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