Longtime community leader Iris Roley is in the headlines as the Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police calls for the city to end her consulting contract. Other community leaders have rallied behind her.
Roley's first contract with the city was announced in early 2022, with a goal of facilitating engagement between the city manager and Cincinnati residents. Her current year-long contract is for $105,000. Her work as a consultant to the city over the past three years includes involvement in hiring Cincinnati's current Police Chief Teresa Theetge.
Cincinnati FOP President Ken Kober is pushing the city to terminate Roley's contract, citing videos in which he says Roley harassed CPD officers "for doing their jobs." A petition on the Cincinnati FOP website has more than 4,900 signatures as of Friday afternoon.
City Manager Sheryl Long said in statement she is "reviewing the alleged incidents."
"Iris Roley is an essential community and civic leader in Cincinnati. Her contributions span from the origins of the Collaborative Agreement to her commitment to problem solving resulting in support for teens at our transit center. She consistently steps up to organize effective strategies and raises her hand to support community when others don't. However, anyone doing work on behalf of the City of Cincinnati must hold themselves to a higher standard. That includes not interfering with police who are in the act of performing their lawful duties. As City Manager, I am reviewing the alleged incidents."
Here's a look at Roley's decades-long history in Cincinnati.
Roley's advocacy goes back decades
The civil unrest in 2001 sparked by the deaths of Black men at the hands of Cincinnati Police accelerated advocates' efforts for systemic reforms to the city's police department. Those reforms, mandated by federal courts after the unrest, became known as the Collaborative Agreement.
Roley was a founding member of the Cincinnati Black United Front, which formed in the summer of 2000. She played a key role in negotiating the Collaborative Agreement, and in a "refresh" process of the agreement in 2017.
As the city recognized the 20 year anniversary of the Collaborative Agreement in 2022, Roley said the work has not stopped.
"We've been at the table for 20 years," she said at a news conference. "This thing will continue on forever. Because you will always have continuous improvement in anything."
Roley was inducted into the Ohio Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2022.
"Iris Roley's continual activism within the community has and will continue to be a resounding voice demanding change for community-police relations," the website said at the time of her induction.
History of conflict with FOP
This is far from the first time the Cincinnati FOP has criticized Roley and her work with the city.
Former FOP President Dan Hils said he chose not to work on issues if Roley was involved, a statement that prompted the Cincinnati Sentinel Police Association to call for Hils' resignation.
In a 2019 op-ed published in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Hils criticized Roley and prominent civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein (who authored the Collaborative Agreement) over their statements regarding a specific incident in which a police officer was injured.
"These two controversy racketeers have mastered manufacturing anger from a select few and convincing City Hall that they represent an entire community," Hils wrote. "They don't!"
Hils has often posted about Roley on social media during his time as FOP president, and continues to do so to this day.
Community support
A petition supporting Roley has nearly 2,800 signatures so far as of Friday.
The Hamilton County Public Defender's office published a statement on social media supporting Roley.
"Iris Roley was an integral part of [the Collaborative Agreement], and she remains a critical part of its continued work," the statement says. "The bad-faith attacks being leveled against her now demean the importance of that historic agreement and undermine the continued work done in service of it."
The statement says the FOP's petition to fire Roley is a "divisive tactic" aimed at dismantling the Collaborative Agreement: "Collaboration cannot exist when law enforcement tries to shut down community dissent through personal attacks."
Over a hundred people, mostly Black men, rallied outside City Hall on Aug. 14 to support Roley.
"At every turn of Black American history, Black women have been at the forefront of advocacy for the Black community, and Black men in particular," said Rev. Richard Hughes of New Jerusalem Baptist Church. "We Black men in the city of Cincinnati are here today to make a statement that we will stand for a sister who has always stood for us."
Julie Johnson says she is a retired CPD officer who has worked with Roley for years.
"There's a lot of police officers that support Iris," Johnson said at the rally. "We have not always seen eye to eye on things, but I know [she has] always had the community's best interests at heart."
Al Gerhardstein wrote an op-ed published in the Cincinnati Enquirer defending Roley.
"Problem-solving fully engages the community, police, social service agencies, other city departments, and faith leaders as partners. The key to the Collaborative is cooperation, not cancellation," Gerhardstein wrote. "The critics of Iris Roley would do well to look at her nearly 25 years of community leadership — all focused on strengthening these partnerships, which are so critical to public safety — before signing any petition to end her role as a city consultant. We are in her debt."
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