July will mark the 31st anniversary of the last time Toledo police went on strike.
They were joined by the city's firefighters in what was believed to be the first time a city's police and firefighters walked off the job the same day.
Toledo's public safety workers had reached an impasse with the city in negotiations, with disputes ranging over pay raises, benefits, and the number of officers and firefighters assigned to each crew.
The unions rejected a final offer that called for a 2 percent pay increase the first year and 1 percent in the subsequent two years of the contract and preserved a cost-of-living adjustment.
The walkout, on July 1, 1979, led to 48 hours of mayhem in parts of the city, with countless acts of arson, including the firebombing of the former Plaza Hotel on Monroe Street across from the Toledo Museum of Art.
Some citizens armed themselves with shotguns and other weapons. A TARTA bus driver was killed and another was robbed, prompting the transit agency's chief to suspend service because he feared for the drivers' safety.
Councilman D. Michael Collins, a police officer at the time who stayed on the job, recalled the 1979 strike as "painful."
"The panic that went through the city, it was like a war zone. The citizens were put at risk," he said.
He condemned the possibility of another police strike.
"There is no way that a police organization can condone a strike," he said. "We are the thin blue line, and it is our responsibility to protect that."
During the 1979 strike, Lucas County sheriff's deputies kept the peace as best they could but were overwhelmed. So were firefighters from 13 surrounding communities who came to Toledo's aid under an agreement the city had once resisted.
A July 2 article in The Blade reported at least 15 buildings burned to the ground in a one-block area bounded by Bancroft, Linwood, Beacon, and 14th streets. Linwood, in particular, "looked as though it had been bombed," the story said.
Ohio's governor in 1979 was James A. Rhodes. He was in China at the time of the strike and contemplated sending the Ohio National Guard to Toledo to keep order. Toledo's congressman, Thomas L. Ashley, asked Mr. Rhodes to give Toledo's strike "priority attention."
"Serious violence possible," said Mr. Ashley's message, sent via U.S. Ambassador Leonard Woodcock.
Mr. Rhodes, however, didn't send National Guard troops. He was nine years removed from the fatal shootings that occurred when he sent guardsmen to Kent State University in an attempt to quell Vietnam War protesters.
Doug DeGood, Toledo's 32-year-old mayor, collapsed in his office from stress. He spent 24 hours in what is now Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center.
Lucas County Common Pleas Judge George Kiroff granted the city an injunction that required employees to return to their jobs and said that any union that did not end its strike would be fined $25,000 and each of its striking members would be fined $2,500 a day.
Negotiations resumed, and in the early hours of July 3, city officials announced that the strikers had agreed to return to work.
First Published April 7, 2010, 11:01 p.m.
