By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The new leader of Cincinnati's homicide unit hobbles on crutches. Months before she got the new job, she had jumped into a chase after a drug suspect and blew out her knee.

What was the 43-year-old lieutenant thinking? Simple, says Kim Frey: She knew the area better than the younger officers with her. And she didn't want the guy who'd just sold drugs to an undercover officer to get away.

Sometimes, it doesn't matter if a cop has been on the job for 22 years and has risen through the ranks; she still has to do the basics.

That's exactly what landed Frey at the top of one of the units most critical to the city. She relishes the challenge of leading the 10 homicide detectives, who are working to solve cases at a time when killings are on pace to match last year's 16-year high. Many of those cases are becoming increasingly tougher to solve because most relate to drugs and gangs, and gangsters don't talk to cops.

But Frey knows if there's a key to solving killings, her detectives have to get back to the basics - networking with beat officers who know the neighborhoods and honing interviews of anyone who might know something.

Colleagues call the Seton High School graduate - now a grandma - meticulously organized, firm but fair, and approachable. She spent 14 years as a police officer before her first promotion in 1995. She worked the streets in the west and central parts of the city, processed warrants, worked in personnel and investigated her own colleagues in internal affairs. As a boss, she has supervised officers on patrol as well as those who handled theft cases and those who investigate 1,600 cases a year of sex crimes, child abuse and missing kids.

Making plans

As the head of homicide, she plans to refine a new squad of four detectives created last year to work solely on unsolved cases. She's also considering restructuring the unit so veteran detectives mentor teams of less-experienced detectives. She's also looking into replicating a North Carolina program that brings retired homicide detectives back as volunteers to work on cold cases

"The victims' families deserve the best that anybody has to offer," she said. "I'm not saying I'm the best, but I'm going to give it my best shot."

Lucy Logan, whose son, Nolan Moi, was shot to death in Madisonville in March 2002, is looking forward to Frey's focus on cold cases. Logan founded the victims' relatives group, Who's Killing Our Kids?, and has been pushing for detectives to be more creative in solving older cases.

She talked with Frey about several older cases.

"Who knows? Maybe she just needs to help the investigators stay motivated somehow," Logan said. "It would be hard working there, with all the problems with uncooperative witnesses. Or maybe she just needs to crack the whip, I don't know."

Frey is the first woman to hold the job in a 1,040-officer department that's 80 percent male. She still chuckles when thinking back to her first day on the job in 1981 - when a male officer told her she should be ashamed because she'd taken a slot on the department away from a man.

"Some people might make a big deal about her being a woman," Chief Tom Streicher said. "But for me, she's just an extremely strong part of the organization. She accepts responsibility and accountability. Her composure and her demeanor is just critical in this type of assignment."

That's because "she didn't move up so quickly - she spent a long time as a police officer," said her husband, Art Frey, a fellow Cincinnati lieutenant who leads the department's Street Corner drug unit. "She's got a really good sense of how the department works because she's done it all."

Frey takes over the homicide unit when the number of killings this year in Cincinnati stands at 48. That's one fewer than at this time in 2002, a year that ended with 66 homicides- a 16-year record high. So far, 26 of the 47 are solved. That's about 55 percent, compared with 63 percent nationally in 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. But the number is sliding everywhere, down from almost 80 percent solved across the country in 1976.

Frey replaces Lt. Roger Wolf, who requested a change and has transferred to District 5.

When he was looking to fill the job, Streicher asked Frey is she was sure she wanted the high-pressure, high-profile job. She'd already had a stressful year because her Marine son, Tony, had served in Iraq, and Frey had heard nothing from him for months. He's back at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

When the war started and she would hear televised reports of fights she believed her son might be part of, she took a couple of days off. After a time, though, she said she decided the best way to cope was to jump back into work.

She spends as much time as she can with her grandson, 2-year-old Tony Jr., and made him a little sofa with guns and tanks on it. She quilts and paints, too, for stress relief.

"It is the hot seat," she said of the new job. "But for a lieutenant, I don't think there's a more important job that you can hold."

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E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com