Speaker 1: Don't want to be an American.
Speaker 2: It's a Scott's Loan show on seven hundred WIW and
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Speaker 2: up boggling example of ready fire aim Chief Teresa Thiji
Speaker 2: placed on administrative leave, paid administrator to leave at that
Speaker 2: and an interim chief. And Adam Henny named this before
Speaker 2: the investigation into the effectiveness of our leadership as a
Speaker 2: city calls it that any of this happens. It's the
Speaker 2: city is looking for a reason to fire the chief.
Speaker 2: After they fire the chief, it just goes from bad
Speaker 2: to worse. Too ridiculous at this point with the City
Speaker 2: of Cincinnati, and it's a leader app to ad Pierre
Speaker 2: Valscher along the city manager in just more confusion and
Speaker 2: chaos when we don't need it. Steve Goodness here is
Speaker 2: a council candidate from a council member, attorney and charter
Speaker 2: right and with his analysis here this morning, Steve, how.
Speaker 1: Are you Steve there?
Speaker 2: Steve Gooden, Well wait, wait, hold on, hold on, standby,
Speaker 2: let's go there we go. We got you awsked you. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: first day on the new job, first day on the
Speaker 2: new job. For me, there's an irony here because it's
Speaker 2: the executive branch's law enforcement. The irony is, of course,
Speaker 2: there's no due process for the chief of police. This
Speaker 2: is conviction before being charged, and on that they haven't
Speaker 2: even hired a law firm yet.
Speaker 1: How does this make any sense legally?
Speaker 3: Well it doesn't. I mean, look, you know, I've had employees,
Speaker 3: you know, for most of my career, and look, I
Speaker 3: rule number one is, if you've got the goods on somebody,
Speaker 3: you just go ahead and fire them, you know. And
Speaker 3: so the idea that's here, they said, hey, well we
Speaker 3: want you to resign. The charter clearly says that once
Speaker 3: the chief has served more than six months, she can
Speaker 3: only be fired for cause. So presumably, if they had
Speaker 3: any kind of cause or bad behavior on her part
Speaker 3: that had been documented, they would just gone ahead and
Speaker 3: fired her and we wouldn't have this farce. So now
Speaker 3: they're trying to create a ground, obviously, create grounds to
Speaker 3: fire her after the fact, after they've already sort of
Speaker 3: gone to her and asked her to resign. It is
Speaker 3: a morale killer it's more politics that the rank and
Speaker 3: file see this. I talked to some officers yesterday who
Speaker 3: are just disgusted by how this is playing out. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're already short staff, morale was already bad. And I
Speaker 3: got to hand it to mayor and the council. They
Speaker 3: have done the impossible. They have taken a horrible situation
Speaker 3: and made it yet worse. I was thinking, like, there's
Speaker 3: really no way it gets any worse. We have rampant
Speaker 3: gun violence, business is downtown, are scared in town. We
Speaker 3: literally have slats standing on Fountain Square. My offices right
Speaker 3: there was there yesterday. We don't really have a police chef.
Speaker 3: How could we make it worse? And also, yeah, I've
Speaker 3: never seen a situation we're bringing a bunch of lawyers
Speaker 3: in billing by the hour makes anything. Say that as
Speaker 3: a lawyer who builds by the hour, it never makes
Speaker 3: things better.
Speaker 1: Here's a great example.
Speaker 2: See here's a great example NBA scandal, the betting of
Speaker 2: the gambling scandal.
Speaker 1: Chauncey Billups.
Speaker 2: Okay, how it works all always is always is All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, there's a bombshell, Hey we're having a
Speaker 2: press count.
Speaker 1: Here's what's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: It's like we caught all these players in the gambling
Speaker 2: scheme and at the mobs involved, and you have a
Speaker 2: press conference, you lay the charges out. On the other
Speaker 2: side says, oh, we deny, we deny, we deny.
Speaker 1: Uh. That's how you don't go, hey, by the way.
Speaker 2: Uh, ch we're going to we're gonna we're gonna do this,
Speaker 2: uh and then go and find that we're not sure
Speaker 2: we believe they did this, and now we're gonna go
Speaker 2: and investigate it.
Speaker 1: It's it's completely backwards. You don't do that.
Speaker 2: You have the charges that they make the presentation. You
Speaker 2: don't present and say we're gonna let we're Chauncey billups,
Speaker 2: We're we're gonna suspend you, We're gonna come after, we're
Speaker 2: gonna charge you, but we're not going to tell you
Speaker 2: what it is. We've got to hire a team to
Speaker 2: do that. But we know you're guilty of something. It
Speaker 2: just it doesn't even pass the stiff test for most people.
Speaker 3: It's insane, right, all right, Well, it's a fundamental violation
Speaker 3: of it, just even the most basic due process on
Speaker 3: her part. She can't answer the charges because she doesn't
Speaker 3: know what they are. Now we know from the mayor's
Speaker 3: comments that they're hanging all this on her quote and effectiveness.
Speaker 3: But what she's already telegraph very strongly is I think
Speaker 3: she acknowledges she was uneffective, okay, because of the policy
Speaker 3: she was given an instructed to do. I mean, we
Speaker 3: know that city Hall and the mayor helped elect a
Speaker 3: set of judges over in the courthouse that really didn't
Speaker 3: believe in cash bail, so they were putting gun offenders
Speaker 3: back on the streets rapidly, and that that contributed to
Speaker 3: the frustration in the police department, And that she has
Speaker 3: clearly said that she went to the mayor to try
Speaker 3: to correct the situation and he refused. We also know
Speaker 3: that this whole bizarre compliance versus enforcement thing on lower
Speaker 3: level offenses came right from the city manager and the mayor.
Speaker 3: Now I fault the chief candidly for not pushing back
Speaker 3: more on that. So they stopped writing, uh you know,
Speaker 3: wead tickets, stopped pursuing graffiti issues, stopped dealing with the
Speaker 3: homeless situation downtown, and over time, the failure to prosecute
Speaker 3: or deal with these low level offenses created a sense
Speaker 3: of lawlessness that brought the real bad actors with guns downtown.
Speaker 3: So we've seen that. But calling her ineffective because your
Speaker 3: policies were ineffective, I mean, that's ridiculous. And this just
Speaker 3: isn't the way you do things. OK. I used to
Speaker 3: run a big law firm and there were a couple
Speaker 3: of different instances where we had young lawyers who had
Speaker 3: who had done bad things, and we did an investigation
Speaker 3: and then we went to them then laid it out
Speaker 3: and so either resign or get fired, and here are
Speaker 3: your options. And here's what we found. Unless you have
Speaker 3: some answer, that's how it works. This is they're trying
Speaker 3: to make up a reason to fire after.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And now we have a pattern
Speaker 2: of behavior, Steve Gooden. And when it's abuse of due process,
Speaker 2: let's go back to the July street brawl where you
Speaker 2: had a white guy right who has started this whole
Speaker 2: thing allegedly, and then the city come out and says, well, then,
Speaker 2: well you know what, actually a minute forty six prior,
Speaker 2: they were the victim of some very extreme racial attacks
Speaker 2: and physical attacks. And this was him bass So and
Speaker 2: you know he had the ministers crying for Whitey to
Speaker 2: be charged all this stuff and they do that, and
Speaker 2: it's actually Adam Henny now the interim chief oddly enough,
Speaker 2: so you see there's some quid pro quote at least,
Speaker 2: and I'm not demeaning Chief Henny here. I understand it's
Speaker 2: a great cops cops cop, but again, playing the game
Speaker 2: is that now you cast dispersions on the integrity of
Speaker 2: the office, because like, if you're willing to write a
Speaker 2: ticket for something you didn't witness yourself, and the officers
Speaker 2: didn't want to get jammed up, and he said, I'll
Speaker 2: take the bullet from my officer, so to speak, and
Speaker 2: write the citation that led to the charges.
Speaker 1: It's cut from the same.
Speaker 2: Cloth, like, Okay, we're going to wait a month to
Speaker 2: charge someone, and pretty clearly it's someone who shouldn't be charged,
Speaker 2: but we're doing it because of political correctness and political expediency,
Speaker 2: just like we're doing now we have a trend now.
Speaker 3: All right, well yeah, I mean it's just what we've
Speaker 3: done here is just it just undermines the sense of
Speaker 3: fairness and of law and order in the town. It
Speaker 3: really does look like the mayor and the city manager
Speaker 3: can say, I want this guy charged, so they go
Speaker 3: back and charge him. Whether there's evidence or not, I
Speaker 3: don't know, but certainly you had a guy who an
Speaker 3: officer who signed the charge, who was not involved in
Speaker 3: the investigation, wasn't there, and it hadn't interviewed the guy
Speaker 3: even apparently. Now you also have the scenario where they're saying,
Speaker 3: on these low level offenses, we don't want people charge
Speaker 3: And how do you have a city that way? We
Speaker 3: have a charter that says our police chief and city
Speaker 3: manager is supposed to be independent above politics. They're supposed
Speaker 3: to be out there policing and do it, you know,
Speaker 3: working going where the crime is, looking at real metrics
Speaker 3: and trying to figure out what to do. And that's
Speaker 3: what the neighborhoods are, you know, crying about, because I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean, we don't even trust I don't trust the
Speaker 3: data coming out of the police department in city Hall anymore.
Speaker 3: I think it's clearly been manipulated to make the gun
Speaker 3: violence look less. I mean, you know, from shots about
Speaker 3: and we're on track for twenty three thousand shots fire,
Speaker 3: but that isn't reflected in the other data.
Speaker 2: It's clear from the top right, I mean, the two
Speaker 2: examples I gain what you saided here too. It's like
Speaker 2: the mayor is deciding what justice looks like. And I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: but I wonder about those people who would support AFTAB
Speaker 2: puricle and a heartbeat, who are down marching at the
Speaker 2: No King's rally. Isn't this what you're allegedly fighting against?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I mean, it could not be more
Speaker 3: perfect of an analogy between Donald Trump and AFTAB. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's exactly the same thing. It's just, you know, they're
Speaker 3: on different sides of the aisle politically, you know, but
Speaker 3: there is this sense on both sides that they are
Speaker 3: like busting through some of the norms, you know, that
Speaker 3: we have out there. Said, the critique people make of
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is exactly the same critique that could be
Speaker 3: made of AFTAB, which is somebody who really just doesn't
Speaker 3: plan with the rules. And I would go a step further.
Speaker 3: I mean, the thing that makes me the sickest is
Speaker 3: we've had mayors in the past who have kind of
Speaker 3: lost their way, but we've always had some diversity of
Speaker 3: thought on city Council and some people with backbone that
Speaker 3: we're willing to push back. These guys have been with
Speaker 3: maybe one exception in the last twenty four hours, no
Speaker 3: one's done anything. I mean in the old days, you
Speaker 3: know a Chris Smitherman or a Steve Guodden or even
Speaker 3: maybe Alsie someone you know or can you call someone
Speaker 3: like that would have called for a hearing right a
Speaker 3: public here and to say like what happened here? They
Speaker 3: bring the chief, and they bring the city manager in
Speaker 3: and say like, hey, look, you know, with the cameras on,
Speaker 3: tell us what the hell is going on here where?
Speaker 3: You know? And they wouldn't have just accepted this nonsense
Speaker 3: day in and day out. So there's a lack of
Speaker 3: oversight from council that really really makes this even worse
Speaker 3: because I mean, they have a role in this process.
Speaker 3: They can you know, they have the ability to shine
Speaker 3: a flashlight here and they are hiding under their desk.
Speaker 2: But I would point out that we're being told to
Speaker 2: add at nauseam from a to add peer of all
Speaker 2: in others, this is not political. She's not a political scapegoat.
Speaker 2: The election has nothing to do with the decision. The
Speaker 2: decisions we take public safeties are number one priorities, Like
Speaker 2: we're taking it seriously. This is not political all. As
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, she's not not even fired, she's
Speaker 2: on paid administrative leave.
Speaker 1: And there's another part.
Speaker 2: Of the of the s absurdity Steve Gooden, is that
Speaker 2: all right, Fiji's on paid administrative not fired. She's not
Speaker 2: administrative leader. She's stick in a paycheck while we investigate
Speaker 2: her over the next one. It's going to take months,
Speaker 2: apparently to solve this. Then why name a interim chief
Speaker 2: instead of an acting chief? If you're suspended, it's an
Speaker 2: acting chief, like if someone's hurt. You know, Joe Flacco
Speaker 2: is the acting starting quarterback. He is not the interim
Speaker 2: starting There's a difference in a nuance. There is interim
Speaker 2: chief not acting. They essentially have given it like, well
Speaker 2: we're done with the old chief, this is the innermundle
Speaker 2: we find a new one.
Speaker 1: They've already stated that, and then they go back and go, well, no,
Speaker 1: she just doesn't leave.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what's so funny is he actually slipped
Speaker 3: up at one of his you know, he was sort
Speaker 3: of ambushed coming out of council chambers yesterday and I
Speaker 3: think it was Channel twelve or one of the other
Speaker 3: reporters asked him, you know some pretty tough questions, said, well,
Speaker 3: whenever we move on and change leadership. It's a tough time.
Speaker 3: And I said, okay, so you're firing her? Oh no,
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that. And you just said we're changing leadership,
Speaker 3: you know, And it was like, you know, you're like
Speaker 3: you can't even keep.
Speaker 2: Your your Live Street interim in acting, so you don't
Speaker 2: even know what the adjective you need at this point.
Speaker 2: It's so comically bad in the and the sad part
Speaker 2: about this is all right, it's going to go on
Speaker 2: in for a months, okay, so put your political hat
Speaker 2: on here. A second, good and from the legal one, Okay,
Speaker 2: after the election, what happens, well.
Speaker 3: You know after the election, I mean, lou Well, first, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: I see this dragging into the next year. Uh. And
Speaker 3: I mean I think number one, what the first one
Speaker 3: we got to watch for is what law firm they choose.
Speaker 3: So if they choose one of the go to law
Speaker 3: firms that have represented AFTAB and Council in the past
Speaker 3: and they've gotten in trouble, we're going to know the
Speaker 3: fixes in you know, I we're hoping to go with
Speaker 3: someone outside the area, if you have some integrity here,
Speaker 3: who might actually push back. But I wouldn't hold my
Speaker 3: bread for that. So number one is we got to
Speaker 3: watch which law firm. If it's one of these like
Speaker 3: hyper connected democratic law firms, you know, then you know,
Speaker 3: all bets are off as to what happens there. But
Speaker 3: I would expect us to drag on at least through
Speaker 3: the end of the year with us having you know,
Speaker 3: a suspended chief and an interim chief and then some
Speaker 3: sort of a search. If there was any integrity here,
Speaker 3: they'd wait and see what the new council is going
Speaker 3: to look like so that they could have some input.
Speaker 3: But my guess is that there's going to be like
Speaker 3: a hurry up to try to resolve all this in
Speaker 3: December before anybody can come in and shine a light
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 1: How much longer is she under contract? How much as
Speaker 1: you do? How long does that last?
Speaker 3: My understanding is, and I haven't read it, but my
Speaker 3: recollection is that they renew it every two years. And
Speaker 3: that is where this gets funny from a legal standpoint,
Speaker 3: is that if you recall, we have this thing called
Speaker 3: Issue five that was passed back from two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: which is deeply unpopular with the FOP and probably is
Speaker 3: ripe to be revisited. That kind of takes the chief
Speaker 3: out of some of or most of the civil service protections.
Speaker 3: So the idea is that the Sydney Manager, with input
Speaker 3: from the mayor, actually could just fire the chief for cause.
Speaker 3: And that's in the charter, and it spells it out
Speaker 3: pretty clearly that once you're in the job six months,
Speaker 3: it's kind of a probationary period. Could be fired for
Speaker 3: any reason. After six months, they have to actually prove
Speaker 3: that you've screwed something up for cause. But they are,
Speaker 3: on top of that, have apparently been issuing these two
Speaker 3: year contracts that somehow, you know, deal with compensation and
Speaker 3: so forth, and apparently there's language in there that contradicts
Speaker 3: the charter. So that's why she's lawyered up and there's
Speaker 3: going to be some sort of a court battle about
Speaker 3: what her rights really are. And even this is a mess.
Speaker 3: I don't know how the Law Department allowed this to happen,
Speaker 3: where you have something in the contract that I guess
Speaker 3: the contract doesn't mention her being fired for cause, but
Speaker 3: yet the charter says she is. They're in conflict, and
Speaker 3: it's the classic sort of thing that you end up,
Speaker 3: I hate to say it, having lawyers fight out in
Speaker 3: court in the fact that we're here and that we've
Speaker 3: been kind of doing business this way for years, you know,
Speaker 3: is to terrible. And again the taxpayers lose. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is going to cost every bit of a million
Speaker 3: dollars or about the salary and benefits of five to
Speaker 3: six police officers the time this is all said and.
Speaker 2: Doc, Yeah, he is a Steve Gooden counsel condidate, former
Speaker 2: councilman and a Charter rights Steve Gooden on the ready
Speaker 2: Fire aim approach with Fiji. She is on paid administrative leave.
Speaker 2: They name an interim chief, not acting interim, so there's
Speaker 2: confusion there. And now they're going to hire a law
Speaker 2: firm that could take months of them to investigate why
Speaker 2: they fired her in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's real life.
Speaker 2: That's really happening in the city right now, with an
Speaker 2: election happening, by the way, in just a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: And of course everyone is saying, I have to have
Speaker 2: on down. This is not political. Is it time for
Speaker 2: us to blow everything up? The way it works? Because
Speaker 2: we have a very inefficient If you live in Cincinnati,
Speaker 2: been here long til you kind of pay attention to
Speaker 2: but our government is so inefficient and it starts the
Speaker 2: fact there's so much overlap between Hamlin County and the
Speaker 2: City of Cincinnati in fighting for their turf. Of course
Speaker 2: you see stadium issues and such, but even within the
Speaker 2: design itself. You know, you mentioned the contentious issue five,
Speaker 2: but also how council works, how the city manager integrates
Speaker 2: and all this stuff. Because there's cover for everyone involved.
Speaker 2: Her council can go, well, we have a strong mayor
Speaker 2: in the mayor goes, well, we've got a city manager.
Speaker 2: And the city manager says, well, we've got a mayor
Speaker 2: and a council. It's like no one, there's no one
Speaker 2: the way we've got it wired right now, it strikes
Speaker 2: the average person like myself, Steve Gooden, that it's wired
Speaker 2: so there's no one accountable.
Speaker 3: Well, it's wired so that you end up with an
Speaker 3: absurd result, and you know, and it would work. The
Speaker 3: current system would work. It's not perfect, but would work
Speaker 3: better if council would just step up. If we didn't
Speaker 3: have like a you know, an all a nine member
Speaker 3: politically ambitious democratic city council who would actually step up
Speaker 3: and provide some of the oversight that they are allowed
Speaker 3: to do. But I mean to your larger point, I
Speaker 3: have always been somebody who has been pushing for at
Speaker 3: least some form of metro government so that we might
Speaker 3: actually find some of these efficiencies. I mean, even Tyahoga County,
Speaker 3: even Cleveland has gone to a limited form of metro government,
Speaker 3: Indianapolis has, Louisville has. I mean, it's it's ridiculous that
Speaker 3: we have all these turf battles. It's ridiculous that our
Speaker 3: departments don't work well together. And I mean back when
Speaker 3: I was in the prosecutors obviously as a young assistant prosecutor,
Speaker 3: back in two thousand and one, post the Timothy Thomas
Speaker 3: shooting and the riots that happened, we absolutely had a
Speaker 3: level of cooperation between the city and the county then
Speaker 3: that will be unheard of now. You know, we had
Speaker 3: Operation Vortex. Now they were doing gun and drug sweeps
Speaker 3: with CPD and Sheriff's patrols, I mean, and Ohio State
Speaker 3: Patrol and it was wonderful and it really made a difference.
Speaker 3: But now everyone is just in their silos and they
Speaker 3: don't cooperate at all, and it's really silly. And that's
Speaker 3: something that just desperately needs some fresh thought. And I
Speaker 3: can tell you this current crew or that's not where
Speaker 3: their head is. They're just all about protecting what they
Speaker 3: have rather than trying to look at what would actually
Speaker 3: serve the public better.
Speaker 2: This is the maybe this is a catalyst for Steve.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm trying to be optimistic here.
Speaker 3: Well, well, I'm trying to be optimistic too. And I
Speaker 3: think another part of it is that I'm hoping this
Speaker 3: is the year and the timeframe where some folks in
Speaker 3: the business community who I know have been talking for
Speaker 3: some time about metro government and substantive reforms. I know
Speaker 3: there's a working group down at the Chamber. It's very
Speaker 3: quiet that they've been looking at and studying and pushing
Speaker 3: these issues. And there's just got to come a time
Speaker 3: where we're not not just you know, the citizens, but
Speaker 3: the business community and all these other groups that kind
Speaker 3: of feed in. They have to speak up on this
Speaker 3: stuff too, I mean, because they have a right or wrong,
Speaker 3: a louder voice, and it's been very easy for them
Speaker 3: to kind of go along cynically and say, well, look,
Speaker 3: you know, I have to have very you know, he's
Speaker 3: going to win. It's a blue city, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And just to go along to get along, and some
Speaker 3: people are going to have to stand up. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, we've been our little group has been pretty
Speaker 3: fearless about speaking out on these issues this year. We've
Speaker 3: paid a price for it in terms of some lost
Speaker 3: friendships and broken business relationships. But that's fine. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's what it takes. We need more people to speak
Speaker 3: up and say this isn't working, we're not happy, We're
Speaker 3: not going to go along to get along. We need
Speaker 3: real substance of change, just at every step of the way.
Speaker 3: And it's just going to take some political courage and
Speaker 3: some personal courage, frankly, because you know, in this world
Speaker 3: of lobbyists and nonprofits and the people that really have
Speaker 3: a lot of voices at city Hall, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of personal relationships and you have to be willing to
Speaker 3: just step on those at times if you're going to
Speaker 3: do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Gotch all right, he's a consul, kendedy, Steve Gooden.
Speaker 2: We'll see if this enacts any change, Probably not with
Speaker 2: the mayor, but I you know, ask others about the
Speaker 2: trickle down here, and I think it's I would think
Speaker 2: it's going to be substantial that somebody's going to pay
Speaker 2: for all this ineptitude that's happening at the hand of
Speaker 2: Aftab and cheer along and forts. It's probably gonna be
Speaker 2: some decent people on console for that matter. We'll see
Speaker 2: how it shakes out. Steve, all the best and maybe
Speaker 2: you're part of that change, hopefully and can bring some
Speaker 2: of these ideas to fruition. All the best men, have
Speaker 2: a great weekend. Thanks you too, Take take care. We
Speaker 2: got to get to news and.
Speaker 1: We're in return.
Speaker 2: We have fun because it's Friday, a little heavy for
Speaker 2: a Friday, I apologize. But the insanity what's happening in
Speaker 2: the city is it's unprecedented.
Speaker 1: It really really is.
Speaker 2: Austin Ellmore from ESPN fifteen thirty jumps in next we'll
Speaker 2: talk football, football, and more football, plus the NBA scandal,
Speaker 2: the latest on that next seven hundred WW Scott Fund
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