CLEVELAND — The U.S. Marshals Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force has arrested more than 60,000 violent fugitives since it started nearly 22 years ago. But recently, US Marshal Pete Elliott said there has been an uptick in the number of fugitives who refuse to surrender and instead barricade themselves inside a building.
“Just last week, in Cleveland, we had an individual barricade himself. He yelled out the window to my guys, 'I’m going to pop you one by one, take you away from your families.' He said he was going to set the place on fire. The week before Lorain, that same week Akron. So yeah, definitely an increase,” said Elliott.
That’s why there is a bill in the Ohio Senate that aims to stop the troubling trend that Elliott is seeing.
“This is actually the idea of a sergeant in the Cleveland Police Department that’s assigned to my task force who got with one of my guys and said, 'Hey we need to do something about this because we got people barricading themselves all the time and there’s no penalties for those people barricading themselves,'” said Elliott.
“The problem with that is that it puts the entire neighborhood at risk or shut down, potentially shots being fired,” said Ohio Senator Tom Patton, 24th District.
Last week, he introduced Senate Bill 188.
The Bill would increase penalties for people who barricade themselves to avoid being arrested.
“When these are hours-long perhaps almost a day-long standoff where the entire neighborhood is affected, there’s no additional crime attached to it, if you surrender easily or go down after many, many hours, potentially even holding a hostage, there’s really no additional penalty to your existing crimes,” explained Patton.
If the bill becomes law, it would be a felony charge with additional prison time.
