Neighbors of the three men charged in the kidnapping of Amanda Berry and two other women called police multiple times over the years beginning way back in 2004. Three times police went to the door of the house, but never went inside and never followed up after neighbors told police there were women on leashes in the back yard and one neighbor who had seen Amanda holding an infant and banging on the window for help. You just knew there was going to be a story like this. Neighbors got involved and made the call and police did nothing. No investigations and no followups. They did not take the complaints seriously and let three or possibly more women suffer for almost a decade. Just think if they had been rescued way back in 2004. Think about the years these women would have had back to their lives.
Sounds like typical police behavior to me. They are NOT there to protect and serve poor and/or minority neighborhoods. Which is where these girls were being held captive.
ReplyDeleteNice generalization, Chris. My cop brother has gone into burning buildings more than once to save people without regard for their ethnicity and has put his life on the line to save "minority" women from their abusers and has the hospital records to prove it. that is "typical police behavior." Should these stories turn out to be true, we're talking lazy dogass cops, not typical cops.
DeleteExactly!!!
DeleteSure Chris... My "typical police" husband sounds just like you describe...
DeleteThis is a horrible story and to for anyone to placethe blame or point fingers at anyone other than the perpetrators is wrong
Just because there are a few good cops doesn't mean they all do their jobs. Tell it like it is, chris
Delete"A few good cops?" Hope you never need one, then, or you're screwed.
DeleteMy God...those poor girls. This kind of thing just keeps happening. And ur right, many years of trauma could have been avoided. I hope they sue that worthless police dept.
ReplyDeleteThat's sickening.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me sick to my stomach and I think it was said on enty's twitter yesterday- but it truly does give pause to wonder how many others are in this situation at this very moment that we're unaware of..
ReplyDeleteI didn't hear that the leash thing was reported to the police, only that neighbors saw it.
ReplyDeleteIt sounded like to me that people saw things, but that the police were only notified once about suspicious behavior (in addition to the domestic violence call in 1993).
Heartbreaking. Thank god they are safe now.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there will be a lengthy investigation.... Since the Jaycee Dugard fiasco nothing surprises me.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but you can't hang the police on this. The CLE PD spent thousands of hours on leads for the missing girls. I have friends in the department. They never gave up. The police can't just bust into a house with out cause. They legally need more than a neighbor seeing something. They couldn't even get a search warrant on that. There is going to be a lot of monday-morning-quarterbacking on this one. Once the call went to the actual police dispatcher after that idiot civillian dispatcher, the cops were all over it like white on rice.
ReplyDeleteExactly! The police can't just break down doors for random reports. Then people would be yelling that they are brutal and taking away rights. This is a ridiculous blog entry. Not one person reported the girls there or him being abusive to anyone.
DeleteThe 911 dispatcher is under review. I hope they fire her ass. The whole world has heard what a POS she is.
ReplyDelete?
DeleteI thought the dispatcher was a man.
DeleteJacye Duggard won a huge lawsuit against the state of California. Her situation was different becasue her kidnapper was a registered sex offender and was never properly vetted.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention Amanda Berry's mother might have lived to see her child come home and not die thinking she had been murdered.
ReplyDeletehttp://fox8.com/2012/07/19/source-authorities-searching-for-amanda-berrys-remains/ but the cops continue to search the girls so i think the police was honestly involved and has regrets now
ReplyDeleteHere the difference is that someone (a neighbour) just didn't call the police to say "it's weird..." but he acted and he came to see what happens.
When you listen the neighbours,all say the guy was nice
I live outside of Cleveland (and work in the city) and while the police have been working these leads for years, they still dropped the ball when neighbors called the police about seeing the naked women in the yard, the child in the window of what looks like an abandoned house, etc. and did nothing.
ReplyDelete@Staple611 @Patty:
ReplyDeletei totally agree with you
LAWSUIT.......I hope they get a bundle
ReplyDelete@StewMcG: once the cops came to knock the door once but any one replied
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading about this for the past day or two and the saddest things about this are that Amanda's mom passed without them finding her--she hunted for her until the end, and the other thing is that with the third victim--Michelle, it looks like nobody really looked for her--she was older-and had just lost custody of her child--and people thought she'd taken off.
ReplyDeleteHer family didn't even have pictures to give the authorities. She was stuck there for this long and nobody even looked.
The stories of multiple pregnancies and miscarriages are just sickening--those poor poor girls. I pray they get a lot of support.
The neighbors are saying there were multiple calls made to report the nude women on leashes in the backyard, and someone in the window--and the police are denying there were calls.
This is just tragic all around--and there needs to be a big investigation if they find out the calls were made and not looked in to.
I'm in TX and believe me, EVERY time I call the police they are On It! They don't let things get out of hand where I live. I can't believe somehing like this is happening here with neighbors calling police. Major fail!
ReplyDeleteI'm in Texas and when my neighbors were robbed at gunpoint it took the cops 45 minutes to show up. A simple 911 my House was broken into...two hours.
DeleteFroggy - Williamson County
DeleteCleveland police are denying these reports. Self-interested, perhaps, but still it should be noted.
ReplyDeletehttp://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/05/police_knock_down_reports_of_multiple_calls.php
There were similar reports following the arrest of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland serial killer arrested three years ago. Those reports resulted in extensive changes to CPD procedures for handling reports of sex crimes.
To see how Cleveland police can respond to other situations, see "Review of deadly Cleveland police chase, and what happens next"
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/04/review_of_deadly_cleveland_pol.html
Cleveland police reported hearing a shot fired and set off in pursuit of a car where the shots were believed to have come from. The chase escalated into pursuit by multiple squad cars from multiple jurisdictions. Eventually the car was cornered and police open fire, firing 137 shots and killing two persons. No gun or shell casings were found in the car.
I felt really bad for the last girl too. She was older and seemed all alone.
ReplyDeleteI'm really uncomfortable with the calls for suing. I want to think, hope, that America has good provision for the victims of crime to support their transition back into the world. they will need money.
ReplyDeleteBut I think it's really early to blame police. Maybe they were negligent, but I can't say that yet based on what I've read. All I know is I'm glad these women are alive, the rapist kidnappers are in gaol, and wish this was discovered sooner.
Imagine your house got searched because there was a report, said as plain as this, of a naked woman in your back yard on the ground. Well .. I've been naked there, hopefully privately! Or a woman in a dodgy looking house window. We don't know what and how anything in the past years was reported. Hell, I think the report of talking to much food in the house, which send to have been regular the way it was said, is more compelling than any of the other stuff - and that want ever reported to police (from what I've read).
We all wish these women didn't go through this and are happy they escaped. At this stage, I am not seeing where police negligence has been demonstrated. Just the sadness, which I again want to believe the police department shares.
Tl;dr: premature blamage
I'm wondering if these rumors of the neighbors seeing the leashed women are true. We all know how reports that spread like wildfire can be reported as truth when in fact they never happened. But if they are true, my god.
ReplyDeleteHenriette, I know, there aren't even photos of the last girl. Her background seems awful.
I feel bad that there were THREE women who had to endure this, but at the same time, it seems like maybe the fact that they had each other helped them. If just one was being held, they'd be much more likely to have Stockholm syndrome and may not have tried to escape that way.
ReplyDeleteI have a problem with all these 'reports' coming out that the police could have done this or done that. So far, all we know for sure is that neighbors say they saw stuff. Nothing had been documented, and when the police came out, there was no apparent reason to investigate further. Think of it this way, you piss off your neighbor because your music was up too loud. They call the cops and say they saw a scraggily dressed child in your upstairs bedroom window and they MUST be being held captive! The police come to your door, you say, 'Nope, no child'. The police go away, since there's no reason to suspect anything, OR do you let them roam freely in your house because your pissed off neighbor said they saw something?! If the latter was the case, you'd be all over that shit for the cops being assholes.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that when you look at things in hindsight, it's ALWAYS obvious. Cut the police some slack. If the neighbors were SO convinced there was something going on, why didn't they bust in the house themselves if they felt the cops weren't doing enough?!
I feel terrible for these girls and their families and friends, but in times like this the public ALWAYS wants to blame someone. In this case, blame the kidnappers, and them alone. I don't know the cops personally, but they can't ALL be idiots.
Holy shit I just read on Gawker that Castro beat his ex repeatedly, kidnapped his own daughters, and one of them is in jail for slitting the throat of her 11 month own daughter?!?!
ReplyDeleteWoops sorry it's on Jezebel....
ReplyDeleteA police captain on the news said they had been called out twice in the last ten years.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm with Alita, premature blaming. Think of the outrage if the police stormed EVERY house that had a report of an odd going on, no matter what. They (the police) had no reason to think these women were being held in THIS house.
20/20 vision is a wondrous thing.
Cheers @Lola. I think everyone's so angry when they hear this stuff that they need to blame something or someone. But that doesn't make it fair or right.
DeleteWhy didn't the neighbors break in themselves, are you serious? Oh yeah, because there's no one like say, a police force, that you should call when you see something disturbing or suspicious. Because we haven't all been taught to not take the law into our own hands and jump into a situation that we are not trained to deal with and possibly cause greater danger.
ReplyDeleteWith the past issues involving their 911 line and the atrocious behavior of the 911 operator, it seems like there may be a breakdown in the emergency response system for this city. If that is the case, then it makes the town, NOT the police force responsible. Looking at the cluster of effups that are recorded, it seems highly likely.
I will say, that the officers that were so invested in finding Amanda Berry, must be elated and extremely frustrated as well.
I have had CNN on all morning. The ex-wife of this guy is now dead, but he was charged with breaking her nose, twice, dislocating BOTH her shoulders (separate times) and other serious abuse. Charges were eventually dropped as they arose from a custody case. He was never charged and prosecuted for assault. Michelle Knight, 32 now, was 21 when she disappeared and had a rocky relationship with her family. She is still i the hospital, very weak and doesn't want to speak with her family. So very sad. They should just execute the 3 brothers for what they did to these girls. And I have to agree, without good cause, the police can only do so much. No stories of women on leashes, just a neighbour saying they saw a naked woman walking in the back yard, and the police not believing the teenagers who called it in. It's all sickening.
ReplyDeleteI thought both 911 calls were hard to listen to. The dispatchers were so apathetic. I was horrified that they both sounded like they wanted to get off the phone asap.
ReplyDeleteToo early to place blame and all that... but I'm sure police did look for those girls with all available resources. That doesn't mean they took any calls they may have gotten from a poor neighborhood seriously. They wouldn't have known there might be a connection with their case.
I'm sure mistakes were made but I think it is premature to blame the police. These poor, poor women.
ReplyDeleteThe calls were both at around 5:52PM....The first thing I thought was 'shift change'. Because both operators sounded like they were halfway out the door.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm all for looking to make sure cops did what they could and did their jobs, but the simple fact is there are rights protecting citizens in their homes and police can not simply enter with a swat team at their discretion or without warrant *****significant***** probable cause.
ReplyDeleteAnd if they were to do so...most citizens would go American Reese Witherspoon on their asses.
So...let me get this straight. Say you and your family are leaving the house and your kid is throwing a fit. Screaming bloody murder and really causing a ruckus but you gotta leave. Some appointment or something that you can't miss. Now say your neighbor see's you outside dragging your kid around and hearing all that mess turns to call the police not realizing that you actually left. Now the police have been called about a screaming kid being dragged around outside this house. They go and knock on the door to contact you and of course your not home. Should they
ReplyDeletea.) kick in your door upsetting your family dog that sees someone breaking in the house and goes on attack causing the officer to shoot your beloved dog for his own safety just to find out no one was home?
b.) leave because your not home and that's a bullshit call which 99 out of 100 are.
@Nemesis. I shudder to think what the state of my front door would be if neighbor's called the cops every time (read: at least 2 mornings a week) my daughter threw a fit because she wanted to stay home in the morning.
DeleteAnd there are neighbors who do make calls just because they don't like someone. I had the city water department show up at my house because a leak in "my" backyard was flooding the neighborhood. Only the leak was in the backyard of the person who called the city, the one who doesn't like me because I tossed all the cigarette butts that came from his house back in his yard.
@Nemesis. Yeah. I'm also a bit tired of people saying "I saw this and I saw that and I called the police, but nothing happened." It's not like the police could bust in without cause. If they really suspected something, then these neighbors could have gone all Gladys Kravitz and kept a sharper eye on the place. Even if they did, they must not have seen more to arouse. This man and the brothers involved were good at hiding what they were doing, considering how long this went on. They're the ones to blame.
DeleteI used to nanny for my younger cousins, one of whom was autistic. She would have extremely loud meltdowns when either of her parents left (but only if she saw them leave. Totally fine if they were simply gone and I said they'd be back later) and most neighbors knew what was going on, so if they saw me chasing a little girl down the street or heard her screaming bloody murder, they knew what was going on. But there was this one drunk who always called (she had it in for my uncle and aunt) and said a child was being abused. I was tempted to show the cops my scratched up arms if they wanted to see a victim. That kid was a scratcher.
Long story short, that woman (in her drunken delusion) was convinced I was abusing my cousin and kept calling the cops. The cops kept showing up and not carting me off to prison (rightly so). She did what she thought was her civic duty. They did their job checking things out. The same kind of thing happened here. Only this man was a monster who was doing horrible things. I'm just glad he finally let down his guard enough for these women to get free.
While many, many police officers are upright public servants, stories like this just solidify my opinion that there are also many who are little more than thugs with badges. One missed opportunity would be one thing. But the fact that there were multiple calls from different witnesses is just inexcusable to me. I mean did they even try to get a warrant to search? All you need is probable cause, and repeated complaints from neighbors about specific sightings of women held captive would have been sufficient for that. These bum cops were just lazy and didn't do their jobs. You'd think the fact that the residence was within the vicinity of multiple missing persons cases AND that people spotted women on leashes would be enough to make these officers' light bulbs go off. My heart breaks for those victims and their families. Even more so when I think about the amount of suffering they could have been spared had a few idiot police officers actually done their freaking job.
ReplyDelete/endofrant
My experience is that most are " thugs with badges" & the few that aren't are the exception to the rule. But I'm in Chicago, where corruption is the norm.
Deletetell em fritters
ReplyDeleteAgain, if I - or anyone calls police here saying there is something "weird" they come out. After that they do drive bys day and night for a couple days. When we're out and see the cars we talk with officers to see what's happening. I think if this neighborhood had a similar response these women might have been found sooner. I wonder how much funding the police department has?? This funding is a better use of tax dollars.
ReplyDeleteI live in Texas too, and I have trouble getting the cops out. I'm not talking about calls for something "weird," I'm talking about, "I see a man breaking into my neighbor's car right now." You need to open your eyes to the fact that this isn't how it works in bigger cities. Either the police efforts are unfairly pulled into crime-ridden lower income areas or less attention is paid because the areas are poor.
DeleteI agree that knowing your neighbors and the cops is a great way to deter crime. But, move to a slum in Cleveland and see how hard it is to chit-chat with your local patrolman.
With the people claiming to have reported the strange things at the house and te police saying there were no calls, I wonder how much of this is people trying to assuage their guilt of not calling by saying they did and putting it on the police.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where the women on leashes story came from but that's not what was reported to the police.
ReplyDeleteAnd again, this country would go nuclear (or nucular if you're W) if cops started busting into people's houses every time a neighbor reported something "suspicious".
It's not like they were getting calls every week. Twice in 10 years is not SWAT worthy with nothing else to raise suspicion.
SO should they have SWAT teamed every house "in the vicinity" that had a report by a neighbor?
To repeat...20/20 hindsight and all....
@Dasha "The 911 dispatcher is under review. I hope they fire her ass. The whole world has heard what a POS she is."
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, I'm not familiar with this part of it. Can you or someone fill me in?
The 911 dispatcher needs to be under review. Even if she didn't recognize the name, when someone says that they've been kidnapped you don't tell them to talk to the police when they get there and hang up. You keep her on the line until the police show up.
ReplyDeleteBTW, that was a great response time from the police. Two minutes after dispatching is not usual.
@_-_
ReplyDeleteFunding for police departments is down all over the country due to the economy. There's one town in New Jersey that had it's police force cut by half and it is now over run with drugs and murder.
Nemesis - my point exactly. They don't play where I'm at and are well funded.
DeleteAlita and SillyGirl beat me to it. A lot of retroactive spinning is going on, at every level - including the neighbors. I read where one neighbor said she called the police because she thought it was weird Ariel Castro took a lot of McDonald's bags into his house. I mean, even if you assume it is true... That's not really the sort of tip police can do much with. And unfortunately, the "women on leashes" tip - again, if true - it's "ugh" but if when they got there, there no visual evidence of such a scene, there was no probable cause for them to do a search inside the house.
ReplyDeleteEven Charles Ramsey, bless his heart, has changed some details. I've him him say both he had never heard of Amanda Berry before and also that it took him a second to remember the name. He gave an interview yesterday where he recounted, in great detail, a heated exchange with the 911 operator that flat-out did not happen on the recording. He completely exaggerated (fabricated even) the disbelief of the operator. So even among the best of them, there's some major revisionist history happening very quickly.
Please, yeah, take these "accounts" with a huge grain of salt. What we do know is that three girls disappeared in three years, within the same small area. That, the police absolutely should have connected the dots on.
Actually..I just listened to the 911 call from Amanda and the one from Charles. What he describes happened on the call did happen.
DeleteAnd so you don't think I'm talking out of my ass:
ReplyDeleteCharles Ramsey's Heroic Rescue Story Keeps Changing.
police and CPS (and apparently 911 operators) are for the most part just concernd with checking off all the boxes. bare minimum effort. "went to house" check!, "knocked on door", check! no one home; good. i did what i'm paid to do. done.
ReplyDeleteI read in our paper that neighbors have said police were there 3 times, and the force is looking into if they even actually got calls. It wouldn't surprise me if they did, but it also wouldn't surprise me nobody called the police,and this is the way the neighbors can assuage their guilt by saying the did something.
ReplyDeleteThis whole case is sad, but I'm waiting to hear it officially, not just gossip from neighbors.
@Dewie,
ReplyDeleteI agree. I like Charles but I also think he is grandstanding a bit. There is a man standing to the left behind him in the first videos just listening. This was the neighbor from across the street who ran over first. He says HE kicked in the lower door and Charles only arrived AFTER Amanda came running out. Charles also sounded like he was exaggerating on Anderson Cooper. Although this time he did say something along the lines of "we" went over, meaning the guy across the st.
The man is Hispanic and I don't know if he speaks English or not which may be why he didn't tell his story right away.
Amanda is the real hero.
http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/national/angel-cordero-claims-he-was-first-to-help-cleveland-women-not-charles-ramsey
ReplyDeleteBut the police are the good guys, they care about us, they dont do your drugs, they don't trade them for sex with crack hos, they're upstanding, trustworthy, hardworking citizens! Right.... they are thugs with badges, maybe there's a couple of honest guys on the force, but by and large they are corrupt, lazy, stupid, inept, and do everything and more that they arrest other people for. They are just milking the clock and do the bare minimum not to get fired. Excuse me while I go clean up my community Nightowl.
ReplyDeletewomen were reported as being tied up on leashes in a back yard and a woman with an infant was pounding on a window screaming for help? I pray to God I never go missing. F the police. Your tax dollars hard at work.
ReplyDeletethey dropped the ball? you call this dropping the fucking ball? How would you feel if it was you pounding on that window screaming for help holding your rapists baby, desperately calling to your neighbor and the police just dropped the ball? if it was your daughter on a leash in a yard would you still say they just dropped the ball? they deserve to be prosecuted for their dropping of the ball and fired. period.
ReplyDeleteDear equation: that's because you live in an affluent, majority white county just north of Austin. As the median income goes down and the number of brown people goes up police response times also go up.
ReplyDeletethis story is JUST sad, only person i blame is the mutherfuckers that took those girls. not police , no the dispatcher, not charles.. always a lynch mob to involve everybody FUCK THAT. lets get back to the situation at hand, those fuckers shouldnt have done the shit
ReplyDeleteI too thought the 911 responder was incredibly clueless. She could have kept her on the phone and reassured her she was going to be okay. Even if she didn't know who Amanda Berry is when you say "I was kidnapped 10 yrs. ago and everyone's been looking for me" that should bring you pause.
ReplyDeleteWhat you many see as the exception is the rule for others. We all know there are a lot of good for nothing cops out there. Just because your family members are good doesn't mean the rest of them are.
ReplyDeleteStop assuming the rest of the world has it 'good' like you.
ouch
ReplyDeleteCharles Ramsey: not a real hero, just some schlep who eats at McDonald's and probably wasn't even there when it all went down.
ReplyDeleteThat's what is going to be said sooner or later.
Yes, that's a jaded view to take. But folks are already questioning how much he helped.
Can't win for losing, even when you try to sincerely help someone.
Just wow, I am so glad the women and young girl are safe now! I wonder if there are more out there.
ReplyDeleteTo answer the most recent post, yes, there are more out there. They are the victims of human trafficking, sex slaves or forced labor. They are in your neighborhoods, right under your noses, especially if you live in large cities, near the coast, the border, or an international airport.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that gets me about this the most is the boarded up windows. I know that this was a very poor neighborhood, but if this was such a nice, friendly guy didn't it strike anyone as odd that his windows were boarded up? For years? Yes, I know they can be expensive to fix, but not even one was ever repaired? In my old neighborhood, when the police ran out of probably cause, we started calling code enforcement. They can usually get into a house without probable cause, but if they need it to do a health and safety inspection, it's much easier to get than a criminal search warrant. Maybe that's just a California thing.
Anyway, I'm glad these women are now safe, I hope they can regain their mental and physical health in the years to come, and I hope that Ohio is not one of those states that forces visitation on the children of rape.
Re:police responce: when my kids were young, the woman around the block called to say her 10 yr old son was missing. When police showed up, the mother met them at the door to say kid was home and hes alright. They wanted to see and talk to him, and when she hesitated, they said either bring him here or we coming in, but they werent leaving without seeing him. Thats how u do it.
ReplyDeleteNow in another case few years ago in my new state, little boy cldnt be found so police came out. When they got the boy, he was about 6 or 7, they spoke to him with great grandparents who were babysitting him. Ggma said she was working on something, and gpa was napping and kid shld hv stayed on property. I didnt say anything, but i was thinking, how about telling grandparents no napping or working on something while babysitting!!!!!!!! Toyed with talking to cop- who as a female shld hv known better- but i didnt think it wld do any good. So i dont know.
__-__= ____
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure where exactly you live but it just does not work that way in most places - maybe in Mayberry but I doubt in metro Cleveland's poorer neighborhoods. They're understaffed and it's one emergency after another. So far, the only calls I know to the house was when he left a kid on his schoolbus and one about a fight. The guy who said he had his sister call the police - that story has already changed.
Most recent update I heard is the brothers will not be charged - they are not involved in this. The kidnapper also seriously abused his exwife.
I have not heard any of these "women on a leash" stories anywhere but here. But my heart goes out to these three women and the little girl - they have a lot of shit to work through.
Anon- first was in nyc suberb. 2nd in RI suburb. And u r right; i have no experience with police response in poorer neighborhood. Also u right about shit to work thru. I wish them all well.
Delete