Cincinnati's Citizen Complaint Authority has a permanent executive director for the first time in over two years. John Kennedy Jr. took the job in late August.
Kennedy sat down with WVXU Local Government Reporter Becca Costello to talk about his plans for the independent police oversight board.
Introduce yourself to our listeners and talk about why you decided you wanted this position as director of the CCA.
Well, I'm John Kennedy. I came from the public defender's office, where I've spent my entire career up to this point. That's obviously a role that focuses very much on police-civilian interactions, and so I'm very familiar with police procedure, civilian complaints, while I was representing people who were charged with low-level misdemeanors to high-level felonies. And I saw this opening. I spoke to the previous permanent director, Gabe Davis. I got his input and his insight, and was able to pepper him with all my questions, and it seemed like it could be a good fit for me, and I thought I could bring a new perspective to the CCA.
One of the challenges the CCA has faced over the past decade is underfunding. It has had full funding for the last few years for more investigators, but there's been a lot of turnover among investigators as well, which has contributed to this problem of a backlog in cases. What is the status of the backlog and what is your plan to catch up?
The backlog has taken one direction since 2022: it has gone down. The last time I checked the numbers, the number of cases that were outside 180 days old were 19 cases. A number of those were on the October board meeting [agenda]. Some are going to be on the November board meeting, and some had outstanding requests for records and things like that, that were kind of the reason for the delay. And what the CCA has always done is close more cases in any given year than they open. For example, last year, almost twice as many cases were closed as were opened, so that really cuts down on that backlog.
You mentioned cases over 180 days. Another number that we look at is cases older than 90 days — that's the time period in which an investigation is supposed to be complete. Do you think that is a fair metric, or do you think that needs to be changed, given some of the challenges in getting records, which sometimes are a barrier to completing an investigation within that timeframe?
The collaborative agreement does dictate 90 days [in which] the investigation should be done. I think that is a fair metric by which to assess cases and be able to issue reports in a timely manner.
The reason the backlog exists is because of the historic underfunding and understaffing or, like you said, the staff turnover that existed. But we are in a good place now, and we are able to, with the funding we have, do everything we need to do as we get through those oldest cases. The cases that are between 90 days and 180 days old, I think, number about 25. And that will be a shorter and shorter list as time goes on. And I believe by this time next year that we will have all of our cases dealt with within 90 days.
The relationship between the CCA and the Cincinnati Police Department, as well as separately the Fraternal Order of Police, has often been strained. How do you perceive the status of that relationship, and how would you work to improve that relationship?
I asked for meetings with the police chief and the two individuals, Captain Burns and Lieutenant McCurley, who deal most closely with CCA. I met with them very soon after I started, and we were able to have a very productive conversation. I felt no animus. I had no animus. We're supposed to work collaboratively; I think that is absolutely the relationship we will have and the relationship we can have.
I have also met with Ken Kober [President of the FOP] and had a productive conversation with him, as well. I told both of those parties that they can always pick up the phone and call me. I'm always looking for input in places that we can improve both the relationship and the way CCA handles their complaints.
The CCA board may recommend discipline against an officer who didn't follow policy, but also generally might recommend a policy change. So it might be the case that the police officer was acting according to current policy, but they think the policy should be changed to prevent incidents like this in the future. Historically, the police department does not follow most of those recommendations. So do you think the CCA is as effective as it could be?
I think CCA is not as effective as it could be, but our mandate is to issue those recommendations. And at the end of the day, the metric by which we assess the police actions and the complaints that come in are CPD policies and procedures as they exist in the moment. But I think there is progress we can make toward getting on the same page with some of the recommendations we have made.
For example, whether harassment needs to be defined. CPD has maintained that actions that appear to be harassment or could be claimed to be harassment, can be assessed under current policies
When we're talking about harassment in this context, it is police officers who have been accused of harassing residents?
Yes. What the CCA did was issue a definition for harassment for the CCA. Obviously, it's not binding on the Cincinnati Police Department [and] it is not an attempt to hold them to that standard for their own policies and procedures.
Since 2017 we've gotten 213 allegations of harassment, without a definition with which to address those issues. By creating a definition, presenting it to the board and CPD, I'm hoping that we can demonstrate that this is a framework that we can use for addressing harassment.
But all we can do is demonstrate that this is the recommendation we're making, this is why we're making that recommendation, and hope that CPD sees the value in that recommendation, or at least opens up a dialog on how we can be more responsive to some of the issues that we've had come up again and again.
Do you think the CCA should have more authority?
I can only work with what we currently have. If we had more authority to make decisions and to take actions against CPD, I would be happy to take that responsibility on. But in terms of whether it's necessary for CCA to be effective, I don't think it is. All we can do is do what we can within the parameters we have currently.
But if the decisions were made that more power should go to CCA, I wouldn't shirk from that responsibility. But also, I think the role we currently have and the responsibility we currently have, we can do our jobs effectively.
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