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On The Line: A Night of Turmoil in North Toledo
By Councilman Larry Sykes
Guest Column
5:45 P.M. July 30, 2018 I received a call from Mayor Wade
Kapszukiewicz asking me if I had a minute, I said sure
“what’s up?”
He then said there had been a shooting in the North End and
involving a person of interest and a Toledo police officer.
Concerned, I asked several questions: did the suspect have a
gun, were shots exchanged, what was the age of suspect, was
he shot in the front or back?
Because the mayor had just been informed of the situation he
could not answer any of my questions but would let me know
as soon as he received an update.
6:00 P.M:
I turned on the television news and was shock that they were
reporting that a white officer had shot a black youth, I
then went to social media and saw reports that a WHITE COP
HAD SHOT A 16-YEAR OLD SEVEN TIMES IN THE BACK, ANOTHER SITE
STATED THE 16-YEAR OLD WAS ON HIS KNEES WITH HIS HANDS UP
WHEN SHOT!
At that point, I decided
to go to the scene and see for myself. I was concerned that
situation could become incendiary based on the information
that was getting out.
6:30 P.M: I
arrived on the scene and was taken aback by both the large
crowd and the hostile atmosphere exhibited by the crowd that
had gathered based on unverified reports. As I survey the
crowd, I noticed young children, young adults and many
bystanders curious about what happened.
As I turned off Lagrange
onto Hudson Street I saw 20 -30 police officers lined up
across Hudson Street in an effort to prevent people from
getting to the crime scene. I looked around and saw a number
of individuals taunting the officers and calling them
horrible, vile names. People were putting their phones in
the officer’s face to record him or her or to take a
picture.
I approached the line of
officers identified myself and asked to be taken to Chief
George Kral.
I asked the chief for an
update and he informed me of the name and age of the
deceased. I was told that the young man showed a weapon and
refused to put it down as directed by the officers. I was
told that suspect was shot facing the officer and not in the
back.
I was also informed that
TPD had been trying to arrest the young man for several
months for robbing four commercial businesses, and that he
had stolen a car in East Toledo that morning but TPD lost
him during the chase. I asked was there video footage of
this and he assured me there was. I said ok.
7:00 P.M:
I saw Earl Mack and Chris McBrayer who were both there and
we had a conversation about what was happening. We discussed
how we should help contain this situation .We all agreed to
engage the crowd so we decided to placed ourselves between
the crowd and the police.
I would take the middle,
Chris would take the right side and Earl would take the left
side. As the three of us were strategizing, Nathanial
Livingston called me out for standing behind the line of
officers and said “Councilman Sykes why are you with them
and not over here with us?”
I responded to him that
there is no THEM or US we are all TOLEDEONS. We then took
our positions.
As I stood there observing
the crowd it became crystal clear to me that all it would
take to set off a full-scale melee would be for one crazy
individual to throw something at the officers or one of the
agitators who was being belligerent to the officers put his
hands on them, spit on them at which point an officer might
respond physically.
7:30 P.M:
As we monitored the crowd there were key individuals whom we
saw as the key leaders and we stayed close to them. The
person that I was tasked to monitor was a young male about
25 with a Pittsburgh Steelers Jerome Bettis jersey on and he
was clearly out of control. He started out cursing the
officers but when he saw that the crowd was reacting to his
behavior he then took his jersey off and started to confront
the officer’s face to face and taking pictures of them with
his phone.
From the time I arrived
at 6:30 and until 8:00, he baptized the Caucasian and
African American officers with calling them the word N…. and
“my N…” It was so bad that one of the deputy chiefs of
police asked me, “Councilman, why does he call us the N
word?”
I explained to him that it
was ignorance and mental illness. I was getting tired of
seeing his behavior and the impact he was having on the
officers and his attempt to incite the crowd I decided to
approach him.
8:00 P.M: I
approached the young man with the Pittsburgh jersey and
asked him why was he acting this way and what was his point
in using the N word so much? He laughed and said Bro I am
just F….with them MF’s.
I said to him YO BRO you
need some love? He laughed and I said “no, give me a hug?”
He laughed and I hugged him and he started crying and said
if my grandmother knew what I was doing she would beat my
A..! I keep hugging him in front of the crowd and the police
and told him that it would be all right and it’s ok to be
yourself! He stopped confronting the officers and stopped
being an agitator.
8:20 P.M:
On my right an African-American female in a green dress with
a Slurpee in her hand joined the crowd she was accompanied
by four young children (approximately four, six, seven,
eight years of age) she immediately begin verbally
insulting the officers by calling the African-American
officers Uncle Toms and traitors to their community for
being cops. “All they want is for you to help them to shoot
our black boys like they just did, you low life MFs, you
aint s..t, all you MFs should be killed; all you MF do is
shoot brothers you MF a..holes.”
8:30 P.M:
I approached her and asked her “Miss, do you have to use
such vulgar language?”
She said “F. U. N….I is a
grown-a... woman and I can say and do what the F… I want
to.”
I responded by saying
“You are right but can you be more respectful to the
children that are standing by you?”
She said “You see that
little MF there? He’s mine and so is that F… one over there.
I sh..t them out so I can say what the F… I want around them
so MFU!”
I retreated with a smile
and said “Miss, You are exactly right and I apologize please
forgive me and I went back to my place in front of the
officers.”
8:35 P.M:
A Caucasian female with very short hair and horned rim
glasses approached me stating: “That’s what you get you had
no business getting in her face. And you are nothing but a
bully! I know your kind and you aint sh.t.”
I looked at her and said
“pardon me lady but do I know you?” She responded “No, but
you beat up people, my friend Julian Mack was one.”
I said “No, correction, I
choked him! And if it makes you feel good go ahead and get
it out.”
By now she is livid and
pointing her finger in my face and calling me a RACIST
because I was wearing a Cleveland Indians cap and she is now
in my face spitting and saying I should take that chief
YAHOO hat off because she was an indigenous Indian and I was
promoting racism and what are you going to do beat me up to?
I just stood there smiling at her and then Ruth Leonard came
over and pulled her away from me and that is when I realized
that she was with Black Lives Matter. I was later told that
her name Vera Lucia Mendoza.
8:40 P.M:
Chris Mcbrayer approached the woman in green who was cursing
the officers and asked her if it made her feel good talking
that way? She said you GD right! Chris told her then get it
all OUT! GO AHEAD AND GET IT OUT! IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD,
GET IT OUT!
He then asked her to give
him a hug and she said “I CANT! I CAN’T GIVE YOU LOVE THOSE
MFS KILLED MY BROTHER! He got out of jail after 10 years and
they shot and killed him 30 days ago!”
Chris approached her and
put his hands around her and she broke down crying and
hugged him back.
8:50 P.M:
Earl Mack was engaging a Caucasian male with no shirt on,
red pants with black pockets and an open can of ICE beer.
This man was cussing the officers to their face threatening
to whip their P…k A.. if they even looked at him. He too
called the officers all types of foul and belligerence names
and was pouring beer on the officer’s shoes.
Earl Mack approached him
and had a conversation with him and escorted him away from
the officers.
The crowd was starting to
disperse so I went behind the line of officer to get a water
and one of the officers said to me “Isn’t that your boy?”
As I turned to look I could see that he was talking about
Julian Mack who had just arrived so I turned to the officer
and said “So you got jokes, you should be on comedy central”
and we both burst out laughing.
9:00 P.M:
I received a call that there would be a debriefing at the
mayor’s office at 9:30 and for me to bring Earl and Chris as
I called out to them to inform them of the meeting, true to
form we heard HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT !
We just looked at a the
dangerous childlike behavior being exhibit by someone who
was in desperate need of attention and needed to be
recognized for his child-like behavior and attitude.
Who but an irresponsible
fool would pour gas on a fire or try to incite people after
a shooting. Thank God no one reacted to this ignorance and
irresponsible actions. I have seen some fools in my
lifetime, some who could not blow their noses if their
brains were dynamite. I have seen people who if you put
their brains in a bird the bird would fly backward, I have
seen people who wanted to be leaders but couldn’t find their
own A.. with a GPS. But this guy takes the prize!
9:15 P.M:
With the crowd dispersing, the command officer told us that
they were opening up Lagrange Street and once that happened
things will become normal again so they started to release
the officers by groups and eventually all of the officers
were leaving.
As some of the officers
from the line left one young man whom I had been watching
picked up a brick and was about to throw it at the officers
so I yelled “hey, you better not throw that brick!” He
dropped the brick and ran.
9:30 P.M:
I arrived at the Government center and was met by Alan
Bannister along with other community leaders and we were
escorted up to the 22nd floor to a conference room where
other city council members and community leaders were.
The mayor entered the room
along with Chief Kral and began to explain to the audience
that had been a shooting involving a white officer and a
black suspect and he was going to let the chief take it from
here. Chief Kral explained what had taking place that day
and what lead to the shooting of a black male by a white
officer. He showed us the video of the encounter and it was
graphic but it verified what was said.
The mayor then stated that
he was going to release the video to the media and let them
see that as troublesome as it was, the white officer had no
choice in the shooting of the black suspect.
I asked the mayor if I
could ask a question. He said yes, I asked why would you say
a white officer shot a black suspect instead of saying that
a Toledo police officer shot a suspect in the line of duty
who was a person of interest in a string of commercial
robberies. What does their RACE has to do with any of this?
It was agreed on that race
would not be mentioned at the press conference.
Interestingly enough during the press conference not one
person from the media asked about the race of the officer or
the suspect.
But the local newspaper
made a mess as usual out of the story and reported two
different stories in one paper – one involving RACE and one
did not.
10:30 P.M:
As I left Government Center I thought to myself this
situation could have been worse due to the unsubstantiated
information that was being reported not only on social media
but also in the mainstream media by those who did not know
the facts of the case.
I was grateful that the
situation had not gotten out of hand, that no one in the
crowd or on the police line had been injured, but the
irresponsible reporting of the events had not been helpful
at all. |
