Tension Erupts Between Council and Mayor's Office in Wake of Warehouse District Mass Shooting

Mayor Bibb and Chief Drummond joined the U.S. Marshals in Tuesday’s announcement of 25-year-old Jaylon Jenning’s arrest. Credit: Mark Oprea

The mass shooting that occurred on West 6th St. last Sunday, where 25-year-old Jaylon Jennings shot nine bystanders coming out of Rumor Bar & Lounge, has not only revived safety concerns in the nightlife district but led to a public rift between Mayor Justin Bibb and members of Cleveland city council.

Last Tuesday afternoon, Bibb, Police Chief Wayne Drummond and U.S. Marshals officers announced in a brief press conference on West 6th, where shell casing once lay, that Jennings had been taken into custody without incident. He is currently being held in Cuyahoga County Jail on a $9 million bond. No motive has yet been unveiled.

All officials present at the West 6th press conference nodded to business owner Bobby George, owner of the Barley House, and his $50,000 reward money that helped lead to tips that brought the arrest of Jennings some 61 hours after the chaos.

As George had acted to preserve the image of his businesses, as did Mayor Bibb to safeguard the image of the city he vowed to rid of its gun problem.

In Council’s sole July meeting — the body is on its extended summer recess where it only meets a few times — held last Wednesday, a series of speeches from present members harangued Bibb.

“If you look to your right, you see not one member of the administration there,” Ward 5 Councilman Richard Starr said, nodding to the seats in the Chambers typically reserved for the Mayor’s Office.

Indeed, after councilman Mike Polsensek, chair of the safety committee, announced prior to the meeting he would lambast the adminstration, Bibb and members of his cabinet declined to sit for the lecture.

“We were informed of the political grandstanding that was going to occur tonight,” a City Hall spokesperson told WKYC in response. “The mayor will not subject his cabinet to sit … for yet another monologue attacking their integrity, ethics and basic functionality.”

That evening, Starr had proposed quick changes to city code that would force most late-night bars to hire armed security—his own reaction to the West 6th shooting—along with installing more city-monitored surveillance cameras.

“We give the administration all of the [help] they ask for,” Starr said. “And what do we get in return? All of the negative media. All of the blame for everything that goes wrong.”

Polensek, in the lengthiest and impassioned speech Wednesday, reached a critical apogee in handling Bibb’s absence.

“In all of my time in this body, in 13 consecutive terms, I have never seen a time when no one in the administration showed up at a council meeting. Not one person,” Polensek said, his voice rising to a fury. “If it wasn’t for the critical nature of the pieces before us, I would’ve asked that every piece be held.”

Ward 16 Councilman Brian Kazy, who was present at Wednesday’s Council meeting, said last week on the Outlaws Radio Show that he believes Bibb was allowing an emotional reaction to overtake political reality.

“Well, it sounds to me like somebody’s butthurt,” Kazy said on the podcast. “And the reason that they’re butthurt is because the administration and the mayor himself aren’t the ones to get the calls 24/7. We’re the ones who are closest to our residents.”

Bibb, in the aftermath of the shootings, had laid blame on state and nationwide Republicans for moves that have prevented cities from more aggressively legislating against guns.

As for council, Bibb and Griffin met last Thursday to begin to hash things out.

And last Friday, Bibb and Griffin seemed to have been getting along smilingly, as usual, at a noon press conference in Clark-Fulton.

Through the middle of July, 101 Clevelanders have died in gun-related homicides Polensek said, which he believes will lead to a 30-year high in such violent deaths. But numbers from the city show the current trend in line with recent years, and according to the city, through July 8, there had been 96 homicides, 85 involving a gun.

“The incident on West 6th magnified the problem,” Polensek said. “But look at the carnage every day in this city.”

All sides have acknowledged short-staffing in the department — though officials noted that the Warehouse District does not suffer from a lack of patrols on busy weekend nights — and have explored ways to better recruit cadets in the city.

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