Speaker 1: John nine says, we have a cloudy day to day.
Speaker 1: I have twenty two and be careful on the roads.
Speaker 1: Dating the obvious if you're out there, but if you
Speaker 1: plan on going out and find some slick spots, so
Speaker 1: please watch it. Overnight low of thirteen with clouds high
Speaker 1: thirty Tomorrow. Flood warning ends at one thirty and we'll
Speaker 1: see some sun clouds every night down to thirteen and
Speaker 1: a clear day on Saturday with a high thirty seven
Speaker 1: fourteen degrees.
Speaker 2: Right now, traffic time.
Speaker 3: From you see up traffic center and do you see health.
Speaker 4: You'll find comprehensive care that's so personal and make sure
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Speaker 4: more at you sehealth dot com. We'rell morning on seventy
Speaker 4: five southbound shut down with traffic being diverted off at
Speaker 4: the paddock.
Speaker 3: HiT's over a half hour to lay out of Lackland.
Speaker 4: Northbound seventy five lane's blocked with an accident above seventy four.
Speaker 4: Chuck Ingram on fifty five KRCEE Deep Talk Station.
Speaker 2: Six thirty.
Speaker 1: Happy Thursday, Brian Thomas always interested and happy when FOP
Speaker 1: president Ken Kober joins the program Fraternal Order of Peace
Speaker 1: Chapter sixty nine, representing the CINCINNTI Police Department. But talk
Speaker 1: about today what they and the firefighters are concerned about,
Speaker 1: which is the Cincinnati What is the Community Responder Program? Ken,
Speaker 1: welcome back to the Morning Show. Good to hear from you.
Speaker 5: Thank good morning, Brian, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: All right, let's start with what is the Community Responder Program?
Speaker 1: This is something set up by city hall or by
Speaker 1: the by city council.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So this program is actually developed by the communications director
Speaker 5: emergency communications director, and the idea behind it is to
Speaker 5: basically take civilians that are going to answer calls for
Speaker 5: service instead of having things that traditionally the police do,
Speaker 5: like calls.
Speaker 3: In the nine to one one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So when the call comes in from nine to
Speaker 5: one one, then the communications director has instructed the dispatchers
Speaker 5: to instead of dispatching the police, they're going to dispatch
Speaker 5: the civilians instead of the police for certain runs.
Speaker 1: Well, that sounds like it might come with inherent dangers
Speaker 1: for people who are not trained law enforcement professionals.
Speaker 5: It's been proven already to be rather disastrous. Oh really,
Speaker 5: especially for the citizens.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay, and these are employees of the city
Speaker 1: that are doing this.
Speaker 5: That's correct.
Speaker 1: Okay, So paid employees from the city are responding to
Speaker 1: what otherwise would have been a traditional police nine to
Speaker 1: one to one response. He said, it's been a disaster.
Speaker 1: Can you give my listeners and me an illustration and
Speaker 1: maybe where something went sort of sideways on the citizen.
Speaker 5: Sure. So one of the things that they're doing is
Speaker 5: they're having them respond to auto accidents and instead of
Speaker 5: their theory was well, we're going to lighten the load
Speaker 5: on the police. However, what they're doing is they're showing
Speaker 5: up going to a crash scene and telling them well,
Speaker 5: if you want to report, just go to the police district.
Speaker 5: But what we've seen so far is happening. Two particular
Speaker 5: egregious instances is where they showed up a woman who
Speaker 5: was visibly pregnant, I think she was like eight months pregnant,
Speaker 5: was injured in an auto accident, and instead of calling
Speaker 5: for an ambulance, he said, we'll just go to the
Speaker 5: police district and have a police report fouled up, that's
Speaker 5: what you want to do. So you have an injured
Speaker 5: pregnant woman shows up at the police district and they're like,
Speaker 5: what is this Another one was a guy shows up
Speaker 5: at the district So, yeah, these civilian people told us
Speaker 5: to just come here and follow this police report. He goes,
Speaker 5: but I'm kind of confused because the woman that.
Speaker 3: Hit me was visibly drunk. There you go, they let
Speaker 3: her drive away.
Speaker 1: Just getting ready to ask that it had been trained
Speaker 1: in recognizing impaired driving. Do they know what to look for?
Speaker 1: Can they administer the traditional test to determine whether someone
Speaker 1: is impaired behind the wheel or are they just going
Speaker 1: to overlook something like that that's concerning.
Speaker 3: Well, sure it is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the liability that the city assuming by
Speaker 5: having one of their employees just let somebody that either
Speaker 5: didn't recognize it or is still equipped to recognize these
Speaker 5: kind of things, they let them.
Speaker 2: Drive away, drive away.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh my word.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I got a little burning question go
Speaker 1: on in the back of my head here. If you
Speaker 1: had a full contingent of police officers, in other words,
Speaker 1: if you weren't behind in numbers by how many of
Speaker 1: you down now like three hundred or so, Now we're
Speaker 1: down one hundred and forty, one hundred and forty. Well,
Speaker 1: if you had those one hundred and forty officers now
Speaker 1: working and UH with the police with actively with the
Speaker 1: police department. Would this would these community responders even be necessary?
Speaker 1: I mean, aren't they supposed to? And this sounds like
Speaker 1: a band aid solution they came up with to avoid
Speaker 1: hiring more police officers.
Speaker 5: That's exactly what we suspect is going on.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's where your union contract comes in, right.
Speaker 5: Well, sure, you know the collective bargaining agreement that we
Speaker 5: have says that the work that is traditionally of a
Speaker 5: if they want someone else to do that work, then
Speaker 5: it has to be negotiated. So I sent a season
Speaker 5: desist order last August when they came up with this
Speaker 5: plan and told them that if this is something that
Speaker 5: you want to do, you must first negotiate it with
Speaker 5: the FOP. They just turned a blind eye to it
Speaker 5: once they started hiring people. Is when we decided to
Speaker 5: take action and we filed an unfair labor practice.
Speaker 1: FOP president can cover. I'm going to keep you a
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Speaker 1: Acre's You're nine first morning with a forecasts slick out
Speaker 1: there to be real careful.
Speaker 2: Today's side just twenty two degrees.
Speaker 1: And it'll be cloudy all day today. If you've flirted,
Speaker 1: maybe this morning overnight time to thirteen with clouds. I
Speaker 1: have thirty tomorrow with some sun and the flood warning
Speaker 1: ending at one thirty pm over nineteen to thirteen with
Speaker 1: clouds and a clear Saturday Saturday going up to thirty
Speaker 1: seven degrees.
Speaker 2: Right now it's fifteen degrees in time for traffic.
Speaker 3: From the UCLP Traffic Center. And do you see health.
Speaker 4: You'll find comprehensive care that's so personal and make sure
Speaker 4: best tomorrow possible. That's boundless care for better outcomes. Expect
Speaker 4: more at youseehealth dot com. We'rell morning on seventy five
Speaker 4: southbound shutdown with traffic being diverted off at Paddock. HiT's
Speaker 4: over a half hour delay out of Lachlan northbound seventy five.
Speaker 4: Let lane's blocked with an accident above seventy four. Chuck
Speaker 4: Ingram on fifty five KRSNE theme talk Station.
Speaker 1: Six thirty eighth about krc Detalk station Brian Thomas with
Speaker 1: FOP President Kencobe. We're talking about this greater since a
Speaker 1: community responder program where they sends civilians out on what
Speaker 1: otherwise we'd be normally a police run after someone calls
Speaker 1: in the complaint. Really troubled by that whole automobile accident
Speaker 1: thing because you anticipated exactly where I was going, because
Speaker 1: it could be an ov I situation. Are these are
Speaker 1: these citizen responders? Are they trained on any level?
Speaker 3: Ken?
Speaker 2: Do you know?
Speaker 5: So? They're given some kind of bare bones training. I
Speaker 5: think the training was like six weeks total to cover
Speaker 5: a myriad of things. But one thing that they're not
Speaker 5: equipped to handle is defending themselves if they get into
Speaker 5: a rather violent situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Across the country, we hear all the time about officers
Speaker 5: that show up to a minor auto accent they get ambushed.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say, yeah, means to offend themselves.
Speaker 1: You Quite often situations can devolve from the mundane to
Speaker 1: the violent. I mean, people can just kind of lose
Speaker 1: their wits on a moment's notice. So so these citizen
Speaker 1: responders are themselves maybe in peril. Let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: Do they wear body cameras ken.
Speaker 3: No, of course not.
Speaker 5: Why would they need to do that. That's just reserved
Speaker 5: for the police.
Speaker 1: Do they have radios so they can call in for
Speaker 1: backup with more citizens to show up if there's a problem.
Speaker 5: Right exactly. And that's the other part of this. If
Speaker 5: they get into a situation that they're ill equipped to
Speaker 5: handle and they come over screaming on the radio. Now
Speaker 5: you have the police that are going to be driving
Speaker 5: lights and sirens at high speech, trying to get there
Speaker 5: to protect somebody that has no way to protect themselves,
Speaker 5: and it's only putting the police in even more danger.
Speaker 1: I guess I have to ask this sort of out loud.
Speaker 1: Did the city ever contemplate any of these problems when
Speaker 1: they shove this thing through? Do they consult with the
Speaker 1: police department? And I know this supplies to the firefighters
Speaker 1: because the firefighters union apparently is a little miffed about
Speaker 1: this as well.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 5: I can only assume that they did not or they
Speaker 5: just didn't care what the response was.
Speaker 2: But you're right.
Speaker 5: I mean that's the same way the fire department now
Speaker 5: following suit with the FOP, and they're following unfair labor
Speaker 5: practice themselves.
Speaker 1: Do you have any idea how much these citizen responders
Speaker 1: are paid.
Speaker 5: I looked at I think their average salary is somewhere
Speaker 5: between sixty and ninety thousand a year.
Speaker 1: Holy crap, I mean that's you're in You're in police
Speaker 1: wage territory, there are you not?
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're getting close. And this is the this is
Speaker 5: the biggest problem aside from the safety aspect. They're really
Speaker 5: not lightening the load for the police because they show
Speaker 5: up to an auto accident, they don't investigate it, and
Speaker 5: they look at the people that are involved and go, hey,
Speaker 5: just show up at the district. But here's the problem.
Speaker 5: So you have two people that are involved in an
Speaker 5: auto accident, they say, hey, just show up, you go
Speaker 5: to your local police district finer report. They're only telling
Speaker 5: one person that they need to go, which, of course
Speaker 5: then only one person shows up. And you know, I
Speaker 5: got one side of the story. You don't have the
Speaker 5: other person's information. But let me just say for a
Speaker 5: second and that they actually tell both people to go
Speaker 5: to a police district. And you have one person that
Speaker 5: lives on the west side, they go to District three.
Speaker 5: You have a person that lives on the east side
Speaker 5: and they go to District two. How do you merge
Speaker 5: those police reports and the answers You can't. Well, so
Speaker 5: you have two different police reports going on, and you
Speaker 5: know the same, the facts are different. It's an absolute
Speaker 5: disservice to the people that live, work, and play in
Speaker 5: Cincinnati that they have to even deal with this kind
Speaker 5: of thing.
Speaker 2: Well do they issue citations.
Speaker 5: No, they don't even investigate the crash. They just show
Speaker 5: up and say.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a pretty valuable piece of information for someone
Speaker 1: who's going to make an insurance claim that guy hit me,
Speaker 1: he owes me and needs to pay me back for
Speaker 1: my out of pocket responsibilities under my autobile insurance. Or
Speaker 1: if you don't have any for the damage done by
Speaker 1: the accident, Oh my god, my neck hurts, I've got
Speaker 1: medical bills. Now, all these things become critical questions in
Speaker 1: an automobile accident, even if it doesn't involve into violence
Speaker 1: and they're not in a position to issue a citation.
Speaker 1: Or make a determination as the responsibility. Oh great, then
Speaker 1: you're never going to get one. Sure, this is the
Speaker 1: most ill conceit. Well, I can't say I've ever heard of,
Speaker 1: because we all know things from government. We can go
Speaker 1: down and spend hours and hours talking about stupidity.
Speaker 2: You know, And I guess.
Speaker 1: One of them is going to get hurt someday too,
Speaker 1: and that's going to be a real problem.
Speaker 2: There's no doubt.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's so me looking at us from the
Speaker 5: human side of this. You're notwithstanding the legal side, They're
Speaker 5: going to get somebody hurt. They're going to get somebody killed,
Speaker 5: whether it's a citizen, whether it's one of these community responders.
Speaker 5: And that's just something that it's going to happen. It's inevitable.
Speaker 2: That's a shame.
Speaker 1: Now, where is it in terms of I know, you
Speaker 1: send a cease and desist order to stop this program
Speaker 1: from going through. It went through anyway, and I guess
Speaker 1: they're actively using this program right now.
Speaker 2: It's correct.
Speaker 1: So what's the next step for the union for the
Speaker 1: Police and Firefighters Union in this process?
Speaker 5: So we filed the unfair labor practice with the State
Speaker 5: Employment Relations Board. They've investigated it, and they've ordered us
Speaker 5: to go to mediation. So next month I'll be going
Speaker 5: up to Columbus and We'll be trying to mediate the situation.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, and if the mediation doesn't work, because you're not
Speaker 1: bound by any mediation unless you both mutually agreed to
Speaker 1: resolve it under the terms of the mediation, do you
Speaker 1: go to arbitration then or do you end up in
Speaker 1: front of a judge?
Speaker 5: Well, to go back to the state Employment Relations Board
Speaker 5: for them to investigate further and decide how they wanted
Speaker 5: to get it resolved.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I hope they resolved. To point out
Speaker 1: to the city since saying this sounds like a really
Speaker 1: bad idea. Do you know where the funds came from
Speaker 1: to hire these people? This is just comes out of
Speaker 1: the city, the general fund. All right.
Speaker 3: They've got some really.
Speaker 5: Nice vehicles too. I mean, we can't get we can't
Speaker 5: get new police cars. But yeah, they've got an electric Mustang.
Speaker 5: They've got some nice Chevy Silverados. And that's certainly a
Speaker 5: little bit of reb on the police as well as
Speaker 5: they are driving cars that they have two hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty thousand miles on them and they're going but these
Speaker 5: people have brand new cars.
Speaker 2: That's kind of neat.
Speaker 1: Well, and do you know how many of them there
Speaker 1: are before we part company today, Ken.
Speaker 5: I think there's like a half dozen so far.
Speaker 3: So far?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so far?
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, this just sounds like stupid all across it. And
Speaker 1: I hope for some reason this does violate the terms
Speaker 1: of your collective bargaining agreement, so we can put it
Speaker 1: into this program and maybe save lives and also help
Speaker 1: people resolve their insurance claims during automobile accidents. Ken, I
Speaker 1: feel for you, man, keep up the great work you're
Speaker 1: doing on behalf of the police department, and God bless
Speaker 1: all of the members of the Cincinnati Police Department and
Speaker 1: for what you do each and every day.
Speaker 5: Sure well, thanks, Brian, appreciate you having me.
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