Scene November 17, 2021

SHOW FORCE OF

Data shows Cleveland police are a long way from accountability and transparency

BY CID STANDIFER when it comes to using violence against civilians

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| clevescene.com | November 17-30, 2021

November 17-30, 2021 | clevescene.com |

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CONTENTS

NOVEMBER 17-30, 2021 • VOL. 52 NO 10 Upfront .......................................6 Feature ..................................... 12 Get Out ..................................... 22 Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat Publisher Andrew Zelman Editor Vince Grzegorek Editorial Music Editor Jeff Niesel Senior Writer Sam Allard Staff Writer Brett Zelman Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Visual Arts Writer Shawn Mishak Stage Editor Christine Howey Editorial Intern Emma Sedlak Advertising Senior Multimedia Account Executive John Crobar, Shayne Rose Creative Services Production Manager Haimanti Germain Editorial Layout Evan Sult Staff Photographer Emanuel Wallace Business Business & Sales Support Specialist Megan Stimac Controller Kristy Cramer Circulation Circulation Director Burt Sender

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Eat ............................................ 25 Music ........................................ 29 Savage Love ..............................30 Euclid Media Group Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP Digital Services Stacy Volhein Digital Operations Coordinator Jaime Monzon

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UPFRONT

Photo by Sam Allard

NEW NONPROFIT NEWSROOM AIMS TO LAUNCH IN CLEVELAND NEXT YEAR A COALITION OF LOCAL AND national organizations has raised nearly $6 million to launch a new nonprofit newsroom in Cleveland in 2022. Spearheaded by the American Journalism Project and the Cleveland Foundation, the new newsroom aims to launch with a staff of 25, which would make it among the largest nonprofit newsrooms in the country and among the largest newsrooms in Cleveland.

In an announcement last week, partners in the effort celebrated the as-yet-unnamed newsroom in the context of the shrinking press corps both locally and nationally and the ramifications on public information and civic participation.

“The crisis of local news in this country cries out for bold, innovative and well-resourced entrepreneurial efforts like the local news initiative we’re announcing today,” said Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project, in a press release. “We’re grateful to be working with this coalition to get an amazing news organization off

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the ground.”

The specific flavor and brand of the newsroom is yet-to-be determined and will resolve more sharply into focus when a search committee concludes its national search for an editor-in-chief. The committee, which includes a number of Ohiobased executives in the media and nonprofit spheres, (plus former PD politics writer Henry Gomez), is also searching for a CEO to lead operations statewide. Cleveland is conceived as only the first in a series of Ohio nonprofit newsrooms jointly called the Ohio Local News Initiative.

Like many other nonprofit newsgathering efforts, Cleveland’s will be a digital-only operation at the outset, but will attempt to make its work available in multiple formats. “Center[ing] community voices” will be key, according to the announcement. The newsroom will expand on the work of the Cleveland Documenters project and include a “community reporting model” that hopes to train residents and invite them to set the agenda for editorial

| clevescene.com | November 17-30, 2021

priorities.

“Those who control the narratives have significant influence on decisions, and therefore have impact on outcomes,” said Tim Tramble, President and CEO of the Saint Luke’s Foundation, and member of the search committee. “A communitydriven newsroom, operating at high journalistic standards, can serve as a vehicle for everyday people to develop the power to shape their own narratives.”

The newsroom is distinguished from recent local nonprofit journalism experiments foremost by its scope. This is not a coalition of existing newsrooms or a small, geographically targeted community paper. This is a major operation, which should indeed “dramatically increase the volume of original, indepth, non-partisan reporting in the region,” as the press release foretells.

Sights have been set on additional fundraising and down-the-road expansion, and the newsroom could immediately compete with the likes of Cleveland.com and Ideastream.

Chris Quinn, editor of Cleveland. com and the Plain Dealer, told Scene he thought any project that added more journalists in Cleveland was “terrific.”

“What we’ve been working towards these last 8-plus years is sustainable journalism in a forprofit model, as we believe the best way to preserve journalism for the long haul is to generate the revenue to keep it healthy,” he wrote in an email. “It’s been a journey, but we’ve made some great strides. The nonprofit model has shown promise elsewhere, and I wish this enterprise great success. Recent years have proven that our democracy is threatened as journalism wanes. I hope these folks thrive.”

Mike McIntyre, Executive Editor of Ideastream Public Media, agreed that another newsroom in Cleveland was exciting news.

“In an era when for-profit media offers far less than it once did, more local journalism that informs and engages audiences is a win for everyone,” he said in a statement.

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UPFRONT “It’s also a key priority at Ideastream Public Media. We’re excited to see what the new Cleveland newsroom produces and stand ready to collaborate with them, and others, whenever possible for the benefit of our community.” -Sam Allard

Almost Half of all CMSD Students Have Been Chronically Absent This Year Forty seven percent of Cleveland public school students were chronically absent — missing 10% or more days — in the first seven weeks of the 2021-2022 school year, according to the district.

“We’re seeing larger numbers of that by kids who already had a larger COVID impact than a lot of their more wealthy peers,” CMSD CEO Eric Gordon told The 74. “Yeah, I’m concerned.”

After a virtual year of learning in which more than 8,000 of its students either never showed up, never enrolled, or moved to private schools, a return to in-person classes has seen a staggering rate of absenteeism — more than double its recent pre-pandemic numbers — driven by a few factors, according to Gordon and the Cleveland teachers union.

A poll of CMSD students on the subject of absenteeism found 21% said stress was the cause of missing school, 18% blamed lack of support, 16% were concerned about catching Covid, and 11% said they were unmotivated or lazy.

“Going back to school five days a week seems to be difficult for some of our students,” Cleveland teachers union president Shari Obrenski told The 74. “They were out for a period of time. It’s going to take a while to get a level of stamina where kids are used to being in school five days a week.”

While chronic absenteeism was up in 2020-2021 across the state, rates were higher for schools that did virtual learning as opposed to in-person classes and significantly higher for minority students and those dealing with poverty (38%) than others (11%).

The achievement gap also grew along the same divisions, with those doing all-virtual learning falling further than those in classrooms, and minorities, students with disabilities, and poor students falling further behind than their

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“Going back to school five days a week seems to be difficult for some of our students,” Cleveland teachers union president Shari Obrenski told The 74.

“They were out for a period of time. It’s going to take a while to get a level of stamina where kids are used to being in school five days a week.” counterparts, according to statewide data released in October.

“We also know that some of the decreases were more pronounced in districts that were primarily in remote status last year,” Chris Woolard of the Ohio Department of Education told the Statehouse News Bureau. “So we look at the numbers that are definitely down and not surprisingly, it didn’t sort of impact everybody the same. [And] as is the typical pattern for chronic absenteeism, Ohio’s historically underserved and vulnerable students, and students in urban areas, experienced higher rates of chronic absenteeism than their peers.”

Chronically absent students have lower tests scores in reading and math and are 30% less likely to graduate in Cleveland, Gordon told The 74.

Districts around the country and in Northeast Ohio have also seen a rise in behavioral issues, mainly fighting, in schools that were virtual and have since returned to regular classes.

Bedford High School is in the midst of a one-month return to virtual schooling after violence and fights drove the school board to take action.

“Obviously, none of this is ideal,” Bedford schools superintendent Dr. Andrea Celico said in a statement.

“As we’ve said, the decision to return temporarily to remote learning for high school students wasn’t easy and it wasn’t made lightly. However, we have to address safety issues. We want our students to feel safe so they can concentrate on learning and we want our teachers and staff to feel secure so they can do their best work too.

[Students] are adjusting and many of them are struggling.”

In Akron, schools superintendent Christine Fowler Mack recently sent a letter home to each family discussing the behavioral issues that have become an issue this year and the ways in which the district is using restorative justice, new safety measures and accountability to

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address them.

“We know with certainty that the poor choices of a few can impact the learning of many, and can even pose a threat to the safety (of) those who are making good choices. For this reason, we must work together to remind all students that those who violate our code of conduct face serious consequences including suspension or expulsion, or in some cases, the possibility of criminal charges,” it read. “While the pandemic has taken an emotional toll on all of us, it’s important to note that its impact is more severe for those who were already the most vulnerable among us. For this reason, I urge empathy in our actions and in our reactions to the behaviors of others.”

Speaking to the Beacon Journal, Akron schools’ student support and security director Dam Rambler said that “smaller incidents, from students being disruptive in class to having short tempers that lead to arguments and fights” has been an issue.

“People go from zero to 50 in the quickest blink for the littlest things,” he said.

In the September State of the Schools address, CMSD CEO Eric Gordon highlighted the many ways the district stepped up for its disadvantaged students and families during the pandemic.

Quoting Noam Chomsky, Gordon talked about the privileged few and desperate many, and how the pandemic forced “the privileged few to confront the stark realities of many poor Americans, including those living here in Cleveland.”

In the city with the highest rate of child poverty in the nation and one of the largest digital divides, “CMSD and our many community partners became lifelines to our families. They worked tirelessly to reach those who not only were cut off from such supports, but who needed them more than anyone.

We printed and mailed academic content to our students’ homes, broadcasted lessons on WUABChannel 43, purchased and deployed

iPads, Chromebooks and laptops, distributed hotspots to the homes of every CMSD family, and began the process of converting those hotspots to permanent high-speed Internet access as well.”

It will use ARPA funds to continue to make progress on closing the digital divide for its students. It will continue to offer before and after school opportunities for students who fell behind to catch up.

But getting kids who have been missing days back into the classroom is a short-term problem that has him worried.

“The pattern is looking more like last year than it looked like pre-COVID,” he told The 74. “We’re seeing lots more students with offtrack behavior.” -Vince Grzegorek

Progressive Field Deal

Cuyahoga County Council voted 9-1 Tuesday to authorize spending its portion of a $435 million lease agreement with the Cleveland Guardians. The “deal” will keep pro baseball in Cleveland until 2036 — with the possibility of two additional five-year extensions down the road — and will include more than $200 million in maintenance and upgrades at the facility on the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

The county’s portion includes roughly $9 million per year, harvested from the hotel bed tax (~$3 million), the Sin Tax (~$2.5 million) and the general fund (~$2.5 million) with an additional $300,000 per year coming from sources yet to be determined or publicized.

According to the terms announced by the team and its public partners before hearings began, the county will also contribute $11.6 million in upfront one-time payments.

Under the deal’s terms, the city of Cleveland would contribute $8 million per year, and the state of Ohio would chip in $2 million per year, for the 15-year duration of the lease. The deal will not be finalized until it is passed by Cleveland City Council, who began committee hearings on the deal Tuesday.

The choreography and rhetoric of the county council hearings were nearly identical to those in 2017, when the county authorized its portion of the Q Deal.

Just as at that time, council members claimed that the deal was an imperfect solution to a massive problem. Until the “broken system” is improved via national interventions, said Councilman Dale Miller, paying a ransom every few years to keep the facilities in tip-top

shape, thereby avoiding a larger price tag for a new stadium, is a price the county should be willing to pay to keep a vital piece of the city’s historical and cultural fabric intact.

The deal, said Councilwoman Sunny Simon, is “vital to a community of sports fanatics.” Like others, she celebrated the vitality of downtown Cleveland since the arrival of the basketball and baseball arenas.

Others, like County Executive Armond Budish himself, didn’t feel the need to express remorse or reluctance of any kind. He played his part and proclaimed that the deal was necessary to keep the team in Northeast Ohio and that it was the public’s responsibility to maintain a world-class facility because it was a public asset.

Only Councilman Michael Gallagher voted against the deal, saying he believed the county simply could not afford the ongoing contributions. “There comes a time when you have to make a stand,” he said. -Sam Allard

Winners and Losers from the 2021 Election Season Beyond Kevin Kelley and Justin Bibb Winner: RYAN PUENTE Ryan Puente, the baby-faced former Executive Director of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, was Justin Bibb’s campaign manager. Bibb described him as one of the brightest political minds in America during his victory speech, and he now seems to be in the catbird’s seat, professionally. He could elect to stay on with Bibb’s transition team and could serve as a member of Bibb’s administration if he chose. Alternately, he could leverage the local victory to sign on with, or manage, a campaign on the national stage.

Loser: BASHEER JONES Ward 7 Councilman Basheer Jones made a grave political miscalculation when he backed Kevin Kelley for mayor in the general election after his own disappointing primary performance.

People watched Jones’ Kelley endorsement with a mixture of horror and incredulity. Here was a man who had butted heads constantly with Kelley during his one term on City Council and who, though not always politically savvy, appeared to genuinely care about the most vulnerable members of his community. The Kelley endorsement simply made no sense, which is why many assumed that Jones had

been bought, bossed or bothered into supporting the white candidate who’d ignored and stomped on black voters for years. Jones surrendered his council seat to run for mayor, but he surrendered his credibility to support Kelley. He’s liable to remain the face of all those who did so for awhile.

Winner: ZACK REED Former councilman and mayoral candidate Zack Reed is roughly the photo negative of Jones. Not only did Reed back the right horse after his primary defeat, he also put ego aside to pound pavement. He even put up his own cash to pay for a mailer on the southeast side, where Bibb dominated. Reed made it clear that he was backing Bibb without any commitment for a job in the new administration, and in doing so, came off as a candidate gracious in defeat who remained true to his convictions, someone who sincerely wanted positive change for the city and was willing to work for it.

Loser: DAVE WONDOLOWSKI

DIGIT WIDGET 12 Overdose deaths in Cuyahoga County over the first weekend of November, resulting in a public health alert from the county medical examiner. The County is currently on track to eclipse 700 overdose deaths on the year.

727 – Overdose deaths in Cuyahoga County in 2017, at the height of the Opioid epidemic.

10 Maximum number of balloons that anyone may release outdoors over a 24-hour period, after Cleveland passes an ordinance this week on the subject.

11.3 Acres that will be available for development after the Cleveland Clinic demolishes the Cleveland Play House complex on E. 86th and Euclid. (Currently, the Clinic plans to use the site as an overflow parking lot and staging area for construction materials.)

November 17-30, 2021 | clevescene.com |

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UPFRONT Wondolowski is the Broadview Heights-dwelling head of the Building and Construction Trades Council and a sitting member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. Wondo and his fellas, who align politically with Cleveland’s real-estate-development status quo on the basis of keeping construction jobs flowing, naturally backed Kelley in the mayoral election.

Wondo uttered one of the more memorable and least prophetic quotes of the season when he complained about biased media coverage and said that Kelley was going to “kick the shit out of” the media and Justin Bibb after he won the election. Wondo had to apologize at the Kelley concession party, saying actually I love the media like a man with a gun to his head, but that won’t prevent the remarks from haunting him for years to come, nor from folks asking serious questions about the role and obligations of members of the Board of Elections.

Winner: NICK CASTELE Speaking of the media, the bearded and bespectacled Catholic behind the best political reporting of the year has been the belle of the ball for weeks, and deservedly so.

“After Jackson: Cleveland’s Next Mayor,” the weekly Ideastream podcast hosted and reported by Castele, was a real pro job. Each week, it masterfully recapped the latest campaign news while contextualizing the race’s biggest issues. Clevelanders interested in this pivotal election got to know and understand the candidates and their platforms because of Castele’s work. Ideastream’s Mike McIntyre has said the podcast established Castele as one of the region’s premiere journalists. The truth is, he’s been among the region’s premiere journalists for years. Now, a lot more people know it. And that includes — I’m terrified to report — hiring managers elsewhere.

Loser: OHIO DEMOCRATS The arrival of young, smart, passionate Democrats on the Cleveland political scene should be an exhilarating development for the Ohio party, eager to stock the shelves and replenish the empty warehouse in anticipation of upcoming statewide elections.

But voter turnout in Cleveland actually declined from 2017, when Frank Jackson mobilized his private machine to secure his fourth term without doing much personal

campaigning of any kind. If Cleveland, the so-called Democratic stronghold of Ohio, can’t turn out votes — and if local political figureheads like Frank Jackson, Marcia Fudge and Armond Budish (lol) can’t be bothered to help with anything other than their own campaigns, the continued doom of Ohio, already among the nation’s kookiest and politically barren states, will be assured.

Winner: CLASH Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing scored two huge symbolic victories in the defeats of both Kevin Kelley and Ward 12 City Councilman Anthony Brancatelli.

Kelley sat atop council as, for years, it ignored the lead paint crisis, even after former councilman Jeff Johnson proposed legislation to do something about it in 2017. Kelley also led the charge to invalidate the CLASH petitions on a legal technicality. Brancatelli, siding with the realtor and landlord lobby, was the only councilperson who voted NO on the lead safe ordinance that ultimately passed. Replacing these two will be Justin Bibb, a candidate who has at least gestured toward the urgency of properly funding and enforcing the lead law on the books, and who has mentioned the lead crisis as a target for ARPA dollars; and Rebecca Maurer, the CLASH activist and attorney who drafted the CLASH legislation on which much of the city’s ordinance was based.

Loser: “DEFUND THE POLICE” The overwhelming passage of Issue 24 is wind in the sails of those who’ve been demanding police accountability for years — especially those who’ve lost family members to police violence — and a sharp rebuke to the inane “Defund the Police” narrative as deployed

by Kelley and his goons. After the racial justice protests of May 30th, it was clear that some form of public safety policy intervention was required, beyond the symbolic “Racism as a Public Health Crisis” resolutions passed locally with much fanfare. Issue 24, which will fund and enhance the powers of a civilian review board in matters of police discipline, became that intervention in Cleveland. And voters said yes, please. -Sam Allard

scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene November 17-30, 2021 | clevescene.com |

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FEATURE

Former police chief Calvin Williams, mayor Frank Jackson, and others.

SHOW OF FORCE Data shows Cleveland police are a long way from accountability and transparency when it comes to using force on civilians

By Cid Standifer

THE CLEVELAND POLICE Department’s use of force policy, which was instituted at the beginning of 2018, requires every officer to file a detailed report every time they use more than “de minimis” force on a subject, ranging from pointing a gun at someone to tackling them or tasering.

Officers do not have to file a report when they use “de minimis” force, which is defined by the department as, “Physical interactions meant to guide and/or control a subject that do not constitute reportable force.” As examples, Cleveland’s policy lists stopping, pushing back, separating or guiding someone in a way that shouldn’t cause any pain.

In addition to a detailed narrative of the events and why the officer used force, officers are required to report the steps they took to

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de-escalate the situation, the exact type of force they used, whether there were any injuries to the subject or the officer, and a litany of demographic information.

The police department releases annual reports summarizing the use of force data, but not the reports themselves. Police officials have routinely pointed out that the number of use of force incidents in 2020 were below 2018 and 2019.

These summaries don’t include any information about individual officers or incidents.

With the help of Case Western Reserve University School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic, Cleveland Scene was able to obtain detailed reports from all use of force incidents that were not under continuing investigation from 2019, 2020, and early 2021.

Scene initially requested the data

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in September 2020. The city first provided unrelated materials, and then rejected the request, saying it was “overbroad.” The city turned over most of the data in May 2021, but withheld incident narratives for cases under investigation. The Ohio 8th District Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the city on those narratives, but Scene is appealing the decision.

The database included information on 351 unique use of force case numbers. Where multiple officers were involved in a single incident, the officers’ various reports were filed under a single number.

Altogether, Scene reviewed data from 524 individual reports.

Scene cross-referenced this data with police disciplinary notices, Civilian Police Review Board minutes and agendas, and citizen complaints made to the Office of Professional

Standards. For some incidents, Scene also obtained body camera footage. As many of the subjects in use of force incidents were never charged with or convicted of a crime, Scene is not releasing this footage out of respect for their privacy. In other cases where Scene did not obtain footage, this story relies on descriptions by CPRB members and investigators.

The most recent deep-dive into use of force reports was a decade ago, when The Plain Dealer ran a series analyzing use of force reports filed between 2006 and 2011.

Among the paper’s findings were that uses of force were rarely found inappropriate; some officers failed to file use of force reports in highprofile cases; and officers who used force abnormally frequently were allowed to continue on the force.

Since then, Cleveland has

grappled with the 2014 police killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. A Justice Department investigation of Cleveland cops’ use of force led to a 2015 consent decree in 2014, which requires the department to change some of its policies and practices.

Last year, America watched in horror as George Floyd suffocated under a Minneapolis officer’s knee; and Cleveland protests against police violence ended in violent confrontations. This year, residents petitioned to put an initiative on the ballot creating stronger civilian oversight of the department, which both the outgoing mayor and one mayoral candidate have derided.

Yet Scene’s analysis found many of the same problems reported by the Plain Dealer ten years ago.

Police regularly point guns at people who aren’t resisting Officer David Schramm heard a call over the police radio on an evening in January 2019 about a man who had threatened “suicide by cop.”

Schramm responded to the call, and was there when the man pulled into a driveway after fleeing some other offices. Then Shcramm pointed his gun at the suicidal man.

Schramm’s report noted, “The above male was compliant and no use of force was against us.” He said he pointed his weapon at the man “due to the unknown threat of if the male had a weapon or not.”

The consent decree between the Cleveland Police Department and the U.S. Justice Department stipulates that “officers will allow individuals the opportunity to submit to arrest before force is used wherever possible.” The decree also specifically lists pointing a firearm at someone as a low-level use of force.

But in 2019 and 2020, Cleveland police reported using force in 55 cases – excluding those that appeared to be mislabeled – against people who were offering no resistance, according to a Scene search of the database. That was about one out of every seven cases where police reported using force.

Schramm’s report was labeled in the database as “within policy,” as was every other case where an officer reported force against someone who was not resisting.

Cleveland police policy requires that any use of force be “proportional to the level of resistance,” but it doesn’t expressly ban use of force on someone who is not resisting.

A department spokeswoman, when asked whether it was appropriate for officers to use force on people who weren’t resisting,

responded, “The Cleveland Division of Police chronicles and reviews all use of force incidents on all officers.

Cleveland Police officers are required to report all uses of force with the exception of de minimis force.

Officers found to be in violation of the Cleveland Division of Police Use of Force General Police Order (2.1.05) are subject to discipline up to and including termination.”

Some officers suggested in their reports that they drew weapons on compliant citizens in accordance with their training.

“Due to prior training of conducting felony stops for armed

suspects, and the potential of the occupants to still be armed with the shotgun or other weapons, I had my service weapon drawn and pointing at the driver of the vehicle as we took her into custody,” one officer wrote.

In nearly every case police reported using force on someone who was following commands, police said they pointed a firearm at the person. There were three cases where officers reported using other kinds of force, like pushing a person or putting them in a control hold.

In 40% of cases where officers used force on someone who wasn’t resisting, Cleveland officers said

they could see a firearm in arm’s reach of the subject, or the subject had reportedly used one in a recent crime.

But in others, they had no reason to believe the suspect was armed.

Police responded to a call from Pearl Road Tavern on a day in February 2019 because a man with a gun had been threatening people.

When they arrived, patrons told them the man had thrown the gun in a garbage can and then gone into the bathroom. Police still pointed their weapons at him when he came out of the bathroom with his hands up, according to reports from both

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officers.

In another instance in September 2020, police responding to a residential alarm entered a house with guns drawn, and one officer pointed his weapon at an unarmed man who turned out to be the homeowner.

There were two cases where police pointed a gun at someone, then realized they were asleep or unconscious.

Cleveland State University sociology professor Stephanie Kent, who studies police, said she didn’t know if it was the norm to point weapons at someone who was complying with officers, but added, “It shouldn’t be.”

“I think the police don’t always realize the impact that their actions have on the reactions of people,” she said. “If you pull a gun out, that’s going to escalate the situation from 0 to 100, and that’s when you get people fleeing for stupid stuff, because they’re scared and they don’t know what to do. It could be that they’re not even guilty and they just want to run.”

Some uses of force unreported, unfilmed On a day in May 2019, a boy came home to find his mother passed out on the floor with a cut on her foot.

The boy called for an ambulance, but when his mother awoke, she refused to go to the hospital. That’s when EMS called the cops.

Two officers, Charles Judd and Jacob Pierse, tried to cajole her into the ambulance, alternately threatening her with jail and promising to let her see her children.

Finally, they resorted to force. As she stepped off her porch, the officers grabbed her, but she clung to the railing. One officer lifted her feet off the ground as he pulled her, while the other pried her grip from the bannister.

Months later, the Civilian Police Review Board, taking up a complaint from the woman, decided the officers had done only what was necessary.

But they also found that neither officer had filed a use of force report, as required by department policy for anything above “de minimis” force.

“Do you think that somebody holding onto their house, grabbing onto their porch railing and having to be pried off of it — is that minimal resistance?” Michael Graham, head of the CPRB, asked the investigator.

“They physically ripped her off of that porch. Whether or not it was justified is another question, but I think it demands a use of force report to be filled out.”

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“De minimis” force, according to the department’s definition, includes “physical interactions meant to guide and/or control a subject that do not constitute reportable force.”

The board voted that the officers had violated the department’s policy on reporting use of force, and recommended they be given a “letter of reinstruction” explaining that use of force on someone who is resisting officers needs to be reported.

But Judd and Pierse weren’t the only ones who didn’t report a use of force that led to a complaint.

Of the 11 use of force policy violations in 2019 and 2020 for which the Cleveland Police Department provided officer names and incident dates, Scene could find corresponding use of force reports from that officer for just two. In fact, in eight of the cases, failing to report a use of force was either one of the charges or the only charge for which officers were disciplined.

Scene was also unable to find a corresponding UOF report for three complaints made to the Office of Professional Standards where the complainant named either an officer or a subject. Nor was there a use of force report for either of the cases where the CPRB ruled there was an excessive use of force – though one of the officers involved, Santillo, filed a force report for a different incident on the same night that resulted in a man being sent to a hospital.

Statistics in the annual use of force report released by the city indicate the use of force has declined in recent years. But Kareem Henton, an organizer with Black Lives Matter-Cleveland, said that could just reflect inadequate reporting.

“When they don’t list use of force the way it should be listed...what they’re doing is, they’re padding the stats,” he said. “[The police monitor is] going to just be looking at statistics, and the statistics are going to show [potentially] lethal use of force is down.”

In Judd and Pierse’s case, the CPRB was able to watch video from their wearable camera systems to find out what happened. But officers don’t always turn those systems on when they’re supposed to – which is any time they encounter a potential victim, witness, or suspect – or they may not work.

In 2020, 47 body camera policy violations were listed in divisional notices. Twenty of those officers received a one-day suspension, while 12 were given non-disciplinary letters of reinstruction.

In use of force incident reports that were filed, officers frequently cited issues with their body cameras.

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In 24 of the reports, officers wrote that either their or their partner’s camera had been knocked off their vest. In another 17 incidents, their camera was turned off or in buffer mode. One officer wrote, when he mentioned that his partner’s camera turned off, “this is not uncommon when officers are dealing with noncompliant individuals.”

After a police officer killed Tamir Rice in 2014, the police department invested $2.4 million in Axon-brand wearable cameras.

Professor Stephanie Kent, a sociologist who studies police, said camera footage can be valuable for both police officers and citizens if an encounter turns acrimonious.

“Any time there’s a recording that’s additional evidence that’s additional information that can both help exonerate police in cases when they’re wrongfully accused of misconduct and also help hold them accountable when there are justified complaints by citizens.”

But, she added, departments struggle with “how to enforce the use of them, and what the policies will be about those exceptions when they don’t work or there’s a problem with them.”

Data, documents still difficult to get from police It took months for Cleveland Scene to get the Cleveland Police Department’s use of force data. After multiple requests were rejected or answered with unrelated documents, Scene had to go through the courts to get most of the use of force reports, and some questions are still unanswered.

Cleveland Scene first requested all officer use of force reports for 2019 and January through September 2020 in September 2020. First, Cleveland provided a table showing the total number of use of force reports in 2019 and 2020 through September. When Scene reiterated its request for the actual reports, they rejected the request as “overbroad.”

When Scene submitted a request for a single month of reports, the city sent incident reports, which didn’t describe the use of force involved.

After suing the police department with the help of Case Western Reserve University’s First Amendment Law Clinic, Scene finally received data on individual use of force reports in February 2021.

But that data provided only partial descriptions of what happened in the incidents. Scene continued its lawsuit against the department, finally receiving the full narratives from the reports in May 2021.

Asked about the city’s refusal to provide data during a panel on use of force in February, Police Chief Calvin Williams first claimed Scene’s data request had not been denied.

But he added, “Sometimes people ask for everything and the kitchen sink, which we may not have at the time.

So those requests have to be sent back, have to be fine-tuned, and then come back to the city’s process of answering public records requests.”

Scene requested body camera videos of all the incidents reported by Officer Ryan Sowders in February, when an analysis of the available data showed he’d filed the most use of force reports. Scene didn’t get those videos until June 30. Even then, some of the videos appeared to be redacted to the extent that they were useless, blocking out any view of either Sowders’ or the subject’s actions.

The release of data and records has proven a thorny issue for groups involved in the consent decree.

On Sept. 3, a federal judge ordered Cleveland to release data and documents on police discipline the Community Police Commission had requested months and years previously, to no avail.

The CPC filed the case because, according to their filing, the city had said it would not provide disciplinary notices for officers going forward, even though the police department provided the same documents for the Justice Department and the monitoring team. The city claimed that giving them to the CPC as well would be unreasonably burdensome, and was outside the CPC’s mandate.

“The City does not deny that while in many cases it has ultimately provided some of the requested information to the CPC, it has often done so only after repeated requests, months of delay, and intervention by the Monitoring Team and the United States,” lawyers for the CPC wrote in their request for intervention. “Indeed, the City acknowledges that there are currently outstanding data requests from the CPC, but even in the face of a motion seeking to compel that information, the City does not commit to when—or even whether— it will do so.”

In a forum about the consent decree, Gary Singletary, the Cleveland city government chief of counsel, touted monthly meetings between city officials and the Cleveland Community Police Commission as evidence of progress.

But CPC member Latoya Logan would have none of it.

“We have been looking for documents since 2017,” Logan said.

“Those meetings that we have every single month, we stopped going for a period of time because we were not getting anywhere. In fact we’re often disrespected and dismissed in those meetings by the CPD and the city.”

Kareem Henton of Black Lives Matter Cleveland also said the department’s reticence is troubling.

“Cleveland said that they would do a better job of fulfilling people’s records requests, including law enforcement [records],” he said.

“Requesting this information has still been very problematic when trying to get certain records, so nothing has changed...It just strikes me as just them continuing to circle their wagons.”

Black Lives Matter-Cleveland wants the city to hire someone outside the police department to fulfill requests for police records, in the hopes that an independent arbitrator will create more transparency, Henton said.

Mariah Crenshaw, the founder of an advocacy group called Chasing Justice LLC, said Cleveland’s resistance to providing records casts doubt on the statistics it cites to show the department’s progress.

“How are they tracking this?

Where are [city officials] getting the data from?” she said. “Because when you ask for that information, they don’t have it.”

Punishment for excessive force rare, city data shows The Department of Justice Consent Decree calls on the department to “fully, fairly, and efficiently” investigate allegations of officer wrongdoing. And the city’s official publications seem to show that the department is taking use of force policy violations seriously, with 15 cases where officers were disciplined for use of force policy violations listed in the city’s 2019 annual use of force report.

But the city would only identify officers in five use of force policy violations in 2019, and in only one of those cases did the department rule the use of force itself was out of line. The rest of the policy violations where the city turned over identifiable details were for other infractions related to a use of force incident, like failing to turn on a body camera, or acting unprofessionally.

Each violation listed in the annual report includes an “incident number,” the general policy violated, and the consequences for the officer. But it doesn’t include the officer’s name, the date of the allegation or any detailed description of the officer’s actions.

And the “incident numbers” are not system-wide incident numbers that can be cross-referenced with an incident report. Instead, in the report, the “incident numbers” just label the violations 2019-1 through 2019-15.

In response to a request for details on each of these violations, the Cleveland Police Department initially sent a spreadsheet with just six entries, one of which was labeled “within policy.” The sheet identified the officers involved and rulings on whether they violated use of force policy, but not any details of how they broke the rules or what happened to them.

Scene was able to glean that information from divisional notices on disciplinary action, which are periodically issued by the department. Scene found that, out of the five 2019 incidents the city listed as “sustained,” just one was for the actual use of force, involving Officer John Petkac.

The rest of the violations listed were for failure to deescalate, violations of body camera requirements, failures to provide service, failure to properly investigate and professional conduct.

Two resulted in written reprimands, and two led to a two-day suspension.

Petkac’s was the only case listed where an officer was fired.

In that case, which garnered media attention, Petkac repeatedly tased a man who was mocking him. But that wasn’t Petkac’s only troubling use of force that year.

While Scene couldn’t find a use of

force report for the Oct. 5, 2019 incident listed by the city as the cause of his firing, he did file a report for a July incident where he tased a man who was yelling at him near a homeless shelter. In the use of force report database, that is one of three cases labeled as “not within policy” out of 524 reports.

The city didn’t turn over descriptions of the other two events.

In place of a narrative, the database contains a note saying the report is for statistical purposes, and more information can be found in the department’s internal investigation system.

A judge ruled against Cleveland Scene in seeking those details, finding that those reports were part of ongoing investigations, and thus exempt from public records law.

Scene has appealed the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court.

While the department also sent data for violations listed in the 2020 use of force report, only one of the officers listed there showed up in a disciplinary divisional notice, a document where the department lists officers who have received disciplinary action. There also aren’t any use of force reports filed by the officers listed on the days the alleged incidents took place, making it nearly impossible to divine what the officers did or how they were held responsible.

It can take months after an officer commits an offense for their name to be listed in a disciplinary notice. For the 2019 incidents the department

listed where Scene could find corresponding disciplinary notices, more than a year elapsed on average between the actual incident and the date of the disciplinary notice.

Scene asked the police department about the discrepancy between the spreadsheet the police department provided and the number of violations listed in the annual report.

In response, the department sent a different spreadsheet listing 17 use of force report numbers, some with multiple violations, and disciplinary action taken for each violation, but no names or badge numbers.

The new list included the five case numbers from the department’s original list that were labeled as “sustained.” Altogether, the list included 20 violations.

The department also listed the punishment meted out in each case, and whether the policy violated was about body cameras, use of force, or “other.” Six of the cases listed suspensions of one or two days, and one person, presumably Petkac, was listed as fired. In 12, officers received retraining, verbal counseling, or letters of reinstruction. One received a written reprimand.

Asked why non-force violations were included, the department said, “Table 41 in the Use of Force Report includes policy violations in use of force incidents. Specifically, all policy violations are included and [are] not limited to just use of force. In 2019, there were 17 use of force [incidents] that involved at least one policy violation that may or may not have

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been force related.”

Scene could find use of force reports with matching numbers for 13 of those violations. Where the same use of force case number appeared on both spreadsheets, the person disciplined often wasn’t one of the officers who had filed a report.

Scene therefore couldn’t glean any additional information about the violations from disciplinary notices.

The Civilian Police Review Board considered allegations of excessive force against 26 officers in 2019 and 2020, four of which the board voted to uphold, according to a Scene review of minutes and agendas.

Though two of the incidents in question occurred in 2019, neither appeared in either spreadsheet provided by the police department.

The chief of police only accepted the board’s recommendation for one of these cases.

In a December 2020 virtual meeting, the Civilian Police Review Board considered a complaint brought against Salvatore Santillo.

According to a CPRB investigator’s description of the incident, in November 2019, Santillo and his partner were responding to a call about shots fired when they spoke to a man who was sitting on his porch.

Santillo told the man to go inside his house, but he refused.

Santillo then “grabbed him by his neck, searched him, addressed him in an unprofessional manner, placed him in the rear of his zone car, and improperly issued a citation for disorderly conduct,” the investigator told the board.

“He was not considered a suspect at that point or any other point during the encounter. Officer interviews, [wearable camera systems] and complainant interviews failed to establish any elements of individualized suspicion or probable cause for PO Santillo to have approached [the] complainant on his property.”

CPRB members also watched the body camera video, and voted to sustain the complaint of excessive force.

“He didn’t need to be frisked, he didn’t need to be searched, he didn’t need to be grabbed,” said board chair Michael Graham. “He was grabbed violently by the hoodie and shaken, is what I saw.”

The Cleveland public safety director upheld the board’s recommendation, issuing Santillo a 20-day suspension.

But the safety director overturned the one other 2019 case where the board censured an officer’s use of force.

In June 2020, CPRB considered

a complaint against Sgt. James Dziuba. The incident began with a group of people playing guitars at the Ascension Day Festival, according to investigator Eric Richardson. A different officer told the guitarists they had to leave the area, so they packed up their instruments and began to leave.

Then Sgt. Dziuba, leading a group of officers, stopped the musicians and arrested them for disorderly conduct.

The complainant said Dziuba took his cell phone, and it wasn’t returned to him with his other property. He also said Dziuba twisted his arm.

Dziuba denied that he had any physical contact with the complainants, and that he had taken the cell phone. But when the investigator showed Dziuba camera footage of himself taking the cell phone, he demurred.

When investigating the complaint, the investigator also found not only that Dziuba hadn’t turned on his body cam, but also that he had told other officers they didn’t need to either, contrary to department policy.

Richardson located surveillance video and body cam footage from one of the other officers present showing Dziuba physically contacting the complainant, but he said he wasn’t able to see any force that wouldn’t be defined as “de minimis.”

Department policy defines de minimis force as actions taken to guide or control a subject that “do not cause pain and are not reasonably likely to cause pain.” That could include stopping or guiding a subject with only the officer’s hands, or handcuffing them with “only minimal resistance.” Officers aren’t

required to report instances where they use only de minimis force.

Richardson told the CPRB he recommended a finding of “insufficient evidence” for the use of force complaint, but he said it was “a coin toss, because I had to weigh his credibility of his denial of any physical encounter, except for having handcuffed him, that was clearly contradicted by the surveillance video, but the surveillance video was not clear enough to show and make a conclusive determination whether that force that was used was beyond de minimis.”

The CPRB decided that, even if Dziuba only used de minimis force, that qualified as excessive, since he shouldn’t have been arresting the musicians in the first place.

But Cleveland Safety Director Karrie Howard ignored their recommendation, ruling that “the record does not support a finding of guilt.” Howard also threw out the board’s finding that Dziuba had cited and arrested the complainants inappropriately. For failing to turn on his body camera, Howard gave Dziuba a two-day suspension.

The city has not responded to a Sept. 8 public records request for the investigative file for the incident.

City officials have insisted the department is holding officers accountable for any misdeeds, and that they’ve done so in collaboration with the CPRB. “It’s [about] having checks and balances within the department of safety,” Director of Public Safety Karrie Howard said during an April panel about the consent decree.

“Officers are held accountable when

it’s appropriate to do so.”

But some activists say punishment for officers is unsatisfactory.

Kareem Henton, an organizer with Black Lives Matter-Cleveland, pointed to the high-speed police chase that ended with the death of 13-year-old Tamia Chappman. The CPRB voted to discipline several officers in the case, but most of their recommendations were overturned

by Howard.

Henton said the data collected by the Scene confirms his sense that officers are not being held accountable when they use force inappropriately.

“I would expect to see more firings,” he said. “I would expect to see more suspensions. And if we got that, then we would actually see a change in police culture. Nobody wants to give away paychecks.

Nobody.”

Only 4% of Cleveland police officers reported using force more than three times in a year. This officer reported seven.

On the Fourth of July in 2014, police responding to a call about gunshots chased someone into the middle of a child’s backyard birthday party.

After a scuffle, the man was brought to the ground and handcuffed.

Officer Ryan Sowders crouched on his back, while another officer held the man’s feet. Then, Sowders punched the man in the head.

Sowders eventually faced a misdemeanor assault charge for the punch, which the court deemed excessive and not covered

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by “qualified immunity.” He was convicted in 2017, and lost an appeal in 2018. He ultimately paid a fine of $869. The department also suspended him for 30 days.

But the conviction didn’t end Sowders’ time in the Cleveland Police Department, or deter him from using force. In fact, in 2019 and 2020, Sowders filed more use of force reports than any other officer in the department, according to police department data obtained by Scene through a lawsuit.

Sowders’ continued use of force, and the city’s resistance to releasing information about it, raises questions about whether policies and reporting requirements created under its consent decree with the Justice Department actually create transparency, or lead officers to change their behavior.

Almost three-quarters of the officers on the city’s payroll filed no use of force reports at all over that period. Another 17% filed one report.

Fewer than 4% of officers filed three or more use of force reports. Sowders filed seven.

Stephanie Kent, a sociology professor at Cleveland State University who studies the justice system, said an unusually high number of use of force reports by a single officer should raise alarm with their superiors.

“These are the kinds of things that should be tracked. If somebody is a hothead, or is more likely to be violent, then they can find out why,” she said.

But Jeff Follmer, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, said a high number of use of force reports alone shouldn’t be held against an officer.

“We don’t pick and choose when and where we have to use force,” he said. Follmer also suggested that some actions classified as use of force, like bringing down a suspect who tries to flee when already in handcuffs, shouldn’t be considered use of force, and generate too much paperwork.

Every one of Sowders’ use of force reports was declared within department policy.

Police department policy doesn’t require an officer to be terminated for committing a crime unless the conviction prevents them from carrying a gun, such as in domestic violence cases. “Minor misdemeanor” convictions are placed under the lowest level of disciplinary infractions, but since Sowders’ fine was over $150, Ohio law wouldn’t classify it as “minor.”

Jeff Follmer, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s

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Photo Credit: Cleveland police body camera

Association, said it’s not unusual for officers to stay on the force after being convicted of a crime while on duty.

“We’ve had officers convicted of misdemeanors numerous times,” he added.

No resistance Five of the reports said Sowders pointed his weapon at someone.

Under Cleveland department policy, that’s considered a level 1 use of force, which is the least serious.

In one instance in November 2019, Sowders was one of several officers who reported pointing their weapons at a man using his children as hostages. In other instances, though, the subject didn’t seem to pose an immediate threat.

Sowders said in one use of force report he pointed a gun at someone who kept walking away when officers told him to stop. Sowders wrote in his report that he thought the man had a gun, but later found it was a cell phone. The man reportedly told officers later that he had been hoping they would shoot him. Under the level of resistance involved, Sowders categorized the incident as “active resistance.”

The body camera footage provided by the department shows Sowders getting out of a vehicle and shouting “Put your hands up” at a man in a gray hoodie who is standing still, staring open-mouthed at the police, already holding his hands up and out at shoulder height with bent elbows.

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Body camera footage from July 13, 2019 shows a subject putting his hands in the air as soon as Officer Ryan Sowders exits his squad car.

Sowders reported that he pointed a gun at the man because he was walking away.

“Put ‘em up! All the way up in the air!” Sowders can be heard yelling at the man, who remains motionless.

“You don’t listen very well,” he adds as they pull the man’s hands down and handcuff him.

“I wouldn’t hurt y’all,” the man says. “I didn’t hurt nobody. I didn’t do nothin’ out of spite, right? Right?

I ain’t do nothin’ out of spite.” He adds that he’s been drinking. He begins to drop to his knees, but Sowders tells him to stand back up.

As police walk him toward a cruiser, the man can be heard weeping.

Sowders says the man is going to give him a hernia by “dropping like a dead weight.”

“I don’t want to give you a hernia,” the man sobs.

In another incident, after pulling over a man who matched the description of a homicide suspect, Sowders pointed his gun at him while he “gave no resistance and exited the vehicle” following another officer’s directions, according to the use of force report. Another officer filed a use of force report saying he also pointed a gun at the subject.

The body cam video confirms the officers’ description of events. In the video, after reading the man his Miranda rights, Sowders asks his name.

The man’s ID verifies that he’s not the person the police are looking for.

“The guy we’re looking for, that’s involved in a homicide, has just as many face tattoos as you,” Sowders tells him.

“Yeah, I saw him on Facebook,” the man says. “That’s not me, sir.”

Reports where Sowders said he used higher levels of force include one where he punched someone who was resisting arrest; and one where he tased someone who was wrestling with other officers.

A video of the first incident shows Sowders arriving when the subject is already restrained, but appears to try to squirm away from a security guard. The man can be seen banging his own head against the hood of the squad car, and then against the concrete.

Multiple officers end up holding him on the ground. One says, “Stop it man, all you are is drunk.” A woman asks him, “Why do you want to hurt yourself?”

When Sowders empties the man’s pockets and finds what appears to be drug paraphernalia, the man becomes more and more agitated, encouraging the cops to choke him and pull out their guns. At one point he shouts, “I want to die! I will!

Tonight!”

Through much of the video, the camera lens appears to be covered as Sowders wrangles with the subject.

It’s not clear when Sowders struck him, or when the subject bit Sowders, as he wrote in his report.

In a March 2020 incident, Sowders arrives at the scene of a call about a break-in when multiple officers are trying to restrain a young man on the pavement.

“Are we tasing?” Sowders asks.

“No,” one of the officers says.

But when the struggle continues for a few more seconds, Sowders says, “Stop resisting,” and points his taser at the man’s exposed belly.

“You’re going to get tased! Do you understand?” another officer shouts at the young man.

Sowders orders him to turn over.

When he doesn’t, Sowders tases him.

After handcuffing him, the officers carry the man to the squad car while he screams “Buba! Buba!”

Body camera footage shows Officer Ryan Sowders untangling taser wires from a young Nepali man in the back of a squad car.

Then the officers ask if he speaks Spanish.

“I am Nepali,” he says. “My father this he home.”

“Buba” is Nepali for “father.”

The young man’s age isn’t listed in the report, but Sowders estimated he was 125 pounds and under 5 feet

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tall. A use of force report filed by another officer for the same incident said they had guessed early on that the subject didn’t speak English because he wasn’t responding to any of their commands.

The consent decree between the Justice Department and the Cleveland Police Department requires that officers be “trained to consider the possibility that a subject may be noncompliant due to a medical or mental condition, physical or hearing impairment, language barrier, drug interaction or emotional crisis.”

“There’s four officers there,” Kent said after watching the video.

“Why couldn’t there be some way for them to take him down or restrain him without having to resort to the taser?...He’s not a physical threat, and he can’t speak the language. I just don’t understand why the taser needed to be deployed.”

On the other hand, she said, police have few resources to deal with people who can’t communicate. “[Police are] not trained social workers. They’re not trained psychologists. They’re not trained linguists,” she said. “They basically go on what procedure is used in any other incident, regardless of whether the other person is under the influence or not speaking English or has a mental illness.”

Some of the videos provided by the department don’t show the moment Sowders says he used force.

One man, at whom Sowders pointed his gun on April 17, 2019, was reportedly hiding in a basement with a lampshade on his head. The video goes black, containing only audio, at the moment Sowders starts to enter the lighted basement.

In another report, the subject was coming down the stairs toward Sowders after failing to find an exit where he could escape. Most of the picture is blurred out when Sowders approaches the door of the house, and it’s impossible to tell what the subject was doing as Sowders yelled at him to put his hands up.

Individual uses of force are supposed to be reviewed to make sure they fall within department policy. Follmer added that there is a review process for officers whose statistics fall outside the norm, but it includes other factors, like excessive sick days, not just use of force reports.

But Sowders has been in trouble for other incidents. In fact, he was disciplined in his first year on the force. In Sept., 2013, he crashed into a woman’s car on Lorain Ave. while responding to a call. The woman sued the department. The judge

decided Sowders had immunity because he was responding to a call at the time, but the department suspended him for one day for driving too fast. The next year he was suspended again, this time for five days, for being involved in a hitskip accident.

More recently, Sowders was suspended for one day in 2019 for an unspecified violation involving his body camera, according to the department’s periodic discipline announcement from that April.

Then, in July 2020, the Civilian Police Review Board decided that Sowders had behaved unprofessionally after an incident at Old Angle Boxing Gym where a sparring match devolved into a brawl. Sowders told the father of a 14-year-old, who had been sparring a 28-year-old, that he’d made a “mistake” by allowing his son to spar with an adult, and should be charged with assault for intervening.

He was given a formal reprimand for the incident in January 2021, though the department listed under “mitigating factors” that his “advice given was out of concern for the wellbeing of the juvenile without intent to be discourteous or rude.”

While Sowders’ filed more use of force reports than any of his colleagues in 2019 and 2020, his numbers were far lower than the most prolific filers of force reports in 2010, according to a Plain Dealer analysis from a decade ago. In 2010, the paper reported, 11 officers filed eight or more use of force reports.

Two of those officers were charged in 2011 for beating a mentally ill man after a police chase, leaving him with a broken eye socket and detached retina.

In February, Williams pointed out that the department’s total number of use of force reports have been on the decline. Under the consent decree, he said, training has been instituted to ensure that officers know how to use force in a way that is constitutional.

“And, as occasionally happens when officers don’t maintain that standard they’re held accountable,” he said.

“The use of force is part of the role of policing. It’s part of what we ask officers to do. We just ask them to do it thoughtfully and judiciously,” added Brian Maxey, a deputy monitor on the Cleveland Police Monitoring Team. “Do they have the least reliance on the use of force as a tool when engaging with community members? That’s the litmus test, not just the numbers.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene November 17-30, 2021 | clevescene.com |

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GET OUT

Everything to do in Cleveland for the next two weeks

Country singer Kane Brown brings his arena tour to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. See: Sunday, Nov. 21.

WED 11/17 Monsters vs. Syracuse Crunch Because it’s Blue Jackets Night, there will be special promotions all night long tonight when the Monsters play the Syracuse Crunch at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. The two teams square off at 7. Check the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse website for ticket prices. The Monsters and Crunch will play each other again at 7 p.m. on Friday. As part of a special Top Gun Tribute Night, the first 10,000 fans to that game will receive a pair of Aviator Sunglasses.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

THU

11/18

Steve Hoffstetter Known as much for his writing as for his standup, Steve Hofstetter is more articulate than your typical comic. At one point, he was even a weekly humor columnist for Sports Illustrated. “I started doing

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standup to pass the time,” he has said. “I’m in the small percentage of people who started doing what they love accidentally.” A dorky guy who maintains he looks a bit like actor Michael Rapaport with glasses, Hofstetter tours “perpetually.” He performs tonight at 7 at the Improv. Check the website for ticket prices.

1148 Main Ave., 216-696-IMPROV, clevelandimprov.com.

FRI

11/19

Christmas Connection This year’s Christmas Connection marks the return of consumer events at the I-X Center. The show, which starts today and continues through Sunday, will be the first consumer-focused event to take place in the reopened location. There will be crafts, specialty foods, soaps, ornaments, wood creations, jewelry and more. Kids can visit and take a picture with Santa, Mrs. Claus and the elves. Check the website, clevelandchristmasconnection.com,

| clevescene.com | November 17-30, 2021

Matthew Berinato

for more info.

1 I-X Center Dr., 216-676-6000, ixcenter.com.

SAT

11/20

Pete Correale Standup comedian performed numerous times on The Tonight Show, Letterman and Conan. He’s also filmed a handful of one-hour comedy specials. He performs tonight at 8 at the Hanna Theatre.

Check the Playhouse Square website for more info, including COVID protocols.

2067 East 14th St., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

SUN 11/21 Kane Brown This country superstar says he’s pulling out all the stops for his massive arena tour that finds him stopping at each of the NBA’s arenas.

Brown, a former athlete himself, is still riding high from the success

of his first two chart-topping long players. He’s got a third studio album in the works, but it’s still a work-in-progress, so don’t expect to receive a sneak peak at tonight’s show. Rather, you can expect to hear the hits. The concert begins at 7 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Check the Rocket Mortgage website for ticket prices.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

MON 11/22 Cavaliers vs. Brooklyn Nets Stacked with superstars such as James Harden, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, the Brooklyn Nets look to be one of the best teams in the NBA’s Eastern Conference.

They come to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse tonight at 7 to take on the Cavs. Check the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse website for ticket prices.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

GET OUT TUE

11/23

Open Turntable Tuesday Tonight from 7 to 9, the Winchester hosts its weekly Open Turntable Tuesday. Jason Gokorsch will book guest DJs and offer slots to people who want to bring their own vinyl and spin their favorite songs or deep tracks. First time DJs are encouraged, and equipment is provided. Patrons can also bring records for the night’s DJ to add to their set. Sign up on Northeast Ohio Vinyl Club’s Facebook page.

12112 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-600-5338, facebook.com/ TheWinchesterMusicTavern.

WED 11/24 Cavaliers vs. Phoenix Suns The Phoenix Suns defied the odds last year and managed to make it all the way to the NBA Finals. With many of the players from that team still playing for the Suns this year, they stand to remain one of the best squads in the league. They play the Cavaliers in Cleveland for the only time this year when they face off at 7 tonight at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Check the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse website for ticket prices.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

FRI

11/26

Jim Brickman: The Gift of Christmas Singer-songwriter Jim Brickman brings his annual holiday tour to town tonight. Expect to hear seasonal fare such as “The Gift,” “Sending You a Little Christmas,” “Angel Eyes,” and “If You Believe.” He hits the Hanna Theatre stage at 8, and has performances scheduled through Sunday. Check the Playhouse Square website for more info.

2067 East 14th St., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

SAT

11/27

Light It Up! Cleveland Play House presents this brand new, family-friendly musical set in Cleveland that, as it’s put in a press release, “illuminates the power of love, kindness and each person’s ability to make every day

brighter. The world premiere musical features original pop, rock, gospel and jazz holiday tunes as well as new arrangements of Christmas favorites by Tony Award-winning composer Jason Michael Webb.

Tonight’s performance takes place at 7:30 at the Allen Theatre. Check the Playhouse Square website for information about more upcoming shows as well as ticket prices and COVID protocols.

1407 Euclid Ave., playhousesquare.org.

SUN 11/28 The Temptations and the Four Tops Two classic R&B acts that hearken back to the Motown days come to MGM Northfield Park — Center Stage. The Temptations and the Four Tops will perform at 7 p.m. Check the venue website for ticket prices.

10705 Northfield Rd., Northfield, 330-908-7793, mgmnorthfieldpark. mgmresorts.com/en.html.

MON 11/29 Movie Mondays Every Monday, Cleveland Cinemas hosts $5 Movie Mondays, where film fans can catch up on the latest Hollywood flicks for significantly reduced prices. Bring your friends and family and make Movie Mondays a weekly tradition — many theaters even offer discounted concession stand items. Participating theaters include Apollo Theatre, Cedar Lee Theatre and Chagrin Cinemas. Additional charges apply for 3-D movies. clevelandcinemas.com.

TUE

11/30

Anastasia Featuring a book by playwright Terrence McNally, a new score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens with direction by Tony Award-winner Darko Tresnjak, Anastasia rolls into EJ Thomas Hall tonight with plenty of hype. The show switches time periods and locations and takes place both in the twilight of the Russian Empire and the euphoria of Paris in the 1920s. It follows a young woman who’s pursued by a ruthless Soviet officer determined to silence her as she enlists the help of a con man and an ex-aristocrat. Tonight’s curtain is at 7:30. Check the theater’s website for ticket prices and more info.

198 Hill St., Akron, 330-972-7570, ejthomashall.com.

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene November 17-30, 2021 | clevescene.com |

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EAT BUILDING A TRADITION

ETalian is a perfect marriage of concept and setting in Chagrin Falls

FOR MANY FAMILIES, THE Friday night ritual of heading out for pizza is as ingrained a tradition as the snapping of first-day-ofschool photos. Over the years, these easygoing pizza joints become a treasured part of the fabric of the community and indelible slices of the adolescent experience. If a recent Friday night is an accurate sign of what’s to come, then ETalian is poised to become one of those places for the residents of Chagrin Falls.

As daylight faded, the attractive space began filling up with parents and excited teens, who eagerly lined up to place their orders at the counter. Behind that counter stood chef and owner Eddie Tancredi, who endeavored to keep pace with the mounting demand. Assisted in the open kitchen by longtime sous chef Earl Warren, Tancredi continually fed the insatiable beast that is the wood-fired oven, extracting baked pizzas with a peel and immediately replacing them with uncooked ones.

Even at a rate of one pie per minute or two, the task appeared somewhat Sisyphean.

While the ritual of the Friday night slice has remained immutable, the style of those pies most certainly has not. My family’s weekly local specialized in that prototypical Cleveland variety, which is to say thick and buttery, sweet-sauced and cheesy, and classically topped.

Essential to the experience was the familial negotiation process, whereby parents ordered whatever the heck they wanted but the siblings were compelled to reach some sort of complicated détente. Kids bound for ETalian, on the other hand, enjoy the unfettered freedom of the personal pizza.

Tancredi might not be the first in the area to hop on the Neapolitan bandwagon, but he is more than holding his own in the quality department. His 9-inch pies exit the blistering Italian oven with the proper amount of charring – or leopard spotting – which is an essential characteristic of the style. The pies are ringed by a puffy, airy crown and the crust below is slender but sturdy enough to support the toppings. Most

Photo by Douglas Trattner

By Douglas Trattner

importantly, that dough has a depth of flavor indicative of a long, slow fermentation.

The menu lists eight predesigned pies and typically one special. Our table shared a classic pepperoni ($11), mushroom and banana pepper

gets ripped apart by hand and enjoyed. The antipasti salad ($7.99) offers a tasty and traditional mix of greens, cheese, olives, banana peppers and artichoke hearts. Other salads include a Greek and arugula.

For dessert, there’s a half dozen

ETALIAN 13 BELL ST., CHAGRIN FALLS 440-600-2001 ETALIANPIZZA.COM

($11) and sausage ($11). We added the night’s special ($11), which was topped with quartered fresh figs, and it proved the least popular of the bunch. At ETalian, the decisions don’t end with the pizza selection; pies can be ordered unsliced, sliced, kid-sliced (8-count) or folded “walletstyle” and tucked into a paper pouch for mobile enjoyment.

Don’t sleep on the cheesy bread ($5), which is like a bloomin’ onion but with fresh-baked bread, gooey mozzarella and pepperoni ($2) that is surprisingly light, herby and savory. After a quick spell in the wood oven, the flower-cut bread

gelato flavors, which can be enjoyed straight from the cup or in sandwich form ($5.99) after being tucked into a fresh-baked bun. To drink there is a limited selection of beer and wine in cans and simple cocktails.

An elaborate renovation process has transformed a notable and historic – but long vacant – brick building in the heart of downtown into an open and attractive space with exposed brick walls, cathedral ceilings, original beams and windows that offer views of the upper Chagrin Falls. The petite restaurant seats about two dozen inside with room for another two

dozen in the adjacent courtyard patio. Orders for food and drink can be placed online for speedy pickup, in-person at the register or at a countertop kiosk that bypasses the line. Guests grab their own food and utensils when their name is called.

For families in search of a fun weeknight activity, ETalian offers pizza-making kits that include enough dough, sauce, cheese and toppings to whip up two pies. Four different versions are available.

Tancredi, like everybody in the industry, had a brutal 2020. His Distill Table in Lakewood closed a few months after the Governor shut down indoor dining. The experience is precisely what motivated the chef, who comes from fine-dining, to pursue a fast-casual operation like ETalian. When the location presented itself to him, he leapt at the opportunity. The marriage of setting and concept seems like a winning combination for Tancredi and the community.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

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Photo by Doug Trattner

EAT BITES

First Look: Schnitz Ale Brewery, Parma’s first brewery, now open

By Douglas Trattner “THIS IS THE FIRST BREWERY in the history of Parma,” Goran Djurin says proudly.

He’s standing with his son Igor in the just-completed Schnitz Ale Brewery (5729 Pearl Rd.), a dazzling new brewery and restaurant that opened last week in Parma. The building sits directly across the street from Das Schnitzel Haus (5728 Pearl Rd., 440-886-5050), which the same family opened in 2005.

When the two-story building became available in 2019, the family quickly snatched it up with plans for the brewery already in mind. Over the past two years, they transformed every square inch of the space into a distinctive brewpub that seamlessly blends Old World, industrial and contemporary – with every last detail originating from the creative mind of Djurin.

“This is not just a brewery, but a beautiful brewery,” he says. “I wanted to make it something special for Parma.”

The 10,000-square-foot brewpub seats approximately 200 guests on two floors, the second of which is a mezzanine that overlooks the main hall. The front bank of windows opens up to Pearl Road and in spring a beer garden-style patio will emerge on the southwest side of the building.

The 7-barrel brewhouse, which is visible from the main dining room, is run by brewmaster Jerome Moore, who also happens to be a firstgeneration Polish American. Already there are a dozen house beers on tap.

“We brew all varieties, but with a focus on German beers,” Moore says. “We don’t want to discourage someone from coming because they don’t think we have a stout on tap or a hazy IPA.” Flagship brews include the kolsch, marzen, stout and dunkel, which is described by Moore as a dark-style kolsch. Smoke Stacked is a rauchbier, a mildly smoky red ale.

The house pours will be joined by hard seltzers and a guest sour and cider. Beers are served in flights, standard half-liter mugs and snifters for the higher-proof stuff. A wall in the main room is devoted to cubbies

holding steins, the brewery’s version of a mug club.

“We’re calling it the stein mannschaft, which means stein team,” says Igor, adding that membership includes the stein, merchandise, discounts and a yearend party.

For those who pass on beer, there is wine and booze.

The family has no concerns about the brewery cannibalizing business from the restaurant across the street.

“The main draw here is the beer,” notes Igor. “If people want a full meal, it’s at the Schnitzel Haus.”

Guests can look forward to pubfriendly foods made with the same from-scratch mentality that has sustained Das Schnitzel Haus for more than 15 years. On the menu are house-made Bavarian pretzels with beer cheese, meat and cheese boards, a lamb burger and a sausage platter featuring Djurin’s handiwork.

For now, Schnitz Ale Brewery is open 3-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 3-11 p.m. on Friday, noon11 p.m. on Saturday and noon-10 p.m. on Sundays. They plan to open for lunch in the coming weeks.

Pub Frato to Open This Week in the Former Grove Hill Space in Chagrin Falls The transformation from Grove Hill to Pub Frato (25 Pleasant Dr., 440600-7029) is nearly complete, says owner Chris Frate. Over the past year, construction crews essentially gutted the Chagrin Falls property, which had been vacant since 2018, and rebuilt it. Gone are the various interior elevations, replaced by a seamless and open floorplan. The ceilings have been raised, the bar has been extended and a two-way fireplace has been planted in the center of the main dining room.

One of the most dramatic improvements came as a result of relocating the restrooms, which freed up valuable real estate and allowed for the installation of garage doors on the north side of the building. The new restaurant offers

seating for about 150 guests at hightops, low-tops and the bar.

Chris and Lynda Frate opened the original Pub Frato (7548 Fredle Dr., 440-867-2441) in Concord Township back in 2013. Through hard work and trial and error, the husband-and-wife team devised a formula for success that has served them, and the community, well for eight years.

“We pride ourselves in greatquality food, treating the customers like they need to be treated – right or wrong, they’re always right – and that family touch,” says Chris.

An onsite chef will work in conjunction with company chef Maggie Demko to prepare the gastropub-style menu. Fans of the Concord site can look forward to the same approachable, agreeable pub fare. Likely menu items include egg-topped poutine, brisket-stuffed peppers with beer cheese, short rib tacos, patty melts, fish and chips, and salmon fettuccine.

The restaurant, which opens this week, fulfills a long-held goal of the owners.

“Chagrin Falls has been on my bucket list since I was young,” Frate says. “The buzz has been fantastic.

Chagrin Falls has given us an openarm welcome. It’s been really, really nice. I can’t wait to be a part of that community.”

The Spotted Owl in Tremont Welcomes Back Its First Guests in 20 Months Will Hollingsworth put Twin Palms, his alfresco cocktail experience, to bed in mid-September so that he and his team could prepare the

Spotted Owl (710 Jefferson Ave., 216795-5595) for its first guests in 20 months. The seven-year-old Tremont bar has been closed since the start of the pandemic, but now that most adults are vaccinated – and kids are right behind them – Hollingsworth says the time is right to open the doors.

When settling on a course for Spotted Owl’s future, Hollingsworth made a conscious decision to not look in the rear-view mirror.

“I think it would be a mistake to look back through Covid to 2019 and try to recapture former glories,” he says. “I think it’s a new world, so I really want to point the Spotted Owl, as a bar and experience, in sort of a new direction.”

Guests will find that “the Wheel,” the bar’s distinctive bespoke cocktail experience, is still present, but the cocktails that underpin them have evolved. That approach is joined by a “limited focus but high-concept” cocktail menu.

“We’re still running the Wheel,” notes Hollingsworth. “It’s such a popular experience that people really like. I think it’s a beautiful expression of those values and philosophies that I keep talking about, in terms of storytelling and making people feel taken care of and listened to. But I’m looking to do some really weird, really progressive stuff moving forward.”

The bar is walk-in only from 5-midnight Wednesday through Saturday. Hollingsworth suggests trying to avoid the post-dinner rush on weekends.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

November 17-30, 2021 | clevescene.com |

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MUSIC BUILDING MOMENTUM

Heart Attack Man returns to its hardcore roots on terrific new EP

By Jeff Niesel Growing up, Eric Egan initially gravitated to heavy metal and numetal. That then led him to hardcore and punk, and in that regard, the Cleveland music scene had plenty to offer in terms of inspiration.

“When I got my driver’s license and could start going to shows more, I found myself going to local hardcore shows and was into that scene for a while and played with those bands growing up,” Egan says via phone. His band, Heart Attack Man, heads out on the road with Neck Deep this week and its terrific new album, Thoughtz & Prayerz, drops on Friday. Heart Attack Man’s tour with Neck Deep comes to the Agora on Sunday, Nov. 28.

“As I got older, I got more in touch with the part of me that appreciates solid hooks and melodies, and I wanted to try something new after all that,” Egan continues. “I also had six concussions from sports, and so I wanted to play something a little softer to save myself from the head injuries.”

“Something softer” came in the form of Heart Attack Man, which formed in 2013. The band’s pop-punk approach has much in common with acts such as Blink-182, and its full-length debut, 2017’s The Manson Family, even received some national attention.

“That was our first full-length, and we wanted to shop it around to some labels,” says Egan when asked about the album. “We self-financed it and recorded it in six days. That was all we could finance on our own.

It was pretty crazy. We didn’t sleep much at all. We would sleep at the studio at times. We were pushing 20-hour tracking days. It was very hectic, and looking back on it, I don’t know how we did it. We blinked a couple of times, and we were done.”

For its next album, Fake Blood, the band signed to Triple Crown Records/You Did This and had twoand-a-half weeks to record.

“It was much more relaxed,” says Egan, who adds that the band seeks to evolve with each subsequent album. “My process has been take the elements that I think were working the best with the last

Cleveland’s Heart Attack Man.

release and either perfect them or introduce new elements. In my head, it all feels like a successive change to me. We’re building momentum and either perfecting it or trying something new.”

Courtney Emery

“Puke” represents the hardcore element Egan says the band tries to stress on the album.

“When we were tracking, we wanted to incorporate more of a hardcore influence, but we didn’t

NECK DEEP, HEART ATTACK MAN SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 6 P.M., AGORA THEATRE, 5000 EUCLID AVE., 216-881-2221.

TICKETS: $29.50 ADV, $35 DOS AGORACLEVELAND.COM.

With Thoughtz & Prayerz, the band wanted to reintroduce its heavy hardcore side.

“That brings it full circle,” says Egan. “Back when I started the band, I wanted to get away from that for my own safety, but now I kind of miss the energy and the aggression. The music itself is very cathartic. Fake Blood had moments that were more charged like that.»

Thoughtz & Prayerz’s first single, “Pitch Black,” is more on the melodic side of things, but that’s the exception rather than the rule on the EP. With its driving guitars and barked vocals, the Fugazi-like

want it to be indecipherable,” he says.

“Some hardcore bands get so into it that you can’t understand what they’re saying. I love that kind of stuff personally, but for us, I wanted it to be heavy but still decipherable.”

The track “Cool 2 Me” even ventures into spoken word territory.

“That one is weird because there’s a heavy element to it, but it’s still experimental to us. It’s not a typical structure for us, but I was happy with what came of it.”

Though the album is just coming out now, the band started recording in 2020 at the Barbershop in New Jersey and then wrapped up a few

“loose ends” at a studio in Toledo in the fall of that year.

“We didn’t record it all at once,” says Egan. “We spread it out more.

Last year was a wild ride. We wanted to stay busy and hit the ground running when things were somewhat back to normal.

The upcoming tour with Neck Deep was supposed to happen at the end of 2020, but the dates got bumped because of the pandemic.

“I can’t wait [to tour],” says Egan. “It feels like so long since we’ve played a show. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that long.

There will be bands that go on hiatus for much longer, but this is the longest I’ve gone without playing shows since I’ve started playing shows when I was 13. It’s been strange but a nice reset. I got really into fitness. I have better lung capacity and can sing better.

I genuinely feel like I have better control over my voice. It helped me appreciate things more.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

November 17-30, 2021 | clevescene.com |

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SAVAGE LOVE SHORT SHORTS

By Dan Savage Hey Dan: I have a fun little labeling question. I’m a nonbinary person who was assigned male at birth (AMAB).

I gravitate towards femininity in life and in love. My question is about the inclusiveness of the label “lesbian.” Is this a label only for women? Or is it inclusive of everyone who is feminine and is attracted to femininity? My goal is to label myself appropriately without infringing on others.

All Loves Labeled Inclusively As labels go, ALLI, “lesbian” seems pretty darn binary to me. Now, the meaning of any given word evolves and changes over time, of course, and meaning follows use. But lesbian currently means — and is currently used to mean and will most likely continue to mean — a woman who is exclusively attracted to other women romantically and sexually*. So frankly, ALLI, I’m confused about why someone who’s your brand of nonbinary (AMAB, femme and into femmes) would even want to identify as a lesbian. Since you’re neither a woman nor a man, ALLI, why would you want to use such a gendered label? (Why you might feel entitled to use it is another subject, one I’ll leave that for commenters to discuss.)

That said, no one can stop you from using the term lesbian to describe yourself. You know how they say in anti-anti-cancel-culture discourse that there’s no such thing as cancel culture, only accountability? Well, ALLI, there’s no such thing as gatekeeping or gatekeepers; there are no identity cops out there with the power to make arrests or issue fines. There are only people who might find your shit annoying. In the case of your specific shit, ALLI, some lesbians are gonna find it annoying — extremely annoying — but annoyed lesbians can’t prevent you from self-identifying as a lesbian any more than annoyed Slate writers can prevent Louis C.K. from selling out stadiums. No one can cancel him, no one can gatekeep you.

Hey Dan: I’ve been flirting with this guy from my class. He’s four years older and seems very into drugs and certain subcultures, but he also maintains an active social media persona. We’re planning on going out, but I already know that he would fit into an unhealthy pattern

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of mine: guys who aren’t sure what they want and are reluctant to make commitments. Do I just enjoy the sex that could occur? Or do I steer clear to protect myself?

Should I Fuck This Intriguing New Guy? Depends. After identifying this unhealthy pattern — your propensity for getting attached to guys who aren’t sure what they want and/or can’t commit — have you been able to enjoy sex without allowing yourself to get attached to guys with commitment issues? If the answer is yes, SIFTING, if you can trust yourself not to catch feelings for someone, then go ahead and fuck this guy. But if the answer is no — if you can’t fuck a guy without catching feelings — then don’t fuck this guy.

Zooming way out — and this is not a comment on your situation, SIFTING, or your dating history — but sometimes we tell ourselves a man has “commitment issues” when he just doesn’t want to commit to us. And sometimes we tell ourselves a woman “doesn’t know what she wants” when she just doesn’t want us. And that’s fine. We’re just protecting our own egos. But if we believe that shit without reservation — if we buy our own hype — we’ll be devastated when the ex who couldn’t commit to us because “he doesn’t know what he wants” suddenly knows what he wants. And it’s someone else.

Hey Dan: I’m a 31-year-old cis woman living in the South. Dating here is a nightmare. It feels like everyone got married at 22 and is super into Jesus.

I just got back on the apps, and the first date I went on was amazing.

Really cool liberal, age-appropriate dude with a similar sense of humor. I had so much fun, and we exchanged numbers. And then ... nothing. I bit the bullet and followed up and still haven’t heard anything. At what point do I write this guy off as a ghost? And how do I deal with the utter disappointment of being ghosted by a dude I really connected with?

Ghosts Are Horrible ++ I took a call on the Savage Lovecast last week from a woman who was angry about being ghosted by a man — a neighbor whose front door she

| clevescene.com | November 17-30, 2021

had to walk past every day — and then she saw the coroner wheeling the guy’s dead body out of his apartment on a gurney. Like the meme says, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” As for your battle, GAH, look on the bright side. The first date you went on after getting back on the apps went pretty well! There was no second date, and that’s too bad, and assuming he isn’t dead, it was rude of him to ghost on you like that. But if there was one guy in your area you could have an amazing first date with (even if it went nowhere), GAH, it’s not unreasonable to assume there are other guys in your area you could have equally amazing first dates with (dates that might go somewhere).

HEY DAN: I WENT DOWN ON A FRIEND THIS WEEK AND I NOTICED SHE HAD A GROWTH ON HER LABIA I AM SURE IT IS FINE BUT ANY IDEA WHAT IT WAS? WHAT WAS THAT I HAVE NO IDEA BUT IF THE GROWTH WAS IN A SPOT YOUR FRIEND MIGHT HAVE DIFFICULTY SEEING YOU SHOULD SAY SOMETHING TO HER SO SHE CAN GET IT CHECKED OUT BY A DOCTOR.

Hey Dan: I dated someone recently for a few weeks and had sex. It was unprotected, and I found out immediately after that he had herpes.

I was annoyed because I had condoms next to the bed. But I also felt partly responsible since we didn’t have a discussion first. He wound up having a breakout a few days later. We continued dating and used condoms after that until one night when I was high on edibles, and he didn’t use a condom. This was after he asked me earlier if I felt comfy going without condoms again and I explicitly requested condoms. We aren’t together now, but it feels really fucked up. He seemed like the nicest person.

What The Fuck Was That What that was, WTFWT, was fucked up. And that guy wasn’t nice. There’s not a lot you can do about it now besides learn from the experience.

First, don’t drop hints. Don’t put condoms on the nightstand and hope the other person takes the hint. Tell

the other person the condoms are there to be used and that if there isn’t one on his dick, his dick isn’t getting anywhere near your hole/holes — and if his dick gets near your hole without a condom on it, or if the condom should magically disappear after his dick is in your hole, you’ll be filing a police report. And second, don’t make requests: from here on out, WTFWT, make demands. Unambiguous, unequivocal demands. And go get tested.

Hey Dan: Cis, married, straight man here. You’re my gay crush. Given the chance, how would you seduce me? I’ve never had man-sex before, because I really like pussy and the way women feel, but I think I could do it for you.

You’ve always been my celeb “manpass.” How can we get this started? I’m just a straight guy writing to a gay guy, asking him to fuck him.

Lusting After Dan Straight guys who make passes at gay men assume we’re all going to think, “OMG, this is my one chance to sleep with a real man!” In reality, LAD, what most gay men are thinking when a straight guy hits on us is, “This dude is gonna shit all over my dick.”

Now, that thought doesn’t stop some gay men from sleeping with straightidentified guys who are bi or gay and closeted, LAD, nor does it stop some gay men from sleeping with the rare straight-but-situationally-heteroflexible guy with a very specific crush on one of us. But it’s always annoying when a straight guy assumes his straightness is an aphrodisiac that drives gay men wild and asks questions like, “Given the chance, how would you seduce me?” That framing assumes I would try, or would want to try, if I had the chance.

So, you could say, I’m just a gay guy responding to a straight guy, asking him to get over himself. * A shout out to all the asexual lesbians and aromantic lesbians. I see you and your pride flags, I am familiar with your anime avatars, and I affirm the validity of your lesbianism.

mail@savagelove.net t@fakedansavage www.savagelovecast.com

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