By Susan Vinella
Plain Dealer
Copyright 2007 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Hundreds of Clevelanders use the Cleveland Fire Department as a locksmith - at taxpayers’ expense.
More than 1,600 times last year - or nearly five times a day - the city sent fire trucks with four-man crews to help residents who locked keys in their cars or homes, city records show. Ladder trucks, which cost the city as much as $135 an hour to operate, were sent more than half the time.
City Councilman Kevin Conwell condemns the practice.
“It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money,” said Conwell, chairman of council’s Public Safety Committee. “It’s a subtle way of stealing.”
Fire Chief Paul Stubbs defends his department’s actions.
“Whatever call for help that we get, it doesn’t bother me that we’re going to help,” he said. “We get the call, we go.”
According to city police, firefighters are supposed to unlock a car door only when someone’s life is at risk: A young child trapped inside, for example, or a vehicle running inside a garage.
Stubbs said he suspects some residents take advantage of the Fire Department’s willingness to unlock cars by calling 9-1-1 and falsely claiming that children are locked in the cars or some other emergency.
“I would suspect there’s a healthy percentage who are calling us instead of a locksmith,” Stubbs said.
A former union official agreed.
“People manipulate the system,” said Bob Fisher, a Cleveland firefighter who stepped down as president of Local 93 last month.
Fire officials at several other major Ohio cities, including Toledo and Akron, said their departments rarely respond to calls to unlock cars.
“There are very few because our dispatchers are trained not to accept these calls,” Akron Deputy Fire Chief Robert Ross said.
Robert Krause, a Toledo firefighter who also runs his own business, Emergency Services Consultants, said Cleveland’s 1,600 runs to unlock car doors last year seems excessive.
In 27 years as a Toledo firefighter, he said he can’t recall ever responding to an emergency that involved someone locking their keys in their car.
“If it’s really an emergency, a bystander can walk up and break a window,” he said.
But Krause said people have become accustomed to dialing 9-1-1 for minor problems and Cleveland’s Fire Department is being “very kind to its residents” by unlocking cars in non-emergencies.
The practice can take a toll, he said, with wear and tear on fire equipment and wasting fuel. And he questions why Cleveland sends large ladder trucks to unlock a car door.
“Is it probably the best use of taxpayers dollars? No,” Krause said.
Stubbs said he’s not bothered by $625,000 ladder trucks being sent; the closest available fire trucks, whatever their size, are the first dispatched.
But Fisher said that sending ladder trucks to some of the calls is “absolutely a waste of the apparatus.”
The city also routinely sends ladder trucks to minor fender-bender car accidents, according to recent Plain Dealer analysis of fire records. Fisher and city officials said ladder trucks often are needed to block traffic and carry special extraction equipment to accidents.
Stubbs said no matter the type of fire truck sent, it’s hard to refuse help to residents who simply lock their keys in their car - particularly the elderly - once at the scene.
“I wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, you’re out of luck, call a locksmith,’ ” he said.
Fisher said firefighters feel obliged to help, too, no matter the situation.
“Once you’re out there, why not open the person’s car?” he said.
But Conwell said the city should get tough on residents who dupe the city.
“If they’re not telling the truth, we should file a false claim report,” Conwell said.
A public safety official said she was unaware of the Fire Department filing any false claims reports for residents who lied about an emergency involving a locked car.
Conwell said part of the problem is residents have come to expect the Fire Department to respond. If the city changed its policy, he said, word would get out and the calls would drop off.
“We have to make the policy stricter,” he said.