By Ed Meyer, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio
AKRON, Ohio — Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic gave a detailed denial today in response to a Cleveland television station’s Internet report that Akron police stopped him last weekend on suspicion of drunken driving.
Minutes after the report was posted on the TV station’s Internet site — accompanied by a headline stating “Akron Mayor DUI” — Plusquellic acknowledged in a telephone interview that he talked to police early Sunday morning after attending a birthday dinner Saturday night for an Akron police officer at a restaurant in Tallmadge.
But the station’s report of a DUI charge, the mayor said, was “not true.”
Akron Police Lt. Rick Edwards, the department’s spokesman, confirmed that Plusquellic was not issued any citations and that there is no possibility of any charges being filed later.
Edwards said the department received a 911 call at 12:51 a.m. Sunday from a woman named Melanie, saying she was “almost run off the road” on Memorial Parkway near Hickory Street.
The woman gave a description of the vehicle and its license plate number, attempted to follow the vehicle as she continued talking to the police dispatcher and ended her call when she reported seeing police cruisers behind the vehicle on West Market Street, Edwards said.
A recording of the woman’s 911 call — 3 minutes, 46 seconds in length — was released to the Beacon Journal and confirmed that account.
Edwards said Plusquellic’s interaction with a patrol lieutenant who pulled up behind his vehicle lasted about 10 minutes and that the mayor “checked out OK.” There was no suspicion by the officer of drunken driving, Edwards said.
‘Setting me up’
After a telephone interview with the Beacon Journal, Plusquellic issued a statement several hours later through city spokesman Mark Williamson, claiming the 911 call “was orchestrated for political purposes.”
Plusquellic said in the statement that “it is clear to me that an Akron firefighter deliberately came to this public restaurant where the birthday party was being held with the intention of setting me up.”
The unnamed firefighter and his girlfriend, Plusquellic said, “took video pictures from their seat in the restaurant, and when I left, they apparently followed me.”
Plusquellic then went on to say that “witnesses have since advised me that the firefighter and his girlfriend, the woman who identified herself to 911 as ‘Melanie,’ immediately made cell phone calls — apparently to police before they even had time to observe my driving.
“They attempted to pass other cars behind me in an effort to get closer to my car as we traveled on Tallmadge Avenue,” the mayor’s statement said.
It concluded with a statement saying that any person, “especially a public official, can be an easy target for false accusations.”
The police officer who questioned him, Plusquellic said, “handled the situation properly and responsibly.”
Phil Gauer, union president of Akron Firefighters Local 330, said he was not surprised by Plusquellic’s claim that he was set up.
“That’s his normal response,” Gauer said. “It’s the same response he gives for everything. It’s always somebody else’s fault.”
Gauer said he had no knowledge of the identity of the firefighter and his girlfriend to whom the mayor referred in his statement.
But Gauer did say that “if somebody cut me off, I’d call police and handle it the same way. I’d call police. Just because it ends up maybe being a fireman’s girlfriend, I don’t see how that’s setting him up politically.”
Akron laid off 91 employees, including 38 firefighters, on Oct. 1 to bridge a projected budget shortfall of $8 million by the end of the year.
TV station report
The Internet report that began today’s flurry of accusations and responses was by WOIO-TV, Channel 19 Action News.
That report first appeared on the station’s Web site at 11:28 a.m. today. It stated that Plusquellic was “stopped after a woman described his car and called police. The witness said a car almost ran her off the road.”
It was accompanied at that time by a bold Web teaser headline that stated: “Akron Mayor DUI.”
The station’s report then was revised at 12:51 p.m., with a headline saying “Akron Mayor Stopped For Suspicion of Drunk Driving.”
Minutes later, in a Beacon Journal call to Plusquellic seeking comment on the station’s report, the mayor immediately said it wasn’t true. He said he was at a birthday party in Tallmadge for an Akron police officer Saturday evening, along with Akron Police Chief Craig Gilbride and other officers.
“It is a police officer I have known since I was 13 years old,” the mayor said.
After having dinner and leaving the party, Plusquellic said, he was with his girlfriend, driving on West Market Street, when he stopped in front of the Highland Theater to drop off his girlfriend at an establishment near there.
“What someone did was call the police department — I don’t know who it is — and said they saw me traveling at a high rate of speed,” Plusquellic explained in the phone interview.
As he was pulling in to drop off his girlfriend, Plusquellic said he saw a police cruiser’s lights go on behind him.
Plusquellic said the officer got out of the cruiser and questioned him about what he was doing that evening and who he was with.
“He asked me if I had been on Hickory Street, which I had not been . . . and so, based on that conversation, he knew that I wasn’t impaired and was able to drive home. So I came home, and that’s really all there was to it,” Plusquellic said.
The mayor added that he did not receive any citation from the officer. “Absolutely not,” he said.
But Plusquellic’s comments did not end there.
He said these types of things have happened frequently.
“There’s people out there — the bloggers and the Web sites — that every time I stop to go to dinner, somebody accuses me of doing something. That’s fine. I guess that’s our world of free speech,” Plusquellic said.
“But I was at an open public place,” he said, “with a guy I knew from the time I was 13. My significant other was there. His wife was there. A bunch of police officers and their wives were there, and other folks were there, out in a public place.
“I ordered dinner and ate there, then drove to this point and dropped somebody off.”
Numerous calls
The Beacon Journal had received numerous calls in the morning about police stopping Plusquellic before the TV station’s report hit the Internet.
Unsuccessful attempts were made by the newspaper in an attempt to get an immediate response from police, and then Plusquellic was contacted on his cell phone about the station’s report.
The Beacon Journal’s Web site, Ohio.com, published its first account of Saturday night’s events at 2:58 p.m. today.
Channel 19 executive producer Brian Sinclair said the station decided to publish its first report after “sources” called the station to report the police involvement with Plusquellic. He said he did not know who those sources were.
Sinclair said station reporters then called Lt. Edwards, the department’s spokesman, and that Edwards responded by playing the recording of the woman’s 911 call over the phone.
Station reporters attempted to contact Plusquellic, Sinclair said, but were unable to reach him before the station put its first account of the police stop on the Internet.
Copyright 2009 Akron Beacon Journal