CLEVELAND — The violence is becoming too much to bear and for City Councilman Blaine Griffin, the countless shootings plaguing Cleveland’s neighborhoods are unacceptable.
“This affects an entire community. This traumatizes everybody,” he said. “At some point in time people have to realize that these are mothers, father, sisters, brothers, family members, loved ones.”
Griffin said he outraged after police confirmed a 63-year-old woman was the victim in a shooting Friday evening at the Woodhill Estates on East 79th street. According to Griffin, a group of men had some sort of dispute with another man and fired shots at him. Yet, the 63-year-old woman, who Griffin said was inside her home, was shot instead. Her condition is unknown as police continue investigating.
“[She’s] an innocent bystander. A person that didn’t deserve this and as their council person I’m going to speak out against it and do whatever we can to bring these folks justice,” Griffin said.
The incident adds on to the city’s deadly rap sheet this year. Police records show through June 7 there were 60 homicides and 55 of those cases involved guns. Last year in that same time period there were 39 homicides total. Those records also showing that police were called more than 5,000 times for shots fired complaints this year as of June 30.
And that’s not all.
Robberies and felonious assault cases are all up from last year.
“We want to make sure that everybody understands that we’re not playing when it comes to this gun violence in the city of Cleveland. We’re going to have an iron fist and a velvet glove at the same time,” Griffin said.
Councilman Griffin said he’s looking at ways to curb those crimes, especially when it comes to shootings. He said the city needs to do more and force people to really think about the consequences before pulling the trigger.
“At the local level I think we should do whatever we can in order to compound those charges to make sure that they make it clear make people think two, three, four times before they fire a gun,” he said. “It might have to be penalties. It might have to be civil things that we can look at. I’m even interested in you might have to be responsible for paying some kind of fee to the family.”
