police wouldn't let me do it?
What you're coming to her.
Well, yeah, she's in the middle of the road, Willie.
You know, you have a right to protest, you have a right to freedom of speech, but you don't have a right to shut down our bridges. And that's everything that I've seen so far, at least started in the middle of the roadway with the Comington police trying to clear the roadway so that people can get.
Across the bridges. It's dangerous.
It's dangerous for the protesters, it's dangerous for the motorists, it's dangerous for the police.
It's just not.
Something that should have been happening in the first place. And so I'm disappointed that anybody felt it necessary to provoke this confrontation, which is what I believe these protesters were intentionally doing, is trying to provoke a confrontation with police.
That's the only thing that can result from shutting down a bridge on a state route, and I think you would get the result no matter which bridge you try and shut down, but certainly one is highly traveled as the Suspension bridge with all those.
Holes in it.
You know, anybody that's walked across the river to go to the Reds game, or and go to the Bengals game, or coming back over to visit one of our fine establishments on the south side of the river, Willie, which I know you like to frequent and hang out at.
Anybody who's walked.
Across that bridge knows that there's all sorts of gaps and holes in that bridge. And then the last thing any police officer wants to be doing is rolling around in tussling with unruly and uncooperative disobeion the criminals up there not following police lawful orders to disperse and get out of the roadway.
You know what happened. Lieutenant pack Cayton, who I know well, was on the air Channel nine last night saying, well, we've issued two or three paper citations and basically those are going to be dismissed. As soon as they get to a court in Hambling County, they'll be dismissed. The protesters have regularly gone to I seventy five in the city of Cincinnati to shut down I seventy five, and when that happens, guess what. Nothing happens. After the George
Floyd riots, nothing happened. In twenty oh one, the riots, nothing happened. All the charges are dismissed. Do you look forward to dismissing the charges in Covington, Kentucky?
No, Willie. You know it's funny.
I've gotten the number of different emails already, mostly from news outlets, asking me if I plan to dismiss the charges, and I'm like, obviously, you folks don't pay much attention to crime in Kenton County because we're going to collect the evidence.
We're going to review the evidence.
I have over fifty eight body camera videos just from the Covington officers alone. William, that's before we start adding in all the other police agencies from Kenton and Campbell Counties. It responded, we pretty much stripped two counties of all of our police coverage for the all call of the officer needs assistants to get down to the bridge and help get this situation under control. It's a whole another issue about stripping police detective from other law abiding citizens
all across two counties. But nevertheless, know we plan to collect the evidence, review all the body camera videos. If we have a case, we have charges that we can prove the criminal accident anyone committed, they will be prosecuted. It's how we do business over here. It's how I think every citizen has a right to expect that the government that they pay for through the tax dollars will conduct themselves and upholding the law and enforcing the law that has been.
Duly passed by our legislatures.
I don't know why people live in a community that would do anything else.
Well, I look at the demographics. I look at the population. If you take Boone, Kenton, and Campbell County, the population is about a little less than three hundred thousand, which is the population of the city of Cincinnati, and Hamilton County is going to completely woke to the left. So you have three communities northern Kentucky about the size of the city. If you add in the communities in southeast Indiana and those that border Hamilton County, which would be
Claremont County and Warren County. In Butler County, you have this little enclave in the middle where the law doesn't apply, in which there's lax law enforcement, we lease down the city streets, open air smoking, marijuana, non enforcement of curfew laws for teenagers, non enforcement of truancy laws. Twenty five percent of the kids at CPS don't show up for school on any particular day. So you have this one little island floating in the middle of a sea of red.
And I can't think of another city in America where on one side of the river you have woke progressivism. You have in the city of Cincinnati, a sanctuary city in which the law doesn't apply, the police are demoralized, the school stink. In the city of Cincinnati, there's massive lawlessness ignored. And you go a quarter of a mile away the Ohio River, and all of a sudden you're in the land of Rob Sanders Kenton County. You're in the land of Butler County, or Claremont County or Warren County,
David Foreignschell, or Southeast Indiana. God help you if you're caught with marijuana in Dearborn, Indiana. It's a serious matter. So what advice would you provide to the activists, to the progressives, to the city beat crowd, to the NPR crowd, to the Purple hair and nosering crowd. When it comes to committing crime, should you stay in the city of Cincinnati and not venture out?
It surely seems like a good idea.
Will you know, when you start across those bridges and you see the big sign and says welcome to the Bluegrass, they should know that. I don't even know that you caught the old fashioned way. We do things the common sense way. We just enforced the laws that we have on the books, and we expect everybody that's wandered into Artists State to do the same thing, to abide by those laws that are on the books. We're not asking
anybody to do anything special except just behave yourselves. What they choose to do on the north side of the river, that's their business. But if once you come on the bridge, if you look down and you're over top the water, chances are you were now in Kentucky and you can count on being prosecuted for any criminal offense that you
can fit commit. Novel concept, I'm sure. But you know one thing I will mention Willy that was really alarming about this is so this protest, from what I'm told, started with a much smaller group of people coming across the bridge and shutting the bridge down.
And when the.
Police showed up to tell them to get on the sidewalk, because they weren't there to arrest everybody right off the bat, they were there to tell them to get on the sidewalk, that group of people people started radioing back to a larger group still on the Cincinnati side and radio to them and say, you know, I guess we've done it, or the police are here, that's what we're looking for. I don't know, but it's like, hey, the police are here.
So instead of all those people going, well, I'm not going over there because they've already got the police to show up and so I don't want any part of that now, they came running in and created a much bigger problem, adding to the problem with dozens, if not hundreds of more people on the bridge blocking the trafficking,
and only escalated the situation. But the coordination between those people that claim that they're just exercising their rights to radio over to bring in more people to assist them and breaking the laws especially problematic, and I think that's probably a big contributing factor as to why the Comington police chose to go with a riot charge is because of that coordination. In Kentucky, it only takes five people to be involved in criminal conduct for it to be
a riot. But when you have that coordination between dozens or hundreds of people breaking the law, that creates a very serious, very dangerous situation for police officers. You know, we trust them, we asked them, and we trust them to uphold the law, enforce and keep our community safe.
You know, the kind of community that.
We enjoy on the south side of the river, and when people put their lives at risk, we take that very seriously.
And lastly, Rob Sanders, I would imagine the dozens of Covington and Kentucky police that came to assist offerser of needs assistants get here. Now, there were many communities in northern Kentucky left bear in which case law enforcement didn't exist.
And I can specifically recall in the late nineteen nineties that the body of Officer Michael Parton was not located for many weeks because it was the river was very cold, almost in a frozen condition, and the sadness in northern Kentucky and elsewhere that this officer was pursuing someone who should not have been on the bridge, and that he flipped over and ended up in the river and died and his body wasn't located for a long period of time.
Just exacerbate at the conflicts for someone who thinks this emom needs special protection and special protests. Do it in Cincinnati, the charges will be dismissed. You can walk on I seventy five with impunity, smoke your pot, do what you gotta do, do the wheelies around Fountain Square, no big deal.
Do it in Covington doesn't apply. And I think the message has got to be sent to law enforcement in the surrounding counties will seriously maintain statutes and laws that are going to be and if these charges indicated, an indictment is necessary. These fifteen or so people are facing hard time in prison, not a paper charge dismissed by a liberal magistrate. Well, Rob Sanders, thank you. We'll see what happens down the road. Are these individuals out on bond, you know? Are they bonded out yet?
Well, Willie, they all just appeared in our district court for arraignment at eight thirty this morning, and at that time the judge would have set bond.
For each one of them.
Each one of them's cases are individual and they get individual bond reviews, so every one of them's got a different bond amount. I'm going to wait probably a couple more hours here before I get on the jails website see how many of them actually we're able to post that bond. So right now, it's just I haven't taken the time to get on the website and look up all fifteen defendants to see who's in and who's out.
But I suspect that there will probably be several who were unable to make bond, if any of them make bond at all.
All right, good, well, the message is sent, do your crimes in Cincinnati, not much consequence. Do your crimes in Covington, A big consequence message has been sent. Hopefully the NPR crowd, the old white women from Hyde Park that want to feel as if their miserable lives have importance. Hopefully the message will be received. Commit your crimes in Cincinnati, don't commit them in Covington. My hometown. Rob Sanders, thank you very much for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show.
Thank you, Ron, my pleasure, WILLI and Hay about every police agency in northern Kentucky.
Is hiring right now.
So if any of those good officers on the north side of the river retired to work in someplace that just calls for written tickets and dismissed cases, come on over here, put your applications in.
We'd be happy to have more good officers.
God bless America. Rob Sanders, thank you very much. Let's continue with more. There's a lot of new sheriff in town. It's the old sheriff. The idea that a liberal, progressive woke sanctuary city. It's a quarter of a mile from law enforcement across the river. You're warned. Bill Cunningham, News Radio seven hundred WLW