CLEVELAND, OH — Two years after a shootout at Edgewater Park’s beach house wounded a teen and sent park goers scrambling to safety, the chief of the Metroparks Police Department believes the lessons learned from that chaotic night made the park safer.
“I'm not saying, nor am I professing that it's not going to happen again, but we have everything in place to stop that behavior before it starts,” said Chief Kelly Stillman.
Following the shooting Metroparks Police received a $100,000 grant from the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office to improve cameras and technology at the park.
Stillman said that includes software that detects “unruly behavior” before problems begin.
“It goes to a person that’s an expert in looking at that and then calls us right away and we’re able to get down here and mitigate the issue before it even explodes into something that’s out of control,” said Stillman.
He said the department is also using data to better deploy officers to hotspots.
In some cases, doubling the number of police in Edgewater during busy times.
“I do see more traffic, more officers, more patrol units,” said Alex Garcia from Cleveland. “I see it, it’s easily noticeable.”
Stillman said that visibility is part of the plan, helping deter people from starting trouble.
He said on busy days, as many as 10,000 people flood into Edgewater, making it comparable to policing a small city.
One that Stillman believes his department is better-equipped than ever to protect after the June 2024 shootout.
“God forbid something would happen like that again,” said Stillman, “which we have things in pace to identify that before it even would happen. The identification of those people is going to be extremely enhanced. Our probability of making arrests and getting somebody in jail for that is high compared to what it was two years ago.”
