A screen capture from the Hidden Village security camera of Sgt. Favre during the May 22, 2007 surprise inspection.

A: Well, one thing that struck me as being understated here [on the pamphlet describing the program] is where it says, "The Ohio Department of Youth Services," and then it's a hyphen, "youth who have served time in a state juvenile corrections facility from offenses ranging from shoplifting to more serious." I don't know of any youth that served time in a state juvenile correction facility for shoplifting. That's a minor crime. So that -- and I recall looking at it. That seems to be understated that youth that go to a juvenile corrections facility, it's been my experience, go there for serious violent felonies, not for misdemeanor property offenses.

A: Because one of my jobs at that time, having to do with the inspection service was -- a problem that we had was that we had the various departments doing their inspections of properties that kept all their information in their own separate silos was the analogy given to me. And it's an appropriate analogy.

There was no coordination. The fire department could be inspecting a property for some reason. The Building department could be inspecting a property, the same property for another reason, the health department, the police department could be responding there. And the only way that they would know about it was that if a building inspector happened to bump into a health inspector on the street and, "Oh, you're going to that same address? Oh, well, we have a situation there." There was actually so little communication.

So, because we didn't have combined technology and we didn't have interrelated technology among the departments, we started having regular meetings with all of the departments. And in those regular meetings with all the departments involved in inspection services, we would talk about whatever properties they had on their radar at that particular time.

One of the things that I was doing was trying to facilitate a conversation between all of the stakeholders in the city government that are involved in inspection and enforcement processes with regards to all properties in town. So if I would have had a discussion with one person -- and many of the meetings were held in this room. If I would have had a discussion with one person, there may have been any number of other people that may or may not have made that meeting or may not have recapped to that person what was discussed at that meeting. So, if I had expressed -- and I know that I had a conversation about these items, for example, with the Chief of police.

Q: He said you had a second concern which was that there were a lot of blacks in the program? Did you express that?
A: That's absolutely false.
Q: You didn't express that to Mr. Barrett?
A: Absolutely not.
Q: Any idea why Mr. Barrett would testify --
A: I have --
Q: -- under oath that you did?
A: -- no idea.

Q: Did you ever say to anyone in the meeting, in particular, the only African American in the meeting, that you're not sure if she knows what it's like to live in a suburb?
A: Excuse me?
Q: That's my question. Did you say to Candy Withers (sic), who is an African American --
A: I know an Candy Withers (sic) is an African American. Her father, Barry, worked for the City of Cleveland.
Q: Did you say to Candy Withers,(sic) "I don't know if you know what it's like to live in a suburb"?
A: No.
Q: If she testified that you did, would her testimony be inaccurate?
A: Yes.

A: I didn't have anything to do with trying to keep them from doing anything. By the time it came to our attention, it was pretty much a done deal. My comment then and is now and always has been that it's in the wrong location.
Q: Why?
A: Because it's an area that just lends itself to problems for kids that have problems.
Q: Why?
A: It's secluded. It's not well supervised. It's not -- there's too many, if you will, dark corners or places where people can get into trouble, particularly if they are people that you are concerned about getting into trouble.

A: 110th and Detroit at that time [when Diesel Tech occupied Hidden Village] was a high concentration of heroin problems that were spilling not just at 110th and Detroit in Cleveland, but heroin throughout that portion, the east end of Lakewood, the west -- that western portion of the Baltic neighborhood and so forth was centered around West 110th and Detroit. North and South Lane Drive had been problems with drugs at various criminal activities and folks engaged in both living there for some time.

Q: So there was still a lot of drugs in the area?
A: Yes.
Q: Was there still a lot of crime in the area? A: Yes. I would say yes.
Q: And apparently this comment about sex offenders, there were a lot of sex offenders already in the area?
A: Apparently.

A: "By here" is consistent with what I've been saying all along, and to this day right now; I think they're in the wrong place. I think they're in a place that is not conducive for what they're trying to do. They have chosen to be there and so they're there.

Q: Now, you smiled, and I don't know if it was something I said or because you saw Mary Louise Madigan's name on the email or for some other reason. Did you have problems dealing with Mary Louise Madigan during the course of this?
A: Mary Louise tends to make things very complicated when she -- I don't dislike Mary Louise Madigan. I get along with her very well. Simple issues tend to become very complicated.
Q: She testified that she wanted to -- she wanted to ease the transition of the Youth Re-entry Program into the City of Lakewood. Did you agree with her desire to do so?
A: She never consulted -- she never consulted with me about that.
Q: Okay. So you didn't know that she was trying to ease the transition?
A: No.

Q: What did you mean by that clear and unambiguous language?
A: At this point in time, in November, going back from where we jumped from before that. But by the time November had come around, it became very obvious that Mary Louise obviously was involved in the program prior to us even knowing it was even coming into town. And I, at that point, felt that we really didn't know that -- the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. And so I was getting very frustrated from it and I pretty much wanted no part of it.
Q: You didn't want to be part of anything that involved "making nice with them and keeping them here." What did you mean by that?
A: No. I wasn't interested in -- if we could resolve something, if we could come to some conclusion on things, that would be okay with that. But I really wasn't involved in a love fest. I was involved in dealing with whatever we needed to deal with.
Q: Well, but by keeping them here, you meant within the City of Lakewood, didn't you?
A: No, I didn't.
Q: You never wanted them to leave?
A: I think of I've said that several times.

A: There were resident complaints from residents adjoining Hidden Village, and I'm not sure how contemporaneous that was with the date [of the inspection] -- there had been resident complaints. I remember there was a lady on Idlewood that was complaining, and there was a guy that was a custodian on, I think it was, Clifton.

He actually came to an evening meeting we had to complain about drug activity going in and out the windows at Hidden Village. As a matter of fact, he even disclosed that he was a recovering addict and he knows what drug activity -- I remember how forthright he was about his own drug problems. And he mentioned that he seen the people at Hidden Village crawling in and out of windows. So if they say the doors are locked, it doesn't mean anything. They are coming and going, and that he had seen drug activity there. Now –

Q: Yes. So it was seven months before the raid.
A: That's before that time. It wasn't a raid.
Q: Whatever.
A: It wasn't a raid. I know what a raid is. It wasn't a raid.

A: [Reading from an e-mail he wrote after the October 2006 meeting with Buckon and Madigan. Buckon requested a meeting with the mayor after the mayor expressed surprise that she was at the meeting, and reminded her Favre was the administration's point person on Hidden Village] "I heard about this response last night and purposely did not open it because it would keep me awake all night. I was awake all night anyway. Fact is she was involved from the inception. Youth was at the meeting we had long before the issue even went to the Planning Commission. So that excuse is invalid. There is no point in me working on Growing Lakewood issues if we are going to shoot ourselves in the foot like this. I have to stop writing because I'm getting madder as I go."

Q: So is the thing that was making you madder and madder was the fact that you just didn't know about the Family-to-Family Grant?
A: It would have been nice to know when we started this whole process or when we became engaged in this issue in the spring of '06 that that was part of the background of the whole thing.

Q: And so you believe that it was the Youth Services headed up by Dottie Buckon and Mary Hall that brought the Youth Re-entry Program to the City of Lakewood to begin with?
A: That's what it appeared.

Q: Okay. And then you went on to say, "We brought this upon ourselves through the grant. Very disturbing. One of the dangers in depending on grants." What did you mean by that?
A: Well, if in fact the -- if in fact it is correct that the grant was part of the reason that the Youth Re-entry was brought there, we should have -- well, I can't tell you what we should have done, but -- then if it came here and we're upset with the location where it's in, then we should have done something about that at the time that whatever contractual obligation the city had came into play.

And it's one of the dangers of getting involved in grants. You can't control everything -- you know, we have this discussion now all time at the Board of Education, where -- a great example is the grant that you hear a lot, the Race to the Top that the school districts are involved in. You have so many school districts opting out of them because there's so many strings to attached to the money that it costs you more money to implement the money that you get.

That's the problem with grants is it's not always free money. There's a lot of obligations and entanglements that come with them. So you need to know what the obligations are and are you willing to participate in the obligations or how can you control what the obligations are.