FOP Pres Ken Kober - Teen violence in the city

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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A couple of extra minutes not a bad idea for

(00:46):
where your Wednesday morning commute. Chuck Ingram on fifty five KRC,
the Talk Station, six thirty one.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
ARC the Talk Station. Hope everyone's having a decent Wednesday.
Always good thing to have. The president of the Fraternal
over Police Chapter sixty nine. That's the Cincinni Police Department Union.
Ken Kulber, Welcome back to the Morning Show. It's always
great having you on the program. Sir, Hey, good morning, Brian.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
As always, thank you on behalf of all my listening
audience for the hard work the Cincinnti Police Department does
in the name of protecting us. Now question. Accord to
the Sincinni City Manager, they made great progress in reducing
violence among teenagers. And since a city manager, Cheryl Long
said this the other day, six percent dropping and shooting incidents.
Apparently thirty two percent decreasing youth shooting victims year over year.

(01:42):
What's your response to this? And is this your view
from the point of the officers dealing with crime on
the streets.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
I can tell you the statistics might show its down,
but if he has the cops that are responding to this,
we've got a long way to go.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
And is this I mean, we talk regularly about the violence.
It seems to happen on a daily basis at the
bus stops where all these different children are congregating together
and not getting along well. But this goes way beyond that,
I imagine.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
Oh, it absolutely does you know what starts out is
just fights at a bus stop turn into shootings And
we just saw that just a couple of weeks ago.
You know, you have a kid that has been picked
on and picked on and picked on at this Oakley
bus station, and after you know, being a victim, you know,
three or four times, and absolutely nothing being done by

(02:31):
the court system, he goes and picks up a gun
and tries to shoot an intended target, which she ends
up shooting, but also shoots an innocent person in the
in the process of this, all which I believe probably
could have been prevented.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Have they actually held these kids accountable with the justice
system and shooting out court?

Speaker 4 (02:51):
But it's just not happening.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, And you have to as I hear you say that,
I mean, I was a kid once, and I know
what it's like to be picked on, and I know
how that you know, confessed in the back of your mind.
But you know, maybe because I grew up in a
stable environment with parents that cared about me and taught
me right from wrong, that I never thought about taking
a gun out and shooting someone. But see, we have
a problem that's exacerbated now, I imagine by social media

(03:14):
where the the the pestering and the picking on continues
beyond just the bus stop. This kid probably the recipient
of all kinds of text messages or online social media
posts that continue to ridicule the child or otherwise pick
on them, and it makes the problem that much worse.
You cannot escape this abuse, this verbal abuse, at minimum.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Oh without a doubt.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
You said, you leave the bus stop and you're looking
your wounds, and only to open up your phone to
have Snapchat and Facebook and Instagram and all these other things.
And you've got kids that are still just continuing to
poke the bear, you know, bullying these kids, and you
know that you're right, they just they can't escape it.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Well, it's coming up on a break, so let's stop
because I want to talk about is there anything we
can do? You mentioned the criminal justice system, let's look
to that, but in the hearts and minds of the
police department and police officers, is there anything that we
could do collectively with elected officials, community leaders, priests, pastors, rabbis,
whatever that could change this dynamic because every year it

(04:19):
just seems to be getting worse and worse. Six thirty
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FVP President Ken Kover, representing the Cincinnati Police Departments union

(06:09):
and talking about violence and violence inherent in the system.
Though a team violence seems to be a real problem.
We talk about it all the time, all the uh
the fights that break out during the gatherings while they're
getting ready to go to school. Ken, you know, it
used to be that we would we would point to
and I remember going back to the day as a
Tom striker. If you're downtown, you're safe unless you are

(06:32):
involved with drugs, buying, or selling. Gang related turf battles
that sort of you know, respect eye for an eye.
You know your gang hits mine, I'm gonna hit yours.
It was sort of it seemed to be any way,
consolidated among a smaller concentration of people that were involved
in criminal activity. This transcends that this just seems to

(06:55):
be clicks of kids who don't get along together, coupled
with social media and this alienation and this feeling that
you know, okay, I just have had it my I
can no longer take being picked on anymore. I'm going
to take it out on someone. So the spread of
violence and the availability of firearms, generally speaking, makes it
easier for people who otherwise wouldn't even be involved in

(07:17):
criminal activity to choose to go in that direction. Does
that sound accurate in any way, shape or form to
what you're experiencing out there.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yeah, And most of it's you know, like before school,
right after school. These things don't tend to be going
on during you know, major sporting events downtown you know,
blink we just had. Yeah, well it was a very
very safe event. But no, you're right, I mean, it's
it's all dealing with these kids at transit centers in

(07:45):
areas right around the transit centers before and after school.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
So if let's look for a real quick solution, assuming
that money was not an issue, which I know it
always is, if we had regular bus service would picks
up kids in their own neighborhoods and drops them off
at the school where they attend, would we see a
reduction in violence from your standpoint, Ken.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, we didn't see this ten years ago. Huh. Ten
years ago, when they had bussing in their own communities,
taking them from a from a bus stop right near
their house to a school, you didn't see these things
going on. It just it just wasn't a thing. And
now you know, unfortunately some of these actions from cps
have consequences and were facing them now.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, living the reality of this. I mean again pointing
to daily, if not weekly, occurrences of pretty substantial violence
at the bus stuff, the solution seems to have presented
itself without question, so that though we also have and
you alluded to it in the last segment, the failure
of the well the future failure of the prosecutor's office

(08:50):
under the new administration, presumably, but the current failure of
judges that are in the judicial system meeting out heavy
penalties of fines and holding young people accountable for their
violence in an effort to deter other young people from
doing it, a critical leg of the criminal justice system,
but also to punish those that are involved with it
and give them an example for everybody else to follow.

(09:12):
That's just not happening. And I guess word has gotten
out on the street. It's like that song you know
you're under eighteen, you won't be doing any time, you know, hey,
come out and play. I mean, that seems to be
just the order of business these days. Kids don't don't
have no concern for punishment.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, I mean, we had five kids that were recently
arrested for aggravated riot. Their felonies are the third degree,
you know, middle of the road for the most serious felony.
They didn't even have a hearing for could be held.
They were immediately released. They literally had looked at this
check off list at intake and they went, you don't

(09:50):
meet the criteria for you to even be in held,
so they let them out. So what does I tell you?
You have kids committing serious felonies, being accused of these things,
and they're not even and getting a detention hearing. They're
just left right out and say that I will notify
you when you should.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Come to court.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Well, and I'm just guessing it's a general collective ignorance
on the part of the voting population in Hamilton County
that they would elect soft on crime prosecutor and soft
on crime judges. But the reality on the streets is
this has a profound impact. Young people are more violent.
They know they're not going to be held accountable because

(10:25):
of the policies of those folks that we have elected.
If there was a human outcry from the populace, for example,
the community leaders would join together and raise awareness about
the failure of the justice system to hold these young
people accountable. Do you think that would have an impact?
I mean, do you think that might be something that
would work? Because it seems to me that people are

(10:46):
getting really close to the end of the rope on.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
This what absolutely would you know if you put pressure
on elected officials to actually hold these kids accountable, to
tell the juvenile court system that, look, we have got
to make place safer. It'll help give you a perfect example.
You know, we just had to State of the city
address and the mayor highlighted a lot of fantastic things
that the city's accomplished and they have. He got into

(11:10):
the part about juvenile violence and talked about how we're
going to take all these steps to make sure these
things don't occur. Did you hear him say anything about
what they're going to do when these things do occur
because they're occurring. No, none of it had to do
with prosecution, none of it. Absolutely, none of it.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Well, and that's the problem that I have. Right So,
according to FOP President Ken Kober has been kind enough
to talk about this important issue on the program this morning,
the solutions are hold our elected officials accountable, insist on
tough prosecutions for the particularly the most heinous of crimes
these young people are committing. Try them as adult if
that's possible under any given circumstance, give them a heavy penalty,

(11:51):
and also change the bussing policies, so we had go
back to the norm of the old days where he
had picked up a kid in a neighborhood and dropped
them off at school to keep these interactions from happening
in the first place. Wait, hey, we solved the problems
of the world this morning here, ken, didn't we It
was pretty quick too. You're always welcome here in the

(12:12):
morning show. I'll do my best to stir the pot
of people getting in touch with the elected officials downtown
with my more conservative leaning listening audience. It's like, well,
we tried, we tried. We lost the elections here in
Hamilton County, but we sure tried. That doesn't mean you
can't force the current elected officials to change their path
and walk down a different path. Because somebody, look at

(12:33):
all the other cities in the United States that have
tried this soft on crime attitude only to have their
cities completely ruined by it and then turned around in
spite of the fact that they still call themselves democrats,
but do one hundred and eighty degree reversal on it
when it comes to prosecuting crimes that can happen in
Hamilton County. Just start lighting up the phones. Ken kober

(12:56):
On behalf of my entire listening audience. Again, thank you
and God bless the CINCINNTI Police Department for dealing with
this stuff each and every day to try to keep
the city a safe place. And you have a resource
here on the Morning show to vent your spleen and
come up with solutions, which we were able to do
this morning.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
All right, Brian, as always, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
My pleasure, brother Ken come, Thank you very much. Six
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