Him Billy cunning in the Great American Welcome this Friday afternoon of the tries day
to terrible weather once again, go to warm up this weekend in good ways.
Coming in about an hour is Leland Viddard of News Nation. This is
relatable to the NPR and one of the executive editors NPR has taken NPR to
task for being so liberal, not just liberal, but progressive and left of
that. And I know there was eighty seven registered Democrats working for NPR.
How many Republicans are independence The answer is zero. So it was advocacy journalism.
It wasn't actually fact based. It was based upon whatever the Democrats wanted
to be. And unlike Channel five, unlike WLWT television, we pay for
NPR. Unbelievable joining you and I now is the main anchor at Channel five,
that is Shari Pololo and Shari Pololo welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show.
And Chari, how are you? I'm great, Willie? How are
you doing? Two or three big issues are happening? Are you ready to
accept my questions and provide coaching answers? I'll do my best right now.
Many families in March and April are spending their time picking a college for their
son or daughter to go to. And I know, I think you related
on the era with me that you had a son that wanted to, of
course go to college, and which may be a good idea, maybe a
bad idea, depending upon how you want to live your life, but you
took them to Miami. Now, as a parent, how do you process
the murders, sexual assaults, car break ins, and the other arm robberies
happening in and around the UC campus as a parent? Take off your anchor
hat, put on a parent hat. How do you process what's happening at
UC? Yeah, well it's easy for me, WILLI, because you know
I have three boys, one is a UC student, and then I have
a junior who right now we are visiting college campuses and he's deciding where he
wants to go. And you know, sadly, I worry every single day
about my son who's up there at UC. And uh, I think I've
told you before. His apartment was broken into last year, a kid in
this sche mask, a guy in a ski mask. But it's what we
see too often in the news business that really worries me. And I've told
my middle son. Hey, we've visited Ohio State, we went to Miami
last week. He had we had set up to go to UC this past
yesterday actually, and we canceled because he's a different kid. He first of
all, is not you know, one who kind of loves like that inner
city, you know, lifestyle. And I said, I know you,
you'll you will be afraid. And I hate to say that, but my
oldest son considered transferring last year. Look, they have a crime problem.
And the thing that I think is sad is we see it too often where
the university will say, well, it happened off campus, Well will you
and I've talked about this. The reality is that housing because they have so
many students that they were not prepared for housing where the kids eat, where
they party, it's all technically off campus. And yes, we saw it
a few weeks ago where this business student, he was a third year business
student, was shot and killed while trying to stop someone who was stealing his
car, breaking into his car and trying to take off with it. That
happened farther off campus. That was technically well was Mount Alburn. But you
still have so many other robberies and fast and things that are going on around
campus that sadly just don't get addressed. And I can't tell you how many
parents email me reach out to us and say you have to do something.
I mean, we had a student just earlier this week who talked with our
Lindsay Stone. A group of students who started their own online social media page
to alert each other because they feel like they don't get updated enough on what's
really going on. So unless there is a shooting around campus or some sort
of crime like that, they don't get alert and they want to know if
cars are getting broken into, or if kids are getting robbed, you know,
just off of campus. And the sad thing is that this is what
happens. You have people who come from the outside targeting these students because they
know they have cell phones, they have money. I mean, we just
had last June the landscaper who it was about eight blocks off of campus,
who is doing landscaping for uptown properties. Middle of the day, some guy
walks up to him says, give me your money, he doesn't have any,
and he gets shot in the head dead. It's a forty three year
old landscaper who was supposed to have a birthday, you know, a week
later and it's you know, sadly his family is left without him, And
so I think the bigger concern to me is a yes, you know,
you see, police can't be patrolling off campus, but they can do a
better job around campus. And then it has to be teaming up with Cincinnati
police, and goodness knows, the university is making plenty of money that they
can bring in more officers to help out. I think a lot of parents
and I have other parents who are deciding where they're you know, juniors and
seniors are going to go to school, and I have a lot of them
say to me, what do you think would you send now your your junior
there? Would you send my seventh I also a seventh grader. Look,
I knew about the crime issues at the University of Cincinnati before my now sophomore
went there. He was but he loves that school. I love that school.
It's they have a great business program, of course, a great medical
school. It's a great university. But there is a crime problem, and
yes, that comes with a lot of schools, universities that are centered around
the city. Ohio State has it. I'm sure UK has it. But
you have to come out and do something about it. And then there's the
human element, Willie, where as a parent, I mean, here,
you just had a business student shot and killed two weeks ago, and I
still haven't seen anybody from UC coming out as a human being saying we are
devastated that we lost one of our own. I watched some of the interviews
that happened that Lindsay Stone's report was wonderful. I would hope that you see
itself stick head in the sand, would get their head out of their sand
and say, you know what, we got a terrible crime problem and it's
got to stop. Part of it is that we have an Hamley County juvenile
court system now that doesn't believe in locking up kids for vicious crimes. That
these aren't kids dealing reesy bars from Walmart. This seventeen year old picked up
in the murder of Benjamin Addison from Turpin High School. I watched the interviews
that you conducted. Maybe it was one of your reporters with the mom and
that they had went to Turpin. Good kid. He worked in the library,
he was an orientation specialist for new and he went outside and I guess
he confronted those two thugs, those murderous thugs wanting to steal his vehicle.
And I think now you have to tell kids, hey, by the way,
if somebody breaks into your car or commits a property crime, accept it.
Do not confront them because you get on a juvenile court, and juvenile
court Hamlet County has a hands off approach to crime. And that's not the
case. It would be helpful if you see itself would say it takes a
student to organize this thing, and I would think co eds that you see
or even more at risk. You cannot consent to a rape or sexual assault
or a murder. You can't consent to have your property stolen. How many
times are kids coming out and the gun's put upside someone's head, Give me
your money, and the best thing to do is say, yes, sir,
here it is. And you have to tell your students that if your
car's being stolen, do not confront murderers. They're not dealt with well.
And that's the sadness of life that you see. And it's going to get
worse because juvenile court doesn't lock anybody up anymore. The seventeen year old is
down there now and Melissa Powers wants to try him as an adult. But
unless the kids bound over, he won't be tried as an adult. He'll
be going at the age of twenty one. That seventeen year old hasn't been
in school since his freshman year. And you know now you and of course
you know his a defense attorney set in court. Well, he has no
prior record, you know God, And that's I think the point. It's
like, well, you don't go from stealing a car and then shooting,
shooting and killing someone. I mean, you must have done this before and
just gotten away with it. And again there presumably is the second person out
there, because the seventeen year old who was arrested, who I believe police
they was the shooter who was in the passenger seat the driver took off.
There was another person in that car. So it is hard breaking, I
tell you what, Willy, that story rocked me because as a parent of
a UC student, and not to mention that family that was their only child,
he was an only child shot and killed. Well, they drove back
from being out on Saturday night together with a group of friends and get back
to a friend's apartment and interrupt someone stealing their car. Who would think they're
going to be shot and killed over that. I mean, what one of
us would not say, what are you doing? Stop? Stop right right?
And I do that. And you know, I told my my UC
student, I said, you do not if somebody if you're walking out of
a bar, you give them whatever they want. If they're stealing your car.
He doesn't have a car down there, but his roommates do tell them
to take the car, you know, and you hate to do that because
of course then these kids are going to be targets because everybody knows they're not
going to fight them, but or challenge them. It is a problem in
that, you know. I hate it for I think it's just such a
black eye on this university. And like I said, where is the leadership
to come out and say, we're not going to tolerate this. We're teaming
up with Cincinnati Police, We're doing everything we can. We're meeting with Chief
DG. We know we have got to protect our students. There are our
top privorate ority, you know, and we just don't hear that. Maybe
those conversations are going on behind closed doors. But I think as a parent
of a UC student and as a leader in this community, I want to
see it. Yeah, because I will tell you it makes you second guess
having your kids go there. Well maybe, And in this case, I'm
very much pushing my second son to go to Miami, to go to MTU,
to go to another school where there's not that kind of a crime problem
or concern. I mean, I have alerts that come onto my phone every
night. I sleep with my phone on because I'm afraid something's going to happen
on that campus. And you went to NK, you I went to Xavier
zavior has its own crime problem, not as bad as you see. And
then Miami is in the domain of Richard K. Jones. I have a
sense that if a kid goes to Miami, the odds are getting shot or
robbed almost non existent. NKU, I'm sure has crime, but not the
kinds of crimes happening on a regular basis a U see. And the key
element is to have the university leadership get with their campus police and CPD and
get to juvenile court and saying this cannot stand because right now you can break
into cars and steal cars all day and there's no consequence in juvenile court because
one thing leads to the other and right now. Judge Kerry Bloom, who's
the administrative judge in Hamlet County, will freely tell you she's done with the
high school to prison pipeline. Well, there's one kid here, the seventeen
year old I had on I run out of write about three months ago.
About seventy percent of black males are chronically absent a CPS seventy percent. And
what are they doing all day? And this is one example. He's not
been to school since he was fourteen, doesn't work. What do you do
all day when you're fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, other than drink, smoke
and go out there and commit crimes because it's culturally acceptable in some quarters the
face of crime and Cincinnati exactly why that's that's the reason. Yeah, truely,
that's exactly why I say to my boys. If you don't have if
you're not playing a sport in high school for one season or at all,
you're working the minute you can work, because you don't need that much time
on your hands. My kids are all good students, they're all you know,
have all been involved in extracurriculars. But when they decided my two older
boys decided to not play football, I said, all right, you're getting
a job because you don't need Monday through Friday to come home at three o'clock
in the afternoon, because I know you're not steadying for six hours, So
you know, I agree with you. Look, and the superintendent, she
has taken heat because she has made changes that maybe teachers and staffers don't like.
But I tell you what, We've had her on our four o'clock show
many times. She is tough, and I always chat with my colleagues and
I really like her because she's transparent. She talks about the problem of getting
kids at CPS to go to school, not just the being late to go
to school, I mean the amount of kids who are not going to school
within Cincinnati, the city of Cincinnati is shocking and concerning because again, just
like you said, Willie, if they're not in school learning, what are
they doing smoking into trouble, smoking, drinking? An idle mind is the
devil's workshop, and there's lots of work to do, and it's a terrible.
Well, look what happened on Easter Sunday night downtown when you had five
hundred kids wouding in downtown Cincinnati, shooting guns. I cop told me they
were shooting at barges, and they were shooting at things, and knives are
out, fistfights are taking place, ransacking certain restaurants like Morline, and the
cops show up, and a cop told me, look, we're told don't
arrest anybody unless it is absolutely required, because if they focus on one or
two or three kids getting arrested, there's two or three hundred more doing other
stuff. So there's no arrest. When you get to juvenile court under Judge
carry Bloom, there's no consequence, there's no punishment, and then you're released
to kind of laugh and snicker and go back to your lifestyle. And somehow
Cincinnati we're about ten years behind Chicago, Portland, Atlanta, Washington, DC.
But we're gonna get there unless we change fundamentally and begins with leadership like
at UC to tell their students when crime. I was told one reason they
don't do that is just too many crimes. And all they're going to get
is every hour on the hour, there'll be more warnings and threats. That's
a problem too. As a prompt, And to your point about the teenagers
who were you know, hundreds of them on Easter Sunday, that evening.
I mean what a ripple effect is that you have businesses who, you know,
feel that when there are crowds of teenagers who are getting doing nothing but
probably you know, getting into trouble or at least you know, intimidating people
who are down there, you know. And then you have people from the
suburbs who say, well, I'm not going to go down there, but
if I feel like it's not safe along the banks, right, So it
really is such a ripple effect. And you're right. I have Cincinnati Police
officers who talk to me about it all the time. A friend of mine
said, and listen, I have CPD officers who are in my family and
Hamilton County deputies. And I've had friends of mine who say, look,
your definition of a twelve year old or a thirteen year old is much different
than mine, because the kids that were dealing with Tuauten, who are involved
in these shootings are involved in, you know, activities your kids haven't even
heard about, you know, because it is a different life for these kids.
They have parents who either aren't around or aren't involved many of them,
or the ones who are trying to keep them away from that element. Because
it does suck them in. When your friends are on the streets and they're
making money by being a drug runner or or something else, you're bound to
You're bound to get sucked into that activity where it starts out as just a
little thing that you're just going to try to make a little money because maybe
your family isn't able to provide and you have no really guidance in your household.
When you come home, no one's there looking out for you. Of
course you're going to get into trouble. And it is such a ripple effect.
We got to run Sharia Palula. I want to talk to you about
Joe Burrow's alien comments. I guess he believes in aliens visiting Earth. Joe
Burrow. I want to talk about a former teacher pleading guilty to having sucks
with a student who says I'm going to continue the relationship. I wanted to
talk to you about Middletown could allow marijuana businesses to set up shop and more,
but we'll save that for another day. Charie Pullelo, once again,
thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Give my, give my
best of Mike and the k rob all right, I sure will love you
Willy have a great weekend. God bless America. Let's continue with more.
The line becomes available five one, three, seven, four nine, seven
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