Current Article

Mayor of Toledo, OH Tells US Marines to Leave

By Just Stupid on Feb 21, 2008 in Stupid Politicians

This story was sent to us by Glenn L… Evidently Mayor Carty Finkbeiner stands by his decision to stop a Michigan-based Marine battalion from holding an urban warfare training session downtown, a spokesman for the mayor said.

About 200 Marine reservists had prepared to conduct the exercise at a vacant building Friday when city officials put a stop to it. Residents had complained about previous exercises, Finkbeiner spokesman Brian Schwartz said Saturday.

"The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people," Schwartz said. "He did not want them drilling and practicing in a highly visible area."

Members of the Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines based in Grand Rapids, Mich., trained in Toledo in 2006, prior to an Iraq deployment that year.

Schwartz said the mayor informed then-police Chief Jack Smith that he didn’t want the Marines back. Finkbeiner was unaware they planned to return until Friday, Schwartz said.

"Unfortunately, the chief of police never communicated that down to his subordinates, so nobody handed it down to the mayor," Schwartz said.

Smith said Saturday that Finkbeiner should have made his wishes known to current police officials.

"He told me he did not want them, as he put it, ‘playing war in Toledo,’" Smith said of the 2006 training session. "I told him, as a former Marine, that if one young Marine’s life is saved because of training he or she received in Toledo, Ohio, then it was worth the inconvenience." (We agree.)

Maj. Dan Whisnant, the battalion’s commander, said he was disappointed by Finkbeiner’s decision.

The training is vital to their combat mission, given the deployment in 2006 and part of 2007 to Iraq’s western Anbar province, he said.

"It prepares the guys for the real sights, smells, sounds of an operating city," Whisnant told The Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press. "It heightens their sense of awareness. You don’t duplicate it."

Whisnant said he was unaware of any complaints by Toledo residents or the mayor.

"The reason we rescheduled it (the training) is we had such a good training experience," he said. "It went so smoothly last time."

Finkbeiner has had some embarrassing missteps in his career. One of his more memorable gaffes occurred in 1994 when he pondered whether to ask deaf people to move near the airport. (Now that is really stupid!) He later apologized and abandoned the plan.

Technorati Tags: Carty Finkbeiner, Toledo mayor, US Marines