Lorain FOP endorses Tomlinson over incumbent Will in prosecutor’s race

LORAIN — The Lorain Fraternal Order of Police has endorsed Elyria defense attorney JD Tomlinson over Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will in the coming Democratic primary, exposing a rift between the rank-and-file of the county’s largest police department and a former cop who is seeking a fourth term as county prosecutor.

JD Tomlinson

Union President Kyle Gelenius said his membership voted unanimously last week to back Tomlinson.

“The lodge feels that he’s a young, bright, up-and-coming attorney with the interpersonal skills needed to propel the prosecutor’s office to another level,” Gelenius said. “He isn’t afraid to try cases that aren’t really a slam dunk.”

But Will, a retired Elyria police officer, said the FOP’s decision to endorse his opponent has as much to do with the internal politics of Lorain City Hall as with complaints from the union about the amount of evidence he requires before seeking indictments.

Will said he didn’t even bother asking for the FOP’s endorsement after he told detectives and others during a heated meeting earlier this month that he didn’t plan to seek an indictment against former Lorain City Councilman Dan Given, D-at large, for voting on legislation to reform community reinvestment areas, also known as the CRA, in 2006.

Dennis Will

“It’s clear they have an agenda and I’m still going to do my job,” Will said, adding that he asked a representative from U.S. Attorney for Northern Ohio Steven Dettelbach’s office to take a second look at the long-running investigation.

Will said his impression is that Lorain police want to prevent Given, who lost his re-election bid last year, from being named as the city’s safety service director.

Lorain Mayor Chase Ritenauer said Given’s name is one of several that have come up as a possible successor to former Safety Service Director Robert Fowler, who left the city at the end of 2015.

Tomlinson called Will’s explanation for why he didn’t get the Lorain FOP’s endorsement “spin.”

“He lost Lorain PD long before last week,” Tomlinson said. “They’ve been gone a long time.”

The bigger issue, Tomlinson argued, is the perception among Lorain police officers that Will is too cautious when it comes to seeking indictments.

“They feel as if they’ve got real strong cases that they feel aren’t being indicted because they aren’t slam dunks,” he said.

Will said when prosecutors present a case to the grand jury, they have to show not only probable cause, but also that there’s a chance of a successful prosecution. He said

Lorain police have long complained about the second part, but the law is clear that both factors need to be considered by a grand jury.

“You go where you have the evidence,” Will said. “I’m not prosecuting someone until I have all the evidence and can effectively prosecute.”

The CRA
The CRA program has been controversial since 2006, when City Council voted on legislation designed to make uniform the city’s scattered community reinvestment areas, which were created in the 1980s to spur development. The 2006 changes allowed homeowners in the city’s five CRAs to receive 15-year, 100 percent property tax abatements that were retroactive to homes built in 2000 or later.

Given, who worked for Oster Homes at the time, was among the Council members who voted in favor of the changes, which a legal bill once referred to as the “CRA ordinance for Oster Homes development.”

Former Lorain Law Director Mark Provenza wrote in a 2008 open letter that his office had told Given that there was nothing to stop him from being involved with the CRA program as a councilman.

Current Law Director Pat Riley later told Given not to vote on CRA legislation, a legal opinion Given said he followed thereafter.

Will said that the investigation into the CRA began after then-county Auditor Mark Stewart refused to accept the retroactive abatements, touching off a legal battle that ended with a settlement in 2010. Under the terms of that deal, the owners of homes in the CRAs built after April 18, 2006, were allowed to keep their abatements while owners of those built earlier lost all but one year of their abatements.

The city also agreed to refund fees to apply for the program paid by those who lost their abatements.

There is still a lawsuit pending from homeowners, including Given, who were promised and then lost abatements.

Will said as the investigation progressed he removed his office from the decision to prosecute Given because his chief of staff, George Koury, was a potential witness in the case.

Will said the CRA investigation has been reviewed by Dettelbach’s office, the Ohio Ethics Commission, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office and even a former Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor he paid $5,900 to look at the case. None of those reviews led to any charges, although the possibility was discussed, Will said.
Tomlinson said he was unfamiliar with the CRA issue and couldn’t comment on whether anyone should have been charged in the case.

Lorain Police Chief Cel Rivera said the CRA came up again during the federal public corruption investigation that began in Cuyahoga County and spilled into Lorain, leading to the retirement and conviction of former Lorain Community Development Director Sandy Prudoff. Rivera said Prudoff was the original target of the CRA probe.

Given said he was surprised that there was still an active investigation targeting him, given how much time has passed since the CRA was approved.

“So what do you do? Keep going from law enforcement to law enforcement because of hatred for Dan Given?” he said.

Rivera acknowledged that the detectives working on the CRA investigation, which he now considers closed, were unhappy with the lack of prosecution in the case, but he doesn’t think that’s the only reason the police union is upset with Will.

“We do deal with them a lot, but sometimes it’s adversarial,” Rivera said of the relationship between police and prosecutors.

The Lundberg shooting
Gelenius pointed to the 2009 shooting death of Christopher Lundberg as indicative of the problems Lorain police officers have with Will’s office.

“It took a lot of pressing to move that case forward,” he said.

Lundberg was shot after what police have described as a drug deal gone bad on Feb. 3, 2009, near the intersection of West 29th Street and Ashland Avenue. Police have said they believe Lundberg was driving after Andrew Lorenzana and Avery Taylor, who had just robbed him when the pair fired on him from the vehicle they were riding in.

Lorenzana and Taylor were initially charged with murder in the shooting, but Will said the case was extremely weak and he told Lorain detectives that they needed more evidence before he would present the case to a grand jury.

“I wouldn’t do it because there wasn’t evidence of a murder,” he said.

The case wasn’t presented to a grand jury at the time and the murder charges were dropped.

Assistant County Prosecutor Tony Cillo said the problems with trying the Lundberg shooting case as a murder included conflicting statements from Lorenzana and Taylor, and the driver of their vehicle was never identified. He also said DNA evidence on the guns the two men owned that were used in the shooting didn’t conclusively prove who had fired the weapons.

It wasn’t until January 2015 that the two were charged in the shooting for second time. They have pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide and weapons charges. Cillo said the charges stem from Lorenzana and Taylor firing their weapons across a roadway, a theory that prosecutors worked hard to find the evidence to support.

Much of the dispute, Will said, seems to arise from some police officers not understanding the responsibilities his office has when it comes to handing over evidence to defense attorneys as part of what is known as open file discovery. He said he has offered training to better prepare officers to provide the necessary information to his office.

Rivera said police tend to be passionate about their work and protective of their cases, but he added that the final decision on whether to move forward with a criminal case is in the hands of prosecutors.

“It’s not our job to decide who gets prosecuted. It’s not our job to decide who gets found guilty. It’s not our job to decide how people get sentenced,” Rivera said.

Other police
Rivera said he’s not a fan of police unions endorsing in political races, although he said it’s well within the rights of the FOP to do so and make other comments about issues of the day. In the past, union members have been critical of judges they don’t consider to have imposed harsh enough sentences on certain criminal defendants.

“I would prefer our guys not be involved in politics,” Rivera said.

Will does have the backing of the Lorain County Police Chief’s Law Enforcement Association, which endorsed him in December in a vote Rivera said he supported.

Tomlinson said he didn’t ask the chiefs for their endorsement because he wasn’t aware they were planning to issue an endorsement in the race.

Elyria Police Chief Duane Whitely, who serves as president of the chiefs association, said he hasn’t run across the problems the Lorain police union brought up about Will.

“We’ve had a good relationship with him,” Whitely said. “If I had an issue with him or the prosecutor’s office did something I would go to Denny and talk.”

Whitely’s support of Will isn’t necessarily shared by all the members of the Elyria Police Department.

Elyria Police Patrolmen’s Association President Garrett Longacre said his union rarely endorses political candidates and isn’t doing so in the race between Will and Tomlinson.

But he also said that he and several other Elyria police officers support Tomlinson.

“Sometimes you’ve got to bring fresh blood in,” Longacre said.

Deputy Dave Lottman, who serves as president of the Lorain County Deputies Association, also said his union doesn’t endorse candidates and he wasn’t taking a public position in the race between Tomlinson and Will.

Lottman, who works in the detective bureau, said there have been times when prosecutors have asked for more information in cases deputies have been working on, but it hasn’t led to serious clashes between deputies and prosecutors.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re all right,” he said.

Lorain County Sheriff Phil Stammitti, who backs Will, said although there are sometimes issues that come up between his deputies and prosecutors, that’s to be expected.

“Police don’t understand sometimes you can indict people, but you have to have enough evidence to convict,” he said.

Ritenauer said he was aware of the tension between Lorain police and Will.

“Law enforcement and prosecutors are going to have disagreements,” he said. “There’s going to be cases where prosecutors are going to want more information or law enforcement is going to say they don’t go far enough.”

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