Committee questions CPD traffic-enforcement data, cites district disparities and data limits

Cincinnati’s Public Safety and Governance Committee heard a briefing from Cincinnati Police Department traffic staff about how the department sets traffic-enforcement priorities and about limitations in the data used to measure enforcement.

Assistant Chief Matt Hammer told the committee the department’s enforcement decisions reflect three work streams: citizen complaints and community-council referrals; data-driven analysis of traffic crashes and high-injury locations; and officers’ on-patrol identification of hazardous conditions. "Decision making in terms of traffic enforcement for CPD, has some complexity to it," Hammer said.

Jillian Desmond, who works in CPD’s crime analysis and problem-solving unit, described data gaps that make it difficult to map and compare enforcement consistently. She said citation records arrive on paper, are manually entered into a county system, and that county-hand input causes lags and…