For nearly two decades, citizens with complaints about Cincinnati police have had an alternative to filing their grievance with police.
They could turn to an independent city agency with powers to investigate allegations of police misconduct.
In reality, few such complaints receive independent investigations.
The bulk of cases brought in recent years to the city's supposed watchdog on the police - the Office of Contract Compliance and Investigations (OCCI) - have been referred to the police department's internal investigations section, an Enquirer investigation found.
In 1995, for example, the city agency investigated just 29 of the 297 complaints it received. The agency referred 228 complaints - or 77 percent of the total - to the police department.
The agency's record last year in undertaking police-related investigations was even worse. With the staff position of police investigator vacant for 10 of 12 months, the agency referred 84 percent of its complaints to the police department, launching a probe in only 26 of the 279 cases it logged.
The agency's head, James Johnson, blames the shortage of investigations on inadequate funding and staffing. He said he has repeatedly complained to the city manager and others in City Hall that he needs a beefed up office - which has three investigators and one dedicated to police complaints - but that they have done nothing to address the problem.
One African-American community leader disagreed, calling what the agency is doing - or not doing - a sham.
"The paradox in the (OCCI) situation is that a citizen goes to (OCCI) for an independent investigation. (OCCI) doesn't have the staff, so what do they do? They give it over to internal investigations to do," said Milton Hinton, president of the local NAACP.
"That is ludicrous. That is a sham. That is not fair to the citizens who go there expecting an independent arm of the city to do an investigation."
Mr. Hinton also worries that a separate group, a citizens review panel on police, is not empowered to investigate police wrongdoing. He has called for improvements that would change that.
Whether the city needs another police investigative entity has been and is likely to continue to be fodder for public policy debate in Cincinnati. It can be pointed out the city already has OCCI.
Created in 1980 and called the Office of Municipal Investigation (which is now part of OCCI), the independent city agency's original mission was to police the police. In recent years, it has barely done that.
Even when the agency investigated the highly publicized and much-televised 1995 arrest of Pharon Crosby, it did so only on the orders of the city manager. Mr. Johnson said he would not otherwise have intervened.
That is because Mr. Crosby was not injured, which has become one of the requirements of late for the short-staffed OCCI to launch an investigation.
"I have to think of the resources I've got, the seriousness of the injuries, the egregiousness of the act, was there an abuse of a right," Mr. Johnson said.
"I wish I could investigate more (complaints). But when you have the staff I do, you're not going to get the kind of mileage some people think."
Mr. Johnson would like to expand his staff to 10 investigators and one chief investigator, a role the one-time prosecutor now fills. He would then split the investigative staff down the middle, with one half doing police investigations and the other doing all remaining city-related investigations.
What Mr. Johnson wants has gotten little support at City Hall.
City Manager John Shirey, while agreeing that Mr. Johnson has been vocal about his needs, said that he is not unlike most other department heads who constantly want more resources.
"Jim is a frequent complainer about needing more staff," Mr. Shirey said. "But where do you draw the line and try to balance resources with needs?"
Mr. Shirey also said he was troubled by Mr. Johnson's difficulty in hiring a police investigator in 1996, and wonders how he could fill 10 investigator positions when he had problems filling one. He also described Mr. Johnson's wish for 10 investigators as "just ridiculous."
"The bottom line is, (OCCI) would not be a good use of taxpayer resources to investigate every case and duplicate the same investigation twice that was done by internal investigation," Mr. Shirey said.
Mr. Shirey has for some time, however, been mulling a possible retooling of OCCI. He thinks there is a place in Cincinnati for the agency, but he wants it to be more effective.
Some city officials think OCCI is not needed to investigate police complaints.
Safety Director Kent Ryan, who described OCCI as "unusual," said that maybe the agency's "best purpose is best served as being kind of a review function." In that capacity, it would review completed internal investigation cases.
One reason Mr. Johnson thinks a revitalized OCCI is necessary is that, in his mind, the independent agency is more likely to conduct an impartial investigation of alleged police wrongdoing than police are.
"They think they can be completely fair and completely impartial. And they may want to be," Mr. Johnson said. But it is "inherent in our process to be more impartial and more distant."
Public perception in Cincinnati is that that police may go easy on other police, said Mr. Johnson, and that alone is a good reason for impartial investigations by non-police.
"I think people can accept a determination by this office that everything was done according to Hoyle by police, more so than they could from the police division," he said.
Police Lt. Col. Theodore Schoch said the idea of having OCCI is good because it provides "a check-and-balance system." But he also feels his internal investigators are impartial.
"All I know is we do what we do pretty well as far as being impartial and objective," he said. "As far as being removed from it . . . we're not as removed from it as OCCI can be. I don't know if that's a negative or not."
The assistant chief said he sees police and OCCI as a team. "We all work for the city, and we're trying to produce the best product. And that product happens to be an honest investigation that's objective and factual. And that's all."
Councilman Phil Heimlich said that OCCI was not designed to investigate every complaint that comes in the door. It was set up to review all of the complaints, keep some for itself to investigate and send the rest to the police division, he said.
If Mr. Johnson needs more help to handle investigations, he has a standing offer from the city manager to temporarily add staff, according to Mr. Heimlich and Mr. Shirey. That was done during the Pharon Crosby case.
"Whether OCCI needs additional resources beyond that is up to the city manager," said Mr. Heimlich.
The NAACP's Mr. Hinton also worries that another perceived watchdog on police, a citizens police review panel, is not really a watchdog at all. After a visit to the panel two months ago, he said, he came away with the impression that "their mission was not clear to them at that time."
Said Mr. Hinton: "They were just kind of feeling their way along."
Nearly a year ago, in the aftermath of the Crosby case, the city manager named 12 people to his Citizens Police Advisory Panel. The panel now numbers 11.
Between 80 and 90 police departments nationwide have outside civilian review bodies, up from 65 two years ago and just one in 1970, said Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Mr. Hinton said another of the panel's shortcomings is that it does not have its own investigatory staff or subpoena power.
Mr. Shirey disagreed with Mr. Hinton's view of the panel, which meets monthly. He said it has fulfilled its three-pronged role of providing civilian involvement in interviewing prospects for police recruit classes, reviewing police training and practices, and reviewing how officers are disciplined.
Said Mr. Shirey: "I think the mission is clear to the panel. (For Mr. Hinton) and some other people, that's not the mission they want."
The panel has made suggestions to the city manager about additional training for existing officer and recently reviewed a police proposal to add bean bag guns to its arsenal of weapons. The panel endorsed that proposal.
It also made recommendations for police handling of the Jammin' on Main event this spring, based on an analysis of what went wrong in 1996; examined the adequacy of police response to a near-riot on Burnet Avenue last summer; and probed police investigations of several citizen complaints.
One complaint was dismissed as untruthful, and the others have not been completed.
Barbara Glueck, the panel's chair, said the panel is moving forward but has "a very difficult job."
"It may look like we are moving very slowly, but we're trying our best."
She also wonders whether the city needs another watchdog on the police.
If both OCCI and the review panel are not careful, Mr. Hinton warned, they will find themselves caught in the middle.
"They are going to find themselves attributed to being able to do more than they are actually able to do."
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