Cuts Include 9 Sworn Officers; ‘There is Nothing Left,’ Chief Says.
By Rachel Dissell, The Cleveland Plain Dealer
East Cleveland, Ohio -- In a city where seven people have been killed in the past eight weeks, layoffs could leave the skeletal Police Department with only two officers patrolling the streets at some times.
The city laid off 23 employees Monday, 13 from the Police Department. Nine of those laid off were sworn officers, leaving the city of 28,000 with 49 officers.
Earlier this year, all of the police dispatchers, clerks and jail guards were laid off, with their duties going to patrol officers.
“Right now our predicament is bleak and dark and gloom, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better,” a dejected Police Chief Patricia Lane said. “When you’ve been cut and you’re already bleeding . . . there is nothing left.”
She has not decided yet how to reschedule the remaining officers, but she expressed fear for their safety.
Mayor Saratha Goggins declined to be interviewed. Her spokeswoman, Alexandria Johnson Boone, said Goggins sincerely regrets the layoffs but was “left with no choice.”
The other layoffs were spread over the service, recreation, human resources, building and law departments.
Former Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor had announced nearly the same cuts in May but did a rapid about-face on laying off sworn officers when the community complained.
Police Union President John Bechtel said the cuts this week could bring lawlessness in a city with rampant crime.
“It’s going to be safer in Iraq than it is in East Cleveland,” Bechtel said.
He said he didn’t know how the city could justify cutting officers when violent crime, including murders, is rising. The city has had 12 homicides this year.
The city is pushing voters to approve a hefty safety tax to replenish police, fire and ambulance squads already slashed by earlier cutbacks. The tax would cost the owner of a $100,000 home more than $300 a year for five years.
Even if the tax is passed, city leaders are not sure how many members of the safety forces will be rehired.
East Cleveland remains in a fiscal emergency declared by the state in 1988.
Officer Scott Gardner, who has worked for five years in the city, said the layoff notice couldn’t come at a worse time. He got the notice before taking his wife, who is eight months pregnant, to her doctor.
Gardner, 30, said he wishes the city wasn’t so cold in how it took the action.
“The biggest disappointment for me is that the administration could have addressed us directly,” he said.
Instead, he got a letter thanking him for his service and telling him Oct. 29 would be his last day.
Gardner is thankful for one thing though that he’s not one of the guys left in danger.
“I honestly wouldn’t want to be one of them. It’s going to be scary.”
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