Police-Community Relations in Cincinnati
Year Three Evaluation Report
ResearchPublished Dec 7, 2007
In 2002, the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD), the Fraternal Order of Police, and the ACLU joined together in a collaborative agreement to resolve social conflict, improve community relations, and avoid litigation in Cincinnati. This third-year evaluation reports that blacks continue to bear a disproportionate share of the impact of policing services by virtue of the clustering of crime, calls for service, and policing in predominantly black neighborhoods. While there is no evidence that the police systematically or deliberately treat blacks differently, blacks nevertheless experience a different kind of policing from that experienced by whites. In particular, blacks experience more policing and particularly more of the proactive policing exemplified by Operation Vortex. While it may not be possible to field a proactive enforcement strategy that is racially neutral, much of CPD’s interaction with the citizenry comes through vehicle stops. The quality, tenor, and tone of such stops are largely under police control. The department should thus pay special attention to training to ensure that these interactions are conducted consistently, courteously, and professionally. Without a concerted effort to ameliorate the disparate impact of these policies, it seems likely that black Cincinnati residents will remain less satisfied with policing services than will their white counterparts.
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- Copyright: RAND Corporation
- Availability: Web-Only
- Year: 2007
- Pages: 105
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/TR535
- Document Number: TR-535-CC
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Schell, Terry L., Greg Ridgeway, Travis L. Dixon, Susan Turner, and K. Jack Riley, Police-Community Relations in Cincinnati: Year Three Evaluation Report, RAND Corporation, TR-535-CC, 2007. As of October 13, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR535.html
Schell, Terry L., Greg Ridgeway, Travis L. Dixon, Susan Turner, and K. Jack Riley, Police-Community Relations in Cincinnati: Year Three Evaluation Report. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007. https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR535.html.
The research described in this report was sponsored by the City of Cincinnati and was conducted under the auspices of the Safety and Justice Program within RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment (ISE).
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