This past week has been a challenging journey for our community and I want to take a moment to thank everyone for their thoughtful and responsible interactions thus far and encourage patience as we await the results of the full investigation into the officer involved shooting.
It is a tragedy whenever anyone loses their life, and certainly as your Mayor, a wife and a mother of four, my condolences go out to everyone impacted by this situation including the deceased, his friends and family members, and the law enforcement officers involved in the response and their families.
How we all respond to this situation will define us as a community. The City requested that the Lorain County Sheriff department take over the investigation, to insure a neutral third party law enforcement agency conduct a fair and impartial investigation of the events leading up to the officer involved shooting. So as to not compromise the investigation, City of Elyria leadership is not sharing details as we await the official report from the Sheriff’s Department.
And while we cannot share details about the investigation, as Mayor I did request that representative officers from the Elyria Police Department attend the community meeting at a south side church called by a mayoral candidate and attended by Elyria Councilman Marcus Madison in order to listen, hear concerns, and share general information about procedure. The City chose to participate in that meeting, instead of calling a separate meeting for several reasons.
First, the community meeting was called within hours of the incident, as the facts were still flowing into city leadership. It was clear the meeting was going to move forward regardless of the timing, so we decided to respond with the community – instead of trying to create yet another forum. We thought the community would be more receptive to a dialogue with officers if they participated at the meeting that was already organized and that any attempts by the City to organize a competing meeting would be viewed as “political” given that the meeting was being organized by a mayoral candidate.
Second, the City was concerned about having enough police officers available at a second meeting called by the City on the same nights as the fireworks. Safety always has to be our top priority. Not only did we have four Elyria officers who had to be taken out of service as a result of their respective roles in the situation, the City was also receiving intelligence that there might be protests being organized from outside the County that night. The City called in mutual aid from surrounding communities to help insure everyone’s safety for the fireworks.
As we progress through this process, City leadership and law enforcement officers will continue to keep lines of communication open to our residents and community organizations. As a proud community of caring people who prides itself on diversity as one of our greatest strengths, I know we can work through this and come out a stronger community.
