Cincinnati Police

Cincinnati’s Human Resources Department is getting ready to launch a “climate assessment” process to review internal communication and employee morale within the Cincinnati Police Department.

Cincinnati's police chief and the head of the police union are at odds about allowing civilians to process crime scenes.  

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is expected in Cincinnati Tuesday. She's slated to meet with Cincinnati Police and others who were involved with the city's collaborative policing agreement, according to attorney Al Gerhardstein.

The deal worked out after the 2001 riots has been widely credited with improving police-community relations in Cincinnati and is being held up as a model following turmoil in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and other cities.

The Cincinnati Police Department reports it needs a recruit class for each of the next two to three years to maintain its staffing level.

The request was made in the department's budget presentation Monday to a Council committee. Budget manager Ella Topham explained how it would work.

"We'd like to target that recruit class to begin in February each year, and for the next two or three years that would be probably a 30 member recruit class," Topham said.

The department wants to maintain a sworn strength of 1,000 officers.

The Cincinnati Police  investigation of an officer-involved shooting in East Price Hill continues. Detectives are trying to trace where Christian Jackson got the shotgun he allegedly pointed at officers. They are also enhancing the police video shot at the scene.

At a Monday afternoon news conference police detailed the chronology of events leading up to the shooting on Fairbanks Avenue, near Warsaw, after midnight.

Chronology of events:

The Cincinnati Police Department is celebrating the completion of its first recruit class in more than six years.  

56 officers and one firefighter who took the 26-week training courses received their commissions Friday during a ceremony in Downtown Cincinnati at The Masonic Center.  They will now spend the next 13 weeks with training officers.  

The class valedictorian was James Hutchings, who is currently a Cincinnati Firefighter.  He went thru police training to be a sworn officer inside the fire department.  Hutchings had this advice to his fellow graduates.

 Cincinnati's first police recruit class in several years is on track to graduate at the end of next month. That graduation is set for February 27.

56 members are in the 26-week training program. Around 2,500 people took the test to be a city police officer.

Cradle Cincinnati is announcing a couple new partnerships in an effort to prevent sleep-related infant deaths.  It is called the “Cribs for Kids” program.  

One of those involves the United Way's 211 line.  It connects people with community resources.  

Hamilton County Commissioner and Cradle Cincinnati co-chairman Todd Portune said it will help get baby cribs to parents who need them.

Despite back-to-back shooting incidents downtown this week, shootings and violent crime remain down in Cincinnati compared to last year.

Chief Jeffrey Blackwell says police are stepping up patrols throughout the summer anyway to make sure people feel, and are, safe downtown.

"We're going to have a comprehensive incident command-based plan as we move forward to address every weekend event that we have from now through Labor Day and beyond even through Oktoberfest," says Blackwell.

Cincinnati has 19 new police officers. The department's first class of lateral transfer recruits in more than six years was sworn in today. The officers all came from other Ohio agencies but still had to go through the city's training process. Chief Jeffrey Blackwell calls today's graduation exciting.

The new officers will hit the ground running with their first duty assignment working the Cincinnati Reds game on Saturday. They'll be paired with field training officers on Sunday and begin working in their assigned districts.