CINCINNATI — The Cincinnati police chief wants to reduce the number of sergeants in their ranks, increasing the number of officers on patrol.
“The most important job on the police department is patrolmen,” said Dan Hils, president of the Fraternal Order of Police.
Mollie Lair, a spokesperson for the city manager’s office, said City Manager Sheryl Long approved Chief Teresa Theetge’s request to reduce the number of sergeants from 164 to 140. Over time, Long said there will be an additional 24 patrolmen on the streets.
Theetge said this move was coming during a Budget & Finance Committee meeting on April 10.
“Our current sergeants list will expire on April 17. We will be exercising our contractual right to notify the FOP we will be reducing the complement of sergeants. What that means is we will keep more people as police officers. Unfortunately, that postpones the opportunity to get promoted to sergeant,” Theetge said.
The department will achieve this goal through attrition. Long said this can be done through resignation, retirement, promotion, demotion, dismissal for cause or death.
Lt. Jonathan Cunningham said the department will not demote any sergeants.
The decision to reduce the number of sergeants is one Hils supports.
“This is one of those rare moments where you get to hear me say I approve of the direction that the police and city administration are going,” Hils said.
Hils and Cunningham both said this process will take a couple of years, as the department waits for officers to retire.
“Ideally, this should have been done a couple years ago. Ideally, I don’t think we ever should have grown so large administratively,” Hils said.
He noted he would like to see a reduction in the number of lieutenants and captains. Hils said having a larger police presence on the streets should help reduce crime and improve officer safety.
“The most common complaint I get is that officers feel unsafe because of the lack of patrol persons with them on any given shift,” he said.
In a letter to the mayor and city council members, Long said in part: “It is important for our officers to feel safe when on patrol and for our citizens to see police working in their community.”
CPD is allotted to have 1,059 sworn officers. As of today, Cunningham said they have 952 sworn officers.
“If we’re not up to complement, we have to alleviate some issues and being top heavy is definitely one of those issues. Too many bosses, not enough workers,” Hils said.
In April, Theetge reallocated 20 positions from various departments to patrol.
“That was a tough but necessary call that needed to be made,” she said. “Putting 20 more officers back in patrol is just to try to stabilize patrol to continue to answer those calls for service.”
Cunningham said 20 officers made the transition to patrol.
Hils said he is happy to see the department taking steps to increase its number of patrolmen.
