3rd Police District is the ‘forward operating base’ in Justice Dept. report

The Justice Department’s scolding report on the Cleveland police department has brought up lots of unanswered questions, but here is one I can answer.

The 3rd police district -- which includes downtown, University Circle, Hough, Fairfax, and Central – is the place where the commander referred to the station as a “forward operating base” in an interview with Justice investigators. A sign in the station’s vehicle bay used the phrase too.

The 3rd Police District

The comment alarmed the Justice investigators, who saw it as a sign of an us-vs.-them mentality among police.

“There’s actually an interesting story behind that sign,” 3rd District commander Patrick Stephens told me. “They totally missed the point of the sign.”

Stephens said he’d be happy to answer questions about it, but had to call the chief’s office for permission first. Permission was denied.

Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Association, was a 3rd District detective until the end of December. Loomis says the “forward operating base” sign was up in the vehicle bay of the station at 10600 Chester Avenue for at least a year, and was taken down after the Justice Department report came out in December.

“I think the commander’s son is in the military,” Loomis says. “It’s a term of endearment. I don’t think there’s anything sinister to it.

“We’re out there doing the job every day like the military guys,” Loomis added. “That was the premise behind the sign. We have an extraordinary amount of military guys join the police department. Those are just terms they know and understand.”

The Justice Department found the “forward operating base” line disturbing. “Such metaphors have no place in a community-oriented police department,” the December report says.

“This characterization reinforces the view held by some—both inside and outside the Division—that CDP is an occupying force instead of a true partner and resource in the community it serves,” the report says. It even cites the military line as an example of its finding that the department “too often polices in a way that contributes to community distrust and a lack of respect for officers.”

Phyllis Cleveland, city councilwoman for Ward 5, which includes parts of the 3rd Police District, says she sees two ways of looking at the phrase.

“It has a connotation that's very militaristic, maybe even a hostile-type attitude, for the average non-police-officer, non-law-enforcement person,” Cleveland says.

“My other reaction is also that in almost any other industry, or sector, or type of job, you have your gallows type of humor.

“Overall, it doesn’t look good,” Cleveland added. “Taken into the context of all the other things in the report, and things that are happening, it’s not a good look.”

Is the sign a warning of a broader problem? Cleveland says she has “great respect and admiration” for Stephens, commander of the 3rd District since 2011. “He’s been very responsive as commander to me and other residents in the community.”

Cleveland says complaints about the police in her ward are usually about officers being discourteous; brutality complaints there are rare, she says.

Taking the sign down is just a start, Cleveland says.

“I think what everyone wants to do is come to some kind of understanding and find a way to reestablish or establish trust between the police and the community,” she says.

Cleveland and Loomis both say they support the Justice Department’s call for more community policing. But, “there’s no consensus around what that really means,” Cleveland says.

Loomis notes that Cleveland once had a robust community policing strategy, including mini-stations in neighborhoods, but it was dismantled in the mid-2000s when then-mayor Jane Campbell laid off about 500 police officers. Mayor Frank Jackson has reduced the force by about 300 more officers, to about 1,300, he says. So 911 calls trump foot patrols and school visits.

“The reality is, there’s not time,” Loomis says. “We’re going run to run to run to run. We’re a skeleton crew.”

Writer and activist Mansfield Frazier, who lives in the 3rd District, says the “forward operating base” comment confirms his concerns about the average policeman patrolling Hough.

“I’ve been saying for a long time that by and large, police are an army of occupation in some communities,” Frazier says. “That shows they feel the same way.”

When he’s out in his Hough Ave. vineyard, Frazier has written, black police officers often wave or call out greetings, while white officers rarely do, even when he greets them. “In the black community, they want to treat everybody like they’re thugs,” he argues. “They don’t differentiate.”

Frazier calls Stephens “a very decent guy” who quickly returns his calls, and he says some officers have gotten friendlier lately. But overall, he says, “This whole notion is, I don’t want to be invested, don’t want to get to know you, don’t want to be your friend.”

‘Check Cleveland,’ says writer’s advice for downsizing Detroit

Call it Rust Belt creativity. Cleveland’s experiments with reviving foreclosure-devastated neighborhoods could inspire Detroiters, a Motor City writer says.

Detroit faces every problem Cleveland does, multiplied. Its abandonment and suffering from the subprime mortgage collapse are hard to fathom. But John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press is trying. Like Steven Litt at the Plain Dealer, Gallagher evaluates the city's landscape and civic life as an arts critic would, looking for ways it could be better.

Gallagher’s “10 tips for downsizing Detroit” lists “Check Cleveland” as number 7. He credits us with more than 50 pilot programs to revive the city’s most troubled neighborhoods:

Ideas range from creating pocket parks to building an alternative energy plant, and from planting a bamboo grove as part of a zen garden to creating vineyards and orchards.

I think that “vineyards and orchards” line might be a reference to Cleveland Magazine contributor Mansfield Frazier’s plans, including the Vineyards of Château Hough.

Gallagher’s picked up on the creative spirit sprouting among Cleveland's ruins, as WVIZ's Applause did this April. Billy Delfs and I aimed to do the same with our March photo essay, "Tear It Down!"

In turn, Gallagher’s other nine ideas could be as valuable to Cleveland's leaders as they are for Detroit's. Here’s how he tries to solve the political debate over whether “shrinking cities” means letting some neighborhoods go: “Prohibit any redevelopment in neighborhoods marked for mothballing,” he says, but “Never try to forcibly relocate residents.”

New county exec candidates: Welo, Brown, and... Frazier?

Wow, what a day for the county executive race! Three new candidates all jumping in: former University Circle president Terri Hamilton Brown, South Euclid Mayor Georgine Welo, and, most exciting of all, Cleveland Magazine contributor Mansfield Frazier!

Um, OK, so maybe Mansfield is ... how should I say it? Not entirely serious?

From his new Cool Cleveland column:

… why not? I can sling bullshit, make empty promises, and not call people back once I’m elected with the very best (or worst) of ‘em. And the real upside is, I’ve already been to prison — been there, done that — so that’s not something the electorate has to be concerned with.

Some readers must've thought he meant it. Since Cool Cleveland came out this morning, the note "a satire" has been added to the column's top rail.

Mansfield Frazier's "Carr Talk"

I've often linked to Mansfield Frazier's political writing. Now, I'm happy to say he's making his debut in My Town, Cleveland Magazine's first-person essay section.

Our November My Town, "Carr Talk," is Frazier's memoir about Charlie Carr, city councilman from 1945 to 1975. Carr (pictured, left) helped make Cleveland the birthplace of the black political rights movement, paving the way for the historic 1967 election of Carl Stokes (right) as mayor.

Frazier's an interesting writer, and sometimes a political activist too. Yesterday I got an e-mail from him asking why the Congress of Racial Equality and the Ohio Black Legislative Caucus are teaming up with a payday lender for this financial seminar on Saturday.

"If CheckSmart is so concerned with folks' financial well-being, then why are they charging such exorbitant interest rates?" Frazier writes. "I plan to attend the 'seminar' and ask them this question in person." That should be an interesting meeting.

Update, 10/29: Frazier takes up the subject in his Cool Cleveland column this week, subtly titled, "Ohio Black Legislative Black Caucus: A Den of Prostitutes?"

Mansfield: "Skip, You Mouthed Off"

President Obama is having his climactic beer tonight with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and James Crowley, the Cambridge cop who arrested him. In honor of the occasion, I'd like to recommend an opinion piece on The Daily Beast by local columnist Mansfield Frazier, whom Cool Cleveland recently photographed looking badass on a motorcycle.

How's this for a great headline? "Skip, You Mouthed Off." Frazier pulled off the tough feat of saying at the same time that 1) unfair treatment of black men by cops is very real and 2) the professor should've cooled off and complained later. And he did it with more humor than any other writer I've seen tackle this story. (Well, maybe Mansfield's tied with the writers of The Onion.)

Mansfield's been on CNN talking about his column with scholar Michael Eric Dyson, who called him "one of the great writers in American society right now, especially on politics and culture" (see below, starting at 1:50) and on NBC's Today Show (see farther below).

By the way, what beers are the president, professor, and policeman drinking? Bud Light, Red Stripe and Blue Moon. Update, 7/31: Gates switched to Sam Adams Light (good Massachusetts beer). Vice-president Joe Biden joined in and had a non-alcoholic Buckler.

Mansfield instructs county officials in perp walks

Anticipating indictments from the FBI probe, Mansfield B. Frazier taps into his life experience to give county officials and employees under investigation some advice: how to pull off a perp walk.

The cost of corruption: "City Hall is like a Bermuda Triangle for builders"

Sometimes one article gives you the news and another explains why it matters.

The Plain Dealer reported Saturday that three more inspectors for Cleveland's building and housing department have been indicted on federal corruption charges. That's on top of a fourth guy indicted earlier. They're accused of shaking down business owners.

Now, in this week's issue of Cool Cleveland, Mansfield Frazier reminds us of the building and housing department's reputation: Impossible to deal with.

"Most local contractors would rather get beat with a two-by-four with a rusty nail in it than go down to B & H," Frazier writes. "The 5th floor of City Hall is like a Bermuda Triangle for builders."

Past stories about this department have always made it sound like a red-tape problem. Now the feds say it was corruption.

Think about how desperately Cleveland needs new commerce, how badly its 80-year-old neighborhoods need inspections. Then read these two stories and get mad. There's no way of measuring how many businesses have walked away from the city over the years because of practices like these.

Mansfield Frazier & Scene on Cleveland's domestic partnership rally

Mansfield Frazier writes in the new CoolCleveland about speaking at last week's domestic partnership rally at City Hall. It's a great piece about his moment of conscience. He walks past two friends who assume he's not going to the rally and are taken aback when he is. In his speech, Frazier talks about Bayard Rustin, a strategist for the civil-rights movement who had to work behind the scenes because he was gay. Also, Frazier cleverly quotes Bob Dylan for the second time in two weeks.

Dan Harkins of Scene covered the rally and collected some great quotes. Zack Reed, a domestic-partner registry opponent, offers an elliptical comment about why he invited the ministers to City Hall on the same day. Joe Cimperman channels Harvey Milk and demands that intolerance, not gays, be cast into the closet. Peter Lawson Jones happens by and lends support.

(Mansfield Frazier photo from CoolCleveland.com)

My favorite columnist

No disrespect to my favorite Plain Dealer writers. But my favorite local political columnist these days is Mansfield B. Frazier of CoolCleveland.com.

Frazier wrote the best stuff out there about the fight over who should succeed Fannie Lewis on Cleveland City Council. His CoolCleveland piece on how Obama-worship is getting out of hand was so funny, the Plain Dealer picked it up as an op-ed.

His column this week is a very personal, suspenseful, and terrifying story about his son and ex-wife -- and it ends with a sudden but effective turn to the gay-rights battle brewing in Cleveland.

Journalists often lament that our profession has gotten too professional, no longer a haven for interesting characters. Guess they don't know Frazier. This week's column attests to the wild life he's lived. So does his 1995 book, From Behind the Wall -- the author's bio notes he's been "arrested 15 times on felony charges and convicted 5 times."

Sometimes I wish CoolCleveland edited him more, to hone the rough diamond and ask the unanswered question (such as, Do you really think your wife did what she hinted at? If so, how?). On the other hand, his rough edges are part of the fun.

This became obvious when I compared Frazier's original Obama column and the edited version in the Plain Dealer. Most of the edits improved it (including the helpful correction that the plural of "honky" is "honkies"). But PD readers lost his aside about the late Ms. Lewis ("sharing only went so far with Fannie"), his assessment of Obama as "cooler than Frosty the Snowman," and a great digression about a Harlem street hustler nicknamed Seldom Seen, who "knew that in all cultures and societies, too much access deflates value and diminishes cachet."

There's no archive page for all Frazier's columns, like fellow CoolCleveland columnist Roldo Bartimole's blog. But you can go through the CoolCleveland archives and find a link to Frazier's column in each issue. Also, he's got a new gig with TheDailyBeast.com (so far he's written about how alleged pyramid-schemer Bernard Madoff will like prison). Plenty of Mansfield for us to dig into.

What did Fannie Lewis want?

The Plain Dealer has finally reported that a lot of people who were close to the late Fannie Lewis don't believe the grand dame of Hough really chose Stephanie Howse to succeed her on Cleveland City Council. They think council president Martin Sweeney and other lawmakers were lying when they named Howse to the seat.

I can't believe it took the paper so long to cover this story. Mansfield Frazier wrote about the controversy over Lewis' succession in Cool Cleveland on Aug. 20 and Sept. 3. I mentioned the dispute in my Sept. 5 blog post about Lewis, and when I talked about Frazier's work on WCPN's Aug. 28 reporters' roundtable, Frazier called in to the show. (If you download it, listen starting at 33:20 and 37:57.)

This ward meeting agenda, from three days before Lewis' Aug. 11 death, seems to prove that Lewis told some people she wouldn't name a successor. (But it could be interpreted as referring to the 2009 election, not her death.)

The controversy probably won't knock Howse off council. She won 46 percent of the vote in a special primary last week, compared to 12 percent for top challenger T.J. Dow, so she's the heavy favorite to win the Nov. 18 runoff. Still, The Professor of Political Science 216 has an idea for figuring out what the mercurial Ms. Lewis really wanted: holding a seance.

Update: Turns out the PD briefly acknowledged the doubts in the ward in this Aug. 19 story about Howse. Phillip Morris wondered why Lewis didn't endorse Howse publicly in his column that day.