By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The expert hired to help write Cincinnati's latest version of its controversial use-of-force policy is a former deputy police chief in Los Angeles credited with publicly blasting his colleagues for police abuse long before scandals prompted reform there.

Now, Lou Reiter is a Rhode Island-based consultant who has worked on Justice Department agreements in five other cities. In those, including Columbus and Pittsburgh, he worked for the federal government.

Here, Reiter's working for the other side. His version of Cincinnati's policy is being reviewed by Justice officials. It will be included in monitor Saul Green's next report, due July 1.

City officials and Reiter say they hope it resolves many, if not all, of the issues Green was critical of in his first report last week.

In that review, Green criticized the city for not writing acceptable use-of-force and other policies, for missing deadlines and for not instituting all the changes required for handling citizens' complaints.

But Reiter says the debate over the current version of Cincinnati's force policy had more to do with semantics than significance.

"I think it's just different terminology," Reiter said. "(The city) wanted to keep some language they'd trained their people with. And Justice didn't agree."

He did agree with the government that one term Cincinnati wanted to use - "restraining force" - was too vague.

"I could see," he said, "where that would be a lightning rod."

That phrase is not in the pending revised policy. Instead, there are other types of force, with definitions. They range from "escorting," or using light pressure to guide a person, to "hard hands," which means physical pressure to force someone down and "serious use of force." The latter includes any critical firearm discharge, hitting someone on the head with a baton and deadly force.

Reiter said Cincinnati, in some ways, is "in much better shape" than some of the other cities who've dealt with Justice agreements. "They were doing taped interviews and witness interviews before other departments were doing it," Reiter said. "In that respect, they're way ahead of the game."

He retired from the LAPD in 1981 after 22 years there. It was in a retirement speech, according to the Joe Domanick book To Protect and to Serve, that Reiter accused South Central officers of acting like "a hard-charging street army" and treating "everyone who was black as a bad guy."

South Central became the epicenter of the riots that followed the 1992 acquittals of four LAPD officers who beat Rodney King the year before.

Chief Tom Streicher said he hoped most, if not all, remaining issues would be settled in the policy Reiter helped write.

"We believe we have included all the terms and conditions of the agreement," said Greg Baker, who's overseeing the city's compliance with the Justice and collaborative agreements.

Reiter described the work more as a reorganization of the previous draft.

"Ninety-five percent of it is the same," he said. "From my perspective, it was more of a cleaning up of definitions and things like that ... than really making any substantive changes."

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com