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The Cincinnati Beacon
When Easy Politics Trumps Good Crime Fighting
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
 Photo courtesy of here.
Guest article by Greg Harris, candidate for Cincinnati City Council.
In case you haven’t heard, Cincinnati has a crime problem. Unfortunately, when it comes to fighting crime, City Council has too often allowed easy politics to trump good policy.
Case in point: In 2005, the Cincinnati Business Committee and other business groups commissioned nationally renowned police expert John Linder (http://www.linderandassociates.net) to examine the culture and effectiveness of the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD). The study has since been buried. Because the funding was private (apparently a condition of CPD cooperation), it did not qualify as a public document subject to Ohio open records laws.
What does exist is a June 2006 PowerPoint summary of the report’s findings that is public record because the presentation was made to public officials. In it, Linder expresses deep admiration for Cincinnati’s rank and file police officers. But then he goes on to say of CPD’s leadership that its “systemically defensive posture hamstring operations, effecting all basic systems.”
A survey of 635 police officers from 11/14/05 to 12/2/05 contains very troubling findings. For example, there are major disconnects between police officers and police leadership when it comes to priorities. 93.7% of officers said arresting violent criminals should be a priority, but only 48.5% believe it’s a CPD priority. Only 18% of officers believe writing tickets should be a priority, yet 79.1% believe this is a CPD priority
There’s also major mistrust of police supervisors by rank and file police officers. Few officers (28.1%) believe that discipline in the CPD is fair and uniform. Most police officers (64%) say their supervisors are more concerned with being obeyed than understood, and only 43% of officers find it useful to go to their supervisor to discuss a problem. Many officers (57.7%) also believe their supervisors need to spend more time on patrol.
Nearly all police officers (92.2%) believe they do not have any say in what CPD as an organization does. Perhaps this disempowerment is behind why over 31% say that they would leave the department if they had the opportunity.
Linder’s recommendations, issued in 2006, include calling on the Cincinnati Police Department to implement new technologies and to reallocate existing resources. Linder says implementation of Tri-State Regional Compstat technology would increase “effectiveness and efficiency of CPD law enforcement,” resulting in “significantly lower levels of crime.” Compstat-type meetings would allow officers to “discuss current crime conditions, patterns, spikes, clusters, and trends” and “formulate strategies, tactics, programs, policies to address crime.” With the right technology, 161 fewer new officers would need to be hired over the next few years.
The disconnection between cops in the trenches and their leadership has not been examined by City Council. To the contrary, Council has enabled the status quo by hiring 75 more officers and then 60 new officers over the last couple years without investigating problems with CPD leadership.
As seen in last Fall’s painful budget deliberations, Council debated reducing spending on social services and closing health and recreation centers without examining public safety spending that consumes 2/3 of our overall budget.
When elected to Council, I pledge to:
*investigate the breakdown of trust between police officers and their supervisors in order to improve police morale;
*link police funding to performance benchmarks, including technological innovations;
*pursue a performance audit of CPD that shows where existing resources are spent, and how they can be reallocated to get more police on the streets.
City Council’s priorities should not be driven by political expediency. A blank check from City Council to the Cincinnati Police Department does not equate to effective crime fighting. Smart, innovative systemic change is needed to enhance public safety for the long term.
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