Police accountability activists say efforts to reinvigorate Cincinnati’s historic Collaborative Agreement are in an “emergency” state following dustups between the union that represents police officers and the city over the role of the Citizen Complaint Authority, an independent board created to investigate allegations of police misconduct.
The Black United Front’s Iris Roley and Rev. Damon Lynch III, who helped fight for the Collaborative following the 2001 police shooting of unarmed black 19-year-old Timothy Thomas in Over-the-Rhine, held a meeting yesterday evening at New Prospect Baptist Church in Roselawn. They’re sounding alarms about the rocky road refresh efforts launched earlier this year have taken and the overall health of the historic agreement originally overseen by the U.S. Department of Justice between the Cincinnati Police Department, the city and racial justice advocates. Other high-profile leaders, including representatives from the NAACP, Sentinels Police Union President Eddie Hawkins and CPD Chief Eliot Isaac, also attended the meeting. It came just a day after a second town hall meeting about the refresh efforts put on by the city.
Other topics attendees voiced concerns about: displacement of black residents from quickly-developing neighborhoods and the lack of economic opportunities many minorities face.
But the immediate impetus for the gathering was more specific. Earlier this year, the Fraternal Order of Police voted to exit refresh efforts after Cincinnati Police Detective Shannon Heine was criticized by Hamilton County Prosecutors and police reform activists during the Ray Tensing Trial. The union later voted to rejoin the effort, but not before serious tension emerged.
Then, last month, FOP President Dan Hils moved to keep two officers accused of excessive force and racial profiling from having to testify before the Citizens Complaint Authority. A judge upheld his request, and the officers haven’t testified before the police accountability group. When news came out about that action earlier this month, Roley and Lynch began circulating calls for the community meeting.
The officers’ accuser was undergoing a criminal trial at that time for allegedly assaulting one of the officers, and Hils said he didn’t want the CCA to interfere with that. City Manager Harry Black stepped into the fray with a late-night phone call Oct. 27 telling Hils to back off of his request or risk the involvement of the U.S. Department of Justice. Hils called that a threat and, following the mayoral election, released a recording he made of that phone call.
“It was a dangerous precedent to try to get around that part of the Collaborative,” Roley told attendees at last night’s emergency meeting in Roselawn about Hils’ move.
All of this has led to serious concern from black leaders about the state of the Collaborative. The drama comes at a time when community surveys show distrust in police is still high in the black community, and as racial tensions in general are high.
“The federal government is not your friend anymore,” NAACP Legal Defense Fund Senior Counsel Monique Dixon told attendees, pointing to divisive statements and efforts to weaken police accountability policies by President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Also hanging in the background: the fact that big racial disparities remain in the arrests CPD makes. Use of force by CPD has dropped nearly 70 percent in the past 15 years. But disparities in arrests and police shootings have proven stubborn. Seventy-seven percent of felony arrestees were black in 2014 — the same as 2001. And since 2010, 28 black individuals have been involved in officer-involved shootings, while seven white individuals have been involved in similar incidents. The city’s population is 46 percent black.
“We are 45 percent black in the city, and we’re arresting 67 percent adults who are black for misdemeanors and felonies,” civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein said at Tuesday’s town hall meeting. “So what is that? Are we going to be satisfied by saying ‘blacks commit more crimes’ or are we going to dig deeper to find out why that is? Because in the old days we were policing the black community more severely than the white community. So what we wanted in the refresh is to dig deeper and figure out whether we can get to the bottom of these numbers.
“We have a ton of work to do. We’re here because everyone who ran for council said they believe in the Collaborative. Both mayoral candidates said they believe in the Collaborative. The FOP has voted to come back to the Collaborative.”
This article appears in Nov 15-22, 2017.