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Billy Cunningham, the Great America. And this is Monday afternoon, of
course Thanksgiving Day week, a lot of stuff going on. Out of a
good coming up later will be Tony Benner's good friend Wayne Allen Root to talk
about perspectives on the Trump Stern more. But until then I had on the
other day Sergeant Dan Hills talking about the main streets of Cincinnati now as opposed
to thirty years ago when he began, and the quality the character is changing
fundamentally, not necessarily for the better. About two or three months ago ahead
on Ironetta Wright, who's a superintendent of schools, that said that they have
a forty nine or fifty percent chronic absentee rate, and if it's block mails,
it's closer to seventy percent or chronically absent and that is relatable, I
think to the mean streets of Cincinnati. What's happening? Because it's not good?
And Brian Hammercourt, of course has been out there for the past twenty
five or thirty years, John London and Curtis Fuller doing their best of reports.
The three of them have about one hundred years of reporting on the main
streets of Cincinnati. And I find Brian Hammock right now on Spring Grove Avenue
outside of a Kroger and Brian Hamrick, Welcome again to the Bill Cunningham,
Jow and Brian. What are you doing this afternoon on Spring Grove Avenue.
Oh, well, it's another one of these kind of crazy situations. You
have this Kroger over here. Apparently someone was carrying a basket of groceries out
of the Kroger without paying, and a security guard stopped to question them or
whatever happened between the security guard and this guy that got pulls out of gun
and according to on the scene, he fired one shot, attempted to fire
another shot, but the gun jammed, couldn't get that shot off. Apparently
they get this guy, he takes off, they catch him not too far
away near what he sand or Ford over there, and they end up taking
him into custody. And they've arrested this guy. His names like Philip Dike.
So this all still kind of breaking as we speak right now. But
it's just very fortunate the shot that went off. And you know, here
we are probably the busiest grocery store shopping week of the year, in a
very busy Kroger down here, and he got a guy firing off a shot
and then he tries to get another shot off, but his gun jams.
Like I said, fortunately it got him, but then he could have but
he could have been. We were just talking some folks one second ago who
had just shown up just after it happened, and they're like, you know
they'd taken a bus down. Is that if our bus would have been just
a little earlier, we'd been right in the middle of it, to one
woman with her grandson, and so yeah, it's this is the kind of
thing that's going on, and this is just one of many that have happened
here recently. And is this you know, somebody tells me, yes,
this has been going on for a long time. But I'm watching a week
ago the CEO of Target and every now and then all shop at a Target,
especially the one in Blue ash and they got into what Joe Kernan on
Squawk Box by the way, CNBC, who went to Santax High School and
he talks about why don't you stop more of these people? And he said,
look what happens when you stop a thief, someone wanting to loot,
a burglar, whatever it might be, is worse than simply letting them go.
And the comment was, well, if you let him go, then
the message is sent out that those who are the petty thieves are going to
get the word around. Well, Kruger is not going to stop anybody,
and therefore, or you can just loot the store and nothing goes on.
But on one hand, I get what the CEO is saying, But this
example this morning is exactly what the target CEO is talking about. If Rodney
McMullen, who the CEO of Kroger, if he could have gone back in
time, he would have told that security guard, don't bother, just let
him go. You're damned if you're doing damned if you don't. Right.
Yeah, no, it's exactly. That's exactly where you are. I mean,
because you know what can you do If you send that message then everybody
just goes in, walks out and takes whatever they want and goes out and
they're well, they aren't going to say anything to you. But if you
stop them, you've got some you know, folks that aren't round too tight,
and they pull out their gun like this thing today, and then you
got a shooting. So you know, it's it's tough on these companies to
try and and police this, and you can't, you know, you can't
have officers at every door. But they had security here, and I guess
they had questioned this guy or at least ask him, hey did you pay?
But you know, anything sets somebody off now, and they've all got
a gun. Fact that we're told this guy had two guns, but he
but he would only use one and then he was then he took off and
wash and was caught by by Cincinnati police officers. So now he's facing years
and years in jail because when you shoplift or steal and in commission of that
offense, you you have a gun in your possession illegally, which in this
case would be illegal to commit an offense. Then you fire a shot.
And Melissa Powers takes these things rather seriously, so because there's a gun speck,
he's going to spend at least the next three years in state prison.
And at this point and all the security guard is doing, is trying to
do his damn job to keep somebody from stealing a bag of grocery is probably
worth fifty dollars. And so that's why you don't want to get involved,
because if he get involved something bad, and that bullet didn't have a name
on it, it could have killed a little kid like that eleven year old
boy. And uh, in the West End, it could have been another
terrible circumstance. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Yeah,
yeah, there's so much of these things. You know. We just
talked with the father of that eleven year old the other night. Uh.
The father's name is Isaac Davis. Dominic Davis is the eleven year old.
He says, you know, his his son had just made the basketball team.
He was so excited about that. He went to school over at that
academy really just across the street from where all this happened. And he said,
uh, you know, it was just an eleven year old kid.
He was out with some of his friends. It was like only like nine
o'clock. I mean it was dark because of the time change, but he
it was you know, he's just out with his friends and you know,
somebody runs by with basically what ends up being uh, the sound was just
like a machine gun. We got the recorded shots off the shots botter and
it was like pow powell, you know, something like that. It was
like the bulk of the bullets came out in something like you would hear,
you know, off of a machine gun, like a kind of sound.
So was not like somebody even pulling and pulling a trigger. So these are
the kind of weapons and when you're fired them into a crowd and none of
these guys can shoot that. None of them hit whatever they're shooting at.
They all hit something or somebody else. I've been to so many of these
scenes where these guys you would think if that was their their their trade and
they took you know, pride and their work as a gangster or whatever,
they they'd be a better shot. They can't hit anything, so the bullets
go everywhere and they end up hitting everybody and anybody usually but the person they're
aiming at. And so uh, it's uh, we've had a bunch of
those, and then we've had the one like the guy that was shot on
the uh Western Hills Viaduct. Not well just so a week or so ago.
So he is coming on a Western Hills viaduct, driving across like six
' twenty in the morning. Somebody opens fire on his car. There's bullet
holes all over it, and police are telling us it looks like a case
of mistaken identity. They end up killing a guy who came here from northern
India to study here. He's an academic wizard. The guy was apparently a
brilliant scientist, was working at a doctorate from through uc at Children's Hospital.
And oh, well, we got the wrong guy. And there's many more.
There's another woman in the same area there going seventy four, getting on
seventy five, elderly woman. Somebody opens fire on her car. Now,
you know, usually this woman was I think in her eighties. Most of
those folks aren't a lot involved in a lot of gang activity. No,
you know, so sure she wasn't. She ends up getting shot a number
of times. They haven't arrested anybody in either of those cases. Now,
the coppers tell me, I talked to Sergeant Dan Hills who made some inquiries
of a homicide and they have nobody there even looking looking at and they're looking
for some of the cameras to see if they have the vehicle they have.
They may have something identified but not specifically, and they're scratching their head on
this one with Dominic Davis, who was not involved in criminal activity at the
age of eleven. And the weapon itself had to be made automatic by a
couple of minor changes, which anybody can do to their to their weapon if
they want to. So that's already illegal to have automatic weapons. There's no
military style weapons that are legal today because automatic weapons are illegal. But if
somebody takes illegal weapon and makes it illegal, I don't know how you stop
somebody from doing that. And it's inexplicable how someone can shoot at a group
of boys and kill and wound. And then with this UC student from northern
to India, I can only imagine how excited his family was to get him
to America, the home of the Free and the land of the brave.
And this kid, I'm told is doing quite well academically. He would probably
stay here and he's dead. Throw on top about the woman should throw on
top of out the the Kroger shopper this morning, and we got Mayhem.
Man, this is starting to sound like Chicago for God's sakes, well,
a lot of bullets flying for you know, no good reason. Just you
know, the folks that are that are doing this have a total disregard and
a lot of these cases and you know some of these cases and uh,
what they what they've seen is uh, you know, you've got a lot
of young kids involved in these things and they got you know, I've talked
to these guys who you know, kind of made their way on the streets
years ago and they're older now and kind of see the wisdom and they tell
me they go the most dangerous folks are these young are these young kids,
and they they don't you know, they get a gun and they do not
they do not care. You know, they just don't care. Uh,
and you know it. You can get into the anatomy at all, but
you know this is one of the brain's not quite developed, the decision making
brains not developed yet. And you've got kids this age who are now with
guns and they watch, you know, their heroes are these gangsters and guys
with money. And you know, it's funny because none of these folks ever
end that they never have anything. They don't have anything. They might have
a car one day, but they don't have any they're not in a nice
house or anything. They got this lifestyle and that's all they got. And
they make that sound so good to these other folks through the music and through
everything else that they they hear in their neighborhood. And somehow they get them
in like a you know, like a Manson or a Jim Jones would into
their cold of this violence and convince these kids who are impressionable and uh.
And before anybody else can get to them, or more powerfully than anyone else
can get to them, now they're dug in and they believe this like it's
their doctrine, like almost like a religious doctrine, and they believe this and
they believe it with everything, so it's hard to get them out there like
a cult. And this is what happens. And now they get younger and
younger and they can't make decisions, and now they got guns running around,
and this is what you know, we see it not just Cincinnati, but
everybody's seeing this, but we're seeing our share of it here in Cincinnati.
It was either you or John Lin that had on this woman that talked about
if they're in this lifestyle, if they don't get out by the time they're
fourteen or fifteen years old, then they're lost. That a few make it
out, but the great majority don't make it out. And this is not
the way it was twenty thirty forty years ago. I'm sorry, we didn't
have twenty five to thirty shots fired in the city of Cincinnati. Fortunately only
about four hundred hits somebody. And this is not the way it used to
be. And you bring it up. It's a great point that if you're
in this lifestyle from the time you're twelve, thirteen, fourteen, if you
don't get out within two or three years, you have no high school education,
you have no marketable skills, you have contact with the juvenile court system,
in which case your path is set and it's going to end up somewhere
at Levenworth or Lucasville goes. You can't get out one way, horizontal or
prison. That's it. Yeah, Well, and here's the other. Here's
the other possibility. And I talked to a woman a while back. I
never did do this story, and I really wish I would have at some
point, and maybe maybe I will in the future. Uh So, because
that's what you know. When they're young, and they're like they're like these
old, like you know, civil war type folks when they went off the
war and the glory of war and I'm going to get in there and you
know, uh, killed the other side or whatever, and it's going to
be glorious. Well, the reality of the war something completely different, you
know. And they finally about the time we got the Vietnam and we brought
the TV cameras in there, people started to realize this is not know like
we had imagine in our minds, you know, of some glorious you know,
I take a shot at arm and and I fight on and you know,
it worked like that. People die of disease, people get paralyzed,
people as dysenteries. What killed most people in disease and and uh and the
glory cutting off legs and all that. It didn't, you know, it
didn't occur to people that this is what the reality of war is about and
not not some glorious you know battle somewhere. Uh, And this is what's
happening here. They've driven him by glory and how wonderful this is because everything
they see and their music and their buddies and their people that are influencing them
or or you know, they're like, oh, look at this man.
He's got the money, he's got the drugs, he got all his girls,
and the respective of the other the fear of other people in the neighborhood
or something. But those guys live in fear. They live in fear that
they might die. Every day. They're living in fear. And there's nobody
really getting to these kids in a way that's making sense to them. And
the story I wanted to do was a guy. It was weird because I
got a hold of this woman by accident. It was weird because he said
it was It was just bizarre that I called her and I said, I
was talking to somebody, was trying to get a hold of somebody about violence.
She goes, oh, I know about violence on the streets. And
I said, oh, how's that. She goes my son. My son
was into that. I'm like, really, I said, what happened.
He goes, well, well, he got shot. I said, oh,
I'm sorry. Did he die? No, No, he didn't die.
It was worse. You know, he got from like the neck down.
And now his mom. The guy was like thirty some years old and
for the last eight or ten years. His mom had had to spoon feed
him every bite that he ate, had to wipe his butt, had to
do everything for this guy that's not in their life little culture, you know,
their little meetings that they talk about and show these guys these things that
wasn't in there. That you either die or you go to prison. No,
you can get paralyzed and your mom could be spoon feeding you, or
your grandma or somebody like that from here on out. That those kinds of
messages don't get out there. You know, you're wounded and you can't you
can't barely walk for the rest of your life, or something like that.
When these machine guns go off, they don't care. They go right through.
And the high speed, the velocity of these things when they go in,
they pulverize organs when they go through. It's it's not really the gun
shot anymore. Speed of the weapon and when that thing goes through the bullet,
the speed of the bullet it goes through. It just liquifies things that's
that are in its path and around it. So you get shot in the
in the in the side of the chest, well, your lungs will be
affected, your kidneys, anything you know. So it's these bullets are incredibly
devastating and the effects aren't just well, I gotta I gotta patch me up,
doc or go back in. It don't work like that much anymore,
you know, Brian, I say, you see it. It'd be good
if some of these young gang bangers could be brought to that guy's hospital bed
in his mother's home to look at his life and say, this is what's
going to happen if you don't get out of this lifestyle. Brian Hammrick could
talk with you. I know you're on the main streets of Cincinnati. At
least they apprehended this morning. The security guard came within an inch of his
life of being murdered. And I would imagine the security guard right now is
looking for some other line of work. Brian Hamrick, once again, between
you and London and Curtis Fuller, one hundred years of repertorial experience, and
keep doing what you're doing. As long as God gives you breath in your
body. No one is better out than Brian Hamrick of the power of five
and thanks againing mister Cunningham. Back at it all right, let's continue now,
that would be interesting. It's not just a funeral. Sometimes living is
worse than dying. Let's continue with more. Bill Cunningham, News Radio seven
hundred WW. On the football field, talent comes in all shapes and sizes,