LIBERTY — The owner of a house neighboring a behavioral care hospital expressed frustration at Tuesday’s trustees meeting over trespassing escapees.

Joe Pinti, whose home abuts Belmont Pines — a 51,580-square-foot facility that evaluates, stabilizes and treats children 5-18 who are experiencing a mental health crisis situation and need immediate intervention — explained to trustees that dealing with the facility’s escapees has been an issue for him all summer.

Pinti said it wasn’t until he made a Facebook post amassing 5,000 views that Belmont Pines CEO Eric Kennedy reached out to Pinti’s fiancee to try and resolve the issue. Pinti said the “little chicken wire fence” the facility put up as a solution isn’t the answer and only creates more problems.

“That’s not OK. It’s a safety hazard. If my kid’s outside (in) the driveway and one of these, I don’t want to call them mentally ill children or whatever the case may be with them, they can come over, they run right through my yard every time; I’ve got multiple videos,” Pinti said. “If one of them grabs my child and uses my child as leverage or something of that nature, there’s going to be bigger issues.”

Pinti said the fence is useless and thinks it’s not on Belmont Pines property and is easily avoidable.

“They can literally go right behind it, right to my shed and hide in my shed; they can hide in my camper. I keep that stuff locked, but you can break (into) anything,” Pinti said. “They need to fence that place in and put a security guard where you have to go through this (entrance). They need to do something other than what they have now.”

Police Chief Toby Meloro said they’ve met with Belmont Pines representatives numerous times about the escapees, which the township’s officers have tracked down previously.

“Their issue is they are not a detention center. They don’t feel they need to do any of that,” Meloro said. “For my officers to go chase someone and they go up on the interstate and get hit by a car, who’s liable?”

Meloro said multiple CEOs from the organization have maintained the same stance in meetings with trustees — that they will not pursue escapees off the facility’s property because of liability issues — which he said he understands.

Trustee Devon Stanley said the escapee issue is a recurring problem with each of the organization’s CEOs.

“Each one is trying a different way to do it, whether personnel minded or different doors or different locks,” Stanley said. “But where there’s a will, there’s a way. They always end up with one or two bad kids and just seem to get the other kids to break out with them and it happens every couple of months.”

Stanley said he’s also frustrated, because he’s afraid the township’s officers will get hit by a car while chasing an escapee across the street, which he doesn’t want happening.

Four teens — two 14 year-olds, one 17 year-old and a 13 year-old — fled the facility in June 2021. Tips from the public led to their discovery, and Meloro intended to meet with Belmont Pines to improve security then.

Liberty police responded to the facility in April of that year on reports of a “riot” that sent 12 residents of Belmont Pines to the Trumbull County juvenile detention center.

Kennedy could not be reached for comment Tuesday night. A woman who answered the phone said he would be available in the morning.