New Lorain Police Chief looks to tackle violent crime through community outreach, impact team

LORAIN — At 21 years old, Michael Failing needed a job. It was a seven-day difference that led him to join Lorain's police department, and 30 years later sit behind a desk as chief. "They called me first," he said, with a laugh, of the department he was sworn in to lead on Monday. "Lorain Fire called me a week later — so in the course of seven days, I would have been a fireman." The need for a job led the Lorain native to hold myriad roles with the department, including school resource officer, crime analyst and Office of Professional Standards investigator as he made his way up the ranks from a patrolman to acting chief earlier this year. "I never thought I would be sitting in this chair, and if I did, I figured I'd have two years to go and then it was the question of 'Would I even bother?' So it's kind of a shock that I'm here now," he said. He had been acting chief less than 90 days when three of his officers were ambushed by a lone gunman at the Colorado Avenue Industrial Park on July 23. Officer Phillip Wagner, 35, died of his injuries the next day. It was the first line-of-duty death the department had seen in more than 100 years. Lorain police are one of the best trained in the area, Failing said, but the emotional toll of that incident is something no one can prepare for. It was trial by fire, he said. Failing is starting his tenure navigating a department of officers, dispatchers and civilian staff through to the other side. A better place There is a parallel in Failing's plans for the department and addressing the community as a whole. For his department, it is a focus on officer wellness in the wake of Wagner's death, and a cultural shift in the department. "We're trying to make this place better … With (Wagner) we had people who were taking charge," he said. "… So them being able to take charge of their own department has helped a lot because now they know that they mean something. Their voices are heard." That goal extends to the rest of the International City. While Failing hopes officers take pride in their department, he wants residents to take pride in their city. "We're going to be working toward helping people take back their neighborhoods," Failing said. Earlier this month Mayor Jack Bradley unveiled a holistic approach to gun violence in Lorain, with plans to target several high-crime areas with cleanups, improved lighting and signage to address quality-of-life issues. Bradley's target areas are informed by LPD's own crime statistics and heat maps of violent crimes. Bradley and Safety/Service Director Rey Carrion plan to focus on four initial zones — which will mirror the police department's investments. Zone 1 is the heart of central Lorain and includes the Stoveworks site, St. Joseph Community Center, Hawthorne Elementary School and Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church and nearby Nativity Manor apartments. Zone 2, also in central Lorain, surrounds Sgt. Samuel L. Felton Jr. Central Park, North and South Central drives, Beech and Oakdale avenues from West 30th Street to West 21st Street. Zone 3 is in South Lorain. It encompasses the area between Pearl and Seneca Avenues from East 28th Street to East 36th Street. Zone 4 is in downtown Lorain, encompassing Broadway to Reid Avenue from West Fifth to West Ninth Street. Residents in these zones will see city workers cleaning litter, scrubbing away graffiti and citing blighted properties alongside an increased police presence from officers and members of the department's recently reinstated community outreach unit. For the past few weeks Officers Miguel Baez and Pablo Cruz have crisscrossed the city to attend local events and brought the department's new ice cream cart with them. Its ice cream stand has been a "huge success" in getting residents who may not normally approach police officers to have an informal conversation with the two men, Failing said. "That's how conversations start and that's how (we) can learn about problems that somebody might not ever (call us for)," he said. Soon, that ice cream cart will be stored in a trailer with sports equipment and other outreach items where the pair can pull up to a city park and meet local kids. The community outreach unit will also help restart neighborhood watch programs. Failing has joined them at community events, a pledge to be accessible to answer residents' questions and address their concerns. "I live here, my family grew up here, I will be out and about at all these functions," Failing said, adding that organizations are welcome to reach out to the department and see their events added to his, Baez and Cruz's calendars. Failing also plans to reinstate the department's social media presence once it hires a civilian media liaison to manage posts, he said. Lorain police shuttered its social media in 2023 after a former officer shot and killed a dog, sparking outrage and an outpouring of spiteful comments and spam posts against the department. Coupled with Baez and Cruz's outreach efforts will also be the restart of the department's Patrol Impact Team in 2026. 'A delicate balance' The PIT or units like it have existed since the 1970s when former Chief Celestino Rivera — then a young patrolman — served on the "Shotgun Squad," a unit so named by local newspapers for the controversial group of plainclothes officers who patrolled in their private vehicles following a string of nightly robberies. While members of the PIT will not be taking matters into their own hands the same way Rivera's Shotgun Squad did those decades ago, it is a proactive style of policing that garnered some success before it went dormant due to staffing levels within the department. In 2022 the PIT had eight officers, two sergeants and a lieutenant assigned to it, with those individuals using informant information and proactive traffic stops for minor violations to find individuals suspected of crimes. To adequately staff the PIT unit and maintain road patrol levels, the department's staffing must be at or above 100 officers; it is currently in the mid-90s, Failing said, but expects it to increase to 105 next year as new hires graduate from the academy. "It is a delicate balance," Failing said of the PIT and community outreach units working in the same neighborhoods. "That's one of the reasons why we need to get into the neighborhoods — we've got to know whose in the neighborhoods." The PIT teams is effective at addressing violent crime, he said, but the department also has to learn who lives in high-crime areas who may not be officers' target. "You don't want to sit there and just (say) 'Oh, they're getting tickets just because they live in that neighborhood — that's not our intention … We want to clean up the neighborhood and once the violence stops, we'll move on." Success will be when PIT officers move on to other areas of the city because an area is no longer a hotspot for violent crime, but the community outreach unit will remain behind to make sure an area does not become a hotspot again. In 2026 there also will be potential investments in technology for the department, like an unmanned drone that can automatically fly over calls for service before officers arrive on scene. The roughly $80,000 investment could see dispatch launch a drone and be able to see its video feed to determine if a call was accurate — such as a report of someone with a gun on the west side that may have been made by drug dealers on the east side to clear police out of their area. The unmanned drone is offered by the same company that operates the city's license plate and traffic cameras, Flock. Failing plans to move some of those cameras from the outskirts of the city to its high-crime areas based on department data. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com