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Former Federal Prosecutor To Head Up Police Watchdog Agency

gabe davis
Courtesy of Gabe Davis

The Citizens Complaint Authority will have a new director starting next month. Gabe Davis was a federal prosecutor and ran for the Democratic nomination for Hamilton County prosecutor last spring. He says he wants the office to help give people confidence in law enforcement.

"For me, it's about taking the CCA and showing that we are first and foremost getting to the truth of what happens in complaints, that we are investigating those thoroughly and fairly and determining what happened in any given situation where there has been a complaint about the police," he says.

The CCA is part of the 2002 collaborative agreement which was negotiated to settle several pending lawsuits against Cincinnati Police alleging discrimination, racial profiling and excessive use of force.

He says the CCA was envisioned as a robust, independent agency to investigate complaints.

"I'm interested in looking forward to the future and seeing what we can do to build upon that legacy but also to take it to the next level and make it an agency that is relevant to the concerns that we are confronting today and some of the questions people are asking."

Davis says his experience as a federal prosecutor focusing on civil rights violations puts him in the unique position of seeing issues from both sides. "You want someone who is trained to collect and analyze facts and to hold those facts up against a set of laws, practices, policies and to ask whether or not the facts support that the complaint or the allegation occurred. And that's what I did every day."

Davis was hired by Cincinnati's interim city manager. He starts work Sept. 6.

Bill Rinehart started his radio career as a disc jockey in 1990. In 1994, he made the jump into journalism and has been reporting and delivering news on the radio ever since.