A Cincinnati company is fleeing its downtown location over the growing violence and disorder in the Ohio city – including fights, people carrying weapons and even a person defecating in front of his office.
Victor Louis, founder and chief executive of One Logistics Network, said his employees no longer feel safe coming to work after nearly a decade at their downtown office.
“I’ve seen individuals carrying weapons. You name it. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen like just disorderly conduct, where people are yelling and screaming right outside our window,” Louis told WCPO 9 News, an ABC-affiliate covering Cincinnati, Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
“We recently had a person walk down the sidewalk, pull down their pants and proceed to defecate, right in front of all my employees.”
Louis’ decision comes on the heels of a horrific brawl that left a woman lying unconscious on the street. The incident gained national attention and flamed racial tensions after video showed people the police labeled as victims lobbing racial slurs ahead of the beatdown.
That fight was the final straw that pushed Louis to move his company, which employs 35 workers, to suburban Blue Ash, Ohio, the CEO said.
“It’s not just this brawl that got national attention, but this is just a drop in the bucket. If the city cannot control the things that are manageable, like potholes, graffiti, vagrancy and drug use, how can we expect them to control violent crime?” Louis said.
In a letter to city officials, Louis blasted “a failure” among local leadership as he claimed that no city council members had contacted him about his concerns after several attempts.
Instead, an unprofessionally-dressed city representative visited the office and dropped off a form for the CEO to fill out with “a vague promise someone would get back to me,” Louis claimed.
He warned that more businesses will soon leave the downtown area unless Cincinnati leadership starts taking complaints seriously.
“It’s no longer a business-friendly environment,” Louis said. “If someone doesn’t fix this, more businesses are going to leave.”
As a Cincinnati native, Louis said he started his company in the downtown area because he loved the vibrant atmosphere.
That love for the city translated to his personal life, as he bought a condo in Cincinnati’s business district in 2019.
But the violent behavior just outside the office has increasingly grown worse, Louis said.
Six people have been charged over the vicious beatdown that took place on a Cincinnati street last week, according to recent local news reports.
Online videos showed a mob stomping on the head of a man on a downtown street while a woman laid on the ground knocked out, with blood dripping from her mouth.
A local pastor and civil rights advocate, the Rev. Damon Lynch, claimed a white man who was beaten in the street helped fuel the graphic attack.
He said that some of the footage shows a black man and a white man squaring off before cooler heads intervened – but then the white person reengaged and slapped a different black man across the face.
The pastor expressed outrage that the local police department had only released mugshots of the black people allegedly involved in the brawl, not the white people.
“When I see the mugshots, I only see people who look like me,” said Lynch, who is black.
“I don’t see the person who re-engaged. And so until we see all the mugshots, this is still a racial issue.”
Meanwhile, an Ohio city council member is facing backlash for arguing that the victims of the brutal attack got what they deserved.
“They asked for that beatdown,” Cincinnati Councilwoman Victoria Parks replied to a video of the brawl on Facebook.
“I am grateful for the whole story,” she added.
Cincinnati’s police union boss quickly denounced the comments and called for Parks’ resignation.
“It’s unconscionable that an elected official would be celebrating violence in the very city she was voted to serve,” Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police president Ken Korber told Fox News Digital.
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