The Grandview Heights police
gained their reputation for aggressive intrusiveness mostly by stopping
as many cars as possible especially late at night and on
weekends. I had one follow me for ten minutes to try to find a
reason to pull me over. After a short conversation, and the
standard sobriety test, let me go. I thought I was succumbing to
paranoia by take the back streets returning from dinner on one St.
Patrick's Day, until I spotted someone hopping through the
alleys. If you do need to drive through Grandview during these
hours, try to avoid the area of the intersection of 1st and NorthWest
Blvd., and the streets that connect it to 3rd near Kingswood Lumber,
Edgehill and Burrell.
I am not sure whether they
chase cars because they need the money from lucrative DWI arrests, or
because they are trying to establish a need for their existence.
They are not very good at preventing robbery, my house has been broken
into twice since I have been here. Still, they are very happy to
send a cruiser out to you for any reason, even if it is just because
you
don't like what someone says to you.
The Origin of Grandview Heights
Division of the Northwest Territory -
After the end of the revolutionary war, at the close of the eighteenth
century, what is now Franklin Co. was the intersection of four land
grant areas. Grandview Heights was formed from the western part of the
Refugee Tract. This four and a half mile tall tract that ran from the
Scioto river east forty-two miles, past Buckeye Lake, was promised to
refugees from Canada and Nova Scotia that had assisted the United
States in the war against Great Britain. It also included most of the
current downtown area of Columbus, south of Fifth St. and north of St.
Rt. 104. Now you can guess where Refugee Rd. got its name.
In March of 1802, a 392 acre tract, in half section 6, Township
5, Range 22, was granted to Lieutenant Col. Carpenter Bradford of the
Plantation of Medumcook in the County of Lincoln and Commonwealth
of Massachusetts by President Thomas Jefferson. He and his wife sold
it to Joseph Hunter, who divided it, and sold a 70 acre portion to
James O'Harra. They passed it to Samuel Bitler in 1832.
The area in the vicinity of First Avenue between Virginia and
Palmer was later owned by Eliza Steitz until the early 1900's.
