Woman accused of killing Cleveland police officer now faces new charges

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Years ago, Cleveland’s cops were required to live in the city and a lot of them picked to settle into the West Park neighborhood.

Residents say that’s made it feel a bit safer here than other areas.

But crime’s creeping in, even taking the life of an officer who lived here a few months ago.

Now, we’ve discovered his accused killer was just connected to several other violent crimes.

A grand jury indicted Tamara McLoyd on charges in more aggravated robberies.

According to court records, McLoyd was working with another man and a woman in a few of the incidents, most of them carjackings.

On Christmas day, police say McLoyd carjacked someone in the same lot where she shot Officer Shane Bartek during a carjacking on New Year’s Eve.

McLoyd’s alleged crimes are unfortunately just a few of their kind in West Park.

Sifting through the data and our past stories, it appears carjackings and auto thefts are the neighborhood’s biggest crime problem.

Just this month in a safety committee meeting, Councilman Charles Slife brought up a recent case that’s hard to wrap your mind around.

“The one that I am particularly interested in Mr. Chair is the rash of automobile thefts,” Slife said. “There was a juvenile in Ward 17 that stole three cars from Hopkins Airport in one day.”

As was true in McLoyd’s case, a lot of the accused carjackers terrorizing this neighborhood are teens and young adults.

Slife started asking the city to increase police presence here when things began to get out of control last year.

“It’s become such a problem across the city, and it’s left council sort of scratching our head to figure out what we need to do to stop it,” Slife said.

Is it more officers on these streets? Is it a better way to deal with the juveniles police say are committing the crimes? How much would it cost the city to do one or both of those?

That’s what this community has to consider in the days to come.

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