The Voters Have Spoken...

And what they have said is they are suckers for a slick campaign and, as Karl Rove proved for years, they can easily be conned into voting against their own best self interests.

Take the casino vote: There’s nothing wrong with wanting casinos, but there is something wrong with letting those who will own the cash cows tell the citizenry how much they will pay us for the privilege. Sane voters would have put the right to own the casinos up for bid and let the market determine the best deal. The way the voters did it here in Ohio means that the state (that means you and me) probably lost billions of dollars by going about this ass-backwards.

Locally, voters allowed themselves to be stampeded into “change” on the heels of a scandal, instead of thinking things through. But the new form of county government will probably produce many new businesses: Dozens of pawnshops next door to the new casinos.

And, while the Cleveland citywide races produced few surprises, it’s still amazing that in my ward (which happens to be 7), 439 people were dumb enough to cast their votes for a certifiable lunatic, and in Ward 12 close to 1000 people voted for a candidate that ran the most viciously racist campaign in recent memory. Maybe we should reinstitute some kind of sanity test before allowing people the franchise. (Just kidding).

The most interesting vote is yet to come however: Who will Cleveland’s City Council elect to lead them? This will speak volumes about the direction and viability of the city during the next four years... more to come on that.

Slipshod Police Work?

When the members of the Cleveland Police Department finish taking their self-congratulatory victory laps around the city for capturing alleged serial killer Thomas Sowell, maybe they’ll find time to answer the question that has been reverberating throughout the black community since the story broke: How could six women (and maybe more), all from pretty much the same neighborhood mind you, vanish into thin air and they didn’t take notice of it for months and months? If they had been on their job the community could have been put on alert, and perhaps some of the lives could have been saved.

Back on Oct. 20, around 2 pm, Don Laster, the owner of ALLS Construction, was flagged down by a young man that he knew while driving down Imperial Avenue (the street Sowell lived on) and was led over to a backyard where a naked man (who turned out to be Sowell) was leaning over a naked, unconscious woman who was bleeding from the nose and mouth. Laster asked the man what the hell he was doing and the man responded that he was trying to help her breathe. Laster gave the man his sweatshirt to put on the woman and said that he was calling 911.

The man begged him not to, and said that they both fell out of the third floor window while having sex, and that he would take care of her. When he saw Laster calling 911 he picked the woman up and attempted to run back into the house, but Laster was struggling with him in the doorway. The fire department responded and took control of the situation and rescued the woman … whereupon Laster left.

No one from the Cleveland Police Department has attempted to contact Laster in regards to the incident, which would have been very easy to do because of the 911 call he made. Also, some other perverts were taking pictures, which they allegedly took to the police station. It’s not clear what, if anything, was done, since Cleveland detectives are so inept they can’t find their asses with both hands, even when using a roadmap and a flashlight. Or it simply could be that they are just lazy as all hell.

There is a notion out there that black folks don’t care enough about their own communities to report crimes, and to some extent that may be true … but how did that circumstance come about? Perhaps it due to the years of experience minorities have of often being blown off — or worse, treated as if they are suspects — by police officers when they do try to file a complaint or a report. Oh, they might pretend to be listening intently … but in too many cases they do damn little afterwards. It’s easy for them to become immune to the suffering of the citizenry.

By the time the third woman was reported missing it just seems logical that someone in the Missing Persons Unit would have noticed a pattern; if they did, they sure kept it to themselves. By time the fourth report was filed, red flags should have been popping up all over the place. However, since it was occurring in inner-city Cleveland, no one in a position of authority was paying any attention.

Can you imagine the uproar and media coverage if six women were to go missing in say, Shaker Heights, Westlake, or even Parma? Even if they were all well-known crack whores there would have been red alerts, hourly updates, and maybe even the calling out of the National Guard.

The simple fact is, lives are not valued equally in this country. If you watch the national news, when have you seen a story about an Amber Alert being issued regarding a black or brown child? I can’t recall ever seeing one. Certainly children of color go missing too, but, this being America, they just are not as “newsworthy.” And that attitude is even truer in racially stratified cities like Cleveland.

Want more proof? On Monday, November 1, at 8:40 am, immediately after Laster told me his story, I personally gave his cell phone number to a high-ranking member of the Cleveland Police Department; however, as of this time, no one has bothered to call this potentially valuable witness. Why? Hey, I asked you first.

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier's From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.