Sound Bite Into Crime
Stop the presses: Mayoral candidates plan to combat crime
By Stephanie Dunlap
CityBeat
August 10, 2005

On June 15 a man opened fire on the corner of Vine and Sixth streets, jarring the heart of downtown Cincinnati's central business district. Only days earlier, a stray bullet ripped through a park near Findlay Market to kill a young mother.

Predicting the pace of Cincinnati's yearly homicides is always a game for the media -- so far the year 2003 holds top billing, with 75 homicides -- but regardless of year-by-year fluctuations, crime in Cincinnati has clearly become big business in the new millennium.

And not only for criminals. Each of the top four candidates for mayor hopes to convince voters that he or she alone holds the key to ameliorating the city's crime problems. But in truth they all touch on parts of many similar ideas, except Councilman David Pepper's lengthy and detailed plan, which spans nearly all of them plus a kitchen sink.

Improved police-community relations: yup, good. Drawing citizens and others together to address the problems of crime through a mayor's roundtable or task force or summit or call-it-what-you-will: good. More youth employment and general economic prosperity to deter crime: good. Making better use of county, state and federal resources and laws: good. Implementing more advanced technology, setting measurable goals for better accountability, tracking gun sellers and targeting suburban drug buyers: good, good, good.

Summer jobs or new jail?
Other than the Rev. Charlie Winburn's ideological preference for locking up criminals rather than coddling them, the differences among the candidates' respective safety plans are marked more by what they left out than internal policy disagreements.

State Sen. Mark Mallory (D-West End) offers the thinnest safety plan next to Vice Mayor Alicia Reece, who has yet to release one but gave CityBeat a preview.

One of the sharper disagreements is over Mallory's proposal to re-create the position of public safety director. As part of Mallory's, six-point plan, the public safety director would mediate between the city manager and the police and fire chiefs, help draw up budgets, oversee the implementation of the collaborative agreement and head a new city Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security.

That's a ridiculous idea, according to fellow Democratic candidates Pepper and Reece. The last city safety director lost his job after the 2001 riots proved the city decidedly unsafe, they say, and adding yet another layer of bureaucracy only decreases accountability.

Mallory also wants to free up city police officers by bringing in the Ohio State Patrol to troll local interstates and make greater use of state laws to seize property involved in drug felonies.

Three of Mallory's six points focus on the city's youth. He'd target truancy, set up a boot camp for non-violent and non-habitual juvenile offenders and try to get kids summer jobs and activities as alternatives to crime.

A second contentious debate has been sparked by former Councilman Winburn's intention to have the city build a new jail. He says this will solve overcrowding problems in the Hamilton County Justice Center, which in turn frees up police and judges to mete out proper punishment to criminals.

The jail is the county's job, not the city's, according to the other candidates. Anyway, they say, the city doesn't have enough money as it is.

Winburn's safety plan nearly rivals Pepper's in length and detail, but its focus is mostly on busting criminals. Winburn thinks the other candidates' plans aren't tough enough.

"What they basically do is kind of babysit the criminals in Cincinnati and they want to clean these people up," Winburn says. "I want to lock them up."

To do that, he'd hire 50 more police officers right away and another 200 by the end of 2009. He thinks the $8.68 million extra that will cost yearly by then will come from forming joint economic development districts and eliminating waste in the city administration.

He also repeatedly mentions the city's "underutilized" drug loitering law but pointedly fails to note that it was Pepper who proposed it to council.

Gun checkpoints
Both Winburn and Pepper want to implement a crime-tracking computer system similar to CompStat that proved so successful under former Mayor Rudoph Giuliani's rule in New York City. They both invoke Project Disarm and the broken windows theory (see "Glass Houses," issue of Jan. 21-27, 2004).

Though Winburn's comes closest, the other candidates' plans just aren't broad enough, Pepper says.

"There aren't a magic three or four steps that are going to do it," Pepper says. "I think a plan needs to be broad enough to hit all of them. It's sort of a disciplining process, too. The day after the election is the day you have to start leading."

That's led Pepper to assemble 32 pages of detailed initiatives, which he breaks down into three main thrusts.

The first is putting more police on the streets, where their visibility makes citizens feel safer, deters crime and improves police-community relations.

Winburn calls that feeling of safety an illusion, while Reece not only agrees it's necessary but notes that in May she helped procure $1.2 million in city funding for additional walking patrols that she, like Pepper, wants to make a permanent line in the police budget.

Pepper also has a host of specific ideas -- for example, using shooting-sensor technology in crime hot spots and urging property owners to evict drug dealers from apartment buildings within three days of their arrest.

Because youth crime and domestic violence are such critical issues in their own right, Pepper says he'll soon release separate plans addressing them.

Reece doesn't think it takes a 35- or 40-page plan to get things done. In fact, she doesn't think it takes a plan at all. Hers will be an action strategy to include permanent walking patrols and a homicide and anti-violence task force, she says.

It'll also root into the source of illegal gun sales by deploying undercover police and having state police set up checkpoints for trucks illegally selling gun is in certain neighborhoods.

Reece's plan will also feature an anti-gang initiative that sounds similar to one that council has repeatedly turned down, largely because the version put forward by Councilman Sam Malone would have drawn officers off the streets.

"I'm not saying whether the gang unit has to be centralized or not," Reece says.

As for the propriety of Police Chief Thomas Streicher Jr. sitting on the city's side of the table during negotiations for a police contract, Reece says Streicher's public opposition to civil service reform, passed by voters in 2001, presents too much of a conflict.

Winburn didn't have an opinion yet.

"I can't make a decision on something I don't have any oversight over," he says.

Mallory didn't know anything about it.

"I guess I'm not familiar with the process," he says. "Huh. I didn't realize that. I can't say now how I would structure contract talks."

But Pepper thinks that, on issues other than those specifically relating to civil service reform, Streicher is integral to explaining the police department's inner workings.