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Tag: Dorothy Todd

  • Violent Crime in Cleveland Fell After Two-Month Crackdown, City Says – Cleveland Scene

    Violent crime is down across the city and police recruits are up, the mayor and police chief said in a press conference on Monday.

    As 36 new officers were getting ready to graduate in an adjacent room on the seventh floor of the Justice Center, Mayor Justin Bibb announced the effects of a two-month, multi-agency crackdown on crime. 

    Robberies are down by a quarter, Bibb and Chief Dorothy Todd reported, as are vehicle thefts; felony assaults, homicides and burlgaries have plummeted about 15 percent; rapes have dropped 28 percent.

    That crackdown, which involved assistance from U.S. marshals and FBI agents, ran from mid-October to mid-December. It was a surge of resources that showed results—338 felony-level arrests, 130 stolen vehicles found, to name just two examples cited.

    On Monday, Bibb lauded the crackdown as a clear byproduct of his Raising Investment in Safety initiative, a tough-on-crime stance that has lured more officers to the local force with increased pay and benefits. Bibb reported a more than 350 percent jump in hired officers in the past two years of academy graduations.

    Throwing in a $5,000 sign-on bonus to a $66,000 starting salary for one of the most dangerous jobs in Cleveland, Bibb said, is part of why RISE is showing results. Along with speeding up the time from application to receiving one’s badge.

    “Before we made these changes, it took 18 months—18 months for someone to join the Division of Police,” he said.

    “Now we’ve cut the time to hire to four months,” he added. “If you’ve been waiting 18 months to get an offer letter, you’re going to find another job. In this economy, we can’t afford to let process get in the way.”

    Along with the CPD’s new $90 million headquarters on Superior Ave., Bibb is aiming to revamp the police department’s five district headquarters with a $21 million modernization. A price tag Bibb believes will be “paid for” with an energy-saving build, he said in an October release.

    “The numbers are a part of the story,” Todd said. “But the commitment that the men and women have here in the Division of Polie for reducing crime never stops.”

    Mark Oprea

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  • Cleveland Police Chief Says Officers ‘Actively Investigating’ Recent Rash of Car Break-Ins – Cleveland Scene

    Car windows are breaking in Ohio City, Tremont and elsewhere once again.

    Over the past week or so, a string of car break-ins—more smash than grab, police said—has plagued the city, including in Tremont, Ohio City, and University Circle. Videos shared by residents show suspects piling out of cars and quickly bashing in windows en masse.

    Once again, those residents are calling on city officials with the question posed ad nauseum: What are you doing about this?

    “Let us be clear: addressing this issue is not as simple as a quick fix,” Police Chief Dorothy Todd wrote in a letter to the public on Wednesday.

    “While some may feel that not enough is being done, please know that our officers, detectives, and command staff are actively investigating these cases and working diligently to identify those responsible,” she said. “It’s not a matter of if arrests will be made, but when.”

    But for those who woke up Monday morning to a hole where their driver’s side window used to be, Todd’s message of reassurance didn’t quite cut it. Facebook community groups are littered with complaints. Why aren’t there more visible patrols? Given the lack of public visibility, should residents form community watch walks?

    A police spokesperson told Scene this week’s string “predominantly” resulted in broken glass and not valuables stolen. But broken windows are expensive, and annoying, to fix. And the lasting feeling of insecurity—that my block isn’t safe—is a clear threat to quality of life.

    “I don’t care what kind of press releases or smoke and mirrors marketing spins that the Cleveland Police Department puts out there or how much they are telling the news stations about their patrolling efforts,” one resident in Ohio City wrote in an Instagram post on Monday. 

    “This is a MAJOR issue in this neighborhood,” she added, and urged visitors: “DO NOT leave anything in your vehicles and either Uber or take the Red Line in, if you can.”

    Brittany Kraus, another resident of Ohio City, told Scene she’s had her car windows smashed twice this year. She suspects the culprits are teenagers on a late-night destruction spree.

    But she’s adapted since: she keeps nothing but her phone charger in her car. She even started waking up early in the morning to do a spot check, yet stopped out of a sense of distress.

    “All around it’s just a headache, time and resources that I’ll never get back,” she wrote.

    Cleveland police are somewhat limited when it comes to catching and arresting those suspected of vandalism or breaking and entering. Ring cameras struggle to catch legible license plate numbers at night, as do the city’s 100 license plate readers fixed on poles. (Though most are trained to catch licenses attached to active cases.)

    And police chase policy, cemented by the city’s Consent Decree, forbids cops from chasing suspects at high speeds for vandalism charges alone.

    “Criminals know that! So they immediately take off,” Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack told Scene. “They know if I drive away recklessly, they won’t chase me—so that’s what they do.”

    After a policy review by the Community Police Commission this summer, police resumed using drones, though only in high-risk scenarios: missing person searches, serving search warrants or navigating disasters.

    McCormack believes that they could be used to help curb break-ins in lieu of chase policy, usage that could help arrest suspects without the risk of a dangerous car chase across the city.

    “I haven’t seen it at this level in a very long time.” he said. “What’s left out of this conversation is my residents who deserve a safe place to live. Where is their peace? Where are their rights?”

    Cleveland police told Scene they’re looking over video footage and interviewing witnesses. No arrests have been made as of Thursday afternoon.

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    Mark Oprea

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  • New Cleveland Chief of Police, Safety Director Sworn In a Week After Karrie Howard Resigns

    New Cleveland Chief of Police, Safety Director Sworn In a Week After Karrie Howard Resigns

    click to enlarge

    Mark Oprea

    Former Chief of Police Wayne Drummond was sworn in as interim Director of Public Safety, replacing former director Karrie Howard who resigned last week following an investigation into an infringement of city policy.

    Dorothy “Annie” Todd, the former deputy chief of Cleveland Police, was sworn in by Mayor Justin Bibb as the city’s new chief of police Thursday morning.

    And former Chief of Police Wayne Drummond was also installed as the city’s new Director of Public Safety, a move that comes a week after former director Karrie Howard resigned, which came days after a Fox 8 investigation showed Howard admitting to violating a city policy he claimed he was unaware of.

    Mayor Justin Bibb, who swore in both Drummond and Todd on Tuesday, framed Howard’s step-down more as a natural path for the former director, who had held his post since 2020, rather than a result of a controversy.

    “Karrie and I spoke frequently about the future of the department, and we often had frank conversations about the leadership that was needed for the department to be successful moving forward,” Bibb said. “Specifically, to reach our ambitious goals, public safety must be focused on delivering for residents and free from distraction. And there must be a high degree of confidence at every level to ensure collaboration.”

    “Karrie felt that now was the right time to make a change in leadership,” Bibb added, “and made the difficult and hard decision to resign.”

    click to enlarge Dorothy "Annie" Todd is the city's newest chief of police, the second woman to hold this role in the city's history. - Mark Oprea

    Mark Oprea

    Dorothy “Annie” Todd is the city’s newest chief of police, the second woman to hold this role in the city’s history.

    On February 22, Fox 8’s Peggy and Ed Gallek revealed that Assistant Director of Public Safety Jakimah Dye had crashed her city car with her children inside in a violation of City of Cleveland policy that states “employees shall not transport any person other than City employees.”

    In a follow-up interview that day, Howard told the Galleks that he was oblivious to such city policy. He himself, he told Peggy Gallek, had done the same as Dye. “So, I’ve had my son in the car,” he told Fox 8. “We reviewed the policy. I didn’t know their was a policy.”

    Regardless of why Howard resigned, the new roles at CPD and Public Safety come at a seemingly tough time for both departments, when battling violent crime—as both Todd and Drummond said—remains a top priority, all while the CPD navigates an ongoing officer shortage that Bibb himself believes he can budget his way out of. (The city’s still short about 424 officers, News 5 found.)

    “Our new incentives around recruitment and retention, I think, are going to show real dividends to the CPD,” Bibb said. “We’re optimistic that we’ll have a sizable large police class by the end of this first quarter to replenish the ranks.”

    Todd began her career as a CPD traffic controller in the late 1990s, was acting deputy chief since 2022, after taking Joellen O’Neill’s role, and was commander of CPD’s Third District for three years before that. She is the second woman to hold the chief of police role in Cleveland’s history.

    Though less vocal than Drummond, Todd told press in City Hall’s Red Room on Thursday that, as chief, she’s prioritizing preventing juvenile crime, along with convincing the new Department of Justice monitors of “the progress we’re making and made throughout the years” with the Consent Decree.

    All three told press that the near formation of Cleveland’s own Gun Crime Intelligence Center, a copy of a similar center in Cincinnati, is the city’s best bet for taking guns used for criminal activity off the streets—a nod to those used in the West 6th and Public Square shootings downtown last summer.

    Bibb himself fashioned Cleveland as safer than it was three, four years ago, even with 2023’s 200 homicides clocked in. “We’ve seen a 14 percent reduction in homicides in out city,” he said, since 2020.

    As for Dye, the assistant director still has her job in the Department of Public Safety. She’s not allowed to drive her city car during an ongoing internal investigation.
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    Mark Oprea

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