A 2001 lawsuit led to what s now known as the Collaborate Agreement among the ACLU, the Cincinnati Black United Front, the city of Cincinnati and the Fraternal Order of Police. It required police to adopt community problem oriented policing, including the establishment of one of the first independent police oversight boards in the country: the Citizen Complaint Authority (CCA).Read More
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The CCA investigates all cases of serious police interactions like firing a weapon or when a person dies in custody. But it s just beginning work on some of the key goals.
Cincinnati is often cited as a model for other cities looking to establish police oversight boards. CCA Executive Director Gabe Davis says the city has a nearly 20-year head start. There are a lot of other models out there for how to do this work, Davis said. We are unique in the sense that we have an investigative driven model. We re not there just to audit what s done by the police, but really there s an independent investigation with independent resources to do that. And that is quite unique, there are only a few jurisdictions that have that kind of structure.
Tom Uhlman / AP
Some people think the tensions between Cincinnati s Black community and the city s police force began on a night in April 2001, when a white police officer chased a 19-year-old Black man into a dark Over-the-Rhine alleyway and killed him with a single shot to the heart.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact is the shooting of Timothy Thomas by then-officer Stephen Roach was the lighted match thrown into a highly combustible cauldron of distrust and anger that had been stewing for years and led to six days and nights of civil unrest that gripped the city in fear.