Wednesday, July 14, 1999
$50K pledged to fight crime
BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — Kenton County officials are promising $50,000 to Covington to help boost the city's anti-crime efforts in the Eastside neighborhood.
Representatives of the county and city stood in the sun in an Eastside park Tuesday afternoon extolling the virtues of cooperation. Covington police said money is what they need to keep Operation Clean Sweep going, and Judge-executive Dick Murgatroyd said he's glad to help.
But there's dissent bubbling under the surface, and it started at a town meeting Saturday. Sheriff's Deputy Ray Murphy, who is expected to run for Covington mayor, quizzed Mr. Murgatroyd and Jailer Terry Carl about why jail inmates were being used to work at a county golf course when they had been cleaning up trash on the Eastside. Both officials took the blame for the change, but said they didn't intend to slight the cleanup program.
So Monday, the judge-executive said he asked what the county could do to help boost Operation Clean Sweep. Now the judge-executive is promising to give some. He proposes $25,000 this next fiscal year, which begins in July, then $15,000 the following year and $10,000 the next. Mr. Murgatroyd said the commissioners all are committed to the funding also. He plans to bring it for a vote July 27.
The county initially offered the services of its police department; Covington preferred money. The two departments have been at odds since late last year over a $180,000 federal grant for which the city applied. The county filed a complaint with the state attorney general's office, claiming it deserved half the grant money. The attorney general recently ruled that the county might be correct and the county could pursue the matter.
Covington's Lt. Col. Bill Dorsey said the grant dispute and Tuesday's $50,000 were not connected.
Invoking his department's worst day in years, he said the same cooperation exists between the departments now as on the early morning of Jan. 4, 1998. That's the day Covington Officer Mike Partin was helping a Kenton County officer chase a man on the bridge. Officer Partin fell from the bridge to his death.
Mr. Murgatroyd also said some people are trying to make an issue out of the fact that the county's money won't be going to the county sheriff's department, another agency involved in the sweep project.
He said he doesn't have any problem with Sheriff Chuck Korzenborn. The money is headed for the city, he said, simply because he asked what the county could do and that's what the city suggested. Had Covington officials suggested getting more help from the sheriff's department, Mr. Murgatroyd said, he would have tried to do that instead.
Operation Clean Sweep started in March with Covington police and the sheriff's department promising to focus on the neighborhood, with a reputation for shootings and widespread drug dealing. Patrols increased; officials met with residents. Now, the police department is giving much of the credit for the city's 14 percent drop in violent crime for the first six months of the year to the special project.
But the focus on the neighborhood has waned. The sheriff's department cut back its hours there, as it expected to do from the start, when manpower was needed elsewhere.
Police had hoped to do it around-the-clock every day of the week. The project now gets two to four officers, seven days a week, about 16 to 18 hours a day, said Lt. Col. Bill Dorsey.
He said the $50,000 would pay for enough overtime to keep the extra patrols going through the rest of the year.
Tom Steidel, Covington's assistant city manager, called the county's financial commitment a compassionate move.
“Maybe we're learning a lesson here,” he said, referring to the city-county cooperation. “This program works.”
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