Fox 8 Cleveland WJW

Driver indicted for harassing Cleveland police, stalling emergency responses

CLEVELAND (WJW) – Video released to the FOX 8 I-Team shows why a driver is facing charges for harassing Cleveland police in the streets, even tying them up when they needed to get to emergencies.

Cuyahoga County prosecutors have indicted Gavin Roberts. He faces a felony charge of disrupting public services and lesser charges for obstructing official business and aggravated menacing.

Body camera video shows why police say they had trouble with Roberts and some buddies all night.

Police say the car Roberts was driving kept going past the scene of a shooting with no headlights.

At other times, the car kept following officers on patrol, speeding through neighborhoods or driving around the second district police station.

Police say they even heard someone in the car yelling threats to shoot cops.

“You guys lucky I stopped this time,” Roberts told officers in one traffic stop encounter.

“Oh, lucky, huh?” the officer responded.

The video also shows Roberts giving an officer a hard time about his window during a traffic stop.

“I’m asking you, don’t roll your window up all the way,” the officer said.

“I won’t,” Roberts answered.

“Can you leave it right there?” the officer then said.

“No,” Roberts said.

“Can you meet me halfway and go halfway? It’s for our safety,” the officer asked.

“My safety, too,” Roberts said.

Eventually, police go back up to the car again and say, “You guys are messing with us.”

“You guys are messing with me, right now,” Roberts interrupted.  

“Trying to do our jobs and you guys are following us,” the officer said. “If we go to a run and you guys keep following us, we are going to do something about it.”

Roberts answered with, “What can you do?” and, “Shut the **** up.”

All of that happened in January. Video has now been released to the I-Team.

While Roberts has been indicted, police have filed traffic tickets, too.

This comes to light along with what happened last week.

A man shot and wounded a Cleveland officer during an investigation into a stolen car. Then, a driver went around the Euclid police station taunting officers. Someone else pointed a gun at police on the Shoreway.

Roberts is pleading not guilty to the indictment.

But, he’s not talking to the I-Team. We called him. He didn’t want to answer questions, and he claimed, on the night in question, he had no interaction with police. Then, he hung up.

The video shows police ultimately lost patience and put all of the people in the car in handcuffs. Roberts is the only one facing charges.

Police say dealing with that car that night led to delays in answering other calls. It even took 56 minutes to get to one call.