Charlie Luken:
Good morning, we'll get started. My name is Charlie Luken and this is a webinar sponsored by Calfee Halter & Griswold, which is a law firm that has offices in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. And we're honored this morning to have my longtime friend John Cranley, and we've asked the mayor to kind of give us an update on what's going on, but more particularly, we want to talk about the collaborative. And John I know from your perspective, you were on the ground in 2001, when the collaborative began to be negotiated, you were at the courthouse along with other council members like Alicia Reese, and David Pepper, even a hand in writing it and negotiating it.
Charlie Luken:
And now here we are 15 years later and people hear about the collaborative and they think it's kind of a good thing, but I don't know that everybody knows what it is. So I thought maybe we'd start with just letting you kind of talk about what it is and it's not a report sitting on a shelf somewhere. It's theoretically a living breathing document that you've worked with during your whole political life.
John Cranley:
Thanks Charlie. And I think most people on this call know this, but Mayor Luken and I are close friends and serve together. [inaudible 00:01:39] was a council member when he was mayor by the time that [inaudible 00:01:41]. And I've said that our city's Renaissance or last 20 years is there's a lot of factors, but the two biggest factors was the collaborative agreement. And the Renaissance of three CDC started this community of reinvesting in our urban core. And on both fronts, they only happened because of Mayor Luken. First because Mayor Luken invited the justice department in to do a review of our police department, which was an extremely controversial decision at the time, he took a lot of grief for it.
Charlie Luken:
You think?
John Cranley:
Yeah. And because he recruited Procter & Gamble to be the first CEO, to be the first chairman of three CDC, which in this town anyway, is a big deal. And so those two things set the tone. And I'm not a hundred percent sure, but my memory is that the request to bring in the justice department, it may have been after the [inaudible 00:02:45] case and before the Timothy Thomas Case. And it was certainly before the lawsuit was filed by the Black United Front, which I think is significant that the mayor at the time took the political heat to do that before sort of being pressured into it, because he knew that something had to change culturally.
John Cranley:
Ultimately, there was a separate lawsuit filed against the city, alleging a pattern and practice of discrimination. And we agreed through an extraordinary decision to mediate that lawsuit rather than litigate the lawsuit. And I will say that this is a point in time, a moment in history that we were being sued. And there's no doubt that the leadership and many people in the community at the time felt that any attempt to negotiate a settlement, that lawsuit was being disrespectful to the police. And so the decision to mediate rather than litigate the lawsuit, which we took that vote in, I think June of 2001. And at that time, the mayor was a member of council.
John Cranley:
And so Charlie and I, Alicia Reese, Paul Booth and Minette Cooper voted yes. And four members of council, I think they were DeWine Tarbell, Heimlich, and Manzell voted no. And in my opinion, that five, four vote was by far the most consequential vote in the city's history, in the last 30, 40 years, because that started the process that led a year later to the signing of the collaborative agreement where John Ashcroft, the attorney general came to City Hall to sign the agreement with us.
John Cranley:
And by the time it came back for final approval, the FOP endorsed the collaborative agreement. And city council including Phil Heimlich, who was the most conservative member at the time endorsed it as well. It was unanimous vote, I believe, or maybe Heimlich was gone by then anyway, regardless. What is it? It's three big things. First, dramatic change and use of force.
John Cranley:
There used to just be kind of a rigid ladder up. If this happens, you hit him with the baton. If that doesn't work, you shoot him. I don't know what the ladder of escalation was, but it was a very rigid escalation.
John Cranley:
And we started moving our use of force policies to A, to try to de-escalate, not escalate as a preference. And when escalation is required to use, try more and more, less lethal ways to do so. So over time, that meant to introduction of tasers, for example, much, much less use of the baton. We outlawed rubber bullets. I mean, outlawed, meaning we ended the policy of using rubber bullets. We banned chokehold.
John Cranley:
All of these changes came from a process of changing use of force. We also introduced enormous trainings from how to deal with someone who's high, how to deal with someone who's mentally ill, how to deal with someone who's both. We also now require implicit bias training for all of our officers.
John Cranley:
So I put that all in a bucket of change in use of force. The second thing is transparency and accountability. The second bucket, which is cops are human, and occasionally you're going to have a cop who makes a mistake. And so how do you hold that officer accountable? And how does the community have trust in that?
John Cranley:
Well, historically the allegation, and you saw this in a lot of the reporting about Chicago's complaints over the last four or five years, which still seems to operate the way we did prior to all this. And candidly, I think most police departments still operate this way, is that if a citizen makes a complaint against an officer, it's investigated A, by the police, which doesn't exactly inspire a sense of neutrality. And the historical practice has been that there has to be a full and complete quote, internal review before any information, public documents, interviews are turned over to some citizen review board.
John Cranley:
And that is, makes it very difficult for someone to have the courage to bring a complaint because it's being investigated first by the police can take several years. And there are allegations that the cops would brush it under the rug.
John Cranley:
And well, I'm not saying that's true or false, but that is the widespread perception. And so in the city of Cincinnati, what we did as part of the collaboratives, we created a citizens complaint authority that was independent of the police, but had access to all public documents. And as a condition of employment, officers have to agree to cooperate and provide interviews to any investigation coming from the citizen complaint authority.
John Cranley:
And it's not being investigated by a fellow police officer, but by an independent investigator. And most crucially, it has concurrent jurisdiction with internal investigations, which is critically important. The only exception to that is if the officer is being accused of a felony by a prosecutor, and that is extremely rare. And candidly, when it has happened, for example, over the years, the officer is usually been indicted by the prosecutor for some more egregious act.
John Cranley:
So that's how the citizen complaint authority works. In addition, we have under my administration introduced body cameras for essentially all of our officers and frankly that's worth 10 times a citizens complaint authority, all the citizen complaint authorities, how you then deal with what you see on the body camera.
John Cranley:
So they work hand and glove together, they need each other. So you've got to have both, but, imagine if we go back to 2001 and get some of the shootings that caused our civil uprisings to and rioting to be on camera. And so that transparency is incredible.
John Cranley:
And third is, and this took the longest time, was changing the culture of policing in Cincinnati from over policing to sweep, what we used to call sweeps to a much more surgical approach to go after repeat violent offenders.
John Cranley:
In prior to the coronavirus, and the coronavirus has scrambled our crime numbers very badly. So shootings are way up, arrests are way down. But prior to the coronavirus, we had a reasonable reduction in arrest of 50%, over a 10 year period, but a 50% roughly reduction in serious crime at that same time.
John Cranley:
And so the coronavirus I can deal with separately, which has scrambled those numbers, but putting the... If you just look backwards 10 years from the beginning of the coronavirus, the results are fewer arrests, but less crime. And so those are the three pillars of the collaborative agreement, and they've served us very, very well.
Charlie Luken:
And I want to mention, that negotiation and I'm not, I don't want to get caught up in history, but that negotiation about the collaborative. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that there was on behalf of some of the people that were complaining about police misconduct, that there was a group of people out there, [inaudible 00:10:53] the lawyer, Damon Lynch, or there were a lot of people who are at the table on behalf of the community and they, well, I think we had our differences at the table in the federal court.
Charlie Luken:
You remember well, I think it would be remiss not to acknowledge the fact that this was a negotiation with community leaders. And it leads me to a thought, which is now we are many years later and you've continued to work on the collaborative and the police continue to use it as a basis for their training.
Charlie Luken:
But to many people, it doesn't mean a whole lot. It's history. And while you've changed it a lot, and you've engaged in a collaborative refresh, I guess the point is, or the question is, you got all these people who aren't aware of all that. And you've got Mr. Floyd's death that everybody in the country is seeing and how do you bring it in Cincinnati, those people who are new or relatively new to this process, how do you bring them into the can't?
Charlie Luken:
Is the collaborative still a foundation moving forward? And what else do you need? And you can't just grab the collaborative off the shelf and wave and say here, all our problems are solved. So how do you open up that process to newer folks?
John Cranley:
It's a great question. And you're right, that it was kind of ying and yang, and it is true that the civil rights activists in our city, including Irish Parolee and Damon Lynch were necessary parties. And while we've all butted heads many times over the years, the fact is that it's a ying and a yang, and that's how progress happens. And I don't want to be remiss and not give them the credit that they deserve.
John Cranley:
It is also true that today the people who are on the streets were literally babies when all this other stuff happened. So they don't remember it. In fact, the video that is on the inquire website right now is an interaction between Lieutenant Colonel Paul Neudigate our assistant chief, and a protest right outside of City Hall from last week. And it's an extraordinary dialogue, which is worth watching.
John Cranley:
See a big old cop who's just a great guy. Who's not young and talking to a very young person, who's protesting outside of City Hall. And the protestor says my favorite interaction, and I may mischaracterize it. It's not verbatim, but she says, "My people have been suffering for hundreds of years." And Paul Neudigate says, "I know." And then he follows up and says, "And that's why since 2001 we've made this change and that change and this change."
John Cranley:
And she gives this look to him like 2001. And the expression on her face was I was a child in 2001. I don't remember 2001. You're going back to ancient history. And the irony was that she had had just literally said hundreds of years, this has happened to my people. And so she was simultaneously familiar with hundreds of years of our history as a country, or probably less familiar with Cincinnati's history over the last 20 years.
John Cranley:
That's not her fault. I'm not blaming her. I'm just saying that you're right, that these younger folks don't appreciate or care. And they're arguing that there are some additional changes that need to happen. Yesterday I met with about 10 college students and recent graduates who have been leading on many of these protests, not all of them. And I've got a series of meetings that are being set up. I have another set of meetings tomorrow, and then we're trying to get a meeting on Friday and listening.
John Cranley:
And I was really blown away yesterday by the folks I met with, they were inspiring. They were smart. And frankly, they were pragmatic. They were not, I was prepared for the defund, the police stuff, disband the police as they voted to in Minneapolis. Really bad ideas like that. But that's not what they were about at all. They had very reasonable requests. They had boiled them down to about seven.
John Cranley:
I'm not sure I would agree to every detail of what they recommended, but conceptually I was fine with all of them. And they involve things like whether or not we should use gas and under what circumstances. It involved officers who had been convicted of misbehavior or abuse, not being able to be hired somewhere else. I mean, that's something that Governor DeWine talked about last week. That's something that we've been talking with the governor about, and it's complicated because it involves state licensing and labor contracts and all that stuff. But it's a good idea.
John Cranley:
And they wanted support for this bill that's going through Congress right now. And anyway, they were very pragmatic, but they also were very insistent that there be additional changes. So I was impressed. And so my goal is to keep meeting with them, meeting with others. Because that group I met with yesterday is not the only group of young people that are leading on the streets right now and I'm trying to reach them. And one of the problems that we've had is literally just trying to figure out who they are. And so that's the effort that is ongoing.
Charlie Luken:
You mentioned at the beginning that the collaborative followed by three CDC and my contention has always been that three CDC doesn't exist without the collaborative. And the reason for that is if you can put into play, if we can put into place some process that gives people some trust that the police department and citizens are on the same page going forward, the opportunity to do meaningful economic development in a place like Over-The-Rhine or any other place is going to be very difficult or fail.
Charlie Luken:
And I think we're seeing that now. I mean, let's, we have to be honest, you and I both worked hard with three CDC to revitalize Over-The-Rhine. And I think it's been a good thing for the city. It's been good thing. And a lot of those businesses right now are suffering pretty badly. So the hand and glove of collaborative development, I mean, I think that's still there for us.
John Cranley:
That's exactly right. We're in total agreement, I've said that those are the two most important things for our Renaissance, but the second one can't happen without the first. That it was sort of a litmus test.
John Cranley:
If you didn't do the collaborative, then an effort to do three CDC would have failed. It would have failed. And so what I like to say is that the social contract was essentially broken or deeply frayed in 2001 where we had half of our citizens, which are predominantly, I mean, half of our citizens are roughly African-American and, or, you know what I mean? I'm misstating it, but you get the idea.
John Cranley:
That they had deep, they deeply distrusted their police department, which they're paying for and their taxpayers and our customers. And you cannot have an effective Renaissance if half of your population is feeling mistreated. And so that commitment to change, which has, buttons fits and starts and all that, but that commitment to change was real intentional. And as a result allowed other good things to happen.
Charlie Luken:
It was, it wasn't just because we wanted to do economic development, but I mean, I think you focused a lot in your career, particularly in the last few years of the inclusiveness of the government, in terms of economic contracts and disparities. And you've, I know that you've made that kind of a cornerstone of what you've been about in city bid process.
Charlie Luken:
The chamber of commerce has their initiatives that have worked very well. At the same time, there are a lot of people that think that this is at least in large part, an economic issue that these disparities in our own city, which worked on are a force of the problem. And I wonder if part of our solution or part of our conversation is going to be the economics of the disparities.
John Cranley:
Yeah, I think so. I think that there will be some changes to law enforcement as a result of all of this in Cincinnati, and that's fair. And we can get better. And we view the commitment to the collaborative as continuous improvement. And there may be some improvements pointed out to us as a result of all this. And certainly around how do we deal with mass curfews and all that is fair game and we've got to think about that.
John Cranley:
But in my opinion, because of the history and because, for example, people who feel they were mistreated in the last 10 days do now have the opportunity to go to citizen's complaint authority, have it fully investigated independently, it'll be on city cable, et cetera. So we have the process in place for accountability, and hopefully it will be given the opportunity to shine and prove that they take it seriously. And I think they will.
John Cranley:
So I believe that it is likely that in our community, the big changes that will come out of the idealism and demand for change over the last 10, 12 days will include a larger and larger focus on the economic outcomes that are still disparate in our community and health outcomes.
John Cranley:
And the coronavirus has laid bare the disparity of health outcomes. And so this whole idea of racism as a public health issue, right now is an important symbolism for a lot of people. And that's great. And we've got to put meat on the bones of what that means in terms of trying to change those outcomes.
John Cranley:
And so I think in the arena of public health, and I believe in the arena of procurement and contracting and small business formation. And you're right, we took contracts for the city of African-American businesses from 2% to a minimum 11%, some years has been 15, but we started at two, we've made real progress, but there's more progress to be made. We've invested in MORTAR, which is an African-American led incubator and a variety of other efforts that were ongoing. But I think that's going to become more important going forward.
Charlie Luken:
Do you think they're, if you're a corporate leader, what you'd be thinking about, I mean, how do you get into this? I mean, we had Cincinnati cannon, again, this is not about history, but I wonder if you have thoughts about whether the corporate community should up their game, and if so, how?
John Cranley:
The short answer is yes, there are preliminary discussions happening already prior to the last 10 days. Joe Meyer, our great leader of our chamber had already organized the restart group to focus on how the economy comes back from the coronavirus. Which, oh, yeah, I forgot about that, the coronavirus.
John Cranley:
And so we've been dealing with multiple crises this year to put it mildly. And that already had an acknowledgement and preliminary discussions that there would need to be additional focus on minority and women on businesses.
John Cranley:
And then in the middle of trying to figure out what that would look like, George Floyd happened. And so I think everyone is acutely aware of that. And I expect that there'll be a variety of efforts. I hate to use the word task force or this or that or whatever, but there will certainly be a number of efforts. What I'm looking particularly on, and just very preliminary concepts.
John Cranley:
This isn't a formed clearly, but we clearly are going to need to do an analysis of law enforcement. Also, I believe we need to do an analysis of what is this whole discussion around race as a public health issue. And how do we combine resources of our health department and UC health, and the children's hospital and others? To really do a better job on that.
John Cranley:
And then thirdly, what we already talked about is how do we really make opportunity more likely? I mean, there was a understandable rallying cry around black coffee, a black owned coffee shop, and right across the street from City Hall or a block away, that was looted. And the day after there was a line around the block to get in. And so certainly if we want to see a black middle-class expand, which is certainly our goal, it's going to involve figuring out, especially in a city, which has a much larger population of African-Americans and say, that region does, that we have an economy that works for all parts of our population.
Charlie Luken:
Well, make one comment that's just an antidote apropos of nothing. But if you remember when we began the collaborative process, one of the... In fact, I think probably the biggest thing that irritated people was that we didn't tell them what was going on within a few days of the investigation.
Charlie Luken:
And I remember how the police chief would say we're investigating it and we'll report in a few days. Well, that sounded like a scam for everybody who didn't trust the police.
Charlie Luken:
One of the interesting thing now is that most of it's on cell phones. So that is very different, but I think withholding that information was really a source of a lot of our difficulty, at least around the 2001 situation. And finally, I would just say, if you wanted to wrap it up for a minute or two, if anything else you want to talk about, you got the floor and we appreciate it. And one other thing of, thanks to Megan Glenn for helping and your staff for helping us organize this, but you have the floor to take us home, your honor.
John Cranley:
Well, your last point is a hundred percent correct. Especially with body-worn cameras and other cell phone video. I think it's critically important to try and get those videos out immediately. And that is our general policy. And I am in discussions with mayors across the country. In fact, I was just appointed to a task force by the US conference of mayors to make recommendations over the next couple of weeks.
John Cranley:
And here's what happens. And it's understandable. And since most of the people in this call are lawyers, they understand. That prosecutors and the city managers and police chiefs, if they become convinced that an officer may have in fact done something wrong, they don't want the video to come out because it could jeopardize the investigation.
John Cranley:
And they worry that the officer might change his or her testimony to match the video and their argument to the public and to the civil rights community is trust us, you'll like the result better if we keep this information from you longer, because it'll make sure that we have a better investigation for a potential prosecution.
John Cranley:
And there is logic in all of that. However, I have concluded because of the experiences you and I have earned the hard way that the risk to the community, conspiracy theories and distrust outweighs in my opinion, any risk to the investigation in order for the public to see what happened as soon as possible.
John Cranley:
And I think there are fair debates and fair arguments on both sides, but I come down on the side of transparency. Since I've been mayor, we have always released videos within 24 hours, unless prosecutor Dieter's has issued a subpoena, preventing us with a court order to prevent us from releasing the videos.
John Cranley:
And both chief Isaac and I have a very nice and working relationship with prosecutor Dieter's. And we have this honest disagreement on this point. And we have consistently asked the prosecutor to allow us to put the video out right away. And a few times, not every time, most of the times he doesn't, but occasionally he has issued a subpoena. So the only time where we haven't done that is when we have a court order preventing us from doing so.
John Cranley:
And, it's a fair debate, but I think in the end a transparency is a better way to go.
Charlie Luken:
We appreciate your time, John. Thanks so much and see you soon.
John Cranley:
Thanks.