"The Cleveland police should be ashamed of themselves.... These girls were five minutes away."

"They were looking for years and years. They were right under their nose."

One neighbor remembered occasional late-night deliveries of groceries to the boarded-up shoe box of a house in a rough-edged West Side neighborhood here.

Another remarked on a porch light that burned at night, even though many of the windows were covered.

“Why would an abandoned house have a porch light on?” he recalled thinking.

Still another said his sister had once seen a figure in an upstairs window, pounding on the glass.

ADDED: The quotes above are from the NYT. The Daily News puts it more bluntly: "Cleveland kidnapping house of horrors: Neighbors reported seeing naked women crawling on leashes, a woman with a baby pounding on a window for help... but cops walked away 3 times."

“They didn’t take it seriously,” said Elsie Cintron, who lived three doors down from the ramshackle residence where the three victims finally broke free Monday evening....

On one occasion in the spring of 2012, four local senior citizens called police — and waited two hours in vain for authorities to appear....

AND: The 911 transcript is evidence of the depth of the problem.