CLEVELAND (WJW) – Newly released video shows police officers teaming up to save a man on Tuesday who was in danger of drowning in the Wade Park Lagoon near the Cleveland Museum of Art.
University Circle police were alerted by officers from the University Hospitals Main Campus that a man, who was being treated for a mental health crisis, walked away from the hospital, jumped into the Wade Lagoon, and was struggling in the water.
On police body camera video, officers and medical personnel can be heard telling the victim, “Come this way, come on, we’re just here to help you, man.”
Among those responding to the scene was University Circle Patrolman Jeff Ridler.
“He started to say he wasn’t able to swim or anything like that, and he did start to go up and down, the drowning motion,” Ridler said.
Two officers began to wade out to the center of the lagoon. However, Ridler, who was a swimmer at Normandy High School and Cleveland State and a former lifeguard and instructor, realized that time was running out.
After taking off his gear and shoes, he ran into the water and quickly swam to the spot where the man had gone under in 20 feet of water.
“He was unresponsive; he was pretty much floating there. I went and gave an underhook under his one arm, got my arm around his chest, and started swimming back with him, getting him up on my hip so that I could keep his head above the water. I was not sure if he was breathing at all at that point or not,” said Ridler.
The body camera video shows the other two officers helping Ridler drag the victim out of the lagoon.
They discovered he was not breathing, so the officers began CPR.
Eventually, they were able to revive the victim.
“This is just what we’re here for, we’re here to help people,” a relieved Ridler said.
When Ridler was a young lifeguard, it was not uncommon for him to help people struggling in the water, but he said this was the first time, while serving as a police officer, that he was able to use his skills to save a drowning victim.
“I tell the guys here, ‘be the police officer that you want responding to a family member in that same situation,’ so I try to think of that same thing. If that were my family member in that lagoon that was drowning, I would want a police officer to go and save him in any way,” said Ridler.
The University Circle police chief said Ridler and the other officers who worked together to rescue and revive the man embody what the department preaches each day: protect and serve with a “servant’s heart.”
“All of that collectively made a huge difference, and we hope that now he’s OK, he’ll get the help he needs and just look back on this as a bad time,” said Chief Tom Wetzel.
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