Cincinnati Police Lt. Col. Ron Twitty, under investigation for allegedly failing to report and lying about a July 4 car accident, wrecked a previous city owned car in 1999 and did not report it, city records show.

        Repair records released by the city Thursday show that the Ford Taurus the assistant chief drove then was fixed in May 1999 after it was in an accident on an undisclosed date. The repairs to the right and left sides of the car cost $906.

Lt. Col. Twitty

        The accident does not appear on the list of previous wrecks in Lt. Col. Twitty's personnel file, where all officers' accidents are supposed to be tracked. The last one there dates back to 1988. All reported accidents would be listed there, officials said.

        Both Chief Tom Streicher and department spokesman Lt. Kurt Byrd said they could not comment on anything about the Twitty case because it is a pending investigation.

        Chief Streicher put his only African-American assistant chief on paid administrative leave July 12 after deciding Col. Twitty's explanation that the car must have been damaged by a hit-skip driver while he slept was not consistent with the evidence, including a lack of debris at the scene in front of Col. Twitty's apartment in Bond Hill.

        The chief, after looking into it himself for three days, handed the investigation over to Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis two weeks ago, the same day Col. Twitty was taken off the job. He said he wanted an outside agency to handle it to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

        Sharon Zealey, Col. Twitty's lawyer and a former U.S. attorney, said her client did report the 1999 accident. It happened during his lunch hour when the assistant chief was navigating the parking lot behind police headquarters, she said.

        “It was routine in every respect,” she said. “It was a scrape to the passenger side of the car. It was no more than a couple of inches long, and he reported it to whoever was at the desk.”

        Superior Chevrolet fixed the body damage to the 1999 Ford Taurus on May 25, 1999, according to the documents, released in response to a public records request.

        Mayor Charlie Luken said he received the report, as did other council members, but he said he had not reviewed it.

        The records were released the same day four groups of Greater Cincinnati ministers held a news conference to support Col. Twitty, a 29-year veteran of the department.

        Members of the Baptist Ministers Conference of Cincinnati and Vicinity, Faith Community Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, Greater Cincinnati African Methodist Episcopal Alliance and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Greater Cincinnati met to say they were disappointed in the chief's news conference July 12 that announced the assistant chief's suspension. That press conference, they said, started a character assassination.

        They also asked that Col. Twitty's police powers be restored. Col. Twitty attended, hugging many of his friends.

        “We will not accept the character assassination of Lt. Col. Ron Twitty based upon improper inferences and assumptions,” the groups' statement said. “We will not rest until these issues are totally resolved, and we insist upon a fair and impartial investigation of the accident report.”

        Ms. Zealey said she has no doubt that sheriff's deputies investigating the July 4 accident have also looked at the 1999 incident. They've also interviewed about 50 people, she said.

        “It's the most thoroughly investigated traffic accident since Chappaquiddick, except there's no dead body, no bridge and no politician,” she said, alluding to the 1969 bridge wreck involving Sen. Edward Kennedy in which his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, was killed.

        “I don't mean to be flip about it. But for an apparent accident where no one saw the actual collision, no one else has ever been treated that way.”

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