Emotions run high at community forum on youth issues

About 150 people filled a meeting room at the Lee Road Library for a Heights Community Congress forum to discuss the recent problems with flash mobs and the new Special Curfew Districts at Coventry Village and Cedar-Lee, July 13.

Topics of discussion ranged from issues of flash mobs and social media to safety and security to the fairness and effectiveness of the new curfew laws. Kasey Greer, Heights Community Congress executive director, facilitated the discussion by posing questions to the audience, which included such local officials as Cuyahoga County Council Member Julian Rogers and Cleveland Heights Mayor Edward Kelley.

Judi Miles, one of the first community members to speak, said when she drove past Coventry Village after the street fair, June 26, she saw more than a hundred youth congregated in and around Mayfield Road. “I am not typically afraid of, I’ll say it, young black kids,” she said, but she felt alarmed by the sheer number of people, even though most of them were not causing trouble.

Former Garfield Heights Mayor Tom Longo warned of the importance of how people perceive security. At a public event like a street fair, “if there is an illusion that it’s not safe . .  people won’t go to it.”

Longo likened the situation in Cleveland Heights  to that that Garfield Heights had faced with its Home Days festival. “It destroyed us,” he said.

The first emotional moment of the night came after one speaker called the troublemakers in the flash mobs “urban terrorists.”

“I had to breathe real deep after that last comment,” said Beatrice Tolls. She defended the crowds at the street fair, who she said had merely run down the street. “That is all they did. That is not illegal in this country.”

“I gotta put it out there guys,” she said, “rein in the fear.”

John Nelson, public relations officer for the Youth of Coventry, a group of teenagers and young adults who frequent Coventry Village, tried to refocus the audience. “Everybody take a breath,” he said before leading the room in inhaling and exhaling. “Everybody is acting on emotions.”

Nelson said the issue of needing more constructive things for youth to do, an opinion voiced by multiple speakers, was not new. “There had to be a riot on Coventry for you to understand that we need something to do in this city,” he said. He cited the CH-UH Public Library as an example of an organization that was already providing activities for adolescents.

Randall Walker, another Youth of Coventry member, echoed Nelson’s frustrations with spreading the youth perspective. “We keep getting cut off every time we have something to say,” he said, referring both to the forum and general civic discussion.

Eric Johnson said that the community has been “asking the wrong question” and needs to focus more on encouraging civility than responding to delinquency. “It takes a crisis to become civically engaged,” he said. “We get what we give.”

Johnson called upon those in attendance to dedicate some of their time to making a difference in the lives of local youth. “When you walk out of this room…are you gonna sit on the sidelines or are you gonna get in?” he asked.

In what was perhaps the tensest moment of the evening, Kathy Wray Coleman was booed by the audience for her assertion that the new curfew laws are “targeting the black community.” She said the curfew violates the 14th Amendment and suggested that, next, “we will have to ride in the back of the bus.”

Bill Swain from Revolution Books agreed with Coleman, calling the curfew “totally racist” and “an actual Jim Crow.”

The incident at the street fair was “fairly minimal,” Swain said, but the reaction the community has had “creates racism among very good people.”

Cleveland Heights Police Chief Jeffrey Robertson flatly denied the allegations of racism. “The ordinance does not target the black population,” he said. “Our officers deal with everybody equally.”

Robertson also said that, to this point, the police department is “still trying to get the word out to the youth.” Police have been informing minors of the curfew when they stop them during restricted hours. Only two kids to have been arrested under the new ordinance so far, and they had gone back to the Cedar-Lee district after they had been asked to leave by police. 

Later, Bill Black took the microphone and asked how many of those in attendance supported the new curfew. Slightly less than half of the audience members raised their hands.

Michael Hagesfeld, a lifelong Cleveland Heights resident, said that everyone in the room loved the community, and “the problem is the people who don’t.” Civic-minded kids, like the members of the Youth of Coventry, “are the people we need to get,” he said.