Dark and walk in the glorious Monday afternoon in the Tri State. The weather.
If you don't like the weather, just wait twenty four hours. We're
going to go from cold to ice to snow to seventy degrees and sixty miles
per hour winds and who knows what comes next Tuesday and Wednesday, plus later
on we have on from Columbus, Jack Windsor to talk about what's happening in
the state's capital. At two o'clock is Leland Viddert of News Nation, who
was on site for the South Carolina primary. And this is being spun by
some as a victory for Nicky Haley when she loses her home state by twenty
one points, that's a win. If that's a win, I don't want
to see a defeat, my god. She's the two term governor of South
Carolina and well respected, gets hammered at home by Donald Trump. But until
then, Once again, last week, Channel nine ran a story still being
investigated about an additional twenty nine year old man who had the crap kicked out
of him in and around Fountain Square and Government Square. And there's great concern
from the social activist the Irish Roly crowd that something's got to be done,
which is generally higher social activists a lot of money to walk around and do
nothing. That's my editorial comment. But Ken Kober is the president of the
FOP and he's also walking in the shoes of Dan Hills, Elmer dunnaway in
the high heels of Kathy Harold and Ken Coober. Welcome again to the Bill
Cunningham Show. But I read something about a new judge in Hamlety County,
and this is indicative of a general problem. It was simply misbehavior by one
judge, you kind of let it go. But when it's representing so much
about what's happening. Judge Samantha Silverstein, newly elected I think, took office
a couple months ago, has enacted some policies and a little birdie whispered in
my ear that a lot of the cops are not are quite unhappy with what's
going on. So, first of all, Ken Cober, welcome this Monday
afternoon of the Bill Cunningham Show, and tell us your concerns about this new
judge. Samantha Silverstein, Hi, Bill, thanks for having me. Yes,
yeah, I've immediately got complaints as soon as she took the bench.
She decided to an active rule that says cops are not allowed to sit in
a jury box, so which has been a practice and is done now in
every other municipal courtroom. But hers if they want to sit in there and
wait for their cake to be called, they can sit with the defendants in
the gallery, or they can stand out the hallway and wait for their case
to be called. Now, I'm going to go back in time because many
don't understand what we're discussing. As far back as I can recall, in
the nineteen seventies, in municipal court, there's a jury box to the right
or left of the bench, and there's generally eight to twelve seats in there,
and it's traditional to have cops in uniform from Springfield Township CPD, Anderson
Township, Harrison, whoever it might be, deputy sheriffs, and the cops
are there in case their testimony is needed on a preliminary hearing or an emotion
first appearance, whatever it might be. It's good to have the person who
arrested the defendant to be present so that the cop can say, you're on
and this is what happened, and the cop signs an under oath Haffi day.
But this is what the defendant did. And so the reason the cops
are in the jury box is because if the cops are out in the hallway,
then they interact with defendants and defense counsel and family members. Things can
get heated if they're sitting in this more or less the audience. You're sitting
with once again, defendants who have not been arrested yet and or family members.
And the gun, the mace is applicable to people to your right and
left. It's like theater seating so many a half a century ago or longer.
The judge and said, look, police officers in uniform with weapons,
you sit in the jury box. And then if I need you to fill
in the blanks, you're right there. And so have have you requested a
meeting? And what is the reason that Judge Silverstein, a brand new judge,
suddenly said we're not going to do that anymore, breaking presidents of a
half a century? Was there a reason? Given? My understanding is that
she said, it makes it looks like these cops are on a pedestal,
like they have their own place to sit, and she's just not going to
allow it. She came out of the Public Defender's office and legal aid,
what do your coppers say about that? How is that received? Well,
they're beyond frustrated. And like I said, not only is it a matter
of they're not on a pedestal, they're there just because they're supposed to be
their off duty. Mind you, granted they're being paid that these are people
that have already worked second or third shift, you know, the day before,
the night before. You know, they're now waiting there, and there
are certain safety concerns that if they're sitting there with the general public and they
decide that they want to try to grab, whether it's their taser, their
mace, they're gone. Those are safety concerns that these officers have that are
real safety concerns. And it's the only judge in municipal court that has this
practice. That's what's really concerning. And so the officers say, this is
dangerous for us, it's dangerous for the public. Have you sign a direct
meeting with Judge Samanthus Silverstein or not? So I have myself and another a
high ranking command staff officer within the police department reached out to her several times
asking to meet just so we could understand her perspective. Maybe there is some
kind of rationale that we don't know about that would make sense for this.
I couldn't understand possibly whatever they could be, but you know, just trying
to be a decent person, I'm like, you know, let's just see
what she has to say. And she's declined to meet with us, said
basically, I'm not going to them. So that's kind of where it stands.
As far as the second and third shift. When I spent my years
there, there are cops that are getting off at seven am, and they've
been up for many times twenty four hours, and they're off duty in a
sense because they're on duty, but they get paid overtime when they work past
forty hours. And I've seen these cops kind of shuffle in and sit in
the jury box so they can relax a little bit. And they also provide
security for the courtroom because if the cops are outside in the hallway, if
something happens inside the courtroom. I've had it happen more than once. We're
an officer in uniform sprung to duty because of the way the defendant was behaving,
and there's not like armed bailiff in the municipal court anymore, so the
cops are like there to provide security. And then it also to have a
police officer, having just worked an eight to twelve hour shift, stand outside
in the hallway waiting for the case to be called, meandering around. It's
just disrespectful to the police. And do you think, Ken Cober, this
is a bigger problem by certain judges and Samantha Silverstein, I know almost all
of them. She's brand new. She moved to our community about seven or
eight years ago, and she came through legal aid and she beat Kirk Kissinger,
who was I think a fine judge who understood the role of law enforcement.
Is there something larger, because if that's the signal, sense the police
officers, who are the thin blue line between democracy and anarchy, they ought
to get a little special place, they ought to be to sit down and
jerry box away from the defendants they've just arrested. Is there any sense this
is symptomatic of a larger problem. Well, sure it is. It just
shows you the disrespect that's going on within law enforcement. You know that they
don't care. We're worried about the defendant and what the defendant might think more
than we are the officer, and all I'm asking is to be equal.
They are innocent until they're proven guilty. However, there are certain circumstances where
an officer should be given a little bit of treatment that would be maybe a
little bit better than the public, only because they've got weapons scrafted their shoulder
to their waste, and we don't want anybody to try to be attacking these
officers. I don't think that's too much to ask, and clearly all the
other municipal court judges don't feel it's too much to ask either, because that's
a common practice. She is the only one that is doing this, and
this is a young female, brand new judge who wants to implement kind of
the theory he's had and been taught in law school and by Legal Aid and
by the Public Defender's Office about certain criminal justice issue at ken Cober. Do
you have a sense the things have metastasized the last month with the two attacks
downtown of a mob of teenagers, and then also Channel nine had a story
Wednesday of last week that another twenty nine year old was jumped. I understand
from Channel nine that thing is still under investigation, but you've been around a
long time as a police officer, how would you describe the respect given to
law enforcement by members of the community. That's different now than it was ten
or twenty years ago. There's much less respect than there ever was. I
mean, just treating somebody with common decency is something that just doesn't occur anymore
when you're talking citizen to citizens, So it's only spilling over into law enforcement.
And they've been nothing but emboldened and empowered by what we've seen in national
politics local politics, where the disrespect for law enforcement's okay, and that is
something that absolutely has to change. Can you give us some a police perspective.
I see these well intended social activists like Iris Roli at Government Square during
these bus transfers, acting as if, okay, we're down here, we're
keeping an eye on things, and in reality, that's a band aid on
a cancerous tumor. Do you have some resolution or something to Is it the
bus pass system? Should we not have dozens of dozens and dozens of teenagers
out of the public school system transferring downtown? Is there some placebo that could
be used here or is there a deeper problem? Well? Sure, let
me first start by saying, you having these social activists downtown, it does
appear to be helping somewhat, but it's something that's just not sustainable. They're
not going to be able to be there every day, every minute of every
hour making sure that these kids are doing what they're supposed to be doing.
So in the interim, it is a it's helping alleviate a little bit of
the problem. The problem is the moment that they leave is the moment that
these bad actors are the ones that are going to continue to convent these crimes.
So they have to look at the root of what is being caused,
why are these things occurring? And the first thing is, and you hit
on it is allowing kids from all fifty two neighborhoods to come down in a
central location where they really don't like each other to begin with. It gives
them a venue to fight. Yeah, and that's all it does. And
you have kids from the East Side that don't like kids from the West Side,
and oh, well, we'll see them down there tomorrow after school or
today before school and then we'll just fight then. So they've got to find
a solution to moving these kids about around the city and understand that there are
a lot of kids that come down there every day that don't do wrong.
It's the same forty fifty sixty seventy kids out of five hundred that are the
problem. And that's what they need to figure out, is how do we
address these fifty sixty kids. Do you identify them and maybe you take their
privileges away to come downtown. Yeah, because if they don't have a bus
pass, they're not going to be putting money in a machine to get on
a metro bus. They'll stay in their neighborhood. And if they're going to
come down and commit these crimes, maybe they should be staying in their neighborhood
where they won't be subjected to the other kids that are just trying to go
to school and get an education. Ken kober I can say this, you
can't the face of crime and Cincinnati is largely a black male face between the
ages of fifteen and thirty years old, and that group represents a tremendous amount
of crime committed. But the great majority eighty ninety ninety five percent of those
kids from Tafft to Ache and the Western Hills or as good as my son
or as good as your son. They're good people. They simply want to
get on with their life and stay out of trouble. And so the face
of crime and Cincinnati is largely a young black male face. But the great
majority of young black males have nothing to do with crime. In fact,
they're the victims of crime. They're the ones who want the law to be
enforced. But somehow those lines are blurred, and that if a racist through
somebody who's race, will think that young black males commit crimes. Well,
the great majority of young black males have no desire to commit any crime.
They're the victims of it and they want it stopped. And if we could
separate from our society about three to four or two percent of young black males
who repeatedly commit crime, life would be a whole lot better. And nobody
can say that because you can't use a racial element. But having spent years
and years in the criminal justice system, go to room A and just watch
the age and the race of those who show up as identified by their victims,
and it's a black male face. It's rare to have someone other than
that commit serious crime. And the issue is this, There was a time
about ten years ago when the inquiry put the face of every person killed in
the city of Cincinnati, and one hundred percent of the faces were black,
and that was deemed to be racist and racial and wrong, and the Inquire's
never done it since. Because the great majority of black folks want the same
level of law enforcement that you and I want, and the great majority want
that. They don't like living hiding behind the locked doors and not able to
go out at night. That's a problem. But those who commit crime,
the small percentage, the small number of young black males who commit crime,
neil to be dealt with harshly to send a message this behavior is unacceptable.
And what part of my little diet tribe there do you agree with or disagree
with? You're absolutely correct. I mean, the ninety percent of the people,
ninety five percent of the people in this city don't go commit crimes,
right, And it's equally as high as the amount of people that don't want
crimes being committed. But a lot of these problems all come down, and
it all starts at the same things in this young kid's house. Because the
kid that at five or six years old, is screaming, throwing temper tangents
at the grocery store that isn't getting corrected. Is the same kid that at
ten, eleven and twelve years old is now running to Kroger and you want
a bag of chips and you know, and some pop. And then by
the time they're fourteen and fifteen, they're stealing guns, but the cars downtown
and now they're shooting each other. It all starts at the home. And
I don't think anybody, regardless of race, regardless of where you live in
this country, regardless of your political feelings, no one is going to disagree
that these problems all start within your home. That's what needs to be ultimately
addressed in order to get something to change here in the society that we're living
in. It must be culturally unacceptable to have children out of wedlock, culturally
unacceptable to commit crime, culturally unacceptable to fantasize about criminal misbehavior. It's got
to be culturally unacceptable to be a bad dude. It's got to be more
acceptable to have the kid that gets high grades, that's the kid that you
admire, and not the one who beat someone else up. But the government
square bus stop and to go back thirty to forty to fifty years and say
the problem began when fathers were paid not to be in the home, and
fathers need to sit on sons more than mothers need to sit on daughters for
some reason. The face of crime about ninety percent or more committed by males
of whatever racial category. Males commit more, great more crime than females.
And young men need stern fathers who love them dearly and want to be with
that person and correct them when they do things wrong. And at the end
of the day when it doesn't work out that way, we need a juvenile
court judge, and we need judges the municipal court and elsewhere all over the
tri state to come down like a ton of bricks on young folks in the
beginning when they commit crime so it doesn't metastasize, and not to give no
bonds and no sentencing. And what's happening is happening in every major city.
Ken Cobra or the FOP, we understand every city in America has exactly the
same problem. Now Here, it's not as bad yet as Detroit and Cleveland
and Atlanta and Washington, d C. And Baltimore. But unless we have
judges that respect law enforcement and separate the good from the bad and correct those
individuals through incarceration. We're going to have the same argument years from today,
and it's not about race because the great majority of black folks have nothing to
do with crime. But when wrongdoers are identified, they must be held accountable
for their misbehavior and ken Kober. Lastly, in the good old days,
there was one thousand, two thousand people showing up to take the police test
at Duke Energy Center. Your friend Dan Hills told me about six months ago,
a year ago, we need more cops. If we would pay cops
in Cincinnati to start one hundred thousand dollars to start, and then from there
you move on up the ladder from there, wouldn't it be much easier to
get cops instead of spending money on street cars for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Would you agree that if we paid people more money, more would take
the test and we'd have better law enforcement. Well, sure, there's no
doubt. I mean you look at UPS and sat Ex and some of these
other places that are paying those salaries to start. If the city wants to
do that, that would certainly go a long way. And we are just
beginning contract negotiations so now would be a good time for the city to decide
what kind of department and what kind of safety do they want to have in
this city. As we go through this negotiation process, it's going to be
interesting to see where their priorities truly lie, Ken Cober, thank you.
But Judge Shamantha Silverstein is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Much like Judge Carrie Bloom who controls juvenal Court. They got to do
their jobs. It begins with the respecting law enforcement who every day put their
life on the line. The thin blue line between democracy and anarchy are cops
and to show them this disrespect, to make the courtroom more dangerous, is
not what a judge should do. Ken Cober, once again, thank you
for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show, and Ken, we'll do it again.
Thank you very much, Thanks and thanks for having me. Let's continue
with more. Yeah, the face of crime in Cincinnati as a young black
male fan, but the great majority of young black males have nothing to do
with crime. Let's continue. Bill Cunningham, News Radio seven hundred WLW.
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