Hello all. Here are some quick news items this morning.
A former Mason resident who is a suspect in a severe beating of a black man during a white supremacist rally Aug. 12 in Charlottesville, Va. is fighting extradition back to the state. Daniel Borden had a hearing today in Hamilton County Courts on his extradition and appeared via video conference call. Borden was given a $100,000 bond and will face another hearing on his extradition in 30 days.
• Notorious trolls with Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church will be in Cincinnati next week. They’ll picket outside Oak Hills High School, the University of Cincinnati and an undisclosed church downtown on Sept. 6. Church members are specifically protesting a gay-straight alliance club at the high school. A flier distributed by the church says Oak Hills is full of “lust, frivolity, wanton sin and every manner of evil…” Well then. The club describes itself as a safe place for students of different orientations to hang out.
• Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black issued a memo yesterday with a brief update about the nearly complete, but stalled, demolition of the Dennison Hotel. Engineers and contractors with the city will open up “inspection portals” to examine a shared structural wall between the Dennison and a neighboring building today, according to the memo. The former historic building on Main Street, owned by the real estate arm of the powerful Joseph Auto group, was mostly demolished earlier this year after a protracted battle over its significance as a historic landmark and its potential for reuse, possibly as affordable housing. Columbia REI, the company that owns the building, prevailed after a series of battles in city panels and county courts. Damage was done to a neighboring building during the demolition and it was discovered the Dennison shares a structural wall with that building. Black’s memo states today’s inspection will help engineers draw up a solution to the shared structural elements, after which owners of both buildings will be presented with options. Black promised to issue a new report after an agreement is reached on how to address the problem.
• Hamilton County will receive a $2 million research grant to purchase Narcan, the anti-overdose drug that blocks opiate receptors in the brain. The money, which comes from Narcan producer Adapt Pharma, should make up to 30,000 more doses of the antidote available in the region. The grant is part of a pilot program in Hamilton County to test the effectiveness of increasing supplies of the drug. County officials hope to cut overdose deaths in half in the next year via the increased supply of the anti-overdose drug.
• Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel has worn a lot of outfits during his political career: Ambitious young political go-getter. Receiver of problematic campaign contributions. Writer of helpful letters on Ohio Treasurer letterhead to another state on behalf of a major donor. State budget transparency crusader. The guy who spent public marketing dollars putting himself in TV ads with a beloved college football coach ahead of his Senate campaign. Trump-esque conservative campaigner. So, who is the real Mandel? This story traces all the weird turns Mandel has taken during his time in the public eye. It’s worth a read as the Republican continues to ramp up a campaign for a big jump up in the political world — the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown.
• Questions remain around the death of a man in the back of a Akron police cruiser. The Akron Police Department says a 17-year-old shot himself in the head, either by accident or on purpose, after he was taken into custody under suspicion of armed robbery. Authorities also say that the man had his hands cuffed behind his back. It’s unclear how the man ended up with the gun — police procedures are usually to frisk and disarm suspects during an arrest — or how he managed to shoot himself while handcuffed. The incident occurred just days before Akron Police Chief James Nice resigned under pressure from Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan after Horrigan says he was engaging in “inappropriate contact with a city employee.” The mayor says the chief’s resignation is unrelated to the shooting in the police cruiser.
This article appears in Aug 23-30, 2017.