August 6, 2025 • 19 mins
Willie talks with WLWT-TV anchor Sheree Paolello about the newest arrest in the infamous brawl case that happened a couple of weeks ago in downtown Cincinnati.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
My Billy cunning in the Grant America. Welcome to this
war is possibly rainy Wednesday afternoon in the triestate of Reds,
baseball looked impregnable, like the imagine no line. I thought
the new pitcher last night was in trouble until I
struck out three in a row. The Reds look unbeatable
at this point, Going out again, going out it again today,
first pitch about two twenty Pregame coverage starts to me
(00:26):
in the segment of one, But until then, Shari Pololo
of the Power of Five has some breaking information about
the sixth the Rest, considering the beatdown that happened on
Fourth and Elm and Shari Pololo, welcome again to the
Bill Cunningham Show. I have many questions about the Gaza Strip,
something about the pick up, the pieces of the bunker busters.
I want to talk about what's happening with monetary policy,
(00:48):
with interest rates. I want to talk about the Southern border.
I want to talk about all those matters and more.
But before we get to all that all those issues,
tell me about the sixth the Rest and your conversation
with the police.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey, good afternoon to you, Lily. So this morning just
before nine o'clock, Cincinnati police were able to track down
a sixth suspect in this fight and assault. She's it's
a woman, So this would be the second woman among
the six people who are charged. Twenty five year old
Ayesha Devall charged with felonious assault and aggravated riot. The
(01:22):
Fugitive Apprehensive Team tracked her down this morning. So this,
you know, Police Chief Terasigi had told us last week
that they had six people in total they were looking for.
This is the sixth and final suspect, at least of
those who we know that they were looking for. You know,
it's interesting, Wally, We have talked so much about this,
(01:45):
that incident that happened almost two weeks ago now, and
I was doing a little bit of research on now
I don't know a ton of their history on this.
Ayisha the sixth suspect who was just arrested. But of
the five who we knew about as of last night,
four of the five, basically all four of the men
who had been arrested all had prior criminal histories. The
(02:08):
one guy, the Merriweather guy, he was actually locked up
by the task Force on July second on four gun charges.
He was out on a four hundred dollars bond the
next day. That's that Montonnez Merriweather currently going through the
legal process. And I could go through all of these
(02:29):
other people as well who are charged and whether it
was domestic violence, formi's assault charges, drug trafficking. Many of
them have seminal histories. But then a lot of the
charges that they were facing were dismissed as well. So
I think that's the concern for so many people around
Greater Cincinnatius. This is a twofold problem when I'm looking
(02:50):
at this from the outside. The police too, said it
last week. We have heard it for years from police
officers that we do have this revolving doer of injustice.
I think is so many people would say, and it's
frustrating for these officers on the streets, whether they're on
the task force or just beat officers, they're locking people
up and then the next day they're released. In fact,
I was just taking with an officer this morning. He
(03:12):
said both century I actually had a kid who he
had sell any warrants out. This was just this week
and twenty twenty said, no, we arrested him. We were
trying to lock them up twenty twenty. So that's the
Juvenile Detention Center said, nope, relation to his parents. And
(03:32):
this is a kid under eighteen who had sell any
warrants out. These are not you know, kids with the
speeding ticket or people with some sort of misdemeanor charge.
These are serious charges of robbery, you know, criminal activity
that put people in our communities, in their communities by
the way that they live in in danger. But then
(03:54):
I think you will also have you know, so that's
been an ongoing problem for the last several years. If
you would ask, you know, the police officers, the people
who are arresting these guys that we have were two
lacks on crime and judges let them write back out,
especially when you're talking about teenagers. I mean, look, we
were talking about the same issue last year when we
had groups of teenagers who were attacking unsuspecting people in
(04:17):
the middle of the day, just walking on downtown street.
So this has been going on. It's just now, you know,
the light of being shined on it again because of
this fight and attack that broke out two weeks ago.
But then you also, I think, you know, from my
point of view, I think where this blew up, So
much is is transparency. You know, whenever there's a police
involved shooting or some sort of violent incident. Typically for
(04:41):
the last you know, ten plus years, Cincinnati police, especially
since the collaborative in two thousand and two, Cincinnati police
are very transparent. They come out within a day or two,
show you all the video, take you through, step by
step by step what has happened. And unfortunately that didn't
happen in this case. Look, I get it, you know,
the police chief and city leaders are damned if you do,
(05:04):
damned if you don't. But when you come out and
you say, here's what we think started it, here's where
things went wrong, and this is what led to again
the fight, and then that led to this attack and
assault of six people and one woman being knocked unconscious,
I think then it doesn't become Then you don't get
(05:24):
national leaders who are getting involved in saying what in
the heck's going on in Cincinnati, Ohio?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Right, Well, we got Bernie Marino's going to talk about it.
But as far as the police, this Merriweather character was
picked up by that special task force July the second.
I mean, this is a bad guy to begin with,
he was terrible and then he gets out. Bill Mallory,
the judge is a good guy. I like him. Everyone
likes Bill Mallory. But he doesn't think people should be
(05:51):
in jail for criminal offenses. He gives this Merriweather in
his thirties, got a terrible record, essentially a four hundred
dollars cash bond and get out. And then I received
a text from Judge Melissa Powers who said that you know,
she ran juvenile court with an iron grip for many years.
And she said to me in a text, you may
know this. When I left juvenile court three years ago,
(06:13):
Judge Kerrie Bloom declared that the juvenile Court will no
longer enforced curfew or truancye violations. All the charges were
summarily dismissed unofficially, which means the prosecutors don't have an
opportunity to appeal or to object, and right now there
are no laws that our juvenile court will enforce. In fact,
she her main item of business is to have a
(06:36):
book report if you do, if you rape somebody or
commit a crime, it's a book report. How do you
feel about that one?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Well, I mean, obviously it's outrageous and I think to
most people if that in fact won't the punishment. It's outrageous.
You know, I was talking to you about the police
officer who I was and by the way, a high
ranking officer who I was talking with this morning about
this test force arresting a kid just the other night.
And he was telling me the kid sixteen, This was
(07:05):
a kid who was breaking into multiple vehicles, had multiple
breaking and entering warrants out and the answer from twenty
twenty was just releasing back to his parents. And what
I would say to that is, do we remember what
happened at the beginning of the summer, the teenager, the
young person who was again stealing cars, and what ended
(07:27):
up happening, well, when he was stealing finally another car,
he was shot and killed by police because he had
a gun, went to get the gun and was you know,
again it was this encounter with police. It's like, at
what point do we say enough is enough? We don't
want to lose people, because you know, police are put
in a compromise situation where they're trying to arrest what
(07:51):
they believe as a criminal. And then we saw what
happened after that, and it was the ripple effect. His
father allegedly was so upset that he went and you know,
chosen officer a deputy at random and shot and killed
or stuply shinkilled, ran, hit and killed Deputy Larry Henderson.
So you know, I think that there clearly is a
(08:12):
breakdown in our system and that's what people are concerned about.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Well, sure, and why I'm monitoring you last night with
Mike and I try to watch everything Simultaneously. You're doing
this piece about lemon Kearney saying, well, we got to
pay armed robbers one thousand dollars a month not to
commit any more crime. Then I'm watching someone else say, well,
the curfew you know, is going to be eleven o'clock,
then it's going to be nine o'clock and then midnight.
Of course you have no court, don't enforce it. And
(08:38):
you're talking about city council and their law and Public
Safety committee, and it Scottie Johnson, who has more lucid
moments than many, who was a former police officer. SI
kind of gets mad at the fact that someone might
think Cincinnati is unsafe and you're not paying attention look
at all the things we've done, and then you quickly
cut the crime scene tape in ot R at eleven
fifteen pm last night. So one packages, hey, look, things
(09:01):
are great, it's unbelievable. Then you say let's go to OTR.
Someone just had their brains blown out. Did you see,
I mean, did you feel what you were doing?
Speaker 2 (09:11):
It is unsettling. Listen, it is unsettling because look, if
you talk to the chief and if you look at
the numbers twenty twenty two, two hundred and thirty nine
shootings in Cincinnati right now, that numbers at one hundred
and seventy one. So yes, if you look at the
numbers from four years ago, the numbers are down. But
(09:32):
we all know. I mean, I talk to people in
the suburbs. I live in Mason, and so many people
I know say I'd rather just go out of here
and not risk something not just happening to me, but
to my car. You know, all of the things. It's
the image and perception that it's not safe to be downtown.
(09:52):
And I think that's what the concern is. And you know, look,
city leaders can you can you can say, look, shootings
are down from year to year from four years ago,
but the reality is when you have a big, big
weekend where there's a sinc Anai Music Festival, there's a
REDS game, there's an sc game, and you have what
happened two weeks ago. It certainly doesn't give people a
(10:15):
feeling from the suburbs that it's safe to go downtown.
And I always say, what my bigger concern is is
what about the people who live in these communities who
don't have the option to go to a restaurant that
they feel like is safer, where they don't have that
chance of their car being broken into them being held
up when they're getting in their car. So it's certainly
something that I think we as a city have to
(10:37):
come together, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican and say,
what are we going to do to make our city
look better to people on the outside. Look, we're building
a new convention center, and we're hoping to get major
conventions and bigger and better, you know, things going on
so that we can continue to grow our city. But
you can't have people who come to our city getting
(10:59):
robbed or worse, getting shot because somebody holds them up
and they don't give them their wallet. So I think
it's just a ripple effect. I was really you know,
on Friday when I watched that news conference, and I'm
talking not as a journalist. Look, it was frustrating as
a journalist because just like I think the police feel,
we feel in the media, we're damned if we do,
(11:20):
damned if we don't. You know, I put something out
on social media thing, we're trying to get the videos,
we're trying to get the people who shot them to
release them, and people think we're holding back to information.
But then you put out information that somebody has been
arrested or these are the people who've been arrested, and
Scotti Johnson's sicked off because we're showing the video over
and over again. Well, guess what, we do that in
(11:40):
every crime. You know, we did that last summer when
kids were jumping innocent people walking down the streets. We
do that when there's a police involved shooting, and there
are questions on if it's justified. So I always say, well,
we are truly just trying to give you information. But
it's frustrating when you see this city leaders coming together
and you're like, Okay, well what are we going to
(12:01):
do about her? I think we can all agree we've
got a problem. You shouldn't have people where. Look, if
that whoever started that fight, if those two people just
would have fought, this would have never made the news.
It would have been one one guy beaten the crop
out of another guy. But what happened was you then
had the guy who looks like from the videos we've seen,
who maybe initiated this, who sort of slapped the one
(12:24):
guy being dragged into the street and beaten by multiple people,
and then a woman who appears to be trying to
break it up being laid out. And I'll tell you what, Lily,
when I initially saw that video two weeks ago on
a Saturday morning of that woman, we know it's Ally,
and we do believe she's going to be talking with
Senator Marino today when he addresses the media here. Locally,
(12:47):
I thought she was dead. I mean the video cut
off and the initial woman I got and I thought
she was dead. And it's like, that's what people across
the country see. I had friends of mine who lived
outside of the city saying, Wow, what's going on in Cincinnati.
And what it reminds me of is I was a
beat reporter in Charlotte, North Carolina in two thousand and
one when we had the racewriters break out and I
(13:08):
was a prime reporter, and when I told them I
was going home in two thousand and two to Cincinnati,
my police officer friends and Charlotte said, why in the
world would you want to look there? So I don't
want that to be the perception across the country. And sadly,
when you see videos like this, it's just like when
you're watching videos of George Floyd and all of it.
If you want to enter race into the equation, it
(13:30):
is a black eye on whatever city it's going on in.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Well, I do some interviews around the country, and Cincinnati.
I won't say it's fair a black eye. What it
is is the worst pr that a region could ever
get is to have major national networks on a loop,
pay the beating, play the beating of those individuals, and
then play the comments of Victoria Parks, who's the president
(13:54):
pro tem of the city council, who said, you know what,
they brought it on themselves. They kind of deserve that happened.
And I'm thinking, and then all of us say things,
maybe imprompted, we shouldn't have said. A couple of days later,
she doubled down with the interview with Curtis Fuller and said, no,
that's exactly what I feel. And that's a that's not
somebody in the street. That's like a sixty five year
old city council member. That is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
You know, I was talking with a neighbor and look,
we heard out rageous things posted by a trustee in
Ross Township on the other side who used.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
The word.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
He used the N word, and you know, I mean,
it's outrageous to me. And I had a neighbor say
to me the other day, again, they weren't following this
as closely as we clearly are, but he says, doesn't
it just come down to you wanting any city leader
to say right is right and wrong is wrong. And
I always say to my boys, I'm never going to
(14:54):
condone bad behavior. Right, So if a teacher, if a
coach calls me and says you did something, I'm never
to justify your actions. You know, I want you to
make it right or always to try and choose the
right thing. And I think that's what the majority of
Greater Cincinnati is saying, is we just want the people
who were involved in this to be held accountable. And
(15:15):
I think that again, transparency is playing a big role
in this. There are so many questions when you you know,
I'm left to wonder, Okay, when the chief says, well,
you haven't seen at all, because Damon Lynch was he
was the first person to say, here's what we think happened.
And the chief basically said, well, that might not be
all of it. There are other videos out there. So
(15:37):
then I'm thinking, as a journalist, did something happen inside
that bar, If something happened that we haven't seen, and
why not just say it? Why not say that there
was a racial slurmaid why not say, you know, whatever
it is, take this through just like you would a
police involved shooting. And so that way, there aren't all
of these questions out there, and you don't have you're
(15:59):
not dividing the city by race, because whether this was
racially motivated or not, it's now become a racial.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Issue, right, especially when leaders of the city say, you know,
like every face up there looks like my face, which
is Damon Lynch, and by the way, now lives in
Claremont County. That's a different issue. Well, the perpetrators of
this event were black, the victims are all white, and
I don't know if race played an element or not.
Where I was told that the N word was expressed,
(16:27):
I had on Ken Kober yesterday. He said, well, they
can't find the in word. And then I find out, well,
maybe there was a minor drug deal involved in which
the white guy wanted to buy marijuana from the black
guy and the price was too high, so they got
into it. The white guy, Leegley, was drunk, and so
therefore he had some beer muscles. And if that's the case,
why not get it out there and say it. If
(16:47):
you have the video, play it and don't wait two weeks.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, because again, it just takes me back to so
many of the incidents that we have had or you know,
over the past twenty years, where I think Cincinnati police
has been so good about getting in front of things
if they feel and by the way, outline police agencies too,
for the most part, if they feel like they've had
(17:13):
an incident that you're doing to be controversial where maybe
a police officer is going to be in question or
something else, they get out in front of it and
take you through what happened and say this is now
under investigation, we're looking into it. And I think it
eases attention right in our communities.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeh, well, we got to run. I want to talk
to you about interest rates, the southern border and Gaza.
We never got to it. And I wanted to maybe
give credit to blame the women, because, as you know,
all the four main anchors are female. City manager is
a female, the chief of police is a female, The
county commissioners are female, the corners are female, the prosecutor
is a female. The presiding judges and all the courts
(17:53):
are female. The Chief Justice Ohio is a female.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
That's not true.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I blame women on this one because women control. We
white guys had a good run. But it's over. Man,
it's over. Tell your boys, we had a good run,
but it's done. It's over. I'm just saying, look, I
see women, women, women, and by the way, I love
women more than I love men, and women are better
people than men. I think we're gonna agree on that.
But nonetheless, give my give my best of my dark.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
We have plenty of men involved. They are all women,
are there.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Well, he's a metro sexual from Beaver Creek and look
up metrosexual. That's him. I'm just saying that we got
problems everywhere and women are to blame. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Okay, well, well i'll beg to differ on that one.
I'll agree to disagree.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Sure, he thank you, but I'll be watching tonight. I'll
be monitoring more crime scene tape and O t R
as the city's crime rates are down. All right, sureI
give my best everyone at five. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
All right, go go Red.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
They're gonna win this. Afteroon, let's continue with more your comments.
Five one, three, seven, four, nine, seven thousand, Bill Cunningham,
News Radio, seven hundred WLW
My Billy cunning in the Grant America. Welcome to this
war is possibly rainy Wednesday afternoon in the triestate of Reds,
baseball looked impregnable, like the imagine no line. I thought
the new pitcher last night was in trouble until I
struck out three in a row. The Reds look unbeatable
at this point, Going out again, going out it again today,
first pitch about two twenty Pregame coverage starts to me
(00:26):
in the segment of one, But until then, Shari Pololo
of the Power of Five has some breaking information about
the sixth the Rest, considering the beatdown that happened on
Fourth and Elm and Shari Pololo, welcome again to the
Bill Cunningham Show. I have many questions about the Gaza Strip,
something about the pick up, the pieces of the bunker busters.
I want to talk about what's happening with monetary policy,
(00:48):
with interest rates. I want to talk about the Southern border.
I want to talk about all those matters and more.
But before we get to all that all those issues,
tell me about the sixth the Rest and your conversation
with the police.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey, good afternoon to you, Lily. So this morning just
before nine o'clock, Cincinnati police were able to track down
a sixth suspect in this fight and assault. She's it's
a woman, So this would be the second woman among
the six people who are charged. Twenty five year old
Ayesha Devall charged with felonious assault and aggravated riot. The
(01:22):
Fugitive Apprehensive Team tracked her down this morning. So this,
you know, Police Chief Terasigi had told us last week
that they had six people in total they were looking for.
This is the sixth and final suspect, at least of
those who we know that they were looking for. You know,
it's interesting, Wally, We have talked so much about this,
(01:45):
that incident that happened almost two weeks ago now, and
I was doing a little bit of research on now
I don't know a ton of their history on this.
Ayisha the sixth suspect who was just arrested. But of
the five who we knew about as of last night,
four of the five, basically all four of the men
who had been arrested all had prior criminal histories. The
(02:08):
one guy, the Merriweather guy, he was actually locked up
by the task Force on July second on four gun charges.
He was out on a four hundred dollars bond the
next day. That's that Montonnez Merriweather currently going through the
legal process. And I could go through all of these
(02:29):
other people as well who are charged and whether it
was domestic violence, formi's assault charges, drug trafficking. Many of
them have seminal histories. But then a lot of the
charges that they were facing were dismissed as well. So
I think that's the concern for so many people around
Greater Cincinnatius. This is a twofold problem when I'm looking
(02:50):
at this from the outside. The police too, said it
last week. We have heard it for years from police
officers that we do have this revolving doer of injustice.
I think is so many people would say, and it's
frustrating for these officers on the streets, whether they're on
the task force or just beat officers, they're locking people
up and then the next day they're released. In fact,
I was just taking with an officer this morning. He
(03:12):
said both century I actually had a kid who he
had sell any warrants out. This was just this week
and twenty twenty said, no, we arrested him. We were
trying to lock them up twenty twenty. So that's the
Juvenile Detention Center said, nope, relation to his parents. And
(03:32):
this is a kid under eighteen who had sell any
warrants out. These are not you know, kids with the
speeding ticket or people with some sort of misdemeanor charge.
These are serious charges of robbery, you know, criminal activity
that put people in our communities, in their communities by
the way that they live in in danger. But then
(03:54):
I think you will also have you know, so that's
been an ongoing problem for the last several years. If
you would ask, you know, the police officers, the people
who are arresting these guys that we have were two
lacks on crime and judges let them write back out,
especially when you're talking about teenagers. I mean, look, we
were talking about the same issue last year when we
had groups of teenagers who were attacking unsuspecting people in
(04:17):
the middle of the day, just walking on downtown street.
So this has been going on. It's just now, you know,
the light of being shined on it again because of
this fight and attack that broke out two weeks ago.
But then you also, I think, you know, from my
point of view, I think where this blew up, So
much is is transparency. You know, whenever there's a police
involved shooting or some sort of violent incident. Typically for
(04:41):
the last you know, ten plus years, Cincinnati police, especially
since the collaborative in two thousand and two, Cincinnati police
are very transparent. They come out within a day or two,
show you all the video, take you through, step by
step by step what has happened. And unfortunately that didn't
happen in this case. Look, I get it, you know,
the police chief and city leaders are damned if you do,
(05:04):
damned if you don't. But when you come out and
you say, here's what we think started it, here's where
things went wrong, and this is what led to again
the fight, and then that led to this attack and
assault of six people and one woman being knocked unconscious,
I think then it doesn't become Then you don't get
(05:24):
national leaders who are getting involved in saying what in
the heck's going on in Cincinnati, Ohio?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Right, Well, we got Bernie Marino's going to talk about it.
But as far as the police, this Merriweather character was
picked up by that special task force July the second.
I mean, this is a bad guy to begin with,
he was terrible and then he gets out. Bill Mallory,
the judge is a good guy. I like him. Everyone
likes Bill Mallory. But he doesn't think people should be
(05:51):
in jail for criminal offenses. He gives this Merriweather in
his thirties, got a terrible record, essentially a four hundred
dollars cash bond and get out. And then I received
a text from Judge Melissa Powers who said that you know,
she ran juvenile court with an iron grip for many years.
And she said to me in a text, you may
know this. When I left juvenile court three years ago,
(06:13):
Judge Kerrie Bloom declared that the juvenile Court will no
longer enforced curfew or truancye violations. All the charges were
summarily dismissed unofficially, which means the prosecutors don't have an
opportunity to appeal or to object, and right now there
are no laws that our juvenile court will enforce. In fact,
she her main item of business is to have a
(06:36):
book report if you do, if you rape somebody or
commit a crime, it's a book report. How do you
feel about that one?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Well, I mean, obviously it's outrageous and I think to
most people if that in fact won't the punishment. It's outrageous.
You know, I was talking to you about the police
officer who I was and by the way, a high
ranking officer who I was talking with this morning about
this test force arresting a kid just the other night.
And he was telling me the kid sixteen, This was
(07:05):
a kid who was breaking into multiple vehicles, had multiple
breaking and entering warrants out and the answer from twenty
twenty was just releasing back to his parents. And what
I would say to that is, do we remember what
happened at the beginning of the summer, the teenager, the
young person who was again stealing cars, and what ended
(07:27):
up happening, well, when he was stealing finally another car,
he was shot and killed by police because he had
a gun, went to get the gun and was you know,
again it was this encounter with police. It's like, at
what point do we say enough is enough? We don't
want to lose people, because you know, police are put
in a compromise situation where they're trying to arrest what
(07:51):
they believe as a criminal. And then we saw what
happened after that, and it was the ripple effect. His
father allegedly was so upset that he went and you know,
chosen officer a deputy at random and shot and killed
or stuply shinkilled, ran, hit and killed Deputy Larry Henderson.
So you know, I think that there clearly is a
(08:12):
breakdown in our system and that's what people are concerned about.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Well, sure, and why I'm monitoring you last night with
Mike and I try to watch everything Simultaneously. You're doing
this piece about lemon Kearney saying, well, we got to
pay armed robbers one thousand dollars a month not to
commit any more crime. Then I'm watching someone else say, well,
the curfew you know, is going to be eleven o'clock,
then it's going to be nine o'clock and then midnight.
Of course you have no court, don't enforce it. And
(08:38):
you're talking about city council and their law and Public
Safety committee, and it Scottie Johnson, who has more lucid
moments than many, who was a former police officer. SI
kind of gets mad at the fact that someone might
think Cincinnati is unsafe and you're not paying attention look
at all the things we've done, and then you quickly
cut the crime scene tape in ot R at eleven
fifteen pm last night. So one packages, hey, look, things
(09:01):
are great, it's unbelievable. Then you say let's go to OTR.
Someone just had their brains blown out. Did you see,
I mean, did you feel what you were doing?
Speaker 2 (09:11):
It is unsettling. Listen, it is unsettling because look, if
you talk to the chief and if you look at
the numbers twenty twenty two, two hundred and thirty nine
shootings in Cincinnati right now, that numbers at one hundred
and seventy one. So yes, if you look at the
numbers from four years ago, the numbers are down. But
(09:32):
we all know. I mean, I talk to people in
the suburbs. I live in Mason, and so many people
I know say I'd rather just go out of here
and not risk something not just happening to me, but
to my car. You know, all of the things. It's
the image and perception that it's not safe to be downtown.
(09:52):
And I think that's what the concern is. And you know, look,
city leaders can you can you can say, look, shootings
are down from year to year from four years ago,
but the reality is when you have a big, big
weekend where there's a sinc Anai Music Festival, there's a
REDS game, there's an sc game, and you have what
happened two weeks ago. It certainly doesn't give people a
(10:15):
feeling from the suburbs that it's safe to go downtown.
And I always say, what my bigger concern is is
what about the people who live in these communities who
don't have the option to go to a restaurant that
they feel like is safer, where they don't have that
chance of their car being broken into them being held
up when they're getting in their car. So it's certainly
something that I think we as a city have to
(10:37):
come together, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican and say,
what are we going to do to make our city
look better to people on the outside. Look, we're building
a new convention center, and we're hoping to get major
conventions and bigger and better, you know, things going on
so that we can continue to grow our city. But
you can't have people who come to our city getting
(10:59):
robbed or worse, getting shot because somebody holds them up
and they don't give them their wallet. So I think
it's just a ripple effect. I was really you know,
on Friday when I watched that news conference, and I'm
talking not as a journalist. Look, it was frustrating as
a journalist because just like I think the police feel,
we feel in the media, we're damned if we do,
(11:20):
damned if we don't. You know, I put something out
on social media thing, we're trying to get the videos,
we're trying to get the people who shot them to
release them, and people think we're holding back to information.
But then you put out information that somebody has been
arrested or these are the people who've been arrested, and
Scotti Johnson's sicked off because we're showing the video over
and over again. Well, guess what, we do that in
(11:40):
every crime. You know, we did that last summer when
kids were jumping innocent people walking down the streets. We
do that when there's a police involved shooting, and there
are questions on if it's justified. So I always say, well,
we are truly just trying to give you information. But
it's frustrating when you see this city leaders coming together
and you're like, Okay, well what are we going to
(12:01):
do about her? I think we can all agree we've
got a problem. You shouldn't have people where. Look, if
that whoever started that fight, if those two people just
would have fought, this would have never made the news.
It would have been one one guy beaten the crop
out of another guy. But what happened was you then
had the guy who looks like from the videos we've seen,
who maybe initiated this, who sort of slapped the one
(12:24):
guy being dragged into the street and beaten by multiple people,
and then a woman who appears to be trying to
break it up being laid out. And I'll tell you what, Lily,
when I initially saw that video two weeks ago on
a Saturday morning of that woman, we know it's Ally,
and we do believe she's going to be talking with
Senator Marino today when he addresses the media here. Locally,
(12:47):
I thought she was dead. I mean the video cut
off and the initial woman I got and I thought
she was dead. And it's like, that's what people across
the country see. I had friends of mine who lived
outside of the city saying, Wow, what's going on in Cincinnati.
And what it reminds me of is I was a
beat reporter in Charlotte, North Carolina in two thousand and
one when we had the racewriters break out and I
(13:08):
was a prime reporter, and when I told them I
was going home in two thousand and two to Cincinnati,
my police officer friends and Charlotte said, why in the
world would you want to look there? So I don't
want that to be the perception across the country. And sadly,
when you see videos like this, it's just like when
you're watching videos of George Floyd and all of it.
If you want to enter race into the equation, it
(13:30):
is a black eye on whatever city it's going on in.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Well, I do some interviews around the country, and Cincinnati.
I won't say it's fair a black eye. What it
is is the worst pr that a region could ever
get is to have major national networks on a loop,
pay the beating, play the beating of those individuals, and
then play the comments of Victoria Parks, who's the president
(13:54):
pro tem of the city council, who said, you know what,
they brought it on themselves. They kind of deserve that happened.
And I'm thinking, and then all of us say things,
maybe imprompted, we shouldn't have said. A couple of days later,
she doubled down with the interview with Curtis Fuller and said, no,
that's exactly what I feel. And that's a that's not
somebody in the street. That's like a sixty five year
old city council member. That is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
You know, I was talking with a neighbor and look,
we heard out rageous things posted by a trustee in
Ross Township on the other side who used.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
The word.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
He used the N word, and you know, I mean,
it's outrageous to me. And I had a neighbor say
to me the other day, again, they weren't following this
as closely as we clearly are, but he says, doesn't
it just come down to you wanting any city leader
to say right is right and wrong is wrong. And
I always say to my boys, I'm never going to
(14:54):
condone bad behavior. Right, So if a teacher, if a
coach calls me and says you did something, I'm never
to justify your actions. You know, I want you to
make it right or always to try and choose the
right thing. And I think that's what the majority of
Greater Cincinnati is saying, is we just want the people
who were involved in this to be held accountable. And
(15:15):
I think that again, transparency is playing a big role
in this. There are so many questions when you you know,
I'm left to wonder, Okay, when the chief says, well,
you haven't seen at all, because Damon Lynch was he
was the first person to say, here's what we think happened.
And the chief basically said, well, that might not be
all of it. There are other videos out there. So
(15:37):
then I'm thinking, as a journalist, did something happen inside
that bar, If something happened that we haven't seen, and
why not just say it? Why not say that there
was a racial slurmaid why not say, you know, whatever
it is, take this through just like you would a
police involved shooting. And so that way, there aren't all
of these questions out there, and you don't have you're
(15:59):
not dividing the city by race, because whether this was
racially motivated or not, it's now become a racial.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Issue, right, especially when leaders of the city say, you know,
like every face up there looks like my face, which
is Damon Lynch, and by the way, now lives in
Claremont County. That's a different issue. Well, the perpetrators of
this event were black, the victims are all white, and
I don't know if race played an element or not.
Where I was told that the N word was expressed,
(16:27):
I had on Ken Kober yesterday. He said, well, they
can't find the in word. And then I find out, well,
maybe there was a minor drug deal involved in which
the white guy wanted to buy marijuana from the black
guy and the price was too high, so they got
into it. The white guy, Leegley, was drunk, and so
therefore he had some beer muscles. And if that's the case,
why not get it out there and say it. If
(16:47):
you have the video, play it and don't wait two weeks.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, because again, it just takes me back to so
many of the incidents that we have had or you know,
over the past twenty years, where I think Cincinnati police
has been so good about getting in front of things
if they feel and by the way, outline police agencies too,
for the most part, if they feel like they've had
(17:13):
an incident that you're doing to be controversial where maybe
a police officer is going to be in question or
something else, they get out in front of it and
take you through what happened and say this is now
under investigation, we're looking into it. And I think it
eases attention right in our communities.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeh, well, we got to run. I want to talk
to you about interest rates, the southern border and Gaza.
We never got to it. And I wanted to maybe
give credit to blame the women, because, as you know,
all the four main anchors are female. City manager is
a female, the chief of police is a female, The
county commissioners are female, the corners are female, the prosecutor
is a female. The presiding judges and all the courts
(17:53):
are female. The Chief Justice Ohio is a female.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
That's not true.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I blame women on this one because women control. We
white guys had a good run. But it's over. Man,
it's over. Tell your boys, we had a good run,
but it's done. It's over. I'm just saying, look, I
see women, women, women, and by the way, I love
women more than I love men, and women are better
people than men. I think we're gonna agree on that.
But nonetheless, give my give my best of my dark.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
We have plenty of men involved. They are all women,
are there.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Well, he's a metro sexual from Beaver Creek and look
up metrosexual. That's him. I'm just saying that we got
problems everywhere and women are to blame. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Okay, well, well i'll beg to differ on that one.
I'll agree to disagree.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Sure, he thank you, but I'll be watching tonight. I'll
be monitoring more crime scene tape and O t R
as the city's crime rates are down. All right, sureI
give my best everyone at five. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
All right, go go Red.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
They're gonna win this. Afteroon, let's continue with more your comments.
Five one, three, seven, four, nine, seven thousand, Bill Cunningham,
News Radio, seven hundred WLW
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