Transparency, discrimination brought up in CPD's latest cultural assessment

The results of the Cincinnati Police Department's cultural assessment are now public. While the survey goes to everyone in the department, only about half gave their opinions on officer wellbeing, communication and more.

Survey results show positive grades on the officers' relationships with the public and officer wellness. However, the survey showed there are issues with transparency, communication and discrimination.

Police Chief Teresa Theetge said on Tuesday CPD is already taking steps to improve the culture, which includes meeting with officers more often and releasing monthly videos about the state of the department. However, Theetge said it will be tougher to address cases of discrimination because the survey didn't go into the specifics.

"I'm very optimistic about having some meaningful changes," said CPD Col. Aaron Jones.

During Cincinnati City Council's public safety and governance committee, CPD gave a presentation on the results of the latest cultural assessment. Just over 500 of 1,078 within CPD took the survey. The company behind the survey, Matrix Consulting Group, also conducted 17 one-on-one interviews with respondents.

The survey showed "favorable views" of CPD's relationship with and attitudes toward the public. CPD also scored high in promoting employee wellness and supporting programs to help officer morale. One of the programs highlighted in the survey was CPD's new donated therapy dog, "Stella."

"I hope you got an opportunity to meet Stella," Theetge said during Tuesday's council meeting.

Sgt. Stewart Isaacs, president of Cincinnati's Sentinel Police Association, also spoke about the importance of officer wellness after the meeting.

"We've done a lot of good work, but we have a lot more work to do," Isaacs said. "Officers are under a tremendous amount of stress, showing up, walking into a dangerous environment, taking on the energy of younger citizens. Some encounters are great encounters, and then sometimes the encounters are not good encounters and there's stress behind that. Unfortunately, the culture right now hasn't been good for the police in general and so we want to make sure that our officers are at their best."

81% of respondents reported a lack of transparency in decision-making, and 75% said there was a lack of communication.

"This was not a surprise, there was an assessment similar done in 2015," Jones said. "It's very difficult in a large organization, a bureaucratic organization, a police department to effectively communicate and get messages from the top down."

Half of the respondents said they experienced or witnessed discrimination, saying they felt they couldn't report it without experiencing retaliation.

"(That's) going to take some background work for us to then come up with a plan that we will fully execute," Theetge said. "The last two specifically can be a little hairy to navigate, but we're committed to full throttle look at the data, see what it tells us, how do we address it so that the people who took the survey that their perceptions their answers to the survey that they feel like they've been addressed appropriately."

This was the first time Isaacs saw the results of the report Tuesday. The Cincinnati Sentinel Police Association watches out for cases of bias and discrimination against minority officers and describes the next steps when it comes to investigating these claims of discrimination.

"The Sentinels will have to make sure to hold the department accountable along with the FOP that we're collaborating and say hey here's what we're hearing what can we do to make this situation better," Isaacs said.

Council member Scotty Johnson, a former CPD officer, said there is an inherent mistrust that even he noticed during his time with the department.

"Unfortunately in paramilitary organizations, there's in a lot of times, there's an inherent distrust for whatever reason, perception is reality depending on who is doing the perceiving," Johnson said.

Johnson said other officers have to be part of the solution to improve CPD.

"At some point, everybody's got to be willing to get out of their comfort zone," said Johnson.

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