May 8, 2013

"The Cleveland police should be ashamed of themselves.... These girls were five minutes away."

"They were looking for years and years. They were right under their nose."
One neighbor remembered occasional late-night deliveries of groceries to the boarded-up shoe box of a house in a rough-edged West Side neighborhood here.

Another remarked on a porch light that burned at night, even though many of the windows were covered.

“Why would an abandoned house have a porch light on?” he recalled thinking.

Still another said his sister had once seen a figure in an upstairs window, pounding on the glass.
ADDED: The quotes above are from the NYT. The Daily News puts it more bluntly: "Cleveland kidnapping house of horrors: Neighbors reported seeing naked women crawling on leashes, a woman with a baby pounding on a window for help... but cops walked away 3 times."
“They didn’t take it seriously,” said Elsie Cintron, who lived three doors down from the ramshackle residence where the three victims finally broke free Monday evening....

On one occasion in the spring of 2012, four local senior citizens called police — and waited two hours in vain for authorities to appear....
AND: The 911 transcript is evidence of the depth of the problem.

111 comments:

Anonymous said...

Except for rationalizing that the 18 year-old who was taken had only run away, with no probable-cause, why would that house stand-out to police? It appears no one in the neighborhood was aware of anything for years.

Are we to now enter Boston-style lock-down mode, with police using "emergency powers" for illegal searches for every crime?

edutcher said...

Search and seizure decisions over the last 50 years or so may have been a factor in this.

We've had similar cases over the years and you can't help wondering.

rhhardin said...

The girls were pretty unresourceful, it seems to me.

KCFleming said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KCFleming said...

"Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter saw a naked woman crawling in the backyard several years ago and called police. “But they didn’t take it seriously,” she said.

Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of the house in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. “They walked to side of the house and then left,” he said.

Lugo said about two years ago his sister told him she heard a woman pounding on a window at Castro's home as if she needed help. When his sister looked up, she saw a woman and a baby standing in a window half covered with a wooden plank. His sister told him and Lugo called the police.

Later, Lugo's mother called the police because Ariel Castro would park his school bus in front of their home and bring bags full of McDonald's and drinks into his home. They wondered why he needed so much food. Police again responded but didn't enter the home.
"

Brennan said...

Have we learned yet if the three brothers all knew about the women in the basement?

It's awfully difficult to believe that all three could have been complicit in the concealment of these women for all these years.

One deranged person I can image. But three in the same house?

Anonymous said...

In the initial reporting, I was struck by the Latina on the porch of the house across the street that did nothing about the screaming woman behind the door.

That and the fact that there were 8 more NYT reporters working on this story than Gosnell. I guess some local stories have national implications and others are just local local stories, like Philly...

KCFleming said...

I have crazy neighbors, a different kind of crazy though.

Cops never come. They act like you're harassing people, so you stop calling.

In our case they eventually removed children from the home after the mother became psychotic and then catatonic.

Once, a man was screaming "I will kill you, you fucking bitch!!" The cops came and talked to him, and told us he was yelling at the cats.

I don't blame the neighbors. Cops never believe you, and in fact despise you for calling.

edutcher said...

Brennan said...

Have we learned yet if the three brothers all knew about the women in the basement?

It's awfully difficult to believe that all three could have been complicit in the concealment of these women for all these years.

One deranged person I can image. But three in the same house?


Not if they were sharing them.

bpm4532 said...

Except for rationalizing that the 18 year-old who was taken had only run away, with no probable-cause, why would that house stand-out to police? It appears no one in the neighborhood was aware of anything for years.

Lots of people were, the cops ignored them.

Are we to now enter Boston-style lock-down mode, with police using "emergency powers" for illegal searches for every crime?

It's already started.

There was a town in CA where it happened about a week ago.

Anonymous said...

Brennan said...
Have we learned yet if the three brothers all knew about the women in the basement?


Three women, three brothers. That IMHO is more than just happenstance. Beyond that, controlling three young women for 10 years alone? hard to do. You gotta sleep sometime...

Astro said...

One neighbor remembered occasional late-night deliveries of groceries to the boarded-up shoe box of a house in a rough-edged West Side neighborhood here.
Another remarked on a porch light that burned at night, even though many of the windows were covered.
“Why would an abandoned house have a porch light on?” he recalled thinking.
Still another said his sister had once seen a figure in an upstairs window, pounding on the glass.


"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Sounds likes an entry for that annual Edward Bulwer-Lytton writing contest.

KCFleming said...

Illegal searches aren't needed.

A man living alone is suddenly seen with a young child in the house, no mother around.

Naked women on a leash crawling in the backyard.

Women pounding on windows inside, yelling.

"Four years ago, in another poverty-stricken part of town, police were heavily criticized following the discovery of 11 women’s bodies in the home and backyard of Anthony Sowell, who was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

The families of Sowell’s victims accused police of failing to properly investigate the disappearances because most of the women were addicted to drugs and poor. For months, the stench of death hung over the house, but it was blamed on a sausage factory next door.

In the wake of public outrage over the killings, a panel formed by the mayor recommended an overhaul of the city’s handling of missing-person and sex crime investigations.
"

But you can bet the traffic ticket fines went up each year.

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...

Are cops members of Unions?

AllenS said...

Just what is the criteria to being hired as a cop in Cleveland? I'll answer that, you have to have a certain number of women and a certain number of minorities. I see a lot of very overweight Cleveland cops, who could give a fuck if they did anything on any given day.

madAsHell said...

Obviously, I'm missing something. Why did it take 10 years to escape??

What event allowed their escape?

"Dead give-away"

Colonel Angus said...

I don't know all the details but last time I checked, cops can't just barge into a home and start looking around.

sakredkow said...

I understand the Cleveland force is doing an internal investigation to see how they missed it, if their methods need to be changed, etc. That's entirely appropriate.

Inappropriate to say "They should be ashamed" at this point. Stuff like that is just demoralizing, doesn't help.

Shanna said...

Illegal searches aren't needed.

Indeed. Naked women crawling around in the backyard, people pounding on the doors, etc...that sounds like probable cause. Go to the judge get a warrant.

Cops just didn't want to be bothered sounds like. Many of them have zero interest in protecting you and if you suggest they do a little extra step they act like you are crazy. (or if you ask them to fingerprint something because someone was trying into your house they refuse and tell you it's 'not like CSI')

Shanna said...

Sorry, trying to break into your house, I meant.

I know cops aren't psychic, and it's easy to look back and say 'why didn't they know' but there is a very real problem with cops ignoring things that they don't consider a priority and I think 'nosy neighbor reports' go low down the totem pole but that is pretty much the only way to catch onto this kind of crime!

AllenS said...

Shanna beat me to it. Probable cause allows the police to have a judge ok a search which enables the cops to do just about anything that they want.

Michael Haz said...

Bad people did bad things in that house, so let's blame the cops for not having x-ray vision.

And let's make sure the courts make probable cause ever more difficult.

And let's blame the cops and sue the cops for accidentally breaking into the wrong house when executing a warrant.

Then let's scream that the cops did nothing.

Colonel Angus said...

or if you ask them to fingerprint something because someone was trying into your house they refuse and tell you it's 'not like CSI')

That's because its not like CSI. The police are not going to bring out a crime scene unit for an attempted burglary. Good grief they'd need an army to handle that.

Shanna said...

The police are not going to bring out a crime scene unit for an attempted burglary.

Or an attempted break in on a woman home alone either, I guess. How do they know it would have just been a burglary?

That's just what I mean, though. It's not a high priority, but they can send two or three cops to do a speed trap and if they think somebody has weed, watch out!

Anonymous said...

"Probable Cause" of which crime? The evidence of which is concealed in the house?

pounding on a door was a crime, there would be lots of people in jail.

After the fact, you might want to talk to the owner of the place, but there would be no evidence of the crime of pounding on a door, to document in a warrant for a search.

search warrants aren't permission to snoop around. You need a crime, and probable cause that evidence of that crime can be found at that location. Which is why if your warrant is for auto theft, you can search the garage, but not toss every drawer in the house...

Colonel Angus said...

Probable cause allows the police to have a judge ok a search which enables the cops to do just about anything that they want.

Actually no, it doesn't. Warrants aren't blank checks that allow the police to turn your house upside down. They need to be specific as to what they are looking for and where they can look. They're not meant to be fishing expeditions.

People go missing all the time and 98% of the time they wind up dead. Now if the police were specifically notified of naked women crawling in the back yard or screaming women pounding on windows and they did nothing then its something to look into. But consider the number of crazy calls the police are responding to on a daily basis and its easy to see how stuff can get overlooked.

I think more to the story needs to be fleshed out before the crucifixion of the police begins.

Brian Brown said...

Have a daughter, relative, or friend kidnapped and held hostage for years right under the noses of local police?

Thank a union.

Brian Brown said...

Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. “They walked to side of the house and then left,” he said.


Too bad they weren't running background checks at gun shows!

That would have helped!

Colonel Angus said...

Or an attempted break in on a woman home alone either, I guess. How do they know it would have just been a burglary?

Because that's the best evidence they have to go on. You do realize that the beat cops don't do investigations or crime scene analysis right? Now perhaps if there had been a series of break ins and assaults of women living home alone then a prudent beat cop would have notified his higher ups but its likely he had several more burgularies to look into that night.

That's just what I mean, though. It's not a high priority, but they can send two or three cops to do a speed trap and if they think somebody has weed, watch out!

That's probably because more people are killed and maimed by reckless speeding each year than homicides and kidnappings.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Donuts and early pensions?

david7134 said...

Colonel angus,
Bad driving does cause more harm. But do you have a single stat that shows that cops help those numbers. For that, consider that cops running traps cause more accidents and injury than if the road is not monitored. We have a cop problem in this country. Look at the horror of Boston as a good example, not the bomb but the followup.

KCFleming said...

"But consider the number of crazy calls the police are responding to on a daily basis and its easy to see how stuff can get overlooked."

I suppose. But Cleveland also overlooked a mass murderer in the same neighborhood, when people could smell the bodies rotting.

So my level of trust in their judgement is rather low.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Where's Officer Bud White when you need him?

Colonel Angus said...

But do you have a single stat that shows that cops help those numbers. For that, consider that cops running traps cause more accidents and injury than if the road is not monitored.

How do speed traps cause more accidents than if they are not monitored?

test said...

Public records show that the property was in foreclosure

I haven't seen a complete history, so I have a ton of questions. There's some discussion of the wife leaving with a kid. Did they live in the same house? If so the kidnappings presumably ocurred afterward. The homeowner's daughter was friends with one victim (which could explain why she accepted a ride when public notoriety was high).

Were the brothers in on it from the beginning or only after the fact? They apparently lived elsewhere, with families? How did they explain why they would visit their brother's home but no one else could? Apparently this guy lost his job leading to the foreclosure. So he seems to have been spiraling out of control.

And I hope some of the people refusing to grant the rescuers credit realize today how wrong they were. If they had called the cops instead of acting the capitives might still be in the basement.

Colonel Angus said...

Look at the horror of Boston as a good example, not the bomb but the followup.

Seems like its damned if you do and damned if you don't.

ricpic said...

Everything is relative, right, lefties? There is no absolute evil, right, lefties?

Shanna said...

If they had called the cops instead of acting the capitives might still be in the basement.

That is an excellent point. This guy didn't sit back and hope the cops would take care of it (which past history shows they wouldn't). He took it on himself to help and good for him. And good for them.

@Colonel Angus, have you read the story above about all the neighbor's calls to the police?

RJ said...

Follow the money.

Drug law enforcement is lucrative because valuable property can be siezed.

Traffic enforcement brings in hard cash. And the possibility of property siezure for drugs.

There's no profit in spending time investigating a weird house.

Anonymous said...

Marshal said...
Apparently this guy lost his job leading to the foreclosure. So he seems to have been spiraling out of control.


We're lucky he had not decided to liquidate his human capital and move somewhere else or been evicted.

jr565 said...

Pogo wrote:
"Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter saw a naked woman crawling in the backyard several years ago and called police. “But they didn’t take it seriously,” she said.
in certain neighborhoods this would be considered neighbors living their lives. Different strokes for different folks as they say.

bagoh20 said...

All the cops needed was someone to suggest that they were growing pot in the house, and the SWAT team would bust down the door. Priorities.

Colonel Angus said...

@Colonel Angus, have you read the story above about all the neighbor's calls to the police?

Yes I have and none of it rises to the level of where a judge is going to issue a warrant to search a home. In what timeframe were these incidents occuring in relation to the girls going missing? Days? Months? Years? As was mentioned earlier, there has to be probable cause in which a warrant is issued. It's real easy to connect the dots after the fact.

bagoh20 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bagoh20 said...

I don't understand how you have that many missing girls in your town and don't take reports of naked women on leashes seriously. Do you really get that many calls like that?

Sir, we have reports of women being abused in this house. Are there any women living here?

Do you mind if we come in and check?

That's step one.

Peter said...

"But the cops don't need you and man they expect the same."

BTW, police can do a "well-being check" if they have an objective basis for believing that an individual’s safety and well-being may be in jeopardy.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

It seems that nothing much changes. If you listen to the 911 call saying that she had been kidnapped for years and had escaped, the dispatcher's attitude was.....'we'll send a car around when we get around to it'. When the girl screamed that they need to do it now before her kidnapper came back...they sort of relented, but wanted to know what the guy was wearing. WTF!!!! you can just hear the hysteria in the girl's voice. HOW SHOULD I KNOW I DIDN'T SEE HIM I WAS A PRISONER.

You can also hear the serious lack of interest, compassion or urgency in the police dispatcher's voice. Ho hum....you were kidnapped.....big deal....when we get some time we will check up on it. Probably too busy filing her nails or playing free cell or something.

And THESE are the people that are supposed to keep us safe. Give up your guns people. Let the competent (not) police take care of you. They will take care of your problem.....if they have the time.


William said...

So far as is presently known, the three brothers were not members of the Tea Party, and there were no guns involved. I was wondering how the left was going to politicize this. It's now becoming clear. The police do not investigate crimes in poor and minority neighborhoods with due diligence. The logic is a bit tricky, but I suppose the point is that if the brothers had been affluent whites, the cops would have broken down their door........This doesn't reflect well on the Cleveland police but the previous cries for help were not so distinct as those at, say, BenGhazi. This is not an optimum situation, but there's always these bumps in the road when doing police work.

Anonymous said...

Well-being check has to have some level of probable cause. It can't just be a low-level SWAT-ing.

CWJ said...

phx,

Read Pogo's comment @7:29.

Cleveland has had its chance to reform their procedures.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

What I want to know is what's the deal with the child who escaped with Amanda Berry. Her daughter? By whom? Is this another Jaycee Dugard case?

Shanna said...

bagoh20 said...
I don't understand how you have that many missing girls in your town and don't take reports of naked women on leashes seriously. Do you really get that many calls like that?


Indeed. Is that really not probable cause of something? Good god, what do they need to investigate, a confession?

test said...

The Drill SGT said...
We're lucky he had not decided to liquidate his human capital and move somewhere else or been evicted.


Quite so.

Shanna said...

What I want to know is what's the deal with the child who escaped with Amanda Berry. Her daughter? By whom? Is this another Jaycee Dugard case?

I beleive that's what's been reported, although they haven't said who the father is. DNA should prove that pretty easily but it will take some time.

Icepick said...

Look, the police don't care about poor areas, save when they need to justify budgets, get on TV, or are looking for a chance to kill someone. Otherwise, poor neighborhoods are just an inconvenience on the way to collecting a fat pension.

test said...

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...
What I want to know is what's the deal with the child who escaped with Amanda Berry. Her daughter? By whom? Is this another Jaycee Dugard case?


They think it's her daughter by the main kidnapper, the homeowner.

Icepick said...

Are cops members of Unions?

Do bears shit in the woods?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

All the cops needed was someone to suggest that they were growing pot in the house, and the SWAT team would bust down the door. Priorities

Quite some years ago, a local grocery store owner had nabbed a guy who was shoplifting for the umpteenth time. He had him "contained"....actually locked in the cold storage room. Called the local sheriff's station and told them to come get the guy. They first gave him a ration of shit for touching the thief and then told him that they couldn't be there for a couple of hours. They were busy. Told him to let him go. He said no and you'd better hurry up because it is effing cold where he is now.

"No....just let him go....we will get him later." (small town, they know where you live) Our friend then informed the dispatcher that if he let him go he would have to shoot him. "Oh....no....you can't do that" "Yes I can. I am afraid that he is armed and will harm my customers. I will have to shoot him if you don't come and get him". The deputies knew that he would definitely do this and it was not an empty threat since our friend was always armed and well known to the deputies. Amazingly enough......they had a car there in about 10 minutes. I guess they had finished up their doughnut run and had the time after all.

THIS is why we are all armed.

test said...

About a week ago, Castro took the 6-year-old girl to a nearby park, where they played in the grass, said Israel Lugo, a neighbor who lives down the street. "I asked him whose kid was it, and he told me his girlfriend's daughter," Lugo said.

Ariel Castro's son, Anthony Castro, said in an interview with London's Daily Mail newspaper that he now speaks with his father just a few times a year and seldom visited his house. He said on his last visit, two weeks ago, his father wouldn't let him inside.


"The house was always locked," he said. "There were places we could never go. There were locks on the basement. Locks on the attic. Locks on the garage."


Jesus, other people were in the house!!!

ndspinelli said...

911 dispatchers run the gamut, from superb to criminally negligent. There is an unsloved murder of a UW student in Madison that was handled despicably. In working civil cases I would always get the 911 tapes if they existed[most depts. keep them 90 days]. Generally, the bureaucrat comes through more than the trained professional.

Colonel Angus said...

I don't understand how you have that many missing girls in your town and don't take reports of naked women on leashes seriously. Do you really get that many calls like that?

You might be amazed at the type of 911 calls that come in. My brother is a cop and you have to develop a good bullshit detector to filter out the real emergencies.

Speaking of naked people, two years ago he got a 911 call, yes, 911 because some guy was mowing his lawn wearing nothing but socks and tennis shoes. So yeah, they get stuff like that all the time. I suppose if they got the call days or weeks after they went missing it might raise suspicion. Years later, probably not.

Crimso said...

When seconds count, the police are only years away.

KCFleming said...

"you have to develop a good bullshit detector"

Here it looks like their bullshit detector wasn't very good.

It wasn't bullshit, but rape and slavery.

edutcher said...

phx said...

I understand the Cleveland force is doing an internal investigation to see how they missed it, if their methods need to be changed, etc. That's entirely appropriate.

It's called CYA, locking the barn door after the horse is gone...

No, it's not appropriate.

Mass firings and prosecutions.

That's entirely appropriate.

Inappropriate to say "They should be ashamed" at this point. Stuff like that is just demoralizing, doesn't help.

Yes, because Cleveland, the poorest big city in the country, is run by the Democrats and the Democrats are run by the unions.

And shame is such a wasted emotion.

They showed true professionalism, once some civilian did their work for them.

DADvocate said...

We're going to send them as soon as we get a car open.

When I first heard teh 911 tape, this jumped out at me. That could take hours. Pathetic. Another lesson on how depending on law enforcement for your safety and well being isn't wise.

Cleveland - there's a reason they call it the "mistake on the lake."

KCFleming said...

"Other women who lived in the neighborhood reportedly told Lugo they saw three men controlling three women on dog leashes crawling around naked in the backyard of the house, according to USA Today. The women who saw this told Lugo that police never responded to their call."

David said...

This is a liberal democratic city. The anchor for Obama's Ohio electoral victory. The fact is they are unwilling to put out much effort on behalf of the proles. Except for electoral turnout.

This example is dramatic and disturbing but the best evidence is failed schools.

doustoi said...

Bad people did bad things in that house, so let's blame the cops for not having x-ray vision.

And let's make sure the courts make probable cause ever more difficult.

And let's blame the cops and sue the cops for accidentally breaking into the wrong house when executing a warrant.

Then let's scream that the cops did nothing.

So, that “To Serve and Protect” thing, that just looks good on the side of the patrol car?

James said...

@Pogo...the really odd thing is that the police are now claiming they have no records of those calls. They even dispatched police to check out the house and yet they don't have records. The Cleveland police needs overhauling from top to bottom especially in the light of the Anthony Sowell serial killings.

Nomennovum said...

Relying on the cops is a sucker's game.

Achilles said...

This is why citizens be allowed to retain the right of self defense. Even if the police did their job properly it would be hard for them to stop this. And I don't want them to have the power to bust down doors willy nilly.

The other issue here is we now have law enforcement instead of peace officers. The police focus too much on fines and confiscation, too little on service and protection. But that makes sense as they are generally a unionized leftist constituency now. The left has little regard for freedom.

Shanna said...

L@Pogo...the really odd thing is that the police are now claiming they have no records of those calls.

I don't find that odd at all. You get the feeling when you call the police (not 911, which I haven't called) that they really don't want to make a record of anything and it's a huge hassle if you ask them to. They probably don't record half of the stuff.

Instead of just saying that since police get calls about naked people mowing the lawn it's completely understandable that they should ignore calls about naked women on leashes, why don't we look at the process and see what might help. Maybe if you get multiple calls about one house, you should bump that up a notch? That would require good tracking. Maybe we should listen to nosy neighbors more? I don't know what the answer is but ignoring stuff like this left these women chained up for years.

Colonel Angus said...

Maybe if you get multiple calls about one house, you should bump that up a notch?

Bump what up a notch? Do you not understand that people call the police for all kinds of things, few of which warrant the cops to search your house?

Is a naked woman on a leash a crime or someone acting out a weird perversion? Again in what timeframe did the reports occur, days after she went missing? Months, years? I don't think you understand that judges don't hand out search warrants purely because something looks odd. The individual has to be under suspicion of some illegal act and quite frankly, nothing reported rises to the level of illegality.

I don't think we want police doing home searches based upon something being odd.

Mitch H. said...

But Cleveland also overlooked a mass murderer in the same neighborhood, when people could smell the bodies rotting.

In the defense of the Cleveland cops, the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood where Anthony Sowell's house was is a dozen miles away from the Castro house, and on the other side of the city. It's not as if they were neighbors.

But good god, this story sounds worse and worse. Makes Cleveland sound like a Detroit that hasn't yet realized it's a dead city.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

I don't think we want police doing home searches based upon something being odd.

No. We don't! If we allow random searches without cause, then we have given up not only our rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, we have caved into a police state where no one is free and anyone can be arrested or detained on trumped up charges with no basis or due process. Giving up our freedoms for the ILLUSION of safety is a fools game.

And in the defense of the police, especially in the urban areas, they do get a lot of stupid and NOT emergency calls. People complaining that their Taco Bell order wasn't right. Constantly being called out on domestic issues and when they get there the people have changed their minds or made up.

To deal with the stupidity that we see on display in the inner cities, the morons on a daily basis....would put you into a less than urgent mind set about many of these calls or incidents. This, plus putting themselves in harms way for a bunch of ungrateful idiots.

The responsible and law abiding people are becoming outnumbered by the sheep and by the wolves. Thank goodness that there are still some people, like Mr. Ramsey, to take the initiative and help out instead of leaving it up to some faceless government lackey to be responsible.

Since we can't rely on the police, we MUST rely on ourselves. This means being armed, aware and vigilant. The government doesn't want an armed and responsible citizenry. The government is NOT here to help us. They are here to CONTROL us. Don't be fooled.

test said...

Colonel Angus said...
I don't think we want police doing home searches based upon something being odd.


I suspect cops routinely search with much less cause than the incidents described when they desire to.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Colonel Angus,

Is a naked woman on a leash a crime or someone acting out a weird perversion?

Don't you think it might be prudent to find out which? I doubt that public nudity is legal in Ohio, with or without leashes.

Again in what timeframe did the reports occur, days after she went missing? Months, years?

You think this matters? An NPR report this morning said that there are hundreds of unsolved missing persons reports in Cleveland alone. If it wasn't these three women, it might have been any number of others.

Shanna said...

Don't you think it might be prudent to find out which?

Seriously. You don't have to turn things into a police state to ask to talk to a woman who is allegedly here. And they could have escalated to surveilance, if they couldn't get a warrant but that would have required them to take the neighbors seriously, which they obviously didn't.

I do agree with DBQ, this is reason number 19872397843 why this 'just trust the police to handle it' idea is bonkers. Numerous reports to police but it took a neighbor breaking down the door to get these girls rescued. God Bless Charles.

Colonel Angus said...

Don't you think it might be prudent to find out which? I doubt that public nudity is legal in Ohio, with or without leashes.

Sure. I'm confident a judge will grant a warrant based upon some kid claiming she saw a naked woman on a leash in a neighbors backyard.

Again in what timeframe did the reports occur, days after she went missing? Months, years?

You think this matters?

Yeah, I think it matters quite a bit. I wish our law enforcement and judicial system worked like the crack outfits on Law and Order and CSI, however the reality is they don't, sometimes due to negligence and sometimes because you just cant stop every crime or investigate every oddity that is reported in hopes of uncovering some illegal act.



Baron Zemo said...

Cleveland has a long history of corruption and incompetence in their police department going all the way back to when they hired Eliot Ness to clean it up in 1935.

Of course he turned out to be very "touchable" in the role and was ousted after drinking himself off the job while messing up a drunk driving hit and run.

Since Cleveland is the home of frequent commenter Loafing Oaf we can be sure that most 911 call are ignored but Sarah Palin's vagina is under 24 hour surveillance. Just sayn'

Anonymous said...

Blame sequester.

mariner said...

Someone should have reported a suspicion that there were a few marijuana seeds in the house.

Then the cops would have stormed the house in the middle of the night.

mariner said...

dustoi,
So, that “To Serve and Protect” thing, that just looks good on the side of the patrol car?

It's been decades since I've seen that on the side of a police car.

Police are neither required nor expected to protect you, per the U.S. Supreme Court.

Colonel Angus said...

I suspect cops routinely search with much less cause than the incidents described when they desire to.

If you willingly let them in the house.

ed said...

When seconds count the police are ... decades away?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Again in what timeframe did the reports occur, days after she went missing? Months, years?

You can't be serious. It doesn't matter WHO is the naked woman on a dog leash in the back yard. It has NOTHING to do with these particular women but rather with the fact that such an occurrence.....naked woman, any woman...any time.....anywhere.....on all fours with a leash isn't of enough interest to the cops to actually do more than knock on the door and then go away. They aren't even curious?

I don't think anyone is saying break down the doors without a warrant, but they could certainly have put in at least a minimal amount of effort to investigate to see if there is something worth looking at.

You are just making up stupid excuses. I imagine YOU would be one of those see nothing, do nothing neighbors.

ed said...

@ Colonel Angus

"I don't know all the details but last time I checked, cops can't just barge into a home and start looking around."

Yes they actually can. It's just that if they find any evidence of a crime it probably won't be admitted in a criminal court. But they can still break in without a warrant or prior authorization.

And if I were a cop and someone told me that they saw a naked woman on a leash crawling in the backyard you bet your ass I would be kicking my through the door ASAP.

Shanna said...

You are just making up stupid excuses.

Indeed. You can support cops in general without rubber stamping this kind of willful ignorance. They could have made a greater lawful effort to find out what was going on and they chose not to. That's on them.

Shanna said...

But they can still break in without a warrant or prior authorization.

exigent circumstances.

Zach said...

The earlier reports are chilling in retrospect, but based on the information I've heard so far, I don't see how anyone could act on them. Naked women on leashes -- Cleveland has 400,000 people. Some of them are going to be crazy, some of them are going to be weird, and lots of them are going to complain about their neighbors. If you were a police officer and didn't hear any aggravating details, you'd assume that some people were getting freaky and bothering the neighbors.

The 911 dispatcher did not cover himself with glory. The NY Daily news article has a recording of the call, and the boredom and detachment in the dispatcher's voice is palpable. There is a very strong message of "get off the phone and stop bothering me."

Dust Bunny Queen said...

you'd assume that some people were getting freaky and bothering the neighbors.

YOU might make that assumption. A police officer is duty bound to investigate whether that is the case or not.

Kirby Olson said...

Castro in Cleveland holds three women in captivity for ten years. The nation is appalled. Castro in Cuba holds millions of people in captivity for decades. No one cares.

Zach said...

YOU might make that assumption. A police officer is duty bound to investigate whether that is the case or not.

What is your suspected crime here? Public nudity? A noise complaint? The people who called in thought it was funny at first, and only called when they got weirded out.

If you can connect a vague report like that to a ten year old kidnapping with any kind of reliability, you need to go work for the psychic hotline.

Shanna said...

The 911 dispatcher did not cover himself with glory.

Especially since he ended the call by saying 'fucking bitch' under his breath. Ass.

The people who called in thought it was funny at first, and only called when they got weirded out.

Their instincts were clearly better than the police, but they aren't in charge of investigating this kind of stuff. The police are. If neighbors calling about women on leashes was not considered high priority before maybe they should revise that opinion in light of further information!

Between this story, and the one of that girl that was in that other guys backyard for 15 years, maybe the cops should start being a little more suspicious of stuff like this.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

If you can connect a vague report like that to a ten year old kidnapping with any kind of reliability, you need to go work for the psychic hotline.

No one said that a report of nude women crawling on all fours and on leashes HAD to be connected to any old crime or disappearance. That is NOT the point.

The mere fact of one such report of an instance of nude women on leashes or several reports of such occurrences, would warrant a bit more attention than just a ho-hum, knock on the door once and then just forget about it response from the people who are paid to protect the public and investigate whether a crime might....or might not be occurring. THAT IS THEIR FUCKING JOB for which they get paid and have some pretty sweet benefits. I think that the cops should be held accountable for not doing their duty.

Whether it turns out to be those girls who had been abducted, some other girls in sexual slavery situations ....or just people having kinky lifestyles which is not a crime and who should be told to take it inside and not disturb the neighbors....

The police are duty bound to find out what the hell is going on. They didn't care enough to even TRY. Had they tried, then perhaps those girls would have been spared YEARS of suffering.

It was their JOB.....they didn't do it. The whole system seems to be riddled with incompetent, lazy, uncaring people from the Dispatcher all the way to the top.

test said...

Dust Bunny Queen said...
No one said that a report of nude women crawling on all fours and on leashes HAD to be connected to any old crime or disappearance. That is NOT the point.


I don't know what's so hard to understand about this. If you see a women with multiple bruises it's always possible she's an MMA fighter or likes rough sexual games, but it isn't certain. That's why we ask them if they're ok.

Baron Zemo said...

In the early morning hours of May 27, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested in 1988) was discovered on the street, wandering naked, heavily under the influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Two young women from the neighborhood found the dazed boy and called 911. Dahmer chased his victim down and tried to take him away, but the women stopped him.[31] Dahmer told John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, police officers dispatched to the scene, that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the protests of the two women who had called 911, who recognized him from the neighborhood and insisted that he was a child and could not speak English, the officers turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent while inside Dahmer's apartment, but did not investigate it. The smell was the body of Tony Hughes, Dahmer's previous victim, decomposing in the bedroom. The officers did not make any attempt to verify Sinthasomphone's age or identity, nor locate someone who could communicate with him, and failed to run a background check that would have revealed Dahmer being a convicted child molester still under probation.[32] Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.
(Some things never change)

Baron Zemo said...

It is not community policing.

It is politically correct policing.

Zach said...

The mere fact of one such report of an instance of nude women on leashes or several reports of such occurrences, would warrant a bit more attention than just a ho-hum, knock on the door once and then just forget about it response from the people who are paid to protect the public and investigate whether a crime might....or might not be occurring. THAT IS THEIR FUCKING JOB for which they get paid and have some pretty sweet benefits. I think that the cops should be held accountable for not doing their duty.

You still haven't identified how you're distinguishing this report from a standard noise complaint. Is it because women were involved? I hate to break it to you, but out of 400,000 Clevelandites, approximately 200,000 are women.

Several reports... you've got a database of 911 calls now? What are your search terms? From 2004 to 2011, you've got a total of three 911 calls, with essentially zero connection between them.

Until someone contacts the police with evidence of an actual crime, I don't see what they could have acted on.

Shanna said...

You still haven't identified how you're distinguishing this report from a standard noise complaint.

Naked with a leash. Yep, that's just like your standard 'my neighbors kid has the radio too loud' complaint. Hell, I had police show up at a part I was at with approximately 10 people bbq'ing in the backyard that were more curious than this (although they looked a little sheepish about it).

I hope none of you purposefully dense people are actual police officers, but it sounds like you couldn't be much worse than the ones we already have.

Sabinal said...

you guys will not condemn the neighbors - especially the ones who went to Castro's barbeque -- but you will condemn the cops???

Baron Zemo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Baron Zemo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sydney said...

I'm not sure how true some of these "I reported.... years ago" stories are. They seem to be getting all jumbled up in the coverage. One time the reported story is that naked women on leashes were seen, another time it's "my daughter saw a naked woman crawling on the ground in the back yard." The latter one might have happened- maybe an escape attempt that was aborted by the captors. But I doubt these guys were walking around their back yard with the women on leashes. They seemed to go to great lengths to keep them out of the public eye.

Remember- news reporters are basically gossip mongers. Don't believe everything they report.

Baron Zemo said...

Hey this is what it is all about.

Give twelve year old kids the abortion pill without telling the parents.

Kill the baby even if it survives the butcher.

Naked girl on a leash.

Who are you to inflict your morality on anyone else you bougie
christianist?

KCFleming said...

"you guys will not condemn the neighbors -- but you will condemn the cops???"

Yes.
I have been one of those neighbors that called and called about worrisome goings-on next door, that later proved correct, and the cops ignored me and acted as if I were a crank.

It's much the same anywhere.
Except in richer neighborhoods.
Except for random drunk driving stops.
Except for 5 miles over the speed limit.
Except for the UW Madison beer parties.

Then the cops come running.

Wally Kalbacken said...

Those poor girls were like the Castro Bros' Monica Lewinski, if you know what I'm sayin'.

William said...

Perhaps there should be some sort of independent body like FAA to pass judgement on police investigations where there is such a strong possibility that the affair was botched. I don't know if there was actual incompetence here, but I wouldn't trust the Cleveland police either to make that determination.

Zach said...

You still haven't identified how you're distinguishing this report from a standard noise complaint.

Naked with a leash.


S&M imagery has been on the freaking Superbowl halftime show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npF1lkKEM9o

A simple thought experiment (because I don't want to see the results): go to Google and type in "naked girl leash." Of all the hits that you get, how many are kidnappers and how many are weird sex sites?

test said...

His brothers, who were originally arrested in the case, were not charged and had no knowledge of what Castro, 52, is accused of doing, according to police.

From reuters. Interesting. It makes me feel better that he wasn't able to communicate his desires for fear of being turned in. But how did he keep three women hostage by himself?

test said...

It also looks like the sightings of naked leashed women in the backyard are false.

ampersand said...

Those girls are lucky it wasn't the Milwaukee cops. They may have been returned to the perps.