In September of 2015, Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black abruptly fired then-Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell. After a very tense Cincinnati City Council meeting where Blackwell’s supporters on Council sparred with Mayor John Cranley and Black over the chief’s firing before a packed house of angry community members and activists, CPD veteran Eliot Isaac was hired as the new chief and a lawsuit against the city threatened by Blackwell faded into the background.
The incident seemed to be receding into city history until late last month, when new information began surfacing about Blackwell’s ouster. Emails between Mayor Cranley and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel regarding Blackwell’s dismissal appeared in December after a lawsuit made Emanuel’s private emails public record.
Shortly afterward, documents surfaced showing that the city had reached a secret $255,000 settlement with Blackwell without notifying Council. The new revelations have reawakened controversy over the firing and raised questions about Cranley’s role in it. They’ve also made Cranley’s political position ahead of the 2017 mayoral election trickier.
A group of prominent black Democrats and community leaders — including Cranley’s 2013 campaign chair and former Cincinnati mayor Dwight Tillery; NAACP Cincinnati head Robert Richardson Sr.; and Eddie Hawkins, president of black police union The Sentinels — gathered at a Dec. 30 news conference called by Cincinnati City Councilman and former CPD officer Wendell Young.
One after another, they blasted the mayor over the emails and the secret nature of the former chief’s settlement, which even City Manager Black has acknowledged should have gone before Council due to the settlement’s importance.
“I want (Cranley) to take responsibility for what he did,” Young said. “I want him to stop hiding behind Harry Black. Come clean with the city that he clearly did what he should not have done, and tell us what he’s going to do to make certain it won’t happen again.”
In a surprise moment, Blackwell, who had a severe stroke in September, spoke to the crowd of more than 200 gathered at the Southern Baptist Church in Avondale for the event via a telephone held up to the mic by community activist Iris Roley.
“I truly appreciate all the support you’ve shown me,” Blackwell said. “I want you guys to keep pushing for the truth. It’s there.”
The event lined up like a preview of the coming mayoral campaign as speaker after speaker criticized the mayor. Among those who spoke were Cranley’s 2017 Democratic primary opponent Cincinnati City Councilwoman Yvette Simpson. Cranley this year is facing Simpson as well as University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees Chair Robert Richardson Jr., who just jumped into the race.
Support from Cincinnati’s black community, marshaled by Tillery and other prominent black leaders, helped Cranley win his 2013 mayoral race against fellow Democrat Roxanne Qualls. Cranley will need to court those voters again as he runs against Simpson and Richardson Jr., both of whom are African-American and have strong roots in the black community.
At his own news conference the same day, the mayor decried Young’s event as a political stunt aimed at boosting his mayoral opponents’ chances in the coming election.
“Let me be clear. Young and Simpson are defending a man who abused his subordinates and city employees instead of standing up for city employees,” Cranley said. “Why? For their political ambition. The safety of the city is at stake and some things are more important than politics.”
Cranley says the emails don’t contradict earlier statements. City Manager Black maintains that Blackwell was fired for cause and that he made the decision to fire the chief, not Cranley.
“The dysfunctionality of the department became a significant distraction when we needed to focus on addressing the spike in crime,” Black explained in a Dec. 29 statement following the revelation of the emails. “After taking into consideration all of the factors associated with this situation, I made the decision to terminate Blackwell for cause. It was a decision made in the best interest of the department and thereby the entire city.”
Black says that 13 officers filed personal statements against Blackwell with charges ranging that he pressured his subordinates for sports tickets to being verbally and mentally abusive. Blackwell denied those charges and pushed for a public forum to defend himself. That forum never materialized, and he was not given a chance to speak during the heated Council meeting occurring just after he was fired.
Blackwell was a popular chief with many Cincinnatians, becoming in his brief tenure a representative for the city’s oft-vaunted community policing efforts and receiving national praise. But there was always tension between the chief and Cranley’s administration. Blackwell was picked by then-City Manager Milton Dohoney in the waning days of Mayor Mark Mallory’s administration, over the protests of incoming Mayor Cranley.
A spike in gun violence in the summer of 2015 led to increased pressure on Blackwell to produce results. That, along with the allegations of misconduct, prompted his firing, Black has said.
At the time Blackwell was fired, Cranley denied he was involved in the decision. But in emails sent to Emanuel in December of 2015, he had a different tone.
“In Cincinnati I inherited a bad chief who happened to be black,” Cranley wrote. “He had enormous vocal black elected and minister support. For 20 months he had the Sentinels (our black cop organization) support and so we waited. Finally Sentinels realized he was so bad that they agreed to go public if we fired him.”
Cranley has said that the emails don’t contradict earlier statements about his lack of involvement in the chief’s firing and that his bigger point is that mayors should work with black officers.
Blackwell’s family railed against the mayor after the emails became public, highlighting the former chief’s record and outside recognition of his work on community policing.
“Cranley writes that he wanted his inherited African-American police chief gone so he pitted the city’s black groups to accomplish his goal,” Blackwell’s family wrote in a statement released Dec. 24. “Blackwell is recognized as one of the nation’s most successful police chiefs. During his tenure, he established significant community policing programs that were recognized by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. He also contributed to President Obama’s 21st Century Task Force report. Blackwell was a community-focused police chief with a national spotlight that cost him his job.”
The Sentinels have also pushed back against Cranley, saying in a strongly worded statement that although a few officers made statements against Blackwell, the organization did not support his ouster.
Councilman Young says he thinks Cranley broke the law by playing a role in Blackwell’s firing, as the city charter gives that power solely to the city manager. Young proposed a motion that would launch an independent investigation into Cranley’s role in the chief’s dismissal, but Council’s Budget and Finance Committee declined to advance that legislation Jan. 3. ©
This article appears in Jan 4-11, 2017.