What Happened to That Police Reform Success Story?

In a city once heralded as a model for community policing, questions arise about the possibility of long-term change

- Fola Akinnibi

The chaos in Cincinnati started, in earnest, at a budget hearing three weeks after the murder of George Floyd. The topic was a million-dollar bump for the Cincinnati Police Department, a hugely controversial proposition amid nationwide calls for drastically cutting police budgets.

Residents filed into the Duke Energy Convention Center on a Thursday night in June 2020. One by one, people took the floor, using their two minutes of allotted time to shout down the increase. “To know as a taxpayer that CPD is receiving my hard-earned money to continue and consistently oppress my brothers and sisters is sickening,” said a woman named Mecca, joining via Zoom. “At this point we are paying slave masters with badges.” Cincinnati police had killed nine people, most of them Black, in the past five years. In 2018, a video of an officer using a Taser on an 11-year-old Black girl in a Kroger supermarket went viral. Applause periodically swelled into “No Justice, No Peace” chants.

Almost three hours in, a middle-aged White man in a plaid button-down short-sleeved shirt walked up to the microphone. He introduced himself as Carl Beckman, thanked the committee, and began reading a prepared speech. “You should give priority to the funding of the police department … .” As soon as his allegiances became clear, an unrelenting two minutes of booing began. He soldiered on as “Black Lives Matter” chants started to drown him out.