Anthony Sowell's Neighbor Says Police Knew About Cleveland Rapist's House

New York Times:

A neighbor of the convicted rapist in Cleveland who was arrested Saturday night after six decomposed bodies were found in his house said Monday that the police were notified repeatedly about violence there, but little was done.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[Lex10]

Kinda rockin' the Emmet Kelly look, no? Aw, he's sad 'cause he got caught.... time to sweep up the spotlight in hel cell on death row....

[moonflowerjewelry]

This is a chilling story on a lot of levels, obviously not getting much attention - women in poor communities do not get the same police response of all out search and rescue and media support as females in affluent communities.

[a270]

Government workers have to be held accountable for the dysfunctional state so many American cities are in. With all the money the nation's taxpayers spend for government, we have to get much better results.

And where are the newspapers in this total breakdown of society? Newspapers report way too little of the failings of government.

[SamKnause]

Another story of too little too late. I guess the police were to busy nabbing those ever so dangerous marijuana smokers. There is money to be made catching and jailing marijuana smokers, not so much, catching rapists and killers.

[Benthead]

Way way before we get to the difficult question of how to protect the public vs how to respect the rights of individuals, the police can act on actual reports!

[a270]

Democrats run the government in these urban areas. Democrat politicians have to be held accountable for the dysfunctional state these cities and towns are in. Where is the supervision of the police? Are any government people going to lose their jobs over this incident? Esp up the chain of command, like those in the mayor's office? I doubt it.

[liberalNmoderation]

I figured someone would attempt to lay blame on the Democrats.
So friggin predictable.

[aseasonforreason]

Seriously, is there anyone in the country who really disagrees with standard life terms in prison or mental institutions as best fits the case for sex offenders? The rates of recitivism are well known, as is the harm caused by these individuals. The costs of current policy is staggering - and I'm not just talking about the money by a long shot.

Over and over again, horrific headlines like this surface - and almost always, it is a repeat offender. Imagine the peace that could come from just getting these people permanently off of the streets.

[hilaritee]

apparently snitchin' does not do much good either....­if you live in the "wrong" neighborhood you are simply invisible

[Smirk]

And, apparently, if you're a prost!tute, it's okay if someone k!lls you.

[brent3d]

The police were notified about this guy before hand, shameful. Lives may have been able to be saved. There is no excusing this. Lack of proper police procedure created this bizarre and tragic story, if whats being said is true. The rapist was allowed to become homicidal, he should have been back in jail a long time ago. So for people in the "inner-city'" laws are enforced differently then any where else in the USA? Why?

[countfloyd]

How do you know proper police procedure wasn't followed?

[thepoliticalcat]

Those poor, poor women. The time has come to recognize that certain crimes are a danger to society and those who commit them must be rendered unable to repeat them ever again. The woman who takes her husband's or child's life, the man who takes his wife's or child's life, they commit crimes of impulse, and we can empathize with them because they lost control and made a dreadful mistake. They are, perhaps, a danger to their nearest and dearest, but they can be rehabilitated. People like Sowell, however, are a danger to society itself. They will keep on committing their crimes until they are no longer able to do so. Like a rabid skunk, they should be rendered incapable of wreaking their hideous brutality on those who have done them no harm. They cannot be rehabilitated (at least I have never seen any evidence of successful rehabilitation). We don't worry about a rabid animal's right to live unmolested, because it represents a threat to all other animals. If Sowell is compelled to behave like a rabid animal, then the greater good of society should outweigh his right to privacy and any other rights that he might have had. He forfeited them all by the heinousness of his wrongs.

[SusanStoHelit]

But there was no way to spot him until now.

He didn't have a long history - he was convicted of ONE rape. Nothing to indicate he would become a serial killer. He served 15 years in jail for that rape - a good sentence. He complied with the monitoring he was told to do.

Now - it's easy - he's LWOP or DP. But there's no way to spot the rehabilitatable rapist - the guy who does it once and won't do it again (and stats say that most of them indeed do not reoffend), versus the guy who will keep doing it.

[RuffNReddy]

Police were notified many times about questionable activity regarding Jeffrey Dahmer but, little was done to attract enough attention to his home. Even when one of his victims ran drugged and half naked down the block only to be found later, decomposing in an oil drum. He was only caught when the odor was so strong they had no choice but to finally intervene.

There's a lot of talk of race and location but, the reality is that once an offender is back on the streets there's little to be done in monitoring them. As if some "bad behavior" is expected. What really should be reconsidered are that rape charges should be harsh life sentences. It's as bad as stealing someone's life... it's stealing someone's livelihood and future. Misdemeanor offenses should be served as community service leaving major offenders to rot in prison. This guy should still be in prison.

And it's curious how these women were never reported missing. Prostitutes, runaways, drug addicts, perhaps? Clearly their whereabouts went unnoticed for some time. That in itself is daunting.

[SusanStoHelit]

Yep - prostitutes, runaways, drug addicts - people whose families have already had to accept many long silences, long disappearances, where there's no way to know why they've vanished.

[Gin1234]

It boils down to part of the population not being as important as other parts. Apparently, walking down the street in his neighborhood is a d.ea.th sentance for neighbors while he gets to go on living his everyday life how ever he wants.

[XzibitX]

Sadly, you're probably right.

[Oortcloud]

We cannot interpret, without approximate dates of death of the victims, how many of these women died, horribly, because the police failed to investigate repeated complaints against a known sex offender. I hope this story is not swept under the rug and that the Cleveland police are held accountable for any murders they allowed to happen through their inactivity.

[Doc0976]

Unfortunately, it already has been swept under the rug. The fact that HuffPo is reporting on it, as are a few other news outlets, doesn't mean that this story won't be neatly brushed aside in a week or so when something more "newsworthy" comes along. In the end, the lack of police involvement in these potentially preventable tragic murders speaks to the kind of societal ills that plague our country. There are communities that will galvanize to search for a missing little girl; then there are those communities that have a few prostitutes or impoverished women that go missing and we never hear of them or even see pictures of them. Why is that? Well, we all know WHY. The blame has to be handed out equally, though. We all knew about the Duke rape case, right? And who can forget Tawana Brawley?

Now, let's fast forward to Cleveland, Ohio. What's so sensational and juicy about a few unidentified minority women getting beaten, raped or even rotting in a black sex offender's home? Obviously not enough to investigate, says the Cleveland PD. But where is the outcry from the neighborhood when the women went missing? Or when the rapes were being reported and not investigated?

That's the world we live in.

[Oortcloud]

I hear you. I have tweeted the link to this article in several forms trying to create a Clevland trending topic and spur some local outrage - all they seem to be interested in is their pathetic football team. Color me.....eve­n more cynical...­..

[jessicadevyn]

I completely agree. I don't know how much more I can say considering my other post for this was scrubbed. Poor black women are not valued in our society at all.

[Gin1234]

I would say it was the neighborhood, rather than his race or the race of the women that determined how much concern the police and law enforcement showed for their lives. My guess is that if a white woman disappeared in this neighborhood and she was considered a drifter, prostitute, or poor, they still wouldn't care because well some areas and the people who live there are not that important, and can prey on each other for all they care.

[Gin1234]

Obviously, there are people in society that rate, and those who don't. To ignore all these reports, and be so slow in responding shows just how much the country values the lives of all it's citizens. The guy was practically raping
and killing in the middle of the road, and completely getting away with it. If these reports were ignored in such a short period of time, imagine how many reports they must have received in the last 4 years and how many actual victims there are out there. How do they know that there aren't more bodies in that house? It doesn't sound like they are looking very hard for more.

[Smirk]

Grand. Yet another ser!al k!ller who eluded detection longer than he should have just because his victims were very poor and/or prost!tutes.

[SusanStoHelit]

Serial killers are sick - but not stupid. They know prostitutes, drug addicts, etc. - won't be reported as missing by their families - they're usually out of contact anyway - no one to miss them - no one who would talk to police, anyway.

[nikky]

disgusting