Good morning all. I hope your weekend was great. I spent mine at the art book fair in Northside, which I hope will become an annual thing. It was rad. But enough about books. It’s time for news.
Two Cincinnati Police officers at the center of ongoing tension between the city and the police union likely violated the department’s Taser policy, experts who viewed body camera footage say. Officers Richard Sullivan and Lawrence Johnson used “horrible judgment,” those experts say, during an incident in August in which they responded to a call from a woman asking officers to remove her two sons from her University Heights apartment. CPD policy states that Tasers should only be used when suspects are “actively resisting arrest.” The two men in the video are never told they are being arrested before officers administer the Tasers and are never read their Miranda rights on the body camera videos.
The incident sparked a battle between Fraternal Order of Police President Dan Hils and city officials after Hils moved to delay testimony from the two officers before the Citizen Complaint Authority, which was created by the city’s Collaborative Agreement as a police accountability measure. At the time, the two young men involved in the incident were being tried for resisting arrest and one with assaulting police for their role in the incident. Both pleaded guilty to those, their first criminal charges. City Manager Harry Black pushed Hils to back off, calling him one evening in late October to ask him to abandon attempts to delay the officers’ testimony before the CCA and threatening to get the U.S. Department of Justice involved. Hils complained that call was “threatening.” Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters issued a restraining order the next day preventing the officers from talking to the CCA.
• Cincinnati is high on the list of cities where people are buying investment properties, a new study suggests. Real estate investment company HomeUnion put the city sixth on its list of places to look for investment properties, based on sales figures for people buying single-family rental homes. Cincy wasn’t the only Ohio city on the list — Columbus ranked second in the nation for sales of rental properties.
• Last week, we reported on city efforts to improve pedestrian safety in a number of neighborhoods after a series of high-profile accidents, some of them fatal, in various Cincinnati communities. One of those neighborhoods, East Price Hill, saw yet another tragic accident this weekend. Longtime Elder High School teacher and running coach Mark Klusman was participating in a neighborhood cleanup Saturday when he was struck by a car on Warsaw Avenue, one of the city’s most dangerous spots for pedestrians. Klusman survived, but he’s currently in intensive care at University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
• Yes, there will be another attempt to get recreation marijuana legalized in Ohio. A group led by Jimmy Gould, who also led a 2015 effort by Responsible Ohio to legalize weed, is planning a 2018 ballot initiative seeking an amendment to the state constitution to that effect. Gould and other Cincinnati-area investors are set to announce the details of that plan today at a news conference in Columbus. Gould is also involved in a company called CannAscend LLC, which was denied a permit to grow medicinal marijuana this year.
• Another bit of marijuana news: It’s unclear whether recipients of legal medicinal marijuana in Ohio will be allowed to own firearms if they’re using the medicine. Federal law prohibits that, but other states, including Hawaii and Nevada, have wrestled with the issue, with some users even challenging it in court. Ohio, a state with especially lax gun regulations, could see similar legal action as medicinal marijuana rolls out over the next year, as this Cleveland Scene article details.
This article appears in Dec 6-13, 2017.