Report: S. Euclid “Youth in Peril” Forum + Today's Events

Report on South Euclid “Youth in Peril” Forum

Attorney and former assistant 

prosecutor Jocelyn Conwell on how a

juvenile record can bedevil adults.

School Board president

Cassandra Jones lauds Judge Michael Ryan

Judge Williams-Byers and Professor Naso listen as teacher

Karen Jones responds to audience question.

South Euclid resident Angela Shute-Wilson 

addresses the Youth-in-Peril panel.

South Euclid resident Gregory Moore urged 

the community to finda way to continue the City's 

court diversion program this summer.

Case Western Reserve University professor
and City Council president David Miller speaks
from audience about the consequences when
children are witness to domestic violence

Marko Fikaris recalls his
outsider status as South Euclid child

Police Chief Kevin Nietert listening
 as community member speaks

An active and engaged band of nearly 40 citizens turned out Wednesday night to listen to and question local community leaders about alternatives and programs for young people, especially those in the 12-15 age range, to deter them from pursuing activities that might push them into the juvenile justice system.

Councilwoman Ruth Gray

 The meeting, held at the South Euclid Community Center, was called by the city council's safety committee, chaired by Ruth Gray. Panel members included three judges —Alison Nelson Floyd and Michael John Ryan from Juvenile Court, and Gayle Williams-Byers of South Euclid Municipal Court — as well as S. Euclid police chief Kevin Nietert, service director Keith A. Benjamin, South Euclid-Lyndhurst Schools director of business services, Karen Jones of Cleveland Heights-University Heights Board of Education and teacher at Memorial Jr. High in South Euclid; Case Western Reserve law professor and juvenile justice expert Carmen Naso; and Chad Welker of the school district’s business services, including security.

Benjamin said that 38% of all young people who get involved with juvenile court wind up in the criminal justice system as adults. He urged swifter resolution of juvenile cases and emphasized that where and with whom children spend their out-of-school time plays a critical role in their destinies.

Police Chief Nietert emphasized his belief in the court diversion program previously operating within South Euclid but said that it had been possible only due to a federal grant that had expired. Since the district had only $5 thousand to run a program costing $10-15 thousand, the city was likely not to participate in 2013.

CH-UH board member and SE-L schoolteacher Karen Jones had some strong ideas about how teachers must be involved in the lives of their students. She said a “good teacher has to be a risk-taker” and inquire after the lives of her students.

“You can’t just wear blinders and say ‘I’m just teaching social studies,’” said Jones. “I don’t want my students to ever meet Judges Floyd or Ryan in court.”

Following the presentations there was high participation from residents. A businessman in the audience, Gregory Moore, challenged city leadership and residents to come up with a plan to ensure the diversion program continues in 2013. “No plan, no dollars. No dollars, no plan,” he said.

Judge Williams-Byers said that she had “been in dialogue with the school superintendent and the principal of Memorial Jr. High regarding the diversion program” as well as a peer court model, and that she would take the lead in following up with Juvenile Court regarding extension of a court diversion program.

Marko Fikaris related his family’s move to South Euclid in 1979 when as a sixth or seventh grader he was presented with numerous challenges because he was an outsider. He said that ingredients for a successful life start from the home.

Two or three parents in the audience spoke with particular reference to five streets in the southwest corner of South Euclid that are within the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district. One said that living in one city while going to school in another raised peer issues of loyalty and identity among students.

As the meeting adjourned, a consensus seemed to be reached that officials would hold regular public sessions on a quarterly basis, in addition to the actions they would pursue over the next sixty days. *

Today’s Community Events

Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson will be the featured speaker tonight, Friday January 18, at the 12^th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Gala, sponsored by the Cleveland chapter Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

The program will be held at the Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church, 1161 East 105 St. [map]

State Sen. Nina Turner will be honored at the 7 PM dinner. For information or tickets [$50.] call Marcia McCoy at 216.374.0913 or 216.752.0259.

• • •

The ceremonial swearing-in ceremony for Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams takes place this afternoon at 4:30PM at Cleveland City Hall, 601 Lakeside Ave., in City Council chambers. Collier-Williams was elected to the Common Pleas Court in November.

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* I was unable to arrive before several on the panel had spoken.

Change Coming — Slowly — to Local Democratic Party

Executive Committee members of Cuyahoga County’s Democratic Party are meeting tomorrow morning on Cuyahoga Community College’s Metro Campus to pick a candidate to run this November in an election to complete the unexpired term of the late Judge Peter Sikora.

Since Sikora’s died after this year’s primary elections, Ohio law provides that the party may select a candidate to run in the next general election to serve the balance of the unexpired term, which ends December 31, 2016.

Only a few years ago, tomorrow’s meeting would have been pretty much a formality. Party bosses Jimmy Dimora and Bill Mason would have lined up their candidates, and after some horse-trading here and there the result would have been determined before anybody showed up.

Some party regulars rue the new order slowly being installed by new party chair Stuart Garson, who was elected chair by that same process himself when party heavyweights — led by Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, and über-labor friend John Ryan in US Senator Sherrod Brown’s office, bypassed calls for an open process and put in Garson. The new chair was largely unknown among the rank and file. He was known as a prolific fundraiser, having raised campaign funds for a number of candidates, including Fudge.

An attorney whose practice specializes in representing injured workers in workers’ comp cases, Garson had no hands-on experience in the hard core ethnic politics county Democrats have long engaged in. In fact, he despises that sort of horse-trading, preferring the more sedate politics practiced in Cuyahoga’s tonier regions, where meritocracy is at least touted, even if not always observed, as the order of the day.

Over the objections of a number of party regulars, Garson has stood firm on a process that reduces the chaotic railroading prevalent in the Dimora era.

Tomorrow six or seven candidates will appear on a first ballot. If any of them receives 50% plus one of the assembled voters, he or she will be the party’s nominee. If no candidate gets a majority, only those who receive at least 15% of the votes cast will pass to the next round. It will likely take 3 or 4 rounds to determine the winner.

Mason candidate O’Malley has perhaps the most political experience and is the presumed frontrunner, but he is by no means assured to emerge as party nominee. Each candidate was required to answer a series of questions about his or her credentials, fitness for office, record of public service, stance on diversity, and other criteria. While there is no guarantee that executive committee voters read the responses, Garson is clearly working to put in place a process that over time should diminish style cronyism.

Competing for the party’s nomination in tomorrow’s vote:

John Lawson, Ed Lentz, William McGinty, Terease Neff, Michael O'Malley, and Michael John Ryan.

The winner will be heavily favored to defeat Republican Anjanette C Arabian Whitman, who was appointed to the seat last week by Gov. John Kasich.