Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner exploits a suicide to make a deranged point

The mayor today used the suicide of a man he referred to as a "very good friend" to prove his point that fewer police don't contribute to crime. He actually said that we won't hear this man's mother complain that there were no Toledo Police patrolling the park where her son decided to kill himself. The mayor of course didn't mention the fact that that the man shot himself in Side Cut MetroPark which is in Maumee and wouldn't have Toledo police patrolling anyway.

"Violent crimes, shootings, are not ever prevented by the presence of a police officer, no matter how many thousands of police officers you have," Mr. Finkbeiner said. The mayor, during a press conference announcing this year's model block program, blamed the media for stirring up fear regarding the police layoffs, which were carried out to address a $21.3 million budget deficit.

We tried to ask the mayor questions about the safety of citizens and he didn't want to hear it. The mayor got angry with one of our reporters after she asked him to respond to citizens blaming the city for recent violent crimes.

"We can't step in the middle of every drug deal in this city. Ninety percent of us go on without us knowing about it at the time. The 10 percent that we know about at the time we try to intercept and put them behind bars, but you the media needs to start being responsible instead upon playing upon people fears be practical and realistic," says Finkbeiner.

"The mayor, man, I feel like he says everything is alright, but he's not living where we're living," says a former gang member. He says he's scared. "The youngest kids got guns around here and it's going to get worse, like I said. There ain't going to be those many cops to patrol."

We walked down alleys and the former gang member pointed out some messages from one gang to another. "My whole alley is tagged up with gang related stuff and it's all war stuff." He's glad the gang task force wasn't dismantled.