2007 Cleveland Homicides (Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo: subdivision, living in, law)

[hillside]

with you there, gtsurfer. good point about the foreclosures. thats a BAD sign for ohio...

[hillside]

could this be a glimpse into 1968/the 70's again? crime fluctuating but generally on the rise in ohio cities...riots and international shame...people bailing their homes...cleveland having to take drastic headline-making measures to avoid going broke (suing subprime lenders, cutting trash collection in the 70s)...i hope not it would be twice as bad its 2008 ppl dont carry pea shooters anymore

[costello_musicman]

Ok, how often do some of you come into the city?? (i'm pretty much talking about Cleveland specifically). If you don;t live here, do you at least work here?? I suppose I'm the opposite when it comes to mentality, I usually hate going into the suburbs because of the generic feel of them (my exceptions being primarily Lakewood, Cleveland Hts, and Shaker).

Like I said before, many of these homicides were people caught up in stuff they shouldn't have been doing. I spend the majority of my time between Little Italy, Downtown, and places like Ohio City, Tremont, and Chinatown--I enjoy the city, and never have had any major problems where I felt that unsafe. But, you also have to know how to be smart to stay out of trouble, just like any city.

Comments like this really **** me off to what some of you guys are doing here:

Originally Posted by italianbluesboy

I am planning a visit to Cleveland this year, and wanted to see the factories and steel mill. But after reading this long, distressing thread I feel like I will probably get killed just driving into what you guys call the "war zone". That's how this thread makes me feel: like just setting foot into Cleveland will get me killed. The way people describe Detroit makes me feel the same way. But I never felt that threatened in Pittsburgh or Columbus.

[Cincy-Rise]

costello_musicman, I hear you ... I'm on a few other msg boards and what I found awkward was that most of the posters on here are more "suburban minded" or they do not have an open mind. I feel that people should work to be part of the change, rather than run. What happened to city & civic pride?

I also fault the people that respond like the one you quoted ... No one should make a statement like that without seeing it for themselves.

[Cincy-Rise]

Originally Posted by gtsurfer05

... o ya and also that nut group from Cincy that had that ban on strip clubs stuff ...

Are you sure they are based in Cincinnati, because if you're referring to the CCV, they are based in Sharonville?

Also, are you saying that there aren't conservative christian groups/activist in Cleveland? I'm just curious ... I'm not saying that there are groups like this in Cleveland, I'm just asking.

[BelieveInCleve]

Its not only people on here that gave Cleveland a bad reputation. All of the crime reports, poverty reports, the news, the talk shows, most of them show Cleveland as a horrible place to live. I remember there was one famous guy that came to Cleveland and the 1st day he was here he went on a bikeride and some guy in Cleveland started chasing him with a gun and tried to rob him. Bad things do happen to innocent people in Cleveland but its really not anywhere near as bad as people make Cleveland out to be.

Costello_musicman: Im guessing you have been in Cleveland for a while and you are in the city a lot, and by your posts it seems like nothing bad has ever happened to you. but you also have to consider people who get robbed the first day they come to the city, which has happened a lot. I dont want to make Cleveland look bad, but there arent many major cities that are worse than Cleveland right now. We really need jobs to keep people in the city and get people to move back into the city.

[Cincy-Rise]

Cle440, this is a serious question ...


Let's say that Costello_musicman lived in a loft downtown and he/she was robbed, do you think that they should move? Would you move?

Let's say your car was broken into not once, but a few times ... is this enough to make the decision to move?

[BelieveInCleve]

Some people would move others wouldnt. Personally I dont really care, I probably wouldnt move unless it happened a lot of times. I have street smarts, I have lived in a bad neighborhood before and I know all the things to do to not get robbed or jumped, its basically just common sense once you live there for a while. When I was growing up in South Elyria in the early 90s I was robbed a few times, almost jumped, nearly shot and stabbed, and a lot of my friends ended up getting stabbed and jumped a lot of times. Once those things happen to you, you learn what to do to avoid those situations. Most the people in my neighborhood knew me, but it was the people who didnt who caused the problems. I was forced to learn to avoid those situations, I just wish that other people wouldnt have to go through the same thing.

But these days its all about quality of life for people, if they could have a lot safer and better life in a suburb outside of Cleveland, then they probably will. Why would someone live in Cleveland and have the bad services and bad schools and have to worry about getting robbed everyday when they could pay a little bit more and get a lot nicer house with better services and little crime in an area outside of Cleveland. Im not saying that Cleveland is horrible but it is a very urban area and every urban area has its problems.

[gtsurfer05]

Originally Posted by Cincy-Rise

Are you sure they are based in Cincinnati, because if you're referring to the CCV, they are based in Sharonville?

Also, are you saying that there aren't conservative christian groups/activist in Cleveland? I'm just curious ... I'm not saying that there are groups like this in Cleveland, I'm just asking.

I thought it was based in Cincy, but I could be wrong. Maybe the news was just saying they were based in Cincy. I assume there could be conservative Christian groups in the cleveland area, at least people that empathize with their cause. My point was rather directed at the group who fought for that law for the entire state.

[Traveler87]

Originally Posted by Cincy-Rise

costello_musicman, I hear you ... I'm on a few other msg boards and what I found awkward was that most of the posters on here are more "suburban minded" or they do not have an open mind. I feel that people should work to be part of the change, rather than run. What happened to city & civic pride?

I also fault the people that respond like the one you quoted ... No one should make a statement like that without seeing it for themselves.

I agree 100%. So many people on here are from the suburbs, myself included, but my career path has shown me so many different views that I never really have thought of before. Cleveland is a multicultural mecca. We have so much history, culture, and an amazing past. We are a changing city, with new nicknames such as: America's New City, The Comeback City, The Forest City with our abundance of urban parks.

Urban living has really taken off here in Cleveland. The growth in downtown shows that, and the population growth downtown alone speaks for itself. Cleveland is doing much better than many other major cities, and walking downtown in Cleveland, I have felt much safer here than in many other major cities. In Cleveland, we have lots of pedestrian traffic, and car traffic, and now with the Euclid Corridor Project, Rapid Transit will be coming into downtown. Cleveland has a great rapid transit system, the first one in North America to have the transit system run from the airport (Hopkins Int'l) to downtown. In the suburb of Shaker Heights, there are stops at the restaurants and shops in that area.

People need to take a visit to Cleveland, it is a very underrated city. A city that has been voted All-American city more than any other, has been voted most livable twice in the 21st century. Take a visit before you bash a city.