Councilman tells troublemaker: 'Go to jail or the cemetery'
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN
Associated Press Writer
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CLEVELAND (AP) -- A city councilman fed up with crime told a teenager with a record that goes back two years to "go to jail or the cemetery," prompting the young man's mother to complain that the letter was threatening.
Councilman Michael Polensek said his letter wasn't a threat, instead it was a warning from a public official to a thug to get out of the neighborhood.
"I think of it as a death threat to my son. It's real simple," Tonya Lewis, mother of Arsenio T. Winston, 18, said Thursday. She said her son wasn't available for an interview but might be reached at another time.
Polensek, Cleveland's longest-serving council member with 28 years, wasn't backing down.
"I'm not wrong on this issue," he said Thursday.
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