It can be demonstrated that police departments across Ohio are more
reluctant than ever to associate their departments or officers with
alleged UFO occurrences, and understandably so. The hirelings armed with
the "badge of truth" often do not relish their position as the
middleman between the U.S. Air Force and the UFO phenomenon.
"From my information, calls placed from police departments to Wright-Patt
are forwarded directly to secret departments at the air base solely
responsible for monitoring the UFO situation," charges George Clappison,
UFO researcher and investigator for the Cincinnati-based study group
Tri-State Advocates for Scientific Knowledge (TASK).
To bolster his contention, Clappison cites a 1995 source he identifies
only as "a southern Ohio law enforcement official." After several
confidential, tightly controlled meetings with his source, Clappison
was informed that his contact had a UFO sighting while on-duty about ten
years prior. His dispatch office then alerted the air base of the
occurrence. The officer recalled that within days of the event, he was
visited and questioned by several agents from the Cincinnati offices of
the FBI.
The law enforcement official conveyed to Clappison his belief that the
Air Force and various intelligence communities currently monitor and
investigate the UFO situation, despite public denials. This investigation
procedure, according to the opinion of the informant, utilizes the vast
resources of police dispatch centers for the collection of UFO reports.
Even when reporting a UFO directly to the Dayton, Ohio, air base, a phone
receptionist taking the call will politely refer the caller to "report
the incident to your local police department."
With delight this writer should inform the reader of the curious
existence of the strange "SIGNAL 50" code word utilized by The Ohio State
Highway Patrol during radio communications to announce the observation of
unknown aircraft. 1
Of the most recently publicized disturbances in which the SIGNAL 50
term could have been utilized by the O.S.P. was the heated incident at
the Lebanon Correctional Institute, in which a glowing red object hovered
for nearly three hours over a state penitentiary. The Warren County
Sheriff's Department and the Ohio State Highway Patrol responded to the
multiple witness event, and calls were placed by the dispatch office to
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, requesting aircraft
identification. 2
Wright-Pat denied having any experimental aircraft in the vicinity, and
furthermore stated that they had no radar track of the unknown object,
which, according to a statement given by Commander H. Lake of the
adjacent Warren Correctional Institute, was "presented to the Warren
County Sheriff's Department by his shift supervisor upon their arrival."
Despite denials by the LeCI or WCI prison offices and the Ohio
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that any internal
documentation of the event exists, H. Lake stated emphatically, "I don't
know what they're talking about. A report does exist because I WROTE the
report myself." 3
Presently, public relations officials at Wright-Patt contend that they
have no documentation available regarding any incoming calls from the
Ohio State Highway Patrol regarding the April 8, 1993 UFO incident at
LeCI. However, FOIA Manager Paul Cassidy stated that "if a phone call
was indeed made to this base, there should be SOME kind of documentation
SOMEWHERE, whether it be in the form of a log entry or scribbled notes." 4
O.S.P. log entries acquired by UFO investigators revealed that several
calls were indeed placed to the Dayton, Ohio air base. Dispatchers at the
Ohio State Patrol and Warren County Sheriff's Office even confirmed that
Wright-Patt had been alerted by utilizing a special, confidential phone
number that gives them direct access to the high-tech air base. When
asked for the number, each respective office refused to disclose it,
saying it was a restricted line, and not releasable to the public. 5
It can be said with certainty that this writer did hear and detect
abnormal aircraft activity above the Cincinnati region in the form of jet
engine sounds which were heard constantly from around 4:15 A.M. until
daybreak on the night of the incident. The jet sounds were deep and
powerful, unlike common air traffic heard frequently above Cincinnati.
Not until the evening news later that day did this writer learn of the
events at the Lebanon, Ohio prison, upon which time the heavy droning
sound of the jet noise was recalled.
There is a healthy historical precedent for UFO mix-ups between Ohio
police agencies and UFOs, with the U.S. Air Force always having a distant
and uncertain role in the drama.
Case in point: at 4:50 A.M. on April 17, 1966, two sheriff's deputies
Dale Spaur and Wilber L. Neff, were advised by the Portage County, Ohio
Dispatch Center to investigate a low-flying UFO reportedly headed in
their direction. The twosome watched as the glowing object approached
their position, illuminating the roadside. 6
"It's about fifty feet across, and I can just make out a dome or
something on the top, but that's very dark," Spaur yelled into his
microphone. "The bottom is real bright, it's putting out a beam of light
that makes a big spot underneath. It was overhead a minute ago, and it
was as bright as day here."
The dispatcher advised Spaur and Neff to keep the UFO in sight, as a
car with camera equipment had been sent out. Soon, the twosome were
racing along Route 14 at ninety miles per hour.
Other police officers soon joined the chase. Wayne Huston of East
Palestine, Ohio, witnessed the UFO pass his location at more than 80
miles per hour, and also joined the chase. "It was a funny thing," he
later said, "but when the object got too far ahead of us it appeared to
stop and wait."
One police officer later recalled that he had seen two jet-fighter
aircraft being followed by a bright object shaped like a football. The
vehicular pursuit took multiple police officials on an eighty-five mile
journey into Pennsylvania before the object allegedly shot off at great
speed and disappeared.
Radar Operators at the Pittsburgh airport control tower advised the
Conway Police Department that they had picked up the UFO on their radar
screens, but later denied this.
Police chief Gerald Buchert of Mantua, Ohio, claimed that he
photographed the object, but was told by the United States Air Force not
to make the pictures public.
The official Air Force conclusion was that Spaur and the others had
been chasing the planet Venus.
Months after the drama, Deputy Spaur was found in hiding by a reporter.
Working as a painter, Spaur lived in poverty residing at a seedy motel.
He had resigned from the police force, and had been divorced from his
wife. "If I could change all that I have done in my life," he said, "I
would change that night we chased that damned saucer."
Given the sad but true public belittlement of UFO witnesses by the
Air Force, the news media and the debunking celebrities, it is
understandable to see why police officials such as those involved in the
LeCI Incident and the Portage pursuit are reluctant to talk about their
full knowledge of these events.
Startling details regarding police department involvement in UFO
sightings surfaced during a routine investigation into an alleged "UFO
crash retrieval" from Ohio. But the findings were surprisingly unrelated
to the initial event being investigated.
Seeking to gather more information regarding the UFO investigations
made by the Highway Patrol as well as county and local police
departments, this writer engineered dozens of phone calls to various Ohio
police agencies, seeking to chisel away at the mystery.
Inquiries were being made into a December 26, 1988 UFO incident,
happening in an area near Liberty, Ohio, north of Dayton not far from
Urbana. According to the legend, the Assistant Chief of Police observed a
gigantic, lime-green ball of light change color as it emerged from the
clouds overhead to slam into the ground. Wright-Patt was notified of the
incident by the dispatch office, and allegedly sent out a clandestine
recovery team to retrieve the object. 7
In researching the validity of the account, this author placed a phone
call to directory assistance so that he could acquire the telephone
number of the Liberty Police Department. Unbeknownst to both parties, the
directory assistance operator had bungled the task and furnished this
author with the WRONG telephone number, instead, providing him with the
number of the Liberty Township Police Department, located north of
Youngstown, Ohio. A long distance phone contact was then placed with the
wrong Liberty, Ohio. 8
"Hello, Liberty Township Police Department," came the kindly greeting
after the phone call was placed.
"I'm trying to get some information about the UFO report from a few
years back that was reported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base," advised
this caller.
"Yes sir, I believe that was two years ago..."
To the shock of the startled caller, certain details gradually emerged
which took nearly two weeks before it was fully understood that a
telephone mix-up had taken place, and that the accounts in question
involved two completely separate occurrences. A four-month investigation
followed, which revealed the details of an event in Trumbull County,
Ohio, happening recently during the late summer months of 1994. 9
Multiple police departments including the Liberty Township Department,
Howland, Hubbard and Girard City Police Departments, as well as the
Trumbull County Sheriffs Department, engaged in an intense, late-night
vehicular pursuit of a "red, saucer shaped object" for a nine hour
duration. The object was described by multiple police officials as an
enormous, brightly luminescent object that rotated, as if on an axis.
The object allegedly made no sound, and hovered directly above housetops
in a residential neighborhood at a disturbingly low elevation.
Upon receiving phone calls to the Trumbull County Dispatch Office by
area residents, Liberty Township police officer Tobe Melero was alerted
to the situation. "I was drinking some coffee when we started getting
calls about a UFO, and we laughed about it," recalled Melero. "But then
we started getting more phone calls, so I had to go check it out." 10
While en route to the disturbance, the officer told of how that he
strangely encountered an elderly man wandering dazed and confused in the
roadway. "I wish now that I would have got his ID, or found out
who he was," Melero said. "The poor man was evidently lost, and he kept
saying, "It was right above my house."
Shortly afterward, the Liberty Township police officer approached the
object in an area near Churchill/Hubbard Road, at which time he contends
that the electrical instrumentation in his patrol cruiser experienced a
complete power failure.
"It made no sound whatever," Melero said, "and I couldn't look directly
at it because it was so bright. I had to look around it."
The dispatcher for the Trumbull County Sheriff's department, Ms. Roy
Anne Rudolph, confirmed that over 80 calls had been received regarding
the object, which seemed to maintain a definite interest over two
adjacent residential neighborhoods. Families and residents had taken to
the streets in droves to view the phenomenon, which another police
officer of the Hubbard City Police Department advised, was pursued for a
nine hour duration.
The Trumbull County 911 Dispatch Center contacted Wright Patt and
other countless federal agencies, requesting assistance and aircraft
identification. To the disbelief and dismay of the Trumbull County
police officials, no aircraft dispatch or technical assistance or support
was advanced from any of the agencies contacted, which also included the
local FAA at Youngstown Airport, the Youngstown-Warren Regional Air Force
Base (Youngstown, Ohio), and also NASA (Cleveland, Ohio).
According to Melero, NASA had offered the dispatch office the notion
that the planet Mercury was visible for the duration of the occurrence.
The region in question is adjacent to a Defense Logistics Agency and
National Defense Stockpile at 1740 Niles-Warren River Road, one of the
biggest radar/air defense installations in the United States. The
Youngstown Municipal Radar Air Defense Agency is also within the
locality.
"Most people don't realize," advised a Hubbard police officer with
great conviction, "that this air base out here is one of the best kept
secrets in the whole damn country. Don't kid yourself. You wouldn't
believe the hardware."
Repeated efforts to acquire the specific date of the incident have been
unsuccessful, as no written report of the incident had been produced by
the Trumbull County Sheriff's Office. "They are stonewalling you, because
they don't want you requesting the audio copies of those dispatch tapes,"
stated one officer who was advised that this writer sought the audio
recordings made from the 911 Dispatch Center. "On those tapes, it'll
tell you who all was involved in this, which implicates just about
everyone."
The officer even attempted to locate the date himself, and expressed
that his cohorts at the Trumbull County Dispatch Office did not respond
favorably when he began making inquiries.
"Let me get right to the point, all indication leads me to believe that
the 911 Center is stonewalling you!" the officer charged in a letter he
sent to this writer. "I made an attempt to get some more information and
ran into a very polite: 'I can't remember. I don't recall!' I've been
around long enough to know when someone is pissing down my neck and
telling me it's raining out!"
Another officer, interviewed privately, stated "I don't want my
involvement with this known."
In an official letter from Robert J. Caffro, operations manager of
Trumbull County 911, he declared that: "the events under investigation
are in no way being discarded or restricted by this 911 center. As
discussed during prior conversations, we would need a date and
approximate time of the occurrence so that an audio copy could be
produced." 11.
A police official interviewed in June of 1996 stated that his
recollection of the time of the incident was just before the violent and
fatal September 8, 1994 crash of a Boeing 737 near Aliquippa,
Pennsylvania, just miles away. The tragedy took the lives of 132
persons, and the cause of the crash remains under investigation by the
National Transportation Safety Board.
To inflame an already volatile situation, telephone callers to
Pittsburgh area radio stations phoned in to report seeing a
saucer-shaped UFO hovering in the very field of the accident 24 hours
before the tragedy.
It should be noted that the flight pattern of air traffic going to or
from the Pittsburgh airport is right over the Trumbull County, Ohio area.
Inquiries placed by this writer with control tower radar operators at
the Youngstown FAA revealed that there are no current employees now on
duty that would have been employed at the air tower during this time
frame. "All of those people were all fired. There is only a core of two
persons in upper level management here that are hold-overs from then,"
advised the control tower telephone tattler. 12
"All present employees were hired at roughly the same time after the
date in question."
"Isn't that a little unusual?" asked the caller.
"No, I don't think so," came the response. The spokesperson declared
that nobody presently on-duty at the FAA control tower has any knowledge
of the event.
A telephone call placed by this writer to the Youngstown Air Force Base
regarding the UFO pursuit was directed to the public information
officer, who laughed bitterly upon being advised the nature of the call.
"I can assure you," he bellowed with a distrustful spirit while going on
to say that he would have been "awoken" if anything like this had been
true.
"Nothing like that has EVER happened here. I don't know who your
sources for this information is [sic]... and I'm not looking to know... but
REST ASSURED, your info is COMPLETELY BOGUS. You have been blasted with
WRONG INFORMATION."
This writer had the extreme desire to correct the base officer by
invoking the details of the multiple witness event and the phone calls
placed to his air base requesting assistance, but elected to allow the
gentleman to continue on his incorrect path of sincere ignorance or
deliberate concealment.
The account of the UFO disturbance over Trumbull County has been
strangely blacked-out after the drama, as none of the departments
involved notified the news media of the event. There has been no
press reportage of the occurrence. After a recent traffic accident
generated local headlines, one police official being interviewed by an
area reporter complained that the news media should have been just as
interested in the big UFO event as much as they were about the traffic
accident. "The reporter just laughed," observed the officer.
To the best of this writers knowledge, the Trumbull County disturbance
remains a volatile mystery, aggravated by the statements made by the
police officials eluding to the tragic jetliner accident happening miles
away, which cost the lives of many. Also inflaming the drama is the
reshuffling of the staff at the FAA tower and the heated denials by the
Youngstown Air base public relations officer, who stated that "the event
never happened to begin with." His adamant contention, in the face of
solid facts, is most insulting, and a simple "no comment" or "we haven't
a clue" would have been more appreciated. The disruption of the
electronic instrumentation of the Liberty Township patrol cruiser offers
viable evidence that should demand this case attain more widespread
attention and scrutiny, at which time, the skeptical communities and
debunking celebrities would have a quality UFO case to thoroughly
investigate; a case complete with 80 plus witnesses including multiple
police departments to a massive, rotating saucer-shaped red light which
resulted in governmental denial and the appearance of conspiracy.
NOTES:
1 "SIGNAL 50" code term utilized by O.S.P., source: Police
Call Plus, Volume 3, Publisher, Gene Hughes
2. Report On Incident At LeCI, published February, 1996 by Kenny
Young, TASK; also reported in April 9, 1993 Cincinnati Post,
Cincinnati Enquirer, and April 17 Western Star newspapers. O.S.P.
reports and documentation obtained by Dale Farmer, TASK
3. Telephone interview with Captain H. Lake, Shift Commander at
WCI, January 26, 1993
4. Telephone interview with Paul E. Cassidy, Wright-Patt Acting FOIA
Manager, November 1995
5. Report from WCCC Director of Communications, Frank Young, February
6, 1996, and also separate telephone discussion with O.S.P.
dispatcher on December 28, 1995
6. Mysteries Of The Unknown: The UFO Phenomenon, Time-Life
Books, 1987
7. UFO Crash Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum, Leonard Stringfield,1992
8. Telephone interview with Liberty TWP dispatcher, April 1996
9. It was learned that the "wrong" Liberty had been contacted after
clarification from Liberty TWP Police Chief Gerald Wardrop
during a May 1996 telephone interview.
10. Telephone with Liberty TWP Police Officer Tobe Melero, May 1996
11. Fax transmission memo from Robert J. Caffro, Operations Manager
of Trumbull County 911, dated June 25, 1996
12. Telephone call placed to Youngstown FAA Tower, June 1996
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