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Downtown's Public Square will be home to Cleveland's first police mini-station in years, since the program was shut down under former Mayor Jane Campbell. Council members, who have been asking for the return of the stations to their neighborhoods, are upset that newly remodeled Public Square seems to have jumped to the top of the list.

(Thomas Ondrey, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - In a heated discussion Monday, members of Cleveland City Council demanded to know why police are setting up what amounts to a mini-station on downtown's Public Square without restoring the beloved satellite offices to the neighborhoods, too.

Council passed legislation Monday night giving the city permission to accept free office-retail space from Cleveland Skyline Renaissance LLC, beside the entrance to the Renaissance hotel, to serve as staging grounds for police during the Republican National Convention next month. The office then would serve for the next five years as a home base for officers assigned to downtown patrols.

During a Committee of the Whole meeting Monday afternoon, Council's Public Safety Committee Chairman Matt Zone likened the office space to the mini-stations that were established in the 1990s under then-Mayor Michael R. White's administration as a way to connect officers with residents and get a better read on crime in the neighborhoods.

The city assigned officers to work out of special offices at recreation and other neighborhood centers. But the mini stations closed in 2005 under then-Mayor Jane Campbell. The police chief at the time was Michael McGrath, the city's current safety director.

Zone said Monday that the Public Square mini-station, "in the heart of the city's central business district," might be the first step toward strategically re-establishing mini-stations throughout the city.

But the mere mention of the phrase "mini-station" seemed to hit a nerve with some council members, irritated that the first mini-station the city has seen in years will serve visitors to the newly remodeled Public Square - not residents in the neighborhoods.

"Well you used the magic word 'mini-station,'" said Councilwoman Dona Brady. "For the last 10 years everything has changed in my ward, and I can attribute at least 90 percent to the fact that I don't have mini-station officers. Those officers knew where the drugs were, where the kids lived, where the gangs were, who was doing the graffiti - and they knew them by name."

Councilman Kevin Conwell became so enraged by the notion that downtown, the site of "billions and billions of dollars" in investment, would receive a mini-station before the downtrodden and impoverished neighborhoods, that he began yelling and was ruled out of order.

Councilman TJ Dow also said it appears the city is giving preferential treatment to downtown by setting up a mini-station there.

"For that reason I won't support this," Dow said. "I think it gives the wrong impression to the folks who don't live downtown and are suffering."

Councilman Brian Kazy asked McGrath if police would open a mini-station in his West Side ward if he could find donated space to house it.

McGrath said such a proposal "would be worth a conversation." The comment further fueled the frustration of council members, who pointed out that most of the long-shuttered mini-stations were housed in city-owned facilities and wouldn't have required rent.

Zone promised his colleagues that the Public Safety Committee will take up the issues of community policing strategies and deployment during a series of summer meetings.