East Cleveland has a new police chief as of yesterday, news which has kind of flown under the radar around Northeast Ohio.
According to Mayor Gary Norton's chief of staff, former police chief Ralph Spotts' last day was yesterday. He had previously announced his plans to retire about a year ago. Michael Cardilli was named the new chief of police.
Information between the mayor's office and other public officials in the city doesn't seem to flow very well, as we found out today when chatting with one elected official who wasn't aware of the official change or announcement.
Mayor Norton was not available for comment. Though that is not surprising.
Norton did mention Spotts during the state of East Cleveland speech given Saturday evening, which few reporters, if any outside of Scene, were present at.
Norton argued that the city was tasked with laying off 10 police officers. They ended up laying off only 2, and Norton claims Spotts was the reason.
From the speech:
"We laid off two police officers. Everybody knows that. Channel 19 was happy to report it. But what you may not know is that we had a choice to lay off 10 police officers or to lay off two police officers. The reason why we only laid off two is because of a man named Ralph Spotts."
"Ralph Spotts saw that we had a choice to lay off 10 police officers or two police officers. The difference between those two numbers is is Ralph Spotts retired we could lay off only two. If he did not retire, we had to lay off 10."
"He said he loved East Cleveland so much that he would retire. He didn't have to, but he saw what was going on and he wanted the department to live on for a long time and for you to have as many officers as possible."
So, if you're keeping track, Spotts' salary was equivalent to that of 8 officers, at least by Norton's tally.
