Wednesday, January 20, 1999
Police reviews supported
Meeting discusses civilian board
BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A civilian panel to investigate complaints against police has been something Leatha Burden has sought for 24 years.
The official version of what happened to the Walnut Hills minister in 1974 is that police charged her with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstructing justice after she gathered a large crowd against officers who arrested her sons for allegedly stealing beer from a pony keg.
She was convicted but says what really happened was that police, searching for a suspect in the deaths of two officers, beat her after she let them in her home.
“I was a victim of police brutality, and nothing was done about it,” she said. “And it's still happening.”
At the time, she complained to the American Civil Liberties Union, but she says she felt police didn't care about her concerns.
Ms. Burden and about 20 others voiced their support at a meeting Tuesday in Cincinnati City Hall for an independent panel that would hold police accountable for misconduct.
A watchdog group proposed by Councilman Tyrone Yates would have the city manager appoint a seven-member panel with authority to compel officers to testify about complaints. That plan appears to have enough votes to pass in a final council vote scheduled for Thursday.
In 1997, 38 of the 50 largest U.S. cities had some form of civilian review.
Such boards take the secrecy out of investigations into police misconduct, said Al Gerhardstein, a Cincinnati civil-rights attorney who fought for the issue.
The civilian board has the support of the Sentinel Police Association, an organization of 230 of the city's 260 black officers.
But local Fraternal Order of Police President Keith Fangman says police already are accountable to internal reviews and the city's independent Office of Municipal Investigations.
“This police division already suffers from a serious morale problem,” Officer Fangman said. “There's been a feeling among the majority of the rank-and-file that they can't so much as blink without being second-guessed and criticized from some of the vocal minority and even certain members of city council.”
The issue has been simmering since the 1997 police shooting death of Lorenzo Collins.
The day he escaped from a University Hospital psychiatric ward, Mr. Collins, 25, refused to drop a brick after 15 armed officers surrounded him in a Corryville yard.
While officers involved were cleared of wrongdoing, his shooting set off protests by some African-Americans and advocates for the mentally ill and prompted a Justice Department mediator to work with groups that recommended a watchdog panel.
Cincinnati's police union says the division already rids itself of bad officers. The division fired 22 officers between 1995 and 1997 — more than cities such as Dayton, Ohio, which fired one officer in the same time period, and Columbus, which fired four.
Ms. Burden says her encounters with police have clouded her view. Police have not been able to solve the 1990 shooting death of her son, Alan Wooten, who was 27 when he was killed in the West End.
She says a review board would not erase her community's mistrust of police, she says, but it would give them a place to feel heard.
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