Youngstown detective: When going gets rough, criminals ask for 'Mom'

YOUNGSTOWN

City police Detective Sgt. Jose Morales has investigated some of the grisliest murders in the city’s history and has been around some of its most hardened criminals.

One thing they almost all have in common, Morales said: When the going gets tough, they all ask for their mothers.

Morales was a detective in the 1990s, specifically 1995, when the city set a record for murders in a single year with 68, part of a decade that saw a spike in the homicide rate that resulted in the murders of more than 500 people.

He and others who worked for the department at the time remember it as a constant grind that left little time for family, friends and sometimes even other work.

Morales said once suspects of murder are questioned and they realize they will probably be convicted and go to prison for the rest of their lives, their persona changes from that of the cold, hard criminal to a person who asks for their mother and sometimes breaks down in tears.

“It’s amazing how they change from that person with no consideration for human life once they realize their life is gone,” Morales said.

David McKnight, who retired as a captain and worked as a detective in the 1990s, described a macabre pattern to the madness: Shootings and homicides were fueled by other shootings or homicides, he said.

Read more about that time in the city's history and how police coped with it in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.