They were changing marijuana laws in Kentucky, and also a suburbanites reflection on what's
happening in downtown Cincinnati. But joining you and I now is the great Missy
Powers, the Hamley County Prosecutor and Melissa Powers. Welcome again to the Bill
Cunningham Show. And let's kind of begin with going back in time a little
bit, because you have been in law enforcement for twenty five to thirty years
and I think spent about twelve years in juvenile court. And when you were
a judge in juvenile court, you saw it all, you did it all.
You understand this isn't about stealing potato chips from Walmart. This is serious
stuff going on. And what have you seen changing in juvenile court since you
and Judge John Williams were there. And there were several state national awards given,
there were programs and diversion programs. John Williams was recognized by the Bar
Association as the most competent judge in Hamilton County and he was kicked out in
twenty twenty because I guess there was a revolution going on with George Floyd and
all that. But kind of addressed the issue about juvenile court ten to fifteen
years ago. What was happening then as opposed to what's happening now. Well,
first let me correct you. I've got thirty two years now, experienced
three decades and in the courtroom and criminal justice. The amount of time I
spent in Juneile Court as a judge was six years before I retired and then
took this position as prosecutor. So I have a wide range of experiences and
a depth of knowledge through with that three decades. You have to have great
compassion, but you also have to have being able to have great strength.
It's not easy to say you're going to lock the child up and remove them
from their family and their loved ones. That's a very difficult thing to do.
But you have to be able to do that in the appropriate cases.
We never in juvenile court. When I worked with Judge Williams and many great
people such as Carla Gunn who was the court administrator forever, they're you know,
for a very long period of time. We instituted many, many programs
to be able to help children, help families, and while I was there
as the administrative judge the last two years, opened an assessment center that's now
being used I'm not sure which direction it's going in, but the purpose of
that was and when you have a child in crisis, when they're coming into
juvenile court, no matter how small or inconsequential the case may be, such
as say truancy, chronic truancy, we know there's a behavioral problem going on
and there's an issue, and we wanted to be able to provide services immediately
to the children and make families also have access to their services. There was
a residential treatment program that we used. You know, in juvenile court,
you're the focus was always rehabilitation balanced with public safety. So you use rehabilitation
efforts and graduated sanctions for children that come into the courtroom or through our doors,
and to treat everybody equally and fairly. That to be able to develop
effective programs where we had success rates, and we had a number of those
programs to redirect children so that they could have a productive life, to graduate
from high school, to make sure they were out of the criminal justice system,
no matter what background that came from, and we had some great success
stories. I'm very proud of our record. The court now is that it
has the views that are coming from the East Coast from the Ivy League from
New York where they believe anybody walking just walking through the door of juvenile court
is so damaging, so it causes so much trauma to the child that they
shouldn't even come through the doors, that if they come through the doors,
they'll ever say in that court system. So we're seeing cases being dismissed and
categories now of statute that are not being enforced. Just like what you see
in some of these major cities of with prosecutors not prosecuting crime. We now
have a judge excuse, we now have a judge that is not prosecuting entire
categories of crime, unruly, truancy. These are the first steps that when
somebody comes into juvenile court, you can get services immediately before they start escalating
and staying in the system with this court, I think, and if anybody
I know, there's community members out there that is trying to you know,
what is the solution. But the solution really needs to start with there's so
much trauma, earlihood, childhood, trauma that is causing multiple adverse you know,
experiences in their life that puts them on a course that enters into the
criminal justice system. And if you're not addressing that, you're not fixing the
problem. And we have many people that are focused on fixing the problem,
focusing on public safety, and that's the direction of the court. It has
completely lost its way, in my opinion, there is no emphasis on protecting
victims or protecting the community, protecting our small businesses in downtown Cincinnati. There's
also, in my opinion, of failure of transparency, and they hide behind
the cloak we're dealing with children. We want to keep all that information private,
but there is information, you know that we have problems with records upon
a dismissal or not guilty finding. They don't do it's not guilty and its
inn of court. They don't use that language. But the records immediately sealed,
immediately sealed, and no one has access to that information. There's policies
that are being set unilaterally, not without any input. They'll they'll talk to
us and tell us, but we have no input whatsoever, such as this
recent policy on assault charges not being it will not be prosecuted, will be
dismissed. Excuse me, And in fact you're notified prosecutor's office not even notified.
Kind of the big term today is restorative justice and social justice, and
that is that. I listened to one of the community activists and a government
square yesterday and one of the TV news shows who talked about the kids themselves
are not responsible, that they are victims of a society, and you don't
hold children responsible for their criminal misbehavior. They're being manipulated by the system.
And I listen to that, I'm going, what are you talking about that
a sixteen seventeen year old they're not responsible. It doesn't make sense. No,
it does not make sense. And then again they think they're helping these
kids, So what they're doing is they're keeping them still. They go right
back to the community, the most vulnerable communities, high risk communities, and
then they're left on their own, so there's no court intervention with services,
there's no trying to read you these children. They think, you know this
restorative justice, you get the parties together. They think that if you take
them, they walk. Like I said, it is so it's so traumatic,
so damaging to the child walking through the doors of the courthouse that they
shouldn't even be going into the courthouse, that alone being entertained. I mean,
that's basically what it is. And on these assault cases, which makes
no sense to me whatsoever. They're considering this a minor offense, so these
can be offenses of violence. And when they say, you know, I've
read in the paper while we're doing it, because the prosecutors aren't doing their
job, I mean our office, we do everything possible to prosecute every case
to the fullish extent. When we need to have compassion and to work with
a child, we do. If it's a school fight sometimes you know those
things. Matters can be resolved with disorderly conducts, you know, where it's
not anything significant, but you want to be able to take each case and
review it before you just throw the cases out. Now, if a charge
is brought down to juvenile court, it goes to the clerk's office, and
then the clerk puts gives it to a social worker and the charge is dismissed.
We don't even see it. The prosecutor's office doesn't even see it.
The victim isn't notified. And when we say, you know, they said
you can object it, it won't matter. A victim can object, it
won't matter. We are dismissing these charges. That's the policy. We've answered
the policy in writing, we haven't received it. I doubt we'll ever get
anything in writing about their policy. So what happened in the there's been too
recent and there's been many more that have been caught on video, some of
which have been on TV. Last night I watched another woman who had our
son had the crap kicked out him in Washington Park and terrible circumstance. But
on Sixth Street, two of the kids had assault charges were simply summarily dismissed,
and restorative justice essentially means let's get the victim together with the perpetrator,
let's talk and see what we can do to resolve the problem. But there's
not prosecution. What happened on Sixth Street? Was it terrible incident? And
if you had been still a juvenile court judge, you would have treated it
differently. And is it true that two of those charges assault were simply they
were released on bond and the charges were dismissed. But you're not even sure
about that, are you? Am? I understanding the first two that got
arrested for the first incident, and one was an adult, so that's going
through the adult system, and right now, it's my understanding, it's in
the grand jury at some point will be presented the juvenile and I don't know
what the charges are yet because I haven't seen him yet. But he was
released on an ankle bracelet, I believe, So that's all I know about
that. Now that'll go through the system. Now whether or not that charges
dismissed. I would think that because of the public outcry, that that's not
going to happen in this case. But I don't know. I don't know
what's going to happen when these cases are being dismissed. We don't even know
they were filed, so we can't track it. We can't we don't have
a list, we can't contact a victim. There's nothing we can do.
They claim this is the purpose behind it is to teach the children conflict resolution.
Well, how do they get taught anything when the charge is being dismissed?
How do they learn anything when there's no accountability? How do you how
do you intervene on a serious case that needs intervention, It needs so that
we don't see these of revolving door and so that we can get services to
a child that needs it that might be in crisis. How do we even
give any kind of assessment on that when it's just automatically dismissed. So it's
flawed. They're failing our children, they're failing the most vulnerable communities, and
they're and they're failing the general public. I mean you could say, I
can I know the mayor and a lot of people are saying downtown safe that
I bet you see, you know, and and maybe people do feel that
that. I think after seeing that, especially that second video of that violent
attack on a juvenile, do would think they're safe? I mean, you
can understand people that may don't frequent down there, that that might be a
place you might not want to go. And then how does that affect all
of our businesses, you know, that have been made an investment in our
city. And then you can just see how this despiraling of a demise of
any thriving city. People move out, people will leave, and then you've
got then if businesses move out and leave, then you've got the people that
are living down there, they'll move out and leave. I mean, so
this is just a disaster and in so many ways. But what also really
gets me upset is they claim they're helping the child when they're failing the child,
and it's so apparent, and and and they're failing the very communities that
need to help, And I just don't know. I'm glad that the public
is starting to see this. The prosecutor's office, we've been citing it every
single day in the courtroom over dismissals. There are cases where had a child
been held, they would not there would be no retaliatory like digital anti type
of justice between with their konum groups of people our office refers to him as
gangs. The people would be alive. And so there is I mean there
are this is life and death consequences in some of these situations. And speaking
of that, I guess there's a fourteen year old in commonplace court on trial
for murder. A fourteen year old after when I was fourteen years old,
I was worried about stupid stuff like the who will a girl look at me?
A fourteen year old is being a contract killer in order to kill other
people, and that we don't have a verdict yet. It might be later
this afternoon or tomorrow, but isn't in sixteen seventeen year olds being recruited because
there's a sense if you have someone under eighteen commit the crime for you that
the juvenile court system until recently dealt with it harshly. But our juvenile court
system doesn't do that anymore. And so the reason the gang bangers recruit a
fourteen year old on a contract killing because there's a sense not much is going
to happen to the fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old. And if you
go through juvenile court with Judge Kerry Bloom's going to be a restorative justice,
there's going to be social justice, it's going to be conflict resolution, in
which case there won't be any charges filed and not a kid will not be
separated from society. Can you briefly tell us what's happening in that case before
Judge Louver's The verdict is coming out sometime today or tomorrow. We think there's
no doubt the message is loud and clear to those that are high risks,
youth that may commit crime, and even adults that know that the juveniles will
not be held accountable and that know there are no consequences. That is loud
and clear, and they know that that's not a deterrent, and they also
know the older ones can take recruit or take advantage of the ones. So
that's the case that you're talking about, is the murder for higher case,
and that was a gang that was a murder for higher gang operate in our
city. And then during a period of time, I forget how many months,
they were responsible for thirty percent of the homicides in Cincinnati, thirty And
these juveniles, these are the type of kids that must be They're dangerous,
that must be removed from the streets of our city. And I don't know
how anybody can look at that in any different way. They deserve to be
treated and receive the penalties in at all court because the juvenile system could never,
never serve those children, no, never. And Joe Dieters often we're
talking about I'm sorry, Joe Dieters often said that if he could separate five
hundred to one thousand of young folks in Hambleton County the city of Cincinnati,
that the crime rate would go down by seventy percent or more. We're not
talking about systemic problems. We're talking about a small number, small percentage committing
disproportion of crimes, having disproportion and impacts. That's the problem. Do you
buy into that too, That's a small number of people doing it. Really
it is. It is a very small number. And that's why the state
legislature, and I hope people understand what's happening and how this is. The
state legislature is trying to put forward a bill or a law that there will
be no longer juvenile bindovers. And again, this is a pervasive philosophy that
is sweeping our country. And you can see how that policy will fail,
will fail our communities and make us less safe and makes us dangerous. Because
the juvenile system only goes until the age of twenty one. So we have
a juveniles that are responsible for thirty percent of the murders, but if they
reach the age twenty one, they're back on the streets into the adult system.
At least they're subject to fifteen years to life on a murder charge.
On a murder charge, and the rehabilitation can could occur within the prison system.
And that's another area. Why don't you reform there to give you know,
occupation or educational opportunities, whatever it may be. Do the rehabilitation reform
there. Well, Melissa Powers, we have a prosecutor now that knows exactly
what juvenile court should be and it's not that way. And I think that
George Floyd's situation in the summer of twenty twenty calls many in Hamlety County to
say, let's get rid of the current system we have in juvenile court.
Let's change it. And it's changed for the worst. And I can't imagine.
I don't want our city and you and I are like lifelong Cincinnatians Hamley
County residents to go the way of Detroit or Chicago or Atlanta, Washington,
d C. Because I've always thought we were special and unique. And if
we give up, if we say we stop, okay, let Judge Carrie
Bloom and others do exactly what they want to do with conflict resolution or restorative
justice. We got to We're going to look like Toledo, Detroit, We're
gonna look like Portland that declared the ninety day state of emergency because the gangs
have taken over the streets. Well, Melissa Powers, we have to run.
I thank you, and I know you're going to stay strong. The
fight continues every day, and this isn't this isn't your grandfather's juvenile court anymore.
When one part of gangs are creating thirty percent of the murders, and
those murders aren't living in Indian Hill. They're living in Avondale and they're living
in Evanston, and that's the difficulty. Melissa Powers, I'm glad you're there.
Keep stay strong. The wind beneath your wings are the hundreds of thousands
of residents that are behind you in this fight. Good luck, and keep
doing exactly what you're doing. Thank you, Thank you. Bill. I'm
going to continue to fight to save our county. I don't want our beautiful
city to become one like we see so many other cities in our country.
They have been destroyed by these philosophies, these radical activists type judges and the
philosophy. So I'm here to save our county. That's why I accepted the
position and the job, and also to do the right thing to protect our
community. Melissa, thank you very much. Thank you. All right,
Let's continue with more and to have community activists like I iris roly say the
kids aren't responsible, they're victims of our society and they need to be treated
as victims. No, they're the perpetrators that are causing victims. Let's continue
with more. Bill Cunningham, News Radio seven hundred WULW. Now is the
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