The leader of the Greater Cleveland Cop Block chapter stood on a public sidewalk in his hometown of Parma last week with a sign reading “Check point ahead / Turn now.” Parma police then turned their attention away from indiscriminately stopping drivers to cite him with an extremely vague “obstructing official business” charge, before taking his sign as “evidence” and sending him on his way.
Doug Odolecki is no stranger to Parma police officers. He was featured in an April Scene story about a Cop Block meetup in Cleveland, where we wrote: “The 42-year-old has a penchant for protesting DUI checkpoints — what he calls ‘Papers, please! Checkpoints’ — near his Parma house and in surrounding suburbs. He’ll find out when one’s scheduled and then head down the road and hold up a sign warning motorists of the awaiting presence.”
Odolecki, as Cop Blockers advocate, filmed Friday’s interaction with police and uploaded it to YouTube. The 20-minute video starts as two cops approach him on foot.
Without Odolecki filming, we wouldn’t have been able to see one of the officers give one of the most Orwellian explanations for harassing a person doing nothing more than exercising First Amendment rights. Here’s their crazy justification for drunk driving checkpoints: “I’m Lieutenant McCann and I need to advise you, you can stand here with the sign, but you’re going to need to get rid of the ‘turn now.’ Our sobriety checkpoint is all about educating the public and we need them to come through the checkpoint to educate them.” Ka-ching.
After the officers head to their cars to write up the ticket, Odolecki learns the second officer is James Manzo, the cop Odolecki has been asking Parma police about ever since the city settled a brutality lawsuit for $40,000 in March after Manzo bloodied a kid’s head with his flashlight during an arrest. He’s the one with the stereotypical cop mustache, with sunglasses on his head at night. As Manzo returns to give Odolecki the ticket and take his sign from him, he calmly asks the cop “What are the laws against smacking people in the back of the head, I’m wondering?”
The “obstructing official business” charge is horse shit, if you were wondering. We’re sure Odolecki is anxiously awaiting his date in court.
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2014.
The cops state they consulted with the Parma City Law Department on the tape (really? at 9 pm on a Friday night?), so if true, there is plenty of stupid sauce for all of them.
I actually approve of DUI checkpoints, but that’s not what matters here. The fact is, Mr. Odolecki has every right to stand on a sidewalk and hold a sign — just as the damnable Westboro Baptist Church members have.
It seems clear to me, the cops only ticketed him because they WISH it were legal to force citizens to cease protesting police action. To suggest that his sign holding interfered with the flow of traffic or prevent the cops from conducting the DUI checkpoint is patently ridiculous.
The US Supreme Court has held that these checkpoints are constitutional, but Mr. Odolecki has every right to continue to protest their use if he wishes. Parma is headed off to a thorough spanking by the federal court for this one, I predict.
BTW, Mr. Odolecki, I don’t approve of your language, your needless disrespect for the cops or your message — but I am 100% grateful to you for exercising your constitutional rights and thereby helping to assure my freedom of speech as well. Well done, sir.
Yes, let’s all just be grateful that some “gentlemen” sent drunk drivers through a neighborhood to mow over your kids, grandkids, neighbor’s kids, etc… or maybe plow into a family driving home from a fun time out. Yes, let’s be thankful that he advised those drivers to turn around from a checkpoint that can pull them off the street so that you don’t have to bury someone you love. Let us all be thankful that his right to free speech is more important than someone else’s right to live.
Human Nature, if you wish to ban speech that may lead people to drink and drive, you might should begin with ads for alcoholic beverages — not police protest signs.
The sign holder in this video could care less about tyranny. Government is there to provide a deterrent against people like drunk drivers who would impede a persons right to life and then liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This rebellious person needs be educated himself.
“Our sobriety checkpoint is all about educating the public and we need them to come through the checkpoint to educate them.”
Educate? Intimidate is the word here. Show Joe and Josephine Sixpack (excuse the pun) who the toughest gang in town REALLY is. Would it have made any difference if he had removed the “turn now” part of the sign? I doubt it. They’d have found another excuse to jerk him around.
Do other states have these checkpoints? What else are they really looking for, except to harass and intimidate? Illegals? I lived in Chicago for 36 years, and don’t remember this kind of crap. And Chicago cops are REALLY bad-ass. You don’t mess with them. Hell, they even rough up people in their fifties, and have blown away seniors. I learned how to say “Officer” and “Sir” very young, at gunpoint.
Of course, that was before Bush and 9/11 made our police force an occupying military Gestapo force…and made America into Occupied France. I don’t even want to think about what Chicago cops must be like now.
Chuckles the Clown
that is just fine for the drunk driver human nature, but I don’t drink and drive and I choose not to have to show my papers to the Gestapo and prove it to them
Free speech *is* more important than the ‘right to live’. That’s why people died for it.
The free speech guarantee protects unpopular speech — popular speech needs no protection. It’s the rantings of the crazies at the Westboro Baptist Church, the religious nutter shouting from an orange crate, the KKK freaks, the porn merchant — etc.
The government has no business telling our fellow citizens what they may say except in very limited circumstances — and Friday night in Parma for Mr. Odolecki was not one.
There’s a few asshole comments here from very ignorant people!! Police have NO REASON to stop ANYONE that isn’t showing obvious signs of being impaired while going about their business. A lot of these power hungry pricks are on drugs… mostly steroids and alcohol!! They exhibit an extreme ignorance of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They should be fired and forbidden to work in law enforcement ever again! Fascism is loose in Parma and many other places in Amerika. And it’s on its way to YOU!l Papers Pleeeze… MACH SCHNELL!!! Uncle Sam wants YOU… to give up your rights and be a docile victim – or an aggressive fascist.
Or else…
In 1990, the US Supreme Court ruled that sobriety checkpoints are constitutional.
The bottom line is that this is all about money not the safety excuse city’s use. The best is that drivers see the signs about the upcoming checkpoint, turnaround, and still get pulled over.
I wish Doug Odolecki would stand on the bridge over I71 prior to Linndale with a sign notifying drivers about the Linndale losers parked in the berm.
You mean just like the Supreme Court recently said that “Corporations are people” now? That alone should tell you that they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about…
I’d say this is the worst court we have had in my lifetime, but it is still the Supreme Court and what they decide is still the law.
Persecution, gassing, and burning of the Jews (and others) was unspeakably horrible, but in Nazi Germany, it was still the law.
Checkpoints on Monday…and who knows what else by Fry Day?
Chuckles the Clown
I promise to break out the riot gear if Nazis show up on the Supreme Court. Till then, I think your chicken little dance is cute, but premature.
There are already Nazis ON the Soo-preme Court, dear one. Did you perhaps mean AT the Supreme Court? They show up regularly, along with their “You-must-have-that-baby!” anti-choice pals.
Maybe you’d be happier with your city-hating, taxpayer-defending, GOP pals at the PD board, ya think?
Chuckles the Clown
If we really want to educate people to not drink and drive, how about we try to do that BEFORE they drink and drive? I mean, isn’t the whole idea of this to keep them off the streets? So how about we educate them before they get into their car? How about you take some of the taxpayer dollars paying the overtime so we can man the DUI checkpoint and instead pay a sober driver or a taxi to take a drunk home? The logic of waiting for them to commit the crime before you can educate them is stupid at best. Do you really need to wait for someone to do drugs before you tell them drugs are bad? Or do you need them to kill someone first before you can tell them that killing is bad? Be proactive, not reactive.
If someone is actually that intoxicated they will most likely miss the sign. They go thru stop signs traffic lights. A sign on the sidewalk would definitely have the strong probability of not being seen.
As far as free speech it has to be protected at ALL cost or we will all be lost.
Wow, what a nutty knucklehead. Too many morons like this running around now days. Needs to seriously be probated & evaluated cuz the boy definitely ain’t all there. He’s right, they shouldn’t have had to deal with an idiot like him. This little Cop Block club thing as he calls it is seems to be nothing but a bunch of whiners with way too much time on their hands. For all his talk I don’t hear him saying anything about him joining a crime watch group or doing anything to help reduce crime. Epic Fail on his part. The guy babbles on & on to himself. No, not all there, not at all. Oh yes, we all feel like this is Nazi Germany every time we go out onto the suburban streets of Parma…………NOT! LOL! There were performing a legal checkpoint, weeding out drunks who cause fatal accidnets & this goof was most obviously obstructing their official business of trying to keep the drunk drivers off our streets. Such “tyranny” as he calls it isn’t it?…lol. What an ass. Well, he got his 10 minutes of shame & embarassment like he wanted. He went from “just do what you have to do” when given the chance to avoid a citation for his actions helping drunks avoid the checkpoint to a long drawn out diatribe of whining after getting the exact attention he was hoping for. Reminds me of the Monty Python character in the scene where the guys screams to everyone around “See the repression inherent in the system! Did you see that? Did you see them repressing me?”….LOLLOLOLOL! Oh, well. Besides there being no reason for all the non-stop ridiculous vulgarity and using phrases like “Mustn’t I”?, he should really spend his time & money more productively by taking English & grammar classes instead of making signs and hanging out on the street acting like a needy lunatic bothering people while they are working. Probably has a houseful of arms for that coming moment when the martail law gets imposed across the land…….LOL. Idiot!