BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati should hire 10 extra police officers specially trained to deal with the mentally ill, city Safety Director Kent Ryan said Wednesday.
Mr. Ryan's proposal is an alternative to a push to hire 33 additional officers at a cost of $3 million in the next three years.
The city has 983 officers but does not have 24-hour police patrols in each of the 52 neighborhoods. Council is scheduled to vote Sept. 23 on whether to hire more officers than the routine recruit classes. Under a plan proposed by council members Phil Heimlich, Jeanette Cissell and Charlie Winburn, a federal grant would help cover the cost of 33 new police positions over the next three years. Mr. Heimlich said projections show the city will see a budget surplus of $14.2 million in 1998 and can afford the additional cost.
Mr. Ryan rejected that plan Wednesday, calling instead for using the federal grant for 10 more officers who have increased training, at a cost to the city of $681,419.
Urban Waldbillig, who is active in issues of mental illness, endorsed Mr. Ryan's plan. He has been among those calling for such training since the February 1997 fatal shooting of Lorenzo Collins. Mr. Collins, an escaped mental patient, was shot by police after lunging at them with a brick.
But Mr. Heimlich sees Mr. Ryan's plan as a poor alternative to increased neighborhood patrols.
"Nothing has been proven better to further reduce crime than around-the-clock community policing," he said. "Until we put a cop in every neighborhood, the job isn't done."
Mr. Ryan disagrees, saying the perception of crime is worse than the reality and that "the addition of 33 officers is not an effective use of limited resources."
He backed his claim by saying the city's population and crime reports continue to fall while response time and arrestrates are better than average for cities of similar size. Response time, for example, improved 3.6 percent last year from the year before to an average of 5.3 minutes, he said.
But to some residents rallying for more police, improving the perception of crime is as important as closing cases.
"We feel like we want more cops not because we want them to make more arrests but because we want presence in the neighborhoods," said Pete Witte, vice president of the Price Hill Civic Club.
