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Letter carrier attacks spark Ohio lawmaker to co-sponsor bill improving technology, impose stiffer punishments

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Letter carrier attacks spark Ohio lawmaker to co-sponsor bill improving technology, impose stiffer punishments


CINCINNATI — It was 57 degrees outside in January 2019 when letter carrier Ryan Pierani had a gun pointed at his head.

“I was just having lunch and I heard somebody jiggle my side door of my ProMaster,” he said.

That’s when he saw a kid wearing a mask in his mirror.

“He seen I was there with my window down, he hopped up on the side of my ProMaster and put the pistol to my head and demanded my arrow key,” he said.

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Across the country, mail carriers have been targets for their arrow keys. WCPO 9 has reported on the attacks and robberies here in Cincinnati.

Data analyzed by WCPO partner Journal-News showed mail collection box thefts have dropped by 47% year over year in Ohio and robberies of the keys to open the boxes off of postal carriers had dropped by roughly a third from 34 to 23 over the same time period in the state of Ohio.

“Since January of 2022, Branch 43 has had 17 of its members robbed at gunpoint,” said Ted Thompson, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers in Cincinnati.

“We need to keep our letter carriers and postal workers safe,” said Congressman Greg Landsman.

A possible solution to this problem is a new bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Landsman. It aims to make letter carriers and your personal information safer.

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It would allocate $1.4 billion to the U.S. Postal Service to install high-security collection boxes and replace older universal keys, known as arrow keys, with electronic versions.

Landsman should the new technology should deter thieves and isn’t too worried someone will figure out a work-a-round.

“The technology is pretty good. The electric key is one of the requires a whole host of things that you can’t just get by stealing the actual key,” he said.

Thompson said this will help keep his members safer.

“It helps devalue the reason that we’re being robbed of, right, so that our equipment and what we carry with us no longer has value to criminals in an attempt to gain access to the public’s mail,” Thompson said.

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The second component of this bill has to do with the law.

“It provides additional support for the investigation and prosecution of those who commit these crimes against our letter carriers,” Landsman said.

The bill would direct the U.S. Attorney General to appoint assistant U.S. attorneys in all 94 U.S. judicial districts to lead investigations and prosecutions of crimes against USPS employees, assets and facilities.

It would “also establish new guidelines for the punishment as though a letter carrier being assaulted is the same as a law enforcement officer being assaulted,” Thompson said.

Thompson said of the 17 people who were robbed at gunpoint, four have resigned and one retired.

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Pierani was one of the people who came back.

“My coworkers and my customers, getting back to serving them that’s really what drove me to go back,” he said.

“Some of the members I represent they’ve also said because it is a traumatic experience to go through that going back to work was actually helping them in the healing process because sitting at home they were just dwelling on it over, and over, and over again,” Thompson said.

Thompson said they have some electronic keys installed, but the rollout is moving “at a snail’s pace.”

Landsman said if this bill passes it should speed up that process.

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Landsman believes this bill will get widespread support. He said conversations with other lawmakers have been serious but optimistic.





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Ohio

Former Ohio State Forward Keita Bates-Diop Traded to New York Knicks

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Former Ohio State Forward Keita Bates-Diop Traded to New York Knicks


Keita Bates-Diop will be in the Big Apple to begin his seventh NBA season.

The former Ohio State forward was dealt from the Brooklyn Nets to the New York Knicks along with star wing Mikal Bridges and a second-round pick. In return, the Nets get Bojan Bogadanovic, Mamadi Diakite, Shake Milton, four unprotected first-round picks, an unprotected pick swap, a top-four protected first-round pick and a second-round pick.

Although the Knicks will be Bates-Diop’s sixth team since he was selected in the second round of the 2018 NBA draft, the 28-year-old has proven to be a solid backup forward throughout his career. Bates-Diop has averaged six points and three rebounds per game while shooting 47.4% from the floor and 33.3% from beyond the arc through six seasons.

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His 2023-24 season came to an abrupt end when he suffered a stress fracture in his shin on March 23, one that required season-ending surgery. While he averaged just 1.6 points in 4.9 minutes per game after getting dealt to the Phoenix Suns midway through last campaign, the 6-foot-8 forward’s best season came in 2022-23, his last with the San Antonio Spurs. Bates-Diop averaged a career-high 9.7 points, accompanied by 3.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game. He shot 39.4% from beyond the arc that year.

Bates-Diop recently exercised his $2,654,644 player option for 2024-25 and will become an unrestricted free agent following next season.

He played four seasons at Ohio State, averaging 11.7 points, 5.7 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game. His breakout campaign came in 2017-18, when Bates-Diop averaged 19.8 points, 8.7 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game, earning Big Ten Player of the Year and consensus second-team All-American honors.





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Ohio’s $15 minimum wage amendment sputters on deadline day, campaign says

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Ohio’s $15 minimum wage amendment sputters on deadline day, campaign says


The campaign behind a $15 minimum wage amendment in Ohio opted not to submit the hundreds of thousands of signatures it collected before the state’s Wednesday deadline and instead vowed to try for a ballot measure in 2025, according to a statement.

One Fair Wage’s decision means there will be no option to raise the state’s $10.45 minimum wage this November, to the delight of many pro-business groups, including the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.

“The proponents are calling themselves ‘One Fair Wage?’ I guess my reaction would be, ‘Fair to who?’” said Chris Kershner, president and CEO of the Dayton chamber, in an interview. “It doesn’t sound like mandates on the business community are very fair to the employers in Ohio.”

Under One Fair Wage’s proposal, a $15 minimum wage would be phased in over two years and would be tied to rise at the same rate of inflation.

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“When mandates are put onto businesses, businesses have to make operation decisions that impact their companies, their people, their investments and their growth,” Kershner said. He added that the chamber would still need to run the numbers and he couldn’t provide real estimates of how much a higher wage would affect Dayton-area businesses, or how many layoffs it might bring.

One Fair Wage would have needed to deliver its petitions to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office in Columbus before midnight Wednesday.

In order to get on the ballot, any citizen-initiated constitutional amendment aiming for the ballot this year would need to submit 413,487 signatures of valid Ohio voters, with at least half of Ohio’s counties producing signatures that represent 5% of the voters who partook in the last gubernatorial election in that county.

In a statement first shared by the Statehouse News Bureau and later confirmed by Journal-News, One Fair Wage said it fell short in Ohio’s rural areas and, therefore, did not meet the 44-county requirement.

The organization attributed its shortcomings to “violence and intimidation toward our low-wage worker of color canvassers, who were verbally abused and harassed by those opposing raises for workers” in rural counties. The campaign did not immediately provide details to corroborate these accusations when the Dayton Daily News asked.

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In a Wednesday night statement, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose called out One Fair Wage for placing blame on rural Ohioans. He characterized it as “a duplicitous, disorganized goat rodeo of a campaign that has made every excuse in the book for their lack of compliance with the law.”

“I won’t sit quietly while any group distorts the truth to cover for their own negligence,” LaRose said.

One Fair Wage’s own statement concluded with a vow to continue collecting signatures and to try again next year.

By holding off, One Fair Wage is playing it safe to ensure that it can use the bulk of the signatures it already collected in the future. Here’s how the cost-benefit analysis works in these situations:

• In Ohio, turning in 413,487 signatures is enough to begin the state’s verification process. From there, the state would send each county’s signatures to the respective county board of elections, which would then verify whether those signatures are valid. The counties would then send their findings back to the Ohio Secretary of State, which would determine if, in the end, the campaign had submitted enough valid signatures to meet the state’s lofty ballot requirements.

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• If it’s determined that there weren’t enough valid signatures, the campaign would get a 10-day cure period to try to collect enough valid signatures to get over the line.

• However, if the campaign falls short of the initial 413,487 signature haul, or falls short after the 10-day cure period, the entire process would restart and none of the previously collected signatures could be used in the future.

• Luckily for organizers in positions like One Fair Wage, signatures for citizen-initiated amendments in Ohio are evergreen (so long as the individual’s voter registration remains the same), which gives petitioners the option of simply holding off until they are absolutely certain they’d make the ballot.

This story originally appeared on journal-news.com.





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Body of missing Northeast Ohio woman found; boyfriend in custody

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Body of missing Northeast Ohio woman found; boyfriend in custody


PLAIN TOWNSHIP, Ohio — The boyfriend of a woman who was reported missing earlier this week is being held in jail on a $1 million bond after the woman’s body was found in a park near Canton.

Sean Goe, 26, of Plain Township, has yet to be charged with the murder of Raychel Sheridan, 24, also of Plain Township. He is being held on active warrants for burglary, grand theft of a firearm, and domestic violence, according to the Stark County Sheriff’s Office. The domestic violence charge involved Sheridan, the sheriff’s office says.

Goe was arrested Wednesday morning by Canton police at a homeless shelter. It ended a nearly multi-hour search for Goe after Sheridan was reported missing just after 12:30 p.m. Tuesday from a residence on the 4100 block of Orchard Dale Drive NW.

While deputies were searching the home and the surrounding area for Sheridan, deputies spotted a maroon Jeep Liberty registered to her driving on Guilford Avenue NW. Deputies pulled the Jeep over and found Goe was driving, but fled on foot.

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The Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force and the State Highway Patrol were called in to help search the area for Goe, who was found in the early-morning hours Wednesday at the homeless shelter.

The sheriff’s office says detectives searched the apartment shared by Sheridan and Goe determined Sheridan was killed in the residence. The sheriff’s office says unspecified evidence was recovered “indicating foul play.”

Canton sanitation workers found what it believed to be Sheridan’s body just before 9:30 a.m. Wednesday in a park in a southwest section of Canton, the sheriff’s office says.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of Raychel’s loved ones during this incredibly difficult time,” Stark County Sheriff George Maier said in a statement.

The sheriff’s office released no other details Wednesday and says the investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information can contact the Stark County Sheriff’s Office at 330-430-3800.

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