Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Councilmen Hear Professor Geren

The Register-Leader, July 21, 1916

Asks For Police Protection; Says He Has Been Abused by City.

"I can't get any more police protection in Marietta than I could if I lived in Mexico," was the "kick" registered by Christopher Geren of South Seventh Street at the regular meeting of the city council Thursday evening.

"Professor" Geren informed council that he was receiving insufficient police protection and that employees of the city had damaged members of his family and his residence, and declared that the city should pay him damages. For a period of more than ten minutes, Geren enumerated all the things that the city had done to him and his property, and closed his eloquent address by offering to present a bill for all these damages.

He asserted that he had issued warrants for poisoning, shooting, house breaking and assault and batter, and that the police had refused to serve them.

He told how the neighbors abused his five year old son; how his wife fell into a ditch dug in front of their residence by city employees; how his house had been broken into and even the chimney and floors taken away; how he had anchored his house to a buried piece of gas pipe by a wire, and how the city employees had dug up this gas pipe, with the result that his home had floated away during thee 1913 flood; how somebody had poisoned his cow in the year 1907; how the city was responsible for the Ohio river during a recent flood, undermining a section of his yard; and closed his complaint with the statement that the police would not give him protection and that he was afraid to take the law into his own hands for fear that he would be placed in jail.

Upon motion, his complaint was referred to the police committee.

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