Cops with poor diets and a toothless pit bull ban are among the oops of 2007.

Cops with poor diets and a
toothless pit bull ban are among the oops of 2007.

By DAVID SKOLNICK

and PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITERS

Everyone makes mistakes. Most of the time few people know about them and they just go away.

Then there are the foul-ups, mistakes and blunders of 2007. Some are a simple case of “oops” while others are rather large with unpleasant consequences.

Police officers are often unfairly tagged with loving doughnuts as much as Homer Simpson. One of their own — Edward Colon, president of the Youngstown Police Association — didn’t help to change that stereotype.

The union took the city to court to stop Youngstown from relocating most of the police parking spots to a lot about one-quarter of a mile away from the police station.

At a hearing, Colon said many patrolmen, who carry heavy equipment to work, have poor diets and health problems. When asked if the officers control their own diets, Colon agreed they do — but said there aren’t many restaurants open downtown past a certain time of day.

“Couldn’t you pack a lunch? Oh, no, it would be too heavy to carry,” said Law Director Iris Torres Guglucello.

A magistrate threw out the union’s case.

In political elections, there are obviously winners and losers.

But Mike Write, a Youngstown school board member, exceeded his losing quota this year.

Write was beaten in the May Democratic primary for the Youngstown council’s 1st Ward seat. Write then unsuccessfully ran in November for a second four-year term on the school board. It was the first time in recent memory that a local candidate lost twice in the same year.

Write also applied for a job with the school district while still serving as a board member. His applying for the job conflicts with state ethics laws, according to the school superintendent, and Write withdrew his name from consideration.

Is that an oops, I did it again and again?

Youngstown City Council spent quite a bit of time defending its decision to approve a tough pit bull ordinance that placed major restrictions on the dogs and banned newborn pit bulls from the city. The law attracted opposition from dog lovers around the country.

But there was a problem with the law.

The city failed to ask the Mahoning County dog warden if he would enforce it before approving the legislation. Despite assurances from county commissioners that the issue would be easily resolved, it never was, and the ban is all bark and no bite.

City council also drew the ire of some by allowing five lame-duck members to travel on the taxpayers’ dime — about $13,000 worth of dimes — to a conference in New Orleans only six weeks before their terms ended.

City officials finally decided to take matters into their own hands when it came to the Chevrolet Centre, an arena owned by Youngstown that fails to turn a profit. The center ended its second fiscal year, in September, with a $254,388 deficit, more than 10 times the shortfall it had during its previous year.

The city terminated a contract with Global Entertainment Corp. to manage the facility. One of Global’s biggest flaws was it guaranteed money to entertainers to perform at the center, but failed to generate enough cash to cover the fees. The city hired an interim executive director to run the center while it searches for a company to take that post on a permanent basis.

While Attorney General Marc Dann of Liberty spent a lot of time aggressively going after predatory lenders, insurance brokers with questionable tactics and sexual predators, he also made a few questionable hires and gave us an amusing oops.

Dann fired his deputy security director after it was discovered he killed someone in 1976. He also fired his top cop for taking two public salaries and his top fiscal watchdog for failing to disclose he was no longer a licensed accountant.

Dann’s office provided information with tips for holiday shoppers listing telephone numbers for what were supposed to be help centers. One of the phone numbers was for a sex hot line, an unintentional but amusing oops.

There are also oops of omission, such as when the Regional Chamber unveiled a plan to the public on a school consolidation plan in the Mahoning Valley. The problem was the chamber failed to let area school officials know about the plan before the public announcement. That didn’t please some school officials.

“I should have sat down with them,” said Thomas Humphries, the chamber’s president.

The chamber initially said the consolidation could save a total of $40 million to $70 million a year in the Valley’s three counties: Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana. The number was later reduced to about $20 million to $25 million.

This one was more than an oops: Renee A. White, 35, of Warren was arrested by Howland Township police in October during a traffic stop because her name came up as an alias used by a woman wanted on an arrest warrant. She spent four days in the Trumbull County jail before an assistant prosecutor checked her story and determined White wasn’t the woman wanted on the warrant.

Even those in law enforcement were not immune to its long arm in 2007.

Columbiana County Sheriff David L. Smith was charged with operating a vehicle while impaired in October in Guernsey County by a state trooper. During the stop, which was videotaped, Smith suggested the trooper let him go without a charge — something the sheriff said he’s done before.

“You just stop people and don’t test them and then you let them go?” the trooper asked Smith.

“If it was me, yes,” the sheriff responded.

Former Judge Maureen A. Cronin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court was convicted of her second OVI in September.

She served five days in the county’s misdemeanant jail, bypassing 271 others convicted of drunken-driving offenses who were waiting to serve their time in the overcrowded facility. This happened because of miscommunication between court and sheriff department officials.

Then there was the suspect who received a get-out-of-jail-free card when a judge dropped robbery, felonious assault and domestic violence charges against him “for failure to prosecute.”

Saying the speedy trial clock had expired, Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court dismissed the charges against Kenneth R. Miller, 27, of Martin Luther King Boulevard on Nov. 13. The judge’s action followed a defense motion to either start the trial or dismiss the case.

The no-show prosecutor, Natasha Frenchko, was presenting a seminar elsewhere for rape crisis nurses, according to a stand-in prosecutor, who unsuccessfully requested that Miller’s jury trial be postponed.

The furious Judge Durkin scheduled a contempt of court hearing for the wayward Frenchko, then canceled it after she apologized to him for failing to appear in court for the scheduled trial.

But this dispute is not over yet. The county prosecutor appealed the dismissal to the 7th District Court of Appeals, saying he believes at least 37 days remained on Miller’s speedy trial clock.

In addition to the official blunders, there were the instances of criminal defendants inserting their feet into their mouths.

Richard Clark Jr., 19, of Sheridan Road spent almost five months in Mahoning County jail and got three years’ probation from a visiting judge on a retaliation charge after he uttered to two county courthouse deputy sheriffs a threat to kill Judge R. Scott Krichbaum.

Clark pleaded guilty to uttering the threat after Judge Krichbaum of county common pleas court resentenced Clark’s uncle on April 13. Also on that day, Clark’s aunt was arrested for contempt of court for slamming a door against a wall outside the courtroom. The aunt apologized and the judge dropped the contempt charge.

Another defendant was the poster boy for the saying: “Be careful what you’re asking for.”

Judge Krichbaum doubled a four-year prison term agreed to by the prosecution and defense in a plea deal after Tim Vari said he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial and the judge denied the plea withdrawal request.

Vari, 54, of Sixth Street, Campbell, drew the eight-year sentence in August for fleeing police in a stolen pickup truck and ramming two police cars with it before police boxed him in on March 26. After the pursuit in Youngstown and Hubbard, police said Vari refused to emerge from the locked truck, where he lighted a suspected crack pipe before they broke a window to remove him from the truck.

“When somebody assaults a police officer, they’ve got to go down hard,” said Judge Krichbaum, who had warned Vari that an unsuccessful plea withdrawal attempt would result in a harsher sentence.

skolnick@vindy.com