A three-day conference next week will celebrate more than two decades since Cincinnati’s historic collaborative agreement.
The 2002 agreement outlines the city’s commitment to bias-free policing; it was originally a court-supervised settlement to a lawsuit alleging racial bias in the Cincinnati Police Department. Although federal oversight is no longer in place, city officials from every administration since have re-committed to the goals.
Iris Roley of the Black United Front helped negotiate the agreement and now serves as a city consultant.
"What we hope to do is to continue to push that model that we've had for 25 years in the city of Cincinnati, and then to collectively get thoughts from the community on what the next 25 years of policing looks like in the city," Roley told WVXU.
This is the third annual Collaborative Conference, and Roley says it is not a response to a recent report from an outside group that shows stark racial disparities in motorist and pedestrian stops.
"What it does give us is an opportunity to look at the bias-free policing report under our refresh recommendations and see where is there opportunity to provide more assistance in holding officers accountable?" Roley said.
The Collaborative Conference kicks off on the evening of Thursday, Sept. 10, with an event at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
It continues with two days of panel discussions at New Prospect Baptist Church, with topics including how the media reports on gun violence, and how issues like substance use, mental health and housing instability intersect with crime.
The conference is free to attend, but registration is encouraged due to limited seating.
You can learn more and register at collaborative25.org.
What is the Collaborative Agreement?
The Collaborative Agreement was originally a settlement to a federal lawsuit filed 25 years ago by the Black United Front and ACLU of Ohio.
The suit accused the department of racially biased policing. Separately, in the six years leading up to the lawsuit, Cincinnati police officers had killed more than a dozen Black men. In 2001, after the lawsuit was filed, Timothy Thomas became the 15th Black man killed, sparking months of civil unrest.
In the Collaborative Agreement settlement, the city committed to five goals, including to "ensure fair, equitable, and courteous treatment for all."
The Citizen Complaint Authority, an independent police oversight board, was created as part of the agreement.
The police department also started using contact cards because of the agreement. Those are brief forms officers are required to fill out after they initiate any stop of a person in the city, including traffic stops and pedestrian stops. They list a person’s age, race, gender, the location of the stop and other details.
The city has not been legally obligated to follow the agreement since 2008, but officials have consistently voiced continued commitment to its goals and to community problem-oriented policing, and has continued to use contact cards.
The city went through the "refresh" process that concluded in 2018. An independent report commissioned by the city recommended officials "routinely report to the public about progress toward bias-free policing, including the problem-solving efforts that have been applied."
Cincinnati publishes public dashboards that visualize a few years of contact card data at a time: one for traffic stops and one for pedestrian stops.
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