Police chief outlines staffing shortfalls, homicide-clearance gains and drone pilot in budget briefing

Police Chief (Cincinnati Police Department) told the Budget & Finance Committee Wednesday that staffing remains the department’s principal budget challenge while homicide-clearance and evidence workflows have improved.

The department reported it is maintaining a multi-year sworn complement below authorized levels and described ongoing recruiting challenges while highlighting performance gains, including a 79.2% homicide closure rate in the first quarter (July–September) and full compliance with a 30-day National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) shell-casing-entry requirement.

The chief emphasized staffing constraints and recruiting headwinds as the biggest near-term obstacles. “The pool of people interested in joining law enforcement is smaller,” the Police Chief said, adding that retirements and resignations mean numbers are “ever changing.” She said the department is running robust recruiting efforts and has begun an understudy internship program that has led several interns to join recruit classes.

Committee members pressed for specifics on retirements and recruiter capacity. The Police Chief said she did not have a retirement-count at the table and that some retirement timing is confidential between employees and the pension board; she offered to provide the numbers later. Council members and the vice mayor asked whether the city-funded recruit-class schedule would be sufficient; the chief said maintaining the currently authorized class sizes roughly every nine months should improve staffing over several years but acknowledged the city is “playing catch up” after hiring freezes in prior decades.

On investigative performance, the department reported a Q1 homicide clearance rate of 79.2% (19 cases closed in that quarter) and 64.7% in the second quarter, both ahead of the department’s 50% goal. The chief said the department applies stricter closure criteria than many agencies — a case is not counted as closed unless it meets the department’s evidentiary threshold for prosecution. She also described a regional cold-case effort that places two homicide investigators on cold cases with partner offices and the coroner’s office.

The department provided other metrics the council requested: calls for service totaled roughly 145,000 in Q1 and 177,000 in Q2; the department aims to reduce police responses to low-level, nonviolent calls by 5% but reported reductions of 1.5% and 3.6% in the two quarters. The chief said alternative-response programs such as ARC and community co-responder teams are being expanded and could help reach the 5% target.

Traffic enforcement and safety measures were highlighted: the department runs “traffic blitzes” for enforcement and public education (two per year historically; quarter 2 included eight), and it is experimenting with a drone program, working to build an operational model before broader interagency collaboration.

On workforce wellness and diversity, the chief reported that 100% of officers had received services from the department’s wellness unit as part of annual training. The department said it is participating in the “30 by 30” initiative to reach 30% female representation by 2030 and currently is “hovering around” 24% women. Racial-diversity numbers were not provided at the presentation but the chief said she would supply them on request.

Committee members asked the chief to follow up with a retirement projection, racial-diversity data, and a staffing request for victim-services staff (named in the presentation as Karen Rumsey’s team). The chief said she would confer with those units and return figures during the budget process.

The Police Chief closed by reiterating recruiting, retention and strategic staffing as budget priorities as the city finalizes fiscal decisions.