PX column: Cincinnati City Councilman offends Kyle Plush's family and embarrasses the city

One week to the very second that Kyle Plush lay lifeless in the back of his Honda Odyssey, a member of Cincinnati City Council offended the teenager's family.

Wendell Young embarrassed this city on Tuesday afternoon. His feckless comments to the family at City Hall came off like he was putting his political interests ahead of a dead kid and grieving family. Young exemplified what's wrong with City Hall, where political vendettas seem to be more important than people these days.

Near the end of a five-hour special meeting of Council's Law and Public Safety Committee to address a 911 system that failed the 16-year-old Seven Hills sophomore on April 10, Young babbled on for several minutes about the whole afternoon being a political "witch hunt;" that Plush's death was "not one person's fault;" and generally summed up the session as a waste of time.

Politics Extra: 'A lot of blame for all of us,' Cranley says of Plush death

Four members of the Plush family, including Kyle's dad, Ron, sat quietly just feet away in the front row of Council chambers.

And then it got worse.

"I don’t mean to sound insensitive," said Young, who did anyway by adding, "I suspect there will be attempts to do what the law allows to be done to try to in some way make up for what happened with you. But there’s no amount of money that’s going to make you happy."

Ron Plush interrupted: "It’s not about money!"

Young continued: "There’s no amount of blame that’s going to make the situation better. So I think at the end of the day …"

One of Plush's relatives then stood up and started shouting and angrily pointing at Young: "Let's stop this right here! This is the most insensitive thing I’ve ever heard. You guys were doing wonderful until this guy started talking. You’ve crossed the line!"

The family then stormed out.

Councilwoman Amy Murray buried her face in her hands. We all wanted to.

But Young kept on going.

"At the end of the day ..." Blah. Blah. Blah.

More: How everything went exactly wrong and a 16-year-old ended up dead

The Plush family wants answers as to why Kyle spent nearly six minutes on the phone with 911 operators begging for help while being crushed by a seat in the van. Authorities never did find Kyle in the school parking lot. His dad did – six hours after his son called 911.

But hey, no one's to blame for this, according to Young. Is he really this tone deaf? He's a former cop so maybe he was defending the police.

Politics Extra called Young on Tuesday night to see if he could provide further explanation. He did not return a message.

I wish I could say City Hall can't get any worse, but that'd be foolish. I thought Kyle's death would be a wake-up call for Council. But now I'm not so sure.

Sadly, this is no surprise. Young has such disdain for Mayor John Cranley that the councilman seemingly has allowed it to cloud his judgment. Young is willing to defend a city manager who has neglected to fix the 911 center as a way to politically stick it to the mayor.

It's a city manager Young spent years criticizing all the way up until Cranley wanted Harry Black to resign in early March. Cranley's request came amid multiple retaliation complaints filed by city employees against the city manager. Some of Young's long-time buddies have come to Black's defense, including Cranley political nemesis and ex-Mayor Dwight Tillery.

More: 'That kid was amazing'

In an archaic city manager form of government – which Young has vehemently defended – the city manager is directly in charge of overseeing departments. The buck stops with Black on the daily operations of the 911 center. A parade of cops and emergency center employees testified Tuesday about years of gross understaffing, crappy morale and ancient technology.

It seemed Cranley at least partly hoped the meeting would expose Black, especially when the mayor said he didn't know the 911 center was so understaffed and that employees were working too many hours.

Records show that Cranley and Council have received 12 memos from the administration in the past 3½ years addressing problems with the 911 center. Two mentioned staffing, but Cranley later told PX he didn't fully start to understand the scope of that specific problem until a former center employee filed a complaint against Black in late February.

Heck, Cranley himself called 911 last year after being involved in a fender bender. The phone rang, and rang, and rang. No one answered. It's not clear whether it was because of staffing, but he gets it.

Cranley wasn't directly offending the family. He visited with the Plushes in Mount Washington on Friday, and he attended Kyle's funeral on Monday. He wants answers for the family.

“It's painful to see the family leave these chambers in that way," Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman said. "Did we hear what was said today and are we going to do something different? I think the family left here with a sense that we weren't going to get it right."

That's hard to argue after Young's foot-in-mouth moment.

Politics Extra is a column looking inside Greater Cincinnati and Ohio politics. Follow Enquirer political columnist Jason Williams on Twitter @jwilliamscincy.