Slow Response to Senator’s Home Alarm Raises Ruckus in Cleveland

A two-hour period between the triggering of a burglar alarm and police arriving on scene has prompted city council hearings.

CLEVELAND ― The wife of a U.S. Senator waited two hours for police to get to their home after their burglar alarm sounded, prompting some Cleveland City Council members to call for hearings on the issue, reports Fox TV’s local affiliate. An alarm company called Cleveland police at 5:56 a.m. on Tuesday, March 29 to request that officers respond to the home of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and his wife, columnist Connie Schultz, after an alarm sounded. The alarm company reported the residents’ names and the fact that Schultz was still in the home at the time.

Still, nearly two hours passed before police dispatched a cruiser at 7:48 a.m. The delay prompted Schultz to call police directly before the officer arrived. “This neighborhood has been so safe,” Schultz told a police dispatcher. “That’s why it’s alarming to me that that could be the response rate.”

It was particularly alarming, she said, as it occurred one day after a shooting at the U.S. Capitol. “My husband is a U.S. Senator, and the thing that happened at the Capitol yesterday in Washington, that’s why I was a little more concerned than usual,” Schultz told the dispatcher.

A dispatch supervisor could not offer further explanation, only saying there had been a shift change during the two-hour time period. She referred Schultz to Mayor Frank Jackson’s office. “I don’t know what the delay was on giving it out,” the supervisor said. “When there’s an assignment like this pending, we have to notify a sector supervisor that we have this assignment pending and don’t have a car to give it to.”

Cleveland Police spokesperson Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said alarm calls come in as a lower priority code 3, and police officers in the district at the time were busy responding to higher priority calls, including a man threatening suicide. She said it would be different if a caller reported an intruder in a home and said Cleveland Police get alarm calls often with most being accidental, such as wind rattling windows.

However, several council members said this incident reflects a systemic problem, and they demanded hearings during Monday’s council meeting. “You think about what era we’re in, we’re in the era of ISIS, we’re in the era of terrorists,” Councilman Zack Reed said. “They say burglar alarms go from code 1 down to a code 3, but I would think a United States Senator should always be a priority one.”

Ciaccia said a police supervisor is reviewing this case and examining what other district officers were doing that kept them from responding to the alarm call at the house. She declined to comment on whether people with burglar alarms who are fearful about a break-in should still call police directly to register the call as a higher priority code. Ciaccia also said she could not say if Cleveland Police considered the two-hour response time acceptable, pending the outcome of the review of the case.

According to Schultz, upon arriving at the scene police pulled up in front of the home and spoke to her from the squad car without getting out to investigate further.

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Scott Goldfine is the marketing director for Elite Interactive Solutions. He is the former editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He can be reached at [email protected].

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