Cleveland Ohio spike in missing kids; 30 in two weeks

Mathew 24:12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

Important Takeaways:

  • WHERE ARE THEY? Chilling mystery as nearly 30 kids go missing from city in two weeks and cops say they’ve never seen anything like it
  • In the span of two weeks, nearly 30 children have vanished in Cleveland, sparking huge concern from a local police chief who said he hasn’t seen anything like this in his 33-year career.
  • Majoy also serves as the board president of Cleveland Missing, an Ohio nonprofit that offers direct support for friends and families that are searching for a missing loved one.
  • He called the number of missing children, whose ages range from 12 to 17, unprecedented when speaking to reporters.
  • “For some reason, in 2023, we’ve seen a lot more than we normally see, which is troubling in part because we don’t know what’s going on with some of these kids, whether they’re being trafficked or whether they’re involved in gang activity or drugs.”
  • All of these disappearances fall into the larger problem of crime in the greater Cleveland area, said Majoy.
  • He added that many teenagers will seek out gangs when they’re desperate for protection.
  • This often leads to initiation crimes such as carjacking and robberies or even selling their bodies and drug use, resulting in them becoming addicts, he said.

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United Airlines bets on Florida, adding dozens of flights a day starting November

By David Shepardson

(Reuters) – United Airlines is adding up to 28 daily nonstop U.S. flights to Florida starting Nov. 6 as the Chicago-based airline bets on a rebound in leisure travelers heading to sunny skies.

The direct flights are from non United hub cities in Boston, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New York/LaGuardia, Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio to four Florida destinations.

United said it is part of its “continuing strategy to aggressively, and opportunistically manage the impact of COVID-19 by increasing service to destinations where customers most want to fly.” But the carrier said it could reduce the number of flights if COVID-19 infections in Florida remain high.

New Florida flights will go to Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Orlando and Tampa.

Ankit Gupta, United’s vice president of domestic network planning, said the new flights represent “United’s largest expansion of point-to-point, non-hub flying and reflects our data driven approach to add capacity where customers are telling us they want to go.”

United can adjust up or down. Gupta said the added Florida flights could amount to more than 400,000 additional seats this winter season. He said many U.S. travelers are picking Florida instead of international destinations.

There are modest signs of improving air travel demand. The Transportation Security Administration said it screened 831,789 people on Sunday — the first time it screened more than 800,000 people since March 17. That is still down 70% over prior year figures.

Still, Florida has reported 542,792 coronavirus cases, the second most of any U.S. state behind only California, according to a Reuters tally, and more than 10% of all reported U.S. cases. If coronavirus cases in Florida remain high, “we will adjust our plans,” Gupta said.

Southwest Airlines chief executive Gary Kelly said at a Texas Tribune forum on Wednesday the airline is still trying to figure how many flights to offer as it works to reduce its $20 million a day losses. “It is pure guesswork at this point” Kelly said.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by David Gregorio)

Ohio governor tests positive for COVID-19, cancels plans to greet Trump in Cleveland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said on Thursday he had tested positive for COVID-19 as part of a safety protocol to greet U.S. President Donald Trump when he arrives in Cleveland to visit a Whirlpool washing machine factory.

A statement issued on DeWine’s Twitter feed said the governor, a Republican, had no symptoms at the present time and would return to the Ohio capital of Columbus to quarantine at home for the next 14 days. Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted also took the coronavirus test and tested negative, DeWine’s statement said.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said alternate arrangements were being made for greeting Trump and there would be no major changes to the president’s itinerary in Ohio.

“The President wishes Governor DeWine a speedy and full recovery and commends the job he’s doing for the great state of Ohio,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere.

At the Whirlpool plant in Clyde, Ohio, Trump will tout the tariffs his administration imposed on imported washing machines in 2018, which have helped increase employment at the facility while contributing to price increases for the appliances.

Trump also plans to sign a long-awaited executive order aimed at boosting U.S. production of drugs and medical equipment, including through a “Buy America” provision requiring the government to buy from domestic firms and other measures..

Later on Thursday, Trump is due to attend fundraising events at a Cleveland-area yacht club and at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Chris Reese and Tom Brown)

U.S. eviction bans are ending. That could worsen the spread of coronavirus

By Michelle Conlin

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Last month, as the coronavirus was surging in Houston, recently unemployed hospital secretary Ramzan Boudoin got more bad news: She had six days to vacate her apartment for failing to pay the rent.

A Texas ban on evictions had enabled Boudoin to keep the two-bedroom place she shared with her daughter and granddaughter while she searched for another job. But that moratorium expired on May 18. The landlord took legal action and Boudoin couldn’t come up with $2,997 plus interest to settle the judgment.

So this month Boudoin, 46, packed her family into a 2008 Nissan compact and headed to New Orleans, where she moved in with her mother and her sister’s family. In all, nine people share the packed three-bedroom house. Bedouin said her mother suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, a lung illness that makes her particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 in a city where cases are rising at an alarming pace.

“Every minute, we are worried someone is going to give it to her,” Boudoin said.

As the coronavirus began to shut down large swaths of the U.S. economy in March, spiraling millions of Americans into unemployment, a patchwork of state and federal eviction bans were enacted to keep people in their homes. Now those protections are vanishing. Moratoriums have already expired in 29 states and are about to lapse in others. On Friday, a federal stay, which protects roughly one-third of American renters who live in buildings with mortgages backed by the federal government, will run out unless Congress acts fast.

As many as 28 million people could be evicted in coming months, according to Emily Benfer, a visiting law professor at Wake Forest University who is the co-creator of Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, a national research center on evictions. That’s nearly triple the estimated 10 million Americans who lost their homes during the years after the 2008 mortgage crisis.

Public health and housing experts say such a massive displacement of renters would be unprecedented in modern history. In addition to the hardship that comes with losing one’s home, they say, the evictions could lead to a second-wave public health crisis as the newly homeless are forced into shelters or tight quarters with relatives, increasing the risk of spread of COVID-19.

Evictions have resumed in cities including Houston, Cincinnati, Columbus, Kansas City, Cleveland and St. Louis, according to data compiled by Princeton University at its Eviction Lab. No single, comprehensive source exists to track U.S. evictions nationwide.

In Milwaukee, eviction filings dropped to nearly zero after Wisconsin instituted an emergency 60-day ban on evictions on March 27. But after that order was lifted May 26, evictions surged past their pre-pandemic levels. Milwaukee recorded 1,966 eviction filings in the seven weeks following the ban’s expiration, an 89% increase from 1,038 notices filed in the seven weeks leading up to the moratorium, the Princeton data show.

Dr. Nasia Safdar, an infectious disease physician and the medical director for infection prevention at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said it’s impossible at this point to establish a scientific correlation between evictions and COVID-19 spread and deaths; diagnosed coronavirus cases are up 150% in Milwaukee, for example, since the eviction moratorium ended.

What is not in doubt among public health experts, she said, is that evictions are dangerous during a pandemic. “A key tenet of prevention in a pandemic is to have the infrastructure that will minimize transmission from person to person,” Safdar said. “Any activity that breaks down that structure … makes containment of a pandemic exceedingly difficult.”

A July 17 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that in 44 U.S. cities and counties, eviction filings by landlords have almost returned to their usual levels in places where moratoriums have expired, or where bans were never enacted.

That study said evicted tenants are “at greater risk of contracting, spreading and suffering complications from COVID-19” because precariously housed people often are unable to shelter in place, and because they tend to use crowded emergency rooms for their primary medical care.

As evictions rise in some coronavirus hot spots, displaced families are doubling up with relatives or moving into shelters, creating conditions for the virus to spread widely, according to Diane Yentel, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Low Income Housing Coalition, the U.S.’s premiere affordable housing policy group.

“In these cases where social distancing is difficult or impossible, the likelihood of them contracting and spreading coronavirus increases exponentially,” Yentel said.

A fragile safety net is adding to the strain. Enhanced $600 weekly unemployment benefits provided by the federal government are set to evaporate next week, at a time when the national unemployment rate is 13.3%.

Landlords say the pandemic is a crisis for them as well. Bob Pinnegar, CEO of the National Apartment Association, says eviction is always a “last resort,” but “the rental housing industry alone cannot bear the financial burden of the pandemic.”

He said nearly half the country’s landlords are mom-and pop operators who have invested in rental property for retirement income.

COVID POSITIVE, AND FACING EVICTION

For weeks, eviction courts across America were shuttered due to COVID-19. Now, over Zoom, conference calls and even in person in some places, proceedings are ramping up again.

In Houston’s Harris County, more than 5,100 eviction cases have been filed since the virus upended the U.S. economy in March, according to data compiled by Houston-based data science firm January Advisors.

That’s still roughly half of pre-pandemic levels. But it’s worrisome to public health advocates given that Harris County has seen confirmed coronavirus cases jump 500% since Texas’s eviction ban was lifted May 18, the Reuters COVID tracker shows.

Swapnil Agarwal is the 39-year-old founder of Nitya Capital, one of the largest landlords in Texas and owner of the Providence at Champions Apartment Homes from which Boudoin was evicted. During the pandemic, the company has filed more than 120 eviction notices against renters in Houston, a Reuters review of court records found. Houston-based Nitya has $2 billion in real estate assets under management, according to its website.

Agarwal said his firm evicted Boudoin because she was behind on her rent and “we realized that there was no intention to pay,” an allegation she disputes. He said Nitya has gone to great lengths to keep tenants in place and has provided $4 million in rent assistance to those who lost their jobs.

Meanwhile in Milwaukee, Mariah Smith was served an eviction notice on July 1. A shipping clerk for an aircraft parts maker, she lost her job in May. Smith said she hasn’t been able to pay her rent because she never received her $1,200 federal stimulus check and is still waiting to receive unemployment benefits.

Her fortunes have only gotten worse. Smith, 25, last week was diagnosed with coronavirus after experiencing chills, body aches and a sore throat. She said just walking leaves her winded.

On Thursday, she faces a court hearing on her eviction. Nick Homan, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, agreed to help. He said he’s handling around 25 eviction cases a week now, more than double his typical load.

After Reuters contacted Smith’s landlord — a limited liability company named LPT 46 — an attorney representing the firm, Marvin Bynum II, said the company just learned of Smith’s COVID diagnosis. “The landlord is hopeful that Ms. Smith recovers soon, and is confident the parties can swiftly reach a mutually amicable resolution,” Bynum said.

Homan said he’ll see what happens Thursday, but the larger issue remains.

“There’s nobody in any position of authority to stop eviction right now,” Homan said. “I don’t see anybody making decisions on public health. I only see landlords making decisions about their finances.”

(Reporting by Michelle Conlin; Editing by Tom Lasseter and Marla Dickerson)

FBI nabs man it says planned July 4 attacks on Cleveland, Philadelphia

Fireworks at Morningside 7-4-17

By Makini Brice

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI has arrested a man who it said planned to bomb Cleveland’s Fourth of July celebrations and then stand by and watch “it go off,” federal officials said on Monday.

Demetrius Pitts, 48, who had expressed allegiance to the al Qaeda militant group, was arrested on Sunday after a meeting with an undercover FBI agent where he said he planned to plant a bomb at a parade celebrating the U.S. Independence Day holiday and intended to target other locations in Cleveland and Philadelphia.

Many major American cities mark the holiday with fireworks and parades, and typically ramp up security around such events.

An undercover FBI agent helped Pitts pick the location for his planned attack, near a planned fireworks show and multiple U.S. government buildings, the FBI said.

“I’m gonna be downtown when the – when the thing go off. I’m gonna be somewhere cuz I wanna see it go off,” Pitts told an undercover FBI agent who he believed was affiliated with al Qaeda, the FBI said in court documents.

Pitts also suggested giving the children of military personnel remote control cars packed with explosives during the parade so the kids would unwittingly detonate the bombs, the FBI said.

Pitts was charged with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

An FBI source gave Pitts a bus pass and a phone to conduct surveillance ahead of his planned attack, prosecutors said.

Pitts, who lives in the Cleveland suburb of Maple Heights, also discussed possibly traveling to San Francisco for reconnaissance for al Qaeda, the FBI said.

It was not immediately clear if he had retained a lawyer, and relatives could not be reached for comment.

“This defendant, by his own words and by his own deeds, wanted to attack our nation and its ideals,” said Justin Herdman, the U.S. attorney for northern Ohio.

Officials said Pitts is an American citizen who had been radicalized in the United States.

In 2015, U.S. law enforcement officials said they had arrested more than 10 people inspired by the Islamic State militant group ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, saying the arrests had disrupted planned attacks.

A pair of ethnic Chechen brothers inspired by al Qaeda killed three people and injured more than 260 with a pair of homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon in 2013.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg and Diana Kruzman in New York; Editing by Scott Malone, Jeffrey Benkoe, Frances Kerry and Jonathan Oatis)

Facebook murder suspect remains at large as police ask public for help

(Reuters) – A murder suspect who police said posted a video of himself on Facebook shooting an elderly man in Cleveland remained on the loose on Tuesday as authorities appealed to the public for help in the case.

Police said they have received “dozens and dozens” of tips and possible sightings of the suspect, Steve Stephens, and tried to persuade him to turn himself in when they spoke with him via his cellphone on Sunday after the shooting.

But Stephens remained at large as the search for him expanded nationwide, police said.

The shooting marked the latest video clip of a violent crime to turn up on Facebook, raising questions about how the world’s biggest social media network moderates content.

The company on Monday said it would begin reviewing how it monitors violent footage and other objectionable material in response to the killing.

Police said Stephens used Facebook Inc’s service to post video of him killing Robert Godwin Sr., 74.

Stephens is not believed to have known Godwin, a retired foundry worker who media reports said spent Easter Sunday morning with his son and daughter-in-law before he was killed.

“I want him to know what he took from us. He took our dad,” Godwin’s daughter Tammy told CNN on Monday night. “My heart is broke.”

During the same interview, his son Robby Miller said that he wanted the shooter brought to justice and for his family to have closure.

“I forgive him because we are all sinners,” he said. “If you are out there, if you’re listening, turn yourself in.”

Facebook vice president Justin Osofsky said the company was reviewing the procedure that users go through to report videos and other material that violates the social media platform’s standards. The shooting video was visible on Facebook for nearly two hours before it was reported, the company said.

Stephens, who has no prior criminal record, is not suspected in any other murders, police said.

The last confirmed sighting of Stephens was at the scene of the homicide. Police said he might be driving a white or cream-colored Ford Fusion, and asked anyone who spots him or his car to call police or a special FBI hotline (800-CALLFBI).

(Writing by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee)

Curbs on excessive force proposed for Cleveland police

Police officer at Republican convention

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Cleveland police would face new limits on the use of force under proposals issued on Thursday by a group charged with monitoring the city’s police department, after a U.S. Justice Department report highlighted abuses by some of its officers.

The report came just weeks after Tamir Rice, aged 12, was shot and killed by a rookie Cleveland police officer in November 2014, triggering national outrage over another case involving a young African-American who died at the hands of police.

Rice was shot after a 911 caller reported someone waving a gun outside a city recreation center. Investigators later determined he had been in possession of a replica-type gun that shot pellets, not bullets.

Changes proposed by the Cleveland Police Monitoring Team – a group of 17 national experts and community activists – include a requirement that officers use de-escalation tactics before resorting to force, such as creating distance from the threat involved.

Officers would also be required to provide medical aid, rather than just request aid, for anyone injured after the use of force. Cleveland officers were roundly criticized for waiting eight minutes before providing first aid to the wounded Rice, who died a day after he was shot.

Cleveland police did not carry first-aid kits at the time of Rice’s death, a policy that has changed since then.

Officers would also be barred from using chokeholds or force against suspects already handcuffed under the monitoring team’s proposals, and prohibited from putting themselves in harm’s way in a manner that might then require the use of deadly force.

A Cleveland police officer who was in the path of an oncoming vehicle, after a high-speed car chase in 2013, shot the first in a barrage of 137 rounds fired by 13 officers that killed the man and woman in the car.

The proposals from the Cleveland Police Monitoring Team are still subject to public comment this month. If approved by a judge and federal officials, they would take effect sometime early next year, according to Matthew Barge, the oversight consent decree monitor.

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Ben Klayman and Tom Brown)

In some cities, police push back against ‘open carry’ gun laws

Steve Thacker with a rifle and a handgun is surrounded by members of the news media in

By Julia Harte

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tents, ladders, coolers, canned goods, tennis balls and bicycle locks are banned in the area surrounding the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

But guns are fine.

When Ohio Governor John Kasich on Sunday rejected the Cleveland police union’s request to ban the open carrying of firearms near the Quicken Loans Arena, he weighed into a national debate pitting city authorities who contend with gun violence against state lawmakers who answer to gun-loving voters.

Law enforcement leaders in several major cities say municipalities should have to the power to suspend open-carry laws when needed to protect public safety. Currently, 15 of the 45 states that allow openly carried handguns give cities power to restrict those laws, according to a Reuters review of state statutes.

In Cleveland, police union head Steve Loomis said he made the request to protect officers following recent fatal shooting of three police officers in Louisiana on Sunday and the killing of five officers in Dallas on July 7. Kasich said he did not have the power to circumvent the state’s open-carry law.

A decade ago, all Ohio municipalities had the power to regulate how guns could be carried. Now, only the state legislature can do it.

In 2006, the state legislature passed a law denying cities the ability to restrict openly carried weapons, overriding the veto of then-Governor Bob Taft. Cleveland sued the state to try to win back that power, but lost in 2010.

Across the country, similar battles are playing out in states where municipal authorities, often backed by police departments, are clashing with state lawmakers over how to regulate the open carrying of firearms.

Dallas’s police chief drew criticism from gun rights advocates for saying open carriers made it more “challenging” for his officers to respond to a shooter who killed five policemen at a demonstration this month.

The debate occasionally transcends political ideology. Some opposition to open-carry gun laws comes from Republican politicians such as former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who said last year that he was not “fond of this open-carry concept.”

Police in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have been trying and failing to restrict the open carrying of guns for years. The state attorney general argues that citizens have a constitutional right to publicly display weapons, which cannot be overruled by city authorities.

“I wish more of our legislators could see past the ideology,” said Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn. “They have no concern about the impact in urban environments that are already plagued by too many guns and too much violence.”

Flynn attracted gun owners’ ire when he told his officers in 2009 to detain open carriers despite the attorney general’s ruling. Flynn said his department has since “adapted” to the state law.

SAFETY V. RIGHTS

Open-carry advocates say that criminals almost never openly carry firearms. And if law-abiding citizens fail to demonstrate their right to carry guns, they risk losing it, they add.

“We’re sympathetic to law enforcement being concerned about their safety, but that doesn’t mean we give up citizens’ rights just to make it easier to police large events,” said John Pierce, co-founder of national advocacy group OpenCarry.org.

Wisconsin state representative Bob Gannon said he personally is “not a fan” of the practice because it makes people uncomfortable. Still, he said, the right to carry guns in public spaces should be upheld because it is protected by the state constitution.

“The police chief is not an emperor for the state, and he should defer to the state statutes,” he said.

In states where cities can restrict open carry laws, they often have had to defend that right in court.

Colorado passed legislation in 2003 aimed at ensuring a state law on firearms supersedes local ordinances. Denver, the state capital, sued the state to make sure the laws would not affect the city’s longstanding ban on openly carrying firearms.

The city won in 2006 after a 3-3 ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling in favor of Denver.

“In some parts of rural Colorado, where there’s a lot of critters, some people really like the idea of open carry,” said Dan Montgomery, chief of police of the Denver suburb of Westminster for 25 years before leaving the force in 2010. “Certainly, even in the law enforcement community we have our arch conservatives who strongly believe in it, but for the vast majority of us, it’s problematic.”

Not all cities agree. After a man carrying a rifle opened fire in a Colorado Springs neighborhood last autumn, killing three bystanders, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said he had “no appetite” for tightening the city’s open-carry laws because he did not think such restrictions would improve public safety. Suthers declined to comment for this article.

UNPOPULAR WITH COPS

Little research has been done on the views of open-carry policies among police officers nationwide or even within states, which each regulate guns differently. But studies by two top police organizations in the past year provide some insight.

In Florida and Texas, where open-carry laws were recently debated in the state legislatures, surveys found that a majority of law enforcement leaders opposed them. Open-carry legislation was defeated in Florida but passed in Texas.

In Florida, open-carry advocates will almost certainly try to legalize it again next session, said Bob Gualtieri, chair of the legislative committee of the Florida Sheriffs’ Association, which represents the state’s 67 sheriffs.

The association took a vote on the issue this year and found three quarters of the 62 responding sheriffs opposed open carry.

A 2015 survey of about one-fifth of the police chiefs in Texas also found that three quarters of respondents opposed open carry, according to the state police chiefs’ association, which ran the survey.

The same year, the state legislature passed a law permitting firearm owners with a concealed-carry license to openly carry handguns.

Gualtieri said the Dallas shooting illustrated the way people who openly carry guns can hinder law enforcement responses to active shooter scenarios. Dallas police said up to 30 people were carrying rifles during a protest on the night that a man opened fire on police officers, complicating law enforcement’s attempts to identify the gunman.

“Not a single one of these people carrying firearms out there in Texas caught this guy in what he was doing,” Gualtieri said. “It drained law enforcement resources and subjected citizens to being unnecessarily taken into custody, and I think we should all be very grateful that nobody else got hurt.”

(Additional reporting by Isma’il Kushkush; Editing by Jason Szep and Brian Thevenot)

A festival air and unease hang over pre-convention Cleveland

The Quicken Loans Arena is seen as setup continues in advance of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland

By Daniel Trotta

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – East 4th Street, emblematic of the new Cleveland as a once-downtrodden area turned trendy, is bristling ahead of the Republican National Convention.

Outdoor diners on the cobblestone restaurant row enjoy a glorious summer afternoon while cable network MSNBC shoots its politically themed shows on the street.

Just ahead of the four-day convention that starts on Monday, a festival of commerce and smiling faces takes place a few steps from the so-called hard zone, delineated by a literal iron curtain that surrounds the sports arena where Donald Trump will be crowned the Republican presidential candidate.

“Ten years ago, this place was a dump. A wasteland,” said John Lusk, 70, a semiretired publisher of a newsletter. “A group of young, hardworking entrepreneurs came in and look what they did.”

The sunny celebration butts uncomfortably against a massive security operation that shows the other side of Cleveland’s big moment. City and U.S. officials are preparing for the worst, aware that tensions over race relations and police use of force, as well as reaction to Trump’s polarizing campaign, could result in violence on the streets.

Clevelanders are also aware of the backdrop for their convention: the mass shooting in Orlando that killed 50 people in June, the sniper attack that killed five Dallas police this month, and the truck assault that killed 84 this week in Nice.

On this same idyllic block just over a year ago, police in riot gear clashed with demonstrators reacting to the acquittal of police officer charged with manslaughter for firing 15 rounds into the car of an unarmed black man and woman, killing them both. More than 70 people were arrested, disturbing the al fresco dining experience on East 4th Street.

Unrest also followed the fatal police shooting in 2014 of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, an African-American who had a toy gun, and the officer who shot him was not charged with a crime.

Cleveland, a city of 390,000, has been revitalized in part by billions of dollars in infrastructure spending in recent years, but the black majority still lags behind.

Black Lives Matter, the protest group formed after a series of police killings of African-Americans raised questions about justice in America, held a protest on Saturday in Public Square. It was entirely peaceful, with about 100 activists clapping to speeches.

In between the civic protest and festival atmosphere, there are pockets of emptiness. Street closing and security cordons seem to have scared off customers at the Arcade, a late 1800s shopping mall that has been modernized. The ornate interior, illuminated by a skylight, is full of boutiques like Prosperity, which sells handcrafted art glass jewelry. Business is slow on a Saturday afternoon.

“A lot of people are afraid to come downtown,” said Cat Zurchin, one of the artist/storeowners, from an empty shop. “Some of these stores opened up just for the convention. Retail people have been excited, but we also have some anxiety. The Secret Service is everywhere.”

Black SUVs have invaded the city center as the U.S. Secret Service has taken charge of security. Concrete median barriers and the tall, anti-scaling fence circumscribe the city into impenetrable sectors.

A column of police ride through the city center on bicycles, a dozen more on horseback. Helicopters clatter overhead.

Cleveland police are trying to stay restrained, avoiding the militarized presence that has become common thanks to free war surplus equipment from the Pentagon.

Even so, the city’s courts are preparing to process up to 1,000 arrestees per day, ready to stay open 20 hours a day.

Hospitals are bracing for the worst. The Cleveland Clinic, one of the largest hospitals in the country, will have 50 doctors, nurses and other medical personnel at the convention site and its entire staff on standby.

If needed the hospital can take over an adjoining hotel and conference center, enabling it to handle 1,000 general trauma cases. The hospital is prepared to operate without reinforcements for 96 hours.

“All boots on the ground,” said Dr. Robert Willie, chief of medical operations.

Likewise, the Secret Service says it can handle the spotlight.

“We are prepared,” said Ronald Rowe, the agent in charge of the convention, “and ready to welcome the world to Cleveland.”

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta and Kim Palmer)

Cleveland activists wary of city plans to process thousands of arrests

Students Iris Harris and Domonique Dumas with their mentor Kevin Sarran display their Griffin scout robot that will be used by police during a demonstration of police capabilities near the site of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland,

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Police in Cleveland say they aim to avoid mass arrests at the protests planned for next week’s Republican National Convention, but preparations by the city’s courts to process up to 1,000 people a day have some civil rights activists worried.

Thousands of people from across the country are expected in the city to protest the expected presidential nomination of New York businessman Donald Trump, who has vowed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and restrict immigration from countries with large Muslim populations if elected.

Supporters and opponents of Trump have clashed at several of his campaign events.

Police have vowed to honor protesters’ rights of free expression, which are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and avoid mass arrests.

“We don’t want anybody to trample on anybody else’s rights,” Cleveland police chief Calvin Williams told a news conference on Tuesday.

But memories of recent heavier-handed approaches are fresh in the heavily Democratic, majority black Ohio city of 388,000 people.

“I don’t want to be a naysayer here and rule out the possibility that everything is going to be hunky-dory … but knowing how the Cleveland Police Department has handled situations in the past, I just don’t have confidence that it’s going to work,” said Terry Gilbert, an attorney who has handled criminal and civil rights cases in the city for more than four decades.

“Until I see the actual situation next week, I’m going to be worried,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert pointed to the May 2015 arrests of 71 people following the acquittal of a police officer who fired 137 shots following a high-speed 2012 car chase, killing a black man and woman.

The arrested protesters were held for more than 36 hours over the Memorial Day weekend, and four alleged in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that police intentionally kept them in custody longer to prevent the protest from reforming.

‘WE ARE READY’

Cleveland paid $250,000 to secure 200 extra rooms in the Cuyahoga County jail, according to the Republican National Committee budget.

Cleveland Municipal Court officials said they would be ready to process a large volume of people quickly, with staff scheduled to work in two 10-hour shifts keeping the court operating from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. each day.

“We are ready,” said Ed Ferenc, a spokesman for the court. “We’ll have staff here till 1 a.m. If we have to do a docket at 10:30 at night, we’ll do it.”

The United States has seen hundreds of protests over the past two years following a series of high-profile police killings of black men. The vast majority of the protests have been peaceful, although they have been punctuated with bursts of rioting, arson and looting.

The ACLU plans to be out in force to ensure that people are not arrested for legal protests, said Christine Link, the group’s executive director in Ohio.

“Let’s not equate a lot of protesters with violence,” Link said. She noted the group would be keeping careful watch on the whereabouts of anyone arrested to ensure they are charged and released quickly.

At the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, hundreds of protesters were swept up and pushed into pens on the Hudson River.

With temperatures expected to reach 90 degrees F (32 C) most days, the health of detainees will be a concern, she said.

“What we’re worried about is that they’re not saying where they are booking people, they are being vague about it and that’s not good,” Link said. “That’s an attempt to hide the cheese.”

(Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Peter Cooney)