Cleveland Police Want to Fine the Gas Station Their Own Camera Couldn’t Protect

Community / Acceptable Guilt — REAL POWER.TV

A police camera watched the lot for six months. A man still got shot. Now the city wants to fine the one business on Buckeye that did everything it was asked.

The camera was watching

A few days ago, two men with a beef that started elsewhere ran into each other at 130th and Buckeye. One was opening the gas station door when he got shot.

He’s in the hospital and expected home soon. Police picked up two suspects. Credit where it’s due.

You know what comes next. Another absentee owner who doesn’t care.

That’s not this story.

This had nothing to do with the gas station. Nobody was loitering out front. And it happened under a police camera that’s watched that lot for six months. It didn’t stop a thing.

Now the city has a plan for that corner. Not for the shooters. For the gas station. A fine, on a clock the police commander set himself.

So who failed that corner? The honest answer isn’t the one the room picked.

The room

That owner is my client, an Arab American businessman with several stations.

The room is Holy Grove Baptist Church on East 130th, first Friday of the month. Pastor David Owens runs it, and he deserves credit for holding that table together. The district commander comes, and so does Shaker Heights’, since the line runs right there. About twenty neighbors come, mostly retirees home while everybody else works.

Chairman Fahim of New Era Cleveland has been there since the first meeting. His people work hands-on with the young men nobody else can reach.

That first meeting, more than two years ago, was a buzzsaw. Community activist Bob Render organized it, on a mission to shut the station down. He asked the owners where they lived. His message, in so many words: go back to your neighborhood, and let ours look like the Hungarian neighborhood it used to be.

A Black man said that. On Buckeye.

We didn’t argue. We went to work. New fencing. New windows. Fresh paint. Every demand met.

A year later came a new interim commander, with former Council President Jay Westbrook at the table and Council President Blaine Griffin in the room. The deal: a police camera on the lot, patrols, and six months of security paid by the owner, while everybody built a plan for the whole strip. New Era was supposed to be part of it.

The owner paid all six months. He brought New Era into the store for a stretch. The bigger program never came. Money was set aside for a community nonprofit to do this work. That project never came to life, and nobody has said publicly where the dollars went.

And when the city came back, it didn’t bring a plan.

The reversal

After the shooting, they called the owner back into the room. One self-appointed voice of the community said security was bad because the owners wouldn’t pay. He had just paid for six months. That’s what set the room off.

Then the commander said it. This isn’t a city problem. It’s a business problem. Answer on his timeline, or face fines.

A year ago, it was a partnership. Now it’s a citation.

Then he went further. His detectives, he said, believe the security company is in cahoots with the people causing trouble there.

Sit with what that means.

Where it broke

This plan broke on both sides.

On our side, familiarity is real. Guards can get too comfortable with the people they’re paid to watch. We own that.

But in cahoots is a different word. That says guards are complicit in crime. If a police commander believes that, it isn’t something you announce in a church full of residents. It’s something you investigate.

Now the other side. The commander praised the Dollar General next door as a model partner. Nobody ever told the gas station what that partnership looked like. Nobody called a side meeting. A monthly room full of complaints is not a strategy.

I know the commander covers a big district. Cleveland is short on police, and officers earn more on overtime than standing post in a gas station.

When the plan started breaking, nobody said let’s fix it. They reached for a fine. And Dr. Jamal Bryant already gave us a name for that.

Acceptable guilt

Dr. Bryant preached on something he called acceptable guilt. Here’s how I hear it: we accept the guilt that’s easy to hold, and we leave the rest on the floor.

That cuts every way. Nobody in this story is perfect, my client included. But you can’t hold one side to account and wave the rest through.

When a problem is hard, the city finds the easiest target. The owner doesn’t live here. He doesn’t look like the room. Blaming him costs nobody at that table a thing.

Buckeye is a hard problem. Shortly before the gas station shooting, 17-year-old Jaiden Tunson, a Shaker Heights High School student, was shot and killed on Buckeye, across from EDWINS. Police on patrol nearby heard the shots. Two young men are charged with his murder.

Three days later, EDWINS founder Brandon Chrostowski, Fred Ward and Dr. C. Jay Matthews stood outside EDWINS with a mother whose own 17-year-old was killed in Cleveland Heights days earlier. They called it a crisis for the whole community. Nobody at that press conference blamed a gas station.

When the whole corridor is bleeding, singling out one store isn’t accountability. It’s selective blame. You don’t fix it by closing one store.

Somebody asked why a business making all this money can’t pay for more security. Pop, chips and cigarettes. This isn’t a Walmart. It’s small money in a poor neighborhood.

And a former councilman who spent three decades representing the West Side now tells the East Side what our corner should look like. I’m questioning who gets to draw the picture.

Before anybody writes a fine, put the real plan on the table. Activate New Era like we said we would. Account for the money. If the detectives have a case, make it.

The man who got shot on that lot didn’t need somebody to blame. He needed the plan to work.

Kenn Dowell. Cleveland-born, Glenville-raised. Never afraid to say what needs to be said.