Cincinnati’s Citizen Complaint Authority has a permanent executive director for the first time in over two years.
City Manager Sheryl Long announced Monday the hiring of John Kennedy Jr. to lead the independent police oversight board. Kennedy most recently worked as felony director in the Hamilton County Public Defender’s Office.
Long says the city utilized an executive search firm to fill the position, but the job listing failed to attract qualified candidates for a long time.
"We continually got resumes that just were not up to, in my opinion, the standard of what Cincinnatians deserve," Long told WVXU. "We really needed somebody that was not necessarily all policing and not necessarily all legal."
Long says whoever leads the CCA should have a good understanding of and commitment to the city's Collaborative Agreement, understand the importance of positive relationships with the Cincinnati Police Department, and understand the importance of community engagement.
"I think often we look at the CCA as a way to essentially be checks and balances for police, but we forget the component of it that talks about, how do we get outside in the community, and use this as an opportunity to educate the public on how we should be engaging police as well," Long said.
The last permanent CCA director was Gabe Davis, who left the position in August 2023. The CCA has had interim directors since then.
Davis started leading the Citizen Complaint Authority in August 2020. At that time, the department had been underfunded and short-staffed for years, and had a huge backlog in cases.
Kennedy’s first day on the job was Monday.
What is the Citizen Complaint Authority?
A 2001 lawsuit led to what's now known as the Collaborative Agreement between the ACLU, the Cincinnati Black United Front, the city of Cincinnati and the Fraternal Order of Police. It required police to adopt community problem-oriented policing, including the establishment of one of the first independent police oversight boards in the country: the Citizen Complaint Authority (or CCA).
The CCA investigates cases of serious police interactions, including:
- Death in custody
- Discharging of firearm/Taser
- Discrimination/racial profiling
- Excessive force/use-of-force
- Improper searches/seizures/entries
- Improper pointing of firearms
- Improper stops/detention
Investigations take up the vast majority of the CCA's time but are just one piece of its mission, which is to prevent misconduct instead of just responding to it. The group is supposed to analyze data, identify patterns, and do community engagement and mediation.
Learn more about the CCA on the .
Challenges the new CCA director will face
Turnover among CCA investigators has been high over the past two years; that's contributed to a backlog in cases.
"Having consistent leadership will help with the morale of the department, because having several people going in and out is not helpful for stability," Long said.
Long says she's not concerned about the backlog, but she is challenging Kennedy to do more with analyzing complaints and investigation results.
"I think that if we can get organization to that patterns report, that, in turn, will also get organization to the relationship with the police department and the chief," Long said. "We can be able to identify things a lot sooner than later, and [not] wait until the end of the year to say, 'Hey, this officer is doing X, Y and Z,' and we're intervening at the end."
Long says she's already tasked the Office of Performance and Data Analytics to create a template the CCA can use moving forward.
The CCA also has a long history of conflict with the FOP, including lawsuits.
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