The Biggest Brother

The next few weeks wrecked Loomis. The union cut a check to Schroeder's wife and helped keep the media out of the neighborhood. Loomis and other officers cruised the crowds at Browns Stadium with trash cans, collecting thousands for Schroeder's family. Later, when the Schroeders' water heater broke, Loomis and other cops found themselves in his basement, shuffling around weight-lifting equipment to clean up the mess.

During that time, Loomis' fiancée saw him so little -- and could pull so few words from him when she did -- that she depended on the news to know he was OK. The people who actually saw him knew that he wasn't.

"I saw him cry for the first time," Russell says. "When you see a tear rolling down his face, as big and burly as he is, that was the first time I saw weakness in him."

A few days after the shooting, Loomis attended a public vigil at a West Side church. Near the end, he spotted Art McKoy. Loomis' temperature rose.

McKoy, an East Side activist, is a devoted basher of the police. He cries racism when young black men are hurt by cops. He rallies outside precincts, accusing cops of ignoring black victims. He rails about police apathy on his weekly radio show.

Loomis had seen McKoy at a vigil for a fallen cop before. That time, Loomis says, he watched McKoy make a scene, hollering his trademark "No Justice, No Peace." The thought of it happening again left Loomis a shaking, red-faced mess.

"Steve got himself all lathered up, saying, 'Not on my watch,'" says D'Angelo. "He was very emotional. It got the best of him."

"I was not going to let that man dishonor A.J.," Loomis says. "I was not going to let him put my guys in a bad position when they're vulnerable."

As McKoy approached, Loomis cut him off, putting his massive chest to McKoy's and hollering, "Get the hell out of here." Chief McGrath separated the two and pulled McKoy to the side.

Loomis says he had asked McGrath to reach out to McKoy beforehand to keep him away. But City Hall had done the opposite: Some council members had invited McKoy, oblivious to how it would incite police. Loomis found himself yelling at the chief too.

"Whatever happens is on you," he told McGrath. "It's on you."

Later, Loomis made his way back into McKoy's face and even ripped down a sign put up by McKoy's organization, Black on Black Crime. "He can do what he wants," Loomis says. "He just can't do it on the memorial site of a slain officer."

McKoy filed a complaint, telling the department that Loomis was "acting like a madman."

"I was invited to that community vigil by people in the neighborhood," McKoy says. "For anyone to even imply that I shouldn't have been there is absolutely ridiculous."

Ruth Standiford, who helped organize the vigil, told investigators that Loomis "was totally out of control . . . He was almost shaking, he was so mad. He was absolutely in tears at one point . . . I've never seen a grown man shaking and upset as he was."

The incident earned Loomis five days off work. He calls it "one of his finer moments."

"I absolutely considered it my responsibility. I would do it again tomorrow."

It was a day for proud press conferences and lauding editorials. On January 10, a task force of area police and federal agents swept into a gang-ridden neighborhood between East 70th and East 79th streets. They arrested 44 people, mostly members of the 7 Alls gang, who police say were major crack dealers. Their battle for market share had left at least two dead, and many of the city's most violent crimes could be traced to their St. Clair-Superior turf.

But as Loomis read about the bust the next morning, he wasn't so optimistic. Sure, the 18-month investigation razed a bumper crop of crack and locked up some of Hough's worst criminals. Even now, there remains more grant money for encore performances.

But it also spoke to a nagging truth about Cleveland's ability to clean up its gang problem. The city's gang unit was killed in the layoffs. When the grant money runs dry, no one will be dedicated to snuffing out drug turf wars.

"You know how the gangs got that big?" Loomis asks. "There's no goddamn cops on the street to put the squash on them."

It's a predictable chorus for a union boss to sing: We need more guys! And Loomis, like his predecessor, tends to forget that Cleveland's economic forecast isn't Dubai's.