Robbers leave 12 victims naked
Riley G Matthews Jr
By Mehul Srivastava
Dayton Daily News
RIVERSIDE | The officers responding to the 911 call hadn't seen anything
like it before - people, naked except for their trash bags, walking down
Valley Street.
Early Friday, they had been robbed at gunpoint during a poker game at a
private club on Intercity Drive.
But before the robbers left, they stripped the 12 poker players of their
clothes and tied the men and women together with shoelaces and belts.
In the hour or so it took the victims to free themselves, and find the trash
bags to cover themselves, the ski-masked robbers had made a clean getaway.
"I am sure they had to get the gumption up to walk out the door with no
clothes on," said Riverside Detective Kolbey Watson, who spent Friday
following leads.
The crime, while unique in its execution, highlights a reality that
Riverside residents have had to face with increasing regularity - nearly two
years of budget cuts forced by failed levies have left the police department
without the resources to protect the city from crime.
"We are reacting to crimes now, rather than proactively preventing them,"
said Riverside City Manager Jim Onello.
When the poker game was robbed, Riverside had three patrol cars on duty for
its nearly 30,000 residents. When one was dispatched on a call and another
was called for a backup, that left one free patrol car for the entire city.
"That's all we can afford now," Onello said.
On Thursday, a National City Bank at the Airway Shopping Center was held up,
Onello said.
"We would like to have a patrol car go by the shopping center every so
often, but we can't even do that," Onello said.
In January, it became clear that Riverside's police department could
investigate only the most violent crimes. Murders, rapes, and violent
assaults took priority over other crimes.
So, for instance, when a group of people who had their cars vandalized with
racist slurs in June, they got a police report to help with insurance
claims.
But the crime couldn't be investigated. "Lack of manpower," Riverside police
Officer Dave Schmidt said. "We just don't have the ability to go after these
cases."
According to one victim of the poker-game robbery, the armed men were in the
club for nearly an hour.
"They had us tied up on the floor, and then they asked all of us to give
them the PINs to our credit cards and bank cards," said Ronald Shepherd, 29.
By then, the robbers had used a knife to strip them naked, and had taken
away their cell phones.
When the robbers weren't happy with the amount of money the victims had,
they took the time to search through the cars in the parking lot for
anything valuable.
During that one hour, no police patrol car went past the location on Valley
Street. With the crunch on their resources, the officers sometimes go past
the Laws trailer parks at the other edge of Valley Street because of recent
episodes of arson.
Even if a police officer had noticed something wrong, there wasn't much he
could do, said Watson, the detective investigating the robbery.
"Usually, at least one of the patrol cars is tied up on business elsewhere,"
he said.
"And when something like this pops up, what can one officer do against four
men armed with assault rifles?"
With police patrols barely visible, its been open season on Riverside's
roads since January. Without a traffic division, police hand out few
speeding tickets except to the most obvious offenders. Crimes against
properties (thefts, vandalism) have increased in the last two years, Onello
said.
During the same two years, Riverside residents have three times turned down
a 4.95-mill levy that would have allowed the police department to return at
least a few positions in its staff of 27. Now, three detectives handle
almost 1,500 felonies a year, and 15 positions have been eliminated. The
police department's fleet of cars is aging - Onello estimated the cars were
on average at least 8 years old with more than 120,000 miles on them - and
the city has no funds to repair or replace them.
But for officers like Watson, the financial problems translate to a much
simpler reality.
"As a police officer, to have to tell folks who have been robbed that we
can't investigate their crime is really tough," he said. " You gotta feel
sorry for those people.
"It kills you as an officer."
--
Signed,
Riley G Matthews Jr
http://www.RileyG.com
volcati
this is Ohio. Figures no one had any money.
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Wayno
budget at their next city council meeting and catch a clue.
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diablo_tejano
They could do what a lot of other Ohio cities do to raise funds--set up
speed traps for tourists...
I got nailed in a couple of them in the 1970s...
:(
dt
yimyam
How about pulling your head out of your asses, legalizing poker and devoting
100% of the tax revenues toward the police department?
Everyone wins!
Oh hell, what was I thinking? Logic and governmental beauracracies never mix
On Jul 30 2005 8:28 PM, Riley G Matthews Jr wrote:
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