Sometimes, when police are trying to arrest someone, they’ll barricade themselves from police, sometimes bringing others along. A bill at the Ohio Statehouse is aimed at cracking down on that behavior with harsher penalties.
As U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio, Peter Elliott said it’s becoming common for officers to encounter a barricade situation.
“Every single week, we are dealing with barricaded subjects. It’s become off the charts lately. We’ve had three within the last week alone of people barricading themselves,” Elliot said. “We had one three days ago who barricaded himself in a house, in his residence, and then yelled out the window that ‘I’m going to shoot every single one of you, one by one, and take you away from your families.’”
Elliott said that not only puts lives in danger, but it also costs law enforcement money for more officers to deal with it.
“It’s a time-consuming process. We call in the SWAT teams all of the time. Sometimes we are there for twelve hours. There’s a cost-effectiveness in this. They don’t care,” Elliott said.
Elliott said sometimes officers need to deploy gas to force the suspect to emerge from the barricade. Sometimes officers have to call in additional assistance from officers in other departments.
Elliott took his concerns to Sen. Tom Patton (R-Strongsville). Patton’s son Tom was a Cleveland Police officer died while chasing a suspect on March 13, 2010.
Patton sponsored Senate Bill 188, which would make it a third-degree felony if the location a suspect barricades himself into doesn’t allow for immediate access by law enforcement, and a 4th-degree felony for someone helping a suspect establish a barricade. The bill has just been introduced and awaits its first hearing.
Elliott said he’s not sure passage of the bill will deter suspects from barricading themselves, but it will add time to their sentences. And that, he said, would be helpful, especially when authorities deal with repeat offenders. He said the suspect who barricaded himself three days ago had a history—Elliott said it was the third time he’d done it.
