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CINCINNATI – A candidate for Cincinnati’s mayorship slammed city leadership Monday afternoon after a viral downtown beatdown that has reverberated across the nation.
“People don’t even see the sense in calling 911 anymore,” said Cory Bowman, who is also Vice President JD Vance’s half-brother in addition to being a candidate for city mayor.
Bowman placed second in a nonpartisan primary race in May. He will square off with incumbent Mayor Aftab Pureval in November. His thoughts on citizens seeing no sense in calling 911 came after Police Chief Teresa Theetge said in a press conference that only one person called police while the attack was ongoing.
“That is unacceptable to not call the police,” she said during a Monday press conference. “Traffic was horrendous. People saw this. They were fighting in front of traffic. Why didn’t people call us?”
Bowman said that with police handcuffed by the current city leadership, he is not surprised by the events of early Saturday morning, which took place on the corner of Fourth and Elm Street outside a nightclub in the city’s downtown business district.
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“There’s two aspects of it,” Bowman told Fox News Digital. “One, it’s a wake-up call. It’s a wake-up call that we’ve got to have better policy. We’ve got to be able to take immediate action to make sure that the residents and the businesses in our communities are safe. The nation is basically seeing what us in the city have already known to be true.”
Despite the fact that the viral assault could stain his city’s reputation, Bowman said it’s important for the nation to see what’s really happening in cities, and that what happened in Cincinnati is a microcosm of what is happening in urban areas nationwide.
“Now, I think this is important for the nation to see it, because the nation is seeing that multiple downtown areas in America are seeing failed policies ruin their cities,” he said. “And you’re seeing riots, you’re seen fights, you’re seeing crime rise, you’re seeing laws that aren’t enforced.”
He told Fox News Digital that crime in the city not only spikes during the summer months, but has increased over time as a whole, which he claims the local government and media deny.
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“Whenever May and June was rolling around, there was all these press conferences and all these statements from the media that was stating that crime is down, crime is down,” he said.
“Well, the reality of it is that anybody that lived downtown knew that because of snow and because of rain, that maybe some things were being prolonged, but once the warmer months came about, the policies … not enforcing the law is actually going to allow just a free-for-all in the city,” he continued.
Bowman said police officers are voicing their concerns to him about not being able to do their jobs, and he noted that the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) is understaffed to begin with.
“And then what happens is that these police officers don’t see a point in actually booking the criminals, because there’s actually prosecutors in the city that have a revolving door mentality that the criminals go in, and then they’re released on the streets,” he said.
“And so many of these officers don’t even book people because they know they’re just gonna be back on the street next week. So they sit in their cars, and they try to do the best they can. They have a heart for the city, but they’re being hindered by the policies that are in place.”
Ken Kober is a 25-year veteran of the Cincinnati Police Department. He echoed Bowman’s sentiments about the police department’s hands being tied, and told Fox News Digital that the beating is something that “as a society, we cannot accept.”
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“It’s just nothing more than a savage attack on a couple of people. I mean you see somebody that’s completely defenseless, trying to cover their head in their face, and they’re just being stomped on by multiple individuals,” Kober said.
Kober was upset that the positives of the weekend, the Cincinnati Reds winning three home games and the storied Cincinnati Jazz Festival, were overshadowed by the vicious viral video.
He, too, blamed local officials for increasing crime.
“We have a problem with judges that don’t wanna hold people accountable, and when they know that there aren’t gonna to be any consequences for their actions is when people are gonna go out and we’re gonna see incidents like what happened Saturday morning,” he said.
“I hope that the court system actually holds these people to the fullest extent of the law. It would be nice to see headlines six or eight months from now saying that these people were convicted, and they’re now gonna get the maximum sentence for whatever crime they’ve been convicted of.”
On Monday afternoon, CPD said it charged five people in connection with the incident. The names of the individuals were not released.
Cincinnati Chief of Police Teresa Theetge added that there were over 100 witnesses to the attack, and some even filmed it. However, only one call was placed to 911.
Police sources told Fox News earlier in the day that they are working to identify at least eight more suspects.
People with information are asked to call the Cincinnati Police Department or Crime Stoppers at 513-352-3040.
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