Monday, February 23, 2004
An executive director was hired in February 2003, but he quit in June.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- The panel that investigates citizens' complaints about police officers might soon get a new executive director, after working eight months without one while trying to clear dozens of cases.
"We need a full-time executive director bad," said John Eby, vice chairman of the seven-member Citizen Complaint Authority. "We should have been past this already."
A permanent director could be announced within two weeks, said both chairwoman Nancy Minson and Sgt. Harry Roberts, president of the Fraternal Order of Police.
"We are hoping we are just about to hire a person," Minson said last week. The city's human relations department has been interviewing finalists for the job by telephone, she said.
The board was created as part of a collaborative agreement that settled a Justice Department investigation of police procedures and a lawsuit that alleged decades of police harassment of blacks. The intent was to ease racial tensions after the riots of April 2001 by investigating allegations of police brutality, improper use of weapons or other abuses.
But the board has been unable to quickly deal with complaints, and members have complained about lack of coordination between its staff and the police department. Citizens at meetings have accused the panel of being ineffective.
"No one's steering the boat," Eby said. "I've had it. I'm at my wit's end."
What happened
Creation of the Citizen Complaint Authority was announced in April 2002, but the group didn't meet until January 2003. Nathaneal Ford, a former deputy police chief in Toledo, was hired as executive director in mid-February but quit the $96,000-a-year job in June.
A part-time consultant who was the agency's interim director before Ford has been filling in when he can. "He didn't sign on to be here this long," Minson said.
Original members of the collaborative agreement were the city, the Fraternal Order of Police, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Cincinnati Black United Front. A federal judge allowed the Black United Front to withdraw to concentrate on its economic boycott of downtown Cincinnati.
The authority was formed by combining the Office of Municipal Investigation, which was disbanded in January 2003, and the Citizens Police Review Panel, which ended in disarray in March 2002 when members complained that they didn't have adequate staff or funding.
Now, some of that frustration is setting in with the new board.
"We need to be more proactive," Eby said. "But nobody's harder on us than ourselves."