By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

There were no TV cameras, no sharply delivered sound bites and no billing controversies when members of Cincinnati's new Citizen Complaint Authority took the oath of office Wednesday.

Their pay will be $100 biweekly - as opposed to the $100 an hour that the court-appointed monitor was billing the city. But city officials say the Citizen Complaint Authority is just as important to police reforms as Dr. Alan Kalmanoff's successor.

"That's the story. The complaint authority, the progress we're making on implementation," said Councilman David Pepper, one of three council members who helped negotiate the collaborative agreement on racial profiling. "The collaborative is not about the monitor. If the monitor is on the front page every week, we're failing."

Unlike the monitor, the Citizen Complaint Authority is intended to be a permanent layer of oversight for the Cincinnati Police Department. Seven trained board members, with a staff of full-time investigators, will hear complaints of police misconduct, identify trends and make recommendations to the city manager.

The new body replaces and combines the Citizens Police Review Panel and the Office of Municipal Investigation, which critics said were ineffective.

"Today is another milestone, because it shows that the city can be responsible and flexible and change with the times," City Manager Valerie Lemmie said before administering the oath (and hugs) to the seven board members in a simple, 10-minute ceremony at City Hall.

Mayor Charlie Luken appointed the board members in June from among 143 applicants. They are Walter T. Bowers II, Sandra A. Butler, John Eby, Marta Camille Anderson Haamid, Nancy J. Minson, Richard D. Siegel and Justin Wolterman.

Ms. Minson, a holdover from the Citizens Police Review Panel, will serve as chairwoman. The board will hold its first official meeting Jan. 6.

By then, Ms. Lemmie will hire an executive director from the nearly 100 applications she's received. Ms. Lemmie promised that the authority would be allowed to supervise the director as a semi-autonomous, independent agency of city government.

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com