Mayor John Cranley yesterday offered his support for involving the local NAACP in ongoing talks between the University of Cincinnati Police Department and Cincinnati Police Department, but it wasn’t necessarily the do-gooder tale it might seem. At least that’s how the NAACP sees it.
UCPD has been mired in issues since the shooting death of unarmed black motorist Samuel DuBose by UCPD officer Ray Tensing last year, including revelations that its former chief encouraged officers to increase enforcement within a “no-fly zone” and then mislead investigators after the shooting. Stops increased by 400 percent during the year leading up to the July 19 shooting of DuBose.
Rather than graciously accepting the invitation, however, Cincinnati NAACP President Rob Richardson, Sr. questioned the mayor’s motives, The Enquirer reported yesterday. Richardson, Sr.’s son, Rob Richardson, Jr., is the UC Board of Trustees chairman who some believe could be mulling a mayoral run next year.
Richardson, Sr. says he hasn’t heard from the mayor about many other issues and suggested that Cranley could be playing politics.
In true Cranley fashion, the mayor said that surely is not the case, then offered a well-crafted sound bite that kind of sounds otherwise:
“If the NAACP doesn’t think this is important enough to be involved, then that speaks volumes given that his son is the chairman of the UC board,” Cranley said. “If the NAACP doesn’t want to be involved, that’s fine. We can ask the Cincinnati Black United Front and local National Action Network, and the invitation is always open for the NAACP.”
• In other clearly non-politically related news, the Historic Conservation Board yesterday rescheduled the vote on whether or not the Joseph Auto Group family will be allowed to demolish the historic Dennison Hotel building on Main Street.
Joseph’s attorneys had asked for more time to respond to a report issued by Cincinnati Urban Conservator Beth Johnson, who was highly skeptical of their demolition application.
That doesn’t mean Johnson can single-handedly stop it, however.
The conservation board is comprised of seven members, five of whom were recent appointments made on Mayor John Cranley’s watch. Among those appointments, made by City Manager Harry Black, is developer Shree Kulkarni. The developer in the past has butted heads with the very board on which he now sits — because, as we noted in Morning News yesterday, he wanted to tear down historic buildings on Fifth Street to build a parking lot.
The vote has been rescheduled for May 26.
• Meanwhile, The Enquirer has the details of infighting among the Joseph family itself. Sixty-four-year-old Marie Joseph has sued big brother and Joseph Auto Group CEO Ron Joseph, accusing him of cutting his siblings out while consolidating the company’s holdings.
Apparently, this is not the first time these two Josephs have fought it out in court. The Enquirer detailed a few other rich people problems plaguing the siblings in this paragraph:
“Pineridge LLC, an entity controlled by Ron Joseph and his wife Marcia, filed a lawsuit in Hamilton County Municipal Court last year to evict Marie Joseph and her son Derek from a Mount Lookout home it planned to sell. The lawsuit claimed she’d rebuffed requests to leave since summer 2014. The home is located one block from where Ron and Marcia Joseph live.”
You can read more about all of this here.
• Hamilton County could finally be on track to update its outdated crime lab. County Commissioners yesterday accepted a proposal to build a new facility, which could cost around $40 million.
Attempts to get a plan approved that would have renovated a former hospital in Mount Airy fell through. Coroner Lackshmi Sammarco has long advocated for a new facility, as the department currently works in a 40-year-old building in need of major upgrades, which she says inhibits productivity. The coroner’s office tests all of the county’s DNA, drug, ballistics and other forensic cases, as well as similar services for more than a dozen other municipalities.
• The Banks has some new tenants lined up, including a luxury bowling alley and live music venue.
• The Supreme Court seems to be divided on President Obama’s executive action on immigration, which would temporarily grant quasi-legal status to undocumented immigrants whose children were born in the U.S. Around 4 million people could be shielded from deportation if it is upheld.
The court could end up split 4-4, however, which would uphold a lower court’s decision that has kept the actions from going into effect. Doubt this sort of thing has anything to do with why Republicans refuse to allow a confirmation hearing for Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland no matter how bad it makes them look.
• The sponsor of a controversial Tennessee transgender bill has pulled it until at least next year. Advocates from both sides are geared up for a fight over the legislation, which would require students to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender at birth. Perhaps the decision to table it for now might have something to do with the $1.3 billion in Title IX funding the state’s attorney general says could be in jeopardy if it passes.
• Also in Tennessee, family movie night at the Tennessee Titans football stadium got a lot more fun when the field’s sprinkler system came on.
• Also in bathroom news, hand dryers are apparently spraying viruses up into the air, though manufacturers note that this wouldn’t happen if people would wash their hands correctly before drying them with their space-age technology.
• This guy wants to know why society spends tax money on things that not everyone uses. In this case, he’s mad about the $4.2 million a year the city will pay to operate the streetcar, but probably not upset about things like this.
This article appears in Apr 13-20, 2016.