Billy coming in the Great America and welcome this Wednesday afternoon. In the Try Stage, Reds baseball kicks off about six oh five tonight, because I thought that maybe Trevino should start the game because he seems to have more results in the starting pitching crew. Looking at the last two games at my ballpark, the Great American, the Reds on Monday night lost five to one. They lost last night twelve to two. That means collectively they're seventeen and three.
This isn't a football score, a baseball score. Seventeen and three against Miami, not exactly the seventy six Reds, but nonetheless, they try again tonight. We'll see what happens tonight with Avan on the mound, and then they have one more game tomorrow with Miami than three with the Rocks in town and getting ready for the All Star break and the trade deadline. Maybe one of the other good teams won Trevino to pitch for them, because he seems to
be the best pitch of the Reds half. But until then, there's all hell breaking loose throughout the Try State in many different quarters. I have a guest on tomorrow to talk about what happens in Clifton in front of the fire station, the skyline chill. On a regular basis. We've had on guests from Covington about the what's happening on
the riverfront there and also in Cincinnati. But Red White and Blue Ash is a signature event in Hambleton County's We're going on for about thirty years, and until a few days ago there was no difficulties whatsoever. Then all hell broke loose. Joining you and I now is Mayor Jill Cole, and Mayor Cole is in charge of the city of Blue Ash, the little tree that grew, and Mayor Cole welcome, i think for the first time to
the Bill Cunningham Show. So first of all, can you tell me tell the American people the event itself, the planning for the event before the events took place later on in the evening that were terrible. Now just talk in general about what Red White and Blue Ash seeks to do for the past thirty years.
Thanks for having me on, Billy. Yes, it's my first time talking with you, and I'm really grateful to be here. You know, Blue Ash is an amazing city. We have a long history of being safe and welcoming and we're in the we have the ability to do a lot of amazing things, including our annual Fourth of July celebration. As you said, we've been putting these on for over thirty years, and I've always been so proud that despite the thousands and thousands of people that attend, there have
rarely been any problems. However, last Friday night, a small group of individuals made poor choices and they frightened the people around them. I know I had one of my family members that was right in the middle of it, and it was very scary. Fortunately, our police officers were nearby and they were able to quickly respond to the situation.
Fortunately, Yes, very serious injury, and there's other serious injury or deaths or nothing at some of these events. As far as the entry of the facility, I was last there about ten to twelve years ago and it was easy to get into, easy to go. Is there an entry point where people were more or less checked a little bit or not ors simply catches catch can just come in for any any quarter that you desire.
It is just to catches catching Can. It's ad over one hundred acre park and we do want to keep it very opening and welcoming, and so we don't have a checkpoint. And you know, obviously we're going to look at this and see what safety measures we might need to implement for next year. I think that one would be a difficult one to do because of the size of the park and also again we just want to keep the welcoming, family friendly environment of it.
As far as what occurred that night, I know you've been working on this with the city manager and the police chief. Tell the American people what happened Friday night that caused the injury to the police officer, and just give us the facts of what happened that turned out not so well for that particular event.
Sure, you know, I just want to reiterate though that we're still doing research on this, that we're still analyzing you but what we know is that again, there was a small group of individuals that were throwing fireworks at each other under the canopy area, which if you've been to the park, you're familiar with that. And then unfortunately they ran through the crowd saying that gunshots had been fired, so they added confusion and upset to the area. Again.
The people that witnessed it were very upset, rightfully, so, fortunately it was fairly well contained and again the police responded quickly.
As far as injuries, what was the injury to the police officer.
He had a burn on his legs from a firecracker that hit him. He was treated at the hospital and released. In fact, he was back on duty last night.
And as far as I read somewhere in the media that juvenile court, which in my editorial opinion, often does a terrible job relative to holding juveniles accountable for serious misbehavior, is it true that juvenile court dismissed most of the charges against the individual that injured the police officer.
That is true, and unfortunately we can do our part, but we can't control what happens after that, which is really unfortunate.
Did that happen with your permission? With you're okay?
Wow, I wasn't there. Would have to talk with the people that were there. But I don't know that we have a choice in that. That's the magistrate's decision and.
The police officer. I would assume it was. I just understand it's without prejudice, which means that it could be brought again. And the magistrate in the media said that they can't identify the person who did this because it's a juvenile. But nonetheless it was over the objections of the police officer and according to media accounts, the city of Bluish was not involved in the greeing to the dismissal. The magistrate did it on her own. Is that your.
Understanding, that's my understanding.
As far as going forward, one of the council members has come forward about monitoring social media, almost like a CIA function in which you're going to have large numbers of people monitoring social media of individuals who may come to the party, may not come to the party. As far as entry points and searches of bags, have you begun the planning yet to do? What number one, is the event going to continue next year and if so, how will it be different?
Well, you know the event will continue next year. At this point, you know, we're just beginning to look at this, and we have a whole year and so we work closely with our law enforcement, our parks and w REC people and we'll carefully look at what happened and see what we can do if we need to make adjustments or changes to ensure that it's a states and welcoming event. Unfortunately, you know, we do as a policy in our council appoint the mayor and the city administration as official spokespeople.
But unfortunately we had a council member that's gone out on his own and has made statements that are not reflective of the views or the values of the city, describing the individuals as you know, just confusing language that stigmatizes and dehumanizes these people, which were just young kids. They made stupid mistakes, but that was no real you know, we shouldn't be out ahead of this event without understanding all of what happened and criticizing the young people that were there.
Well, that council member was almost Cosloane. A couple of days ago. He talked about the punks, about individuals that don't deserve to come to events like that. He was very accusatory of those being charged. And so you're saying that does not reflect the viewpoint of city council in blue Ash nor the mayor.
What I'm saying is that we shouldn't be talking about individuals like that. First of all, we need to leave the communication, particularly to the administration, So what was released is clear and factual and doesn't conflict with other people are said, and I just personally think and I know that my council members share my view that his statements were inflammatory and were not necessary or helpful and just made the situation worse.
Some of the charges were kept inside the City of Bluish and Mayor's Court. As you know as the mayor that there are misdemeanor charges that could be brought and kept in Mayor's court and if it's a juvenile it must be sent down to Hamlin County Juvenile Court, which is a history of dismissing charges against those charges with crimes.
And I will and Nelly basis are you going to is there a sense of pursuing the charges in the City of blue Ash Mayor's Court to it to their logical conclusion and not to dismiss them.
You know, I don't have any information about what the plan is. As you know, we have a magister. You may know that we have an outside person run our mayor's court now a lawyer, so that it's handled completely appropriately, of course, and so I have not been engaged in any conversations talking about what what will be this is the decision about these charges.
So as far as the planning for the future. The idea of having a place where people are checked is almost impossible to do because I've been there many times and you can come into that park from three sixty You can come in from almost any angle. Secondly, to have a weight line for people to come in starting in the afternoon until ten thirty pm at night, which take forever to get through the line, that would be
a problem. And so there's been comments made by some about parents that aren't possibly being the kind of parents they should be relative to their children. There were comments made by state officials and I know police officer and chiefs of police and other cities have said where are the parents? How come parents on supervising their own children? As far as the age of those involved in these activities?
Is the number about ninety because the police chief said it was about ninety people, What can you tell us about that?
How many people? I've heard media reports that there were four hundred people that I haven't heard anything official from our folks that determine that that was the number of this group. But again, it was a very small number of young people that made these poor choices and use these actions that scared people.
Yeah, no question and I think ninety might be a small number. At one point it was four hundred and as far as the tenants is ninety thousand people, I've heard some say there's ninety to one hundred thousand people attending it. Is that accurate?
You know? I've heard varying numbers from fifty to sixty to seventy in the park to the numbers that you're talking about when you consider the people that watch the fireworks from around the park and then surrounding commercial buildings. So it is a big event, you know, in a Blue Ash we only have about thirteen or fourteen thousand residents.
So we put on this event for the whole community, the whole region, and we're happy to do it and just will work really hard for next year to make sure that we can do anything possible to minimize any events like that's happening to disrupt what's otherwise an amazing event and a.
Mayor cole it's fair to say the great majority of those attending this event are not from the city of Blue Ash. Is that fair to say?
Can't bember the numbers speak for themselves?
Yes, what does everybody park? I mean, I look at numbers of fifty to sixty thousand people. That's like a that's almost up to the level of paid course stadium. Where do people park? How do you get there?
We have well, we have a lot of commercials, a commercial areas around sum At Park, and so the office building. Some of the office buildings, not everyone, but many of them allow us to have visitors park there. We put up portlets and so forth, you know, to accommodate the needs of the people. But you know, we have good relationships with our surrounding businesses. We try to take really good care of our businesses and they help us out from time to time with situations like this.
Well, going forward, how does this hurt you as the mayor of this city, which I think Blue Ash is fabulous that it's a motto is the little tree that grew it's now a fabulous community. How does this hurt your heart when there's something like this happens.
Well, again, I said, it just hurts my heart because I've been so proud of the fact that, you know, as you were talking about earlier, crazy things are happening all over that we've always been able to host this event that has been pretty much trouble free and it is discouraging that this wasn't the case this year, But I really have a lot of confidence in our team, and I know that we will carefully look at every angle of it and will develop a very effective, safe
plan going future, you know, going forward. So we'll also still keep it welcoming and family oriented events.
So the event will go on no matter what. The planning will continue. You can't let these few individuals, which might be half of one percent or less of those who attend, can't let them ruin it for the other ninety nine point eight percent of the people that attend. I often reference this. Then it's not exactly the same. But when something happens terrible in Israel and some terrorist blows up a pizza parlor, the next day, the pizza parlor is filled with customers because you can't let the
myscreyants determine your activities. As an American, we have to stand up to this stuff, and we can't back down and say, Okay, we're not going to do this anymore, because someone may get hurt. Someone may get hurt just walking across the street, for God's sakes. And so when these things happen, whether it's on the Banks, whether it's Washington Park, whether it's in Covington, whether it's in Middletown,
whether it's in Blue Ash. When these events take place, we must stand up together and say not on my watch, and we're going to continue to have this event. We're going to police it maybe a little bit a little bit better. But I don't know how you could have anticipated this from occurring. It hadn't happened in thirty years. And nonetheless your head over one hundred police officers present,
and at this point the planning must go on. Is it your attitude that as long as you're the mayor of Blue Ash, this event will transpire.
Well, that is my sincere hope. And I've heard no one on staff mention at all the idea that this would not go forward. And this is a very important community event we're very proud to put on celebrating our countries. So I have no information at all that discontinuing it is being considered, all.
Right, Mayor Joe Cole, thanks for coming on. And Friday night was a good night until at the last thirty or forty minutes, and then a few individuals acted up, made fools of themselves, committed crimes and next year it will be more prepared. But Mayor Joe Cole, once again, thanks for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show, and thank you.
Mayor thinks Bill. Let's continue with more, and there you have it, and fortunately no one was seriously injured, no one was hurt seriously, no one was killed, fortunately, but nonetheless had the potential of some serious injuries from individuals that don't know how to act in public. Let's continue with more. Bill Cunningham, News Radio seven hundred WLW