CLEVELAND — We're learning more about the timeline of events surrounding the weekend "street takeovers" that impacted multiple locations in Cleveland where suspects stopped traffic, pointed guns at people, lit fireworks and attempted to start fires.
While speaking to Cleveland City Council at a meeting Wednesday morning, Chief of Police Annie Todd gave an in-depth explanation regarding the various incidents, the investigation and what's next.
Below is a timeline of what happened during these street takeovers based on Chief Todd's comments...
LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON: SEPT. 28
Chief Todd said the department received an e-mail from Cincinnati regarding the planned takeovers based on information gathered from posts on social media.
“Part of the post identified, it says, ‘We will not run from a cop. If you can’t stand your ground. This isn’t your meet,'" Chief Todd explained.
She said the posts also urged participants to stay out of the media's way, stating "if you see someone with a camera, just back up and let them get their footage of us."
"So a big part of this is about getting the attention that they’re looking for and getting this out to social media," Chief Todd said.
She said police then made notifications to the Ohio State Highway Patrol and other agencies to ask them to monitor any incoming traffic or large groups of vehicles traveling to the Cleveland area.
All five Cleveland police districts were also notified.
"Our chopper was up, also looking and monitoring for this activity," Chief Todd said.
She said that once incidents began popping up, they weren't happening in one particular location at a time.
"They were hitting multiple neighborhoods, multiple streets on different sides of the city, which does split up our resources when that happens," Chief Todd explained.
You can watch the full Cleveland City Council meeting from Oct. 2 in the video below:
'STREET TAKEOVERS' BEGIN
The first gathering was located around 11:30 p.m. in the area of East 55th and Woodland.
“Officers responded to that location, Chief Todd said. "A short time later at 11:37 p.m., we were notified of an additional gathering at Lee and Miles."
Just after midnight, Chief Todd said the department was notified of an individual shooting an Airsoft gun at officers at one of the street takeovers.
"One of our officers was struck twice with an airsoft gun, but was not injured."
Police were then notified about a group that was gathering in the second district on West 65th with a second group in the area of West 25th and Lorain.
I-90 INCIDENT
The final area was reported on I-90 West at West 14th around 4 a.m. Sunday.
"There was about 20 vehicles on the freeway that were blocking all lanes of traffic, shooting off fireworks, attempting to light fires on the freeway and pointing firearms at citizens who were confronting them," according to Chief Todd.
Based on the location, Chief Todd said there "was no exit ramp between where we could enter and where we could get to that group," adding they needed to make sure "we had a safe plan to get the officers up there and to get the citizens free from that area."
When officers were planning to enter the area, Chief Todd said the State Highway Patrol was on the other side of the freeway and advised the group had dispersed and fled in different directions.
"So throughout this incident, we saw fireworks that were being displayed, attempts to light fire throughout the city," Chief Todd said. "Fortunately the weather prevented that from happening."
She said suspects were also jumping on zone cars while "firearms were displayed at the officers as well as citizens.
RELATED: 'I'm frustrated': Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb responds to chaotic weekend of 'street takeovers'
LIST OF LOCATIONS
Chief Todd said the department had received approximately 100 different calls for service on Saturday night.
When asked for all of the locations involved in the weekend incidents, Chief Todd provided the following areas:
- Scranton and Carter
- West 25th and Lorain
- Steelyard Commons
- Innerbelt Bridge (I-90 West at West 14th)
- East 55th and Woodland
- East 105th and MLK
- East 105th and Park
- Quincy and Opportunity Corridor
- East 105th and Superior
- East 93rd and Opportunity Corridor
- Kinsman and Opportunity Corridor
- Lee and Harvard
- East 122nd and Larchmere
SUSPECTS WANTED
Chief Todd said their goal is to hold all of the participants accountable from those in the vehicles to the others who were standing in the roadways filming or just observing.
“These charges can range anywhere from a minor traffic offense all the way up to a felony crime with this," Chief Todd said.
She also noted that suspects in these situations take the license plates off their vehicles so it's harder for authorities to identify any cars involved.
Chief Todd said they have put together a task force after the weekend incidents, which includes each police district, the traffic unit, fire/arson, gang impact unit and other local partner agencies.
"The goal for this is to gather all of the investigations that we have and compile shared data," Chief Todd said. "Our hope is that as a whole community, and not just the city of Cleveland, that we’ll be able to share this information and bring a bigger case against the participants in this."
'STREET TAKEOVERS' IN OTHER STATES
Chief Todd said similar incidents have recently occurred in other states like Indiana and Pennsylvania.
“There has been similar incidents in Indianapolis, Sept. 14-16," she explained. "The situation in Indianapolis, lighter fluid-filled bottles were thrown at responding officers and baseball bats were taken to their zone cars. In Philadelphia, Sept. 22, baseball bats were used to destroy police cars as well. In those incidents, officers were hurt when responding to these incidents.”
PERCEPTION OF POLICE INACTIONS
“Not everyone will understand our actions or the perception of inactions," Chief Todd said. "I want to be clear that policing is not what you see on TV. Our members are faced with life-and-death situations that they are required to balance on what laws are being broken, what actions can they legally take and what policy is in place for them to follow. To sit back and judge after the fact is easy. We look at the videos after the fact and can tell what they should’ve done, what they could’ve done better, but to be faced with this head-on in real time is extremely challenging. Every action or inaction taken by police will always be judged. Not only by their superiors, by the media, by the community and also we have to answer to the DOJ monitors, CPC and even City Council. We, by far, are not perfect, but we do our best to balance community safety and officer safety. As for opinions on how this should be handled, we must balance how we constitutionally within our force guidelines address these issues while protecting the community, participants and officers.”
She said the department also needs to do better at socializing the work they do.
"I know that is one of the things that we always seem to miss the mark on in policing," she said. "It results in the perception of inaction. So I am committed to making sure that Council, the community and the media are updated throughout this investigation so that you know of the work that we’re doing, that you know when warrants are issued and you know that this behavior is being addressed.”
RELATED: Tremont often staging area for those responsible for Cleveland street takeovers, residents say
WHAT'S NEXT
In addition to finding the suspects, Chief Todd said the department is also looking at proactive measures that can be taken.
“One of the things that we have been looking at is something that Kansas City has done where they do street milling," she said. "What they do with that is they mill portions of larger intersections to prevent this type of activity. What it does is if there’s some type of stunt driving in that area, it would disable the vehicle because the tires couldn’t take the impact of the milling in the road.”
In the shorter-term, Chief Todd said the department is considering other options, too.
“Putting some type of obstruction, a metal plate or something like that inside these intersections so that this activity might be deterred," she said. "Also using, potentially, police or larger city vehicles to block some of these locations. We’ve also had conversations with larger parking lot owners about some proactive measures that they can take. When you look at where they [suspects] gather for these locations when it’s not on a city street, it’s locations that have large unobstructed parking lots. When I say unobstructed, there’s no cart returns, there’s no parking blocks. There’s nothing that stops this activity. We’ve made recommendations to several of those parking lot owners to add something that would prevent this activity.”