Is the collaborative agreement worth saving?

A year ago, it was a landmark. A shining symbol of compromise. Written proof that Cincinnatians could, if they had to, work together on explosive racial issues.

Now the agreement, with its recommended police reforms and citizen participation, is anathema. It's jammed in a wringer of racial politics and personality-based power struggles.

The latest twist: some 200 members of the Fraternal Order of Police voted unanimously Monday to back away from it.

Why? Union vice president Keith Fangman said Tuesday that Judge Susan Dlott, who oversees the agreement and the racial profiling lawsuits that gave rise to it, made statements showing that she is biased against police.

The police union's other reason: the Black United Front, which had represented African-American residents suing the city, was allowed to pull out of the agreement.

How's that for mature police-community relations: If they can, why can't we?

Uncooperative choices

The answer to that question is in two related questions: Was the Black United Front's removal good for the collaborative's efforts? And would the police union's departure have the same effect?

The BUF's leaders said they wanted to step up their activities and focus more national attention on Cincinnati's race problems.

That is in conflict with duties they would have had on the collaborative, which is supposed to endorse citizens and police working together.

I don't like their choice, but I know why they made it.

Some city leaders lobbied from the start to limit BUF's role in the collaborative. Unnamed big-money donors for a new community-police partnership center - an important piece of the collaborative pie - wanted the BUF out, too.

It's fair to say that the BUF left the collaborative under pressure.

A fraction of police

But where is the pressure to kick out the police union?

Some 200 union members voted to leave the collaborative at a meeting Monday night.

That's only a fraction of the hundreds who voted to join the collaborative in the first place. Who knows how the vote would have gone if all union members were notified in advance of the vote and had known to attend the meeting?

Nevertheless, Monday's vote is valid and binding, union leaders said. The police union represents 1,050 officers, 28 percent of whom (294) are black.

Even with the vote, it's still not a given that Judge Dlott will let the police union walk away. After all, she was roundly blasted for letting the BUF leave.

If the union walks, who'll stand in for rank and file officers?

The Sentinel Police Association, seeing an opportunity, has offered to take the FOP's place. But the association of black police officers is not a union with formal bargaining power.

Is this who union leaders Fangman and Roger Webster want speaking for officers?

There's also Police Chief Tom Streicher and his top command, who are still at the bargaining table.

But this is supposed to be a collaboration between the community and the police. Not a dialogue between police brass and a few lawyers.

The BUF's departure left a hole, but that's being resolved. Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union was appointed to represent black residents. An "advisory panel" of community members would assist.

Fangman and Webster said that many provisions of the collaborative agreement are worthwhile. They vowed police officers will implement them.

So maybe it's not the collaborative agreement that's broken.

Maybe it's the people working on it.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com