Public Safety Partnership; Community Policing Grants

Award Description: The COPS Hiring Recovery Program (CHRP) provided the City of Cincinnati funds to rehire fifty (50) career law enforcement officers in an effort to create and preserve jobs, and to increase community policing capacity and crime prevention efforts.

Description of Jobs Created: Work performed on the City's COPS Hiring Recovery Program (CHRP) for the 3rd quarter of 2009 retained a total of 7.0 FTE Police Officers that serve as Neighborhood Liaison Officers (NLO). Work performed in the 4th quarter of 2009 retained a total of 47.47 FTE that serve as NLO's. Work performed in the 1st quarter of 2010 retained a total of 47.75 FTE that serve as NLO's. Work performed in the 2nd quarter of 2010 retained a total of 47.89 FTE that served as NLO's. The Neighborhood Liaison Officer (NLO) remains the primary citizen contact for problem-oriented policing. Along with patrol officers and supervisors, NLO's share information on crime and disorder in the community, solicit input from the community regarding problems, and invite the community members to participate in solving those problems. Together, officers routinely work with community groups to identify problems and search for the underlying causes that allow these problems to occur. Together they formulate appropriate responses to reduce the problems while measuring their impact on these problems. NLO's provide an upward flow of information from neighborhood contacts to their supervisors and commanders. This includes: crime trends, intelligence information, rumors of unrest, hot spots, and any other information that could provide assistance to problem solving. The NLO can also recommend problem-solving initiatives based on community concerns.

Quarterly Activities: Use of the COPS Hiring Recovery Program has helped the 50 officers whose jobs were saved by this grant to learn to develop and establish partnerships with several segments of the community. The Cincinnati Police Department continues to expand partnerships with local cultural organizations, health and welfare programs, community organizations, businesses and corporations as well as local colleges and universities. Institutions like Su Casa, the Urban League, and the Islamic Center work directly with training patrol officers to better understand and serve the population in the ever changing cultural makeup of our city. Several officers participated in Spanish language classes provided by Su Casa in an effort to understand and connect with the Hispanic community. Several of these officers are also members of specialized units including Mounted Unit, Violent Crimes Squad, Canine Unit, Vortex Unit, Traffic Unit and District Investigators. The loss of these officers jobs would also cause gaps in coverage for extended periods of time where these specialized units would have to interview, select and train a whole new set of police officers causing an extended restructuring of several units within the police department. Some units have purchased specialized or customized equipment for these officers which would not be able to be reallocated to other officers in the event of a lay off situation.

One member of this group of officers, Police Officer H. Moy was honored with a Superior Achievement Award. During the past year, he received two department commendations regarding his contribution to an initiative against gang related activities with 30 felony arrests and the recovery of 19 firearms. He was the lead investigator on a high profile case regarding vehicular vandalism where several people were injured by a juvenile who was throwing rocks at traffic on a local highway.