John nine says, we have a cloudy day to day. I have twenty two and be careful on the roads. Dating the obvious if you're out there, but if you plan on going out and find some slick spots, so please watch it. Overnight low of thirteen with clouds high thirty Tomorrow. Flood warning ends at one thirty and we'll see some sun clouds every night down to thirteen and a clear day on Saturday with a high thirty seven fourteen degrees.
Right now, traffic time.
From you see up traffic center and do you see health.
You'll find comprehensive care that's so personal and make sure best tomorrow possible. That's boundless care for better outcomes. Expect more at you sehealth dot com. We'rell morning on seventy five southbound shut down with traffic being diverted off at the paddock.
HiT's over a half hour to lay out of Lackland.
Northbound seventy five lane's blocked with an accident above seventy four. Chuck Ingram on fifty five KRCEE Deep Talk Station.
Six thirty.
Happy Thursday, Brian Thomas always interested and happy when FOP president Ken Kober joins the program Fraternal Order of Peace Chapter sixty nine, representing the CINCINNTI Police Department. But talk about today what they and the firefighters are concerned about, which is the Cincinnati What is the Community Responder Program? Ken, welcome back to the Morning Show. Good to hear from you.
Thank good morning, Brian, thanks for having me.
All right, let's start with what is the Community Responder Program? This is something set up by city hall or by the by city council.
Yeah.
So this program is actually developed by the communications director emergency communications director, and the idea behind it is to basically take civilians that are going to answer calls for service instead of having things that traditionally the police do, like calls.
In the nine to one one.
Yeah, So when the call comes in from nine to one one, then the communications director has instructed the dispatchers to instead of dispatching the police, they're going to dispatch the civilians instead of the police for certain runs.
Well, that sounds like it might come with inherent dangers for people who are not trained law enforcement professionals.
It's been proven already to be rather disastrous. Oh really, especially for the citizens.
Yeah yeah, okay, and these are employees of the city that are doing this.
That's correct.
Okay, So paid employees from the city are responding to what otherwise would have been a traditional police nine to one to one response. He said, it's been a disaster. Can you give my listeners and me an illustration and maybe where something went sort of sideways on the citizen.
Sure. So one of the things that they're doing is they're having them respond to auto accidents and instead of their theory was well, we're going to lighten the load on the police. However, what they're doing is they're showing up going to a crash scene and telling them well, if you want to report, just go to the police district.
But what we've seen so far is happening. Two particular egregious instances is where they showed up a woman who was visibly pregnant, I think she was like eight months pregnant, was injured in an auto accident, and instead of calling for an ambulance, he said, we'll just go to the police district and have a police report fouled up, that's
what you want to do. So you have an injured pregnant woman shows up at the police district and they're like, what is this Another one was a guy shows up at the district So, yeah, these civilian people told us to just come here and follow this police report. He goes, but I'm kind of confused because the woman that.
Hit me was visibly drunk. There you go, they let her drive away.
Just getting ready to ask that it had been trained in recognizing impaired driving. Do they know what to look for? Can they administer the traditional test to determine whether someone is impaired behind the wheel or are they just going to overlook something like that that's concerning.
Well, sure it is.
Yeah, I mean the liability that the city assuming by having one of their employees just let somebody that either didn't recognize it or is still equipped to recognize these kind of things, they let them.
Drive away, drive away.
Yeah.
Oh my word.
Well, I guess I got a little burning question go on in the back of my head here. If you had a full contingent of police officers, in other words, if you weren't behind in numbers by how many of you down now like three hundred or so, Now we're down one hundred and forty, one hundred and forty. Well, if you had those one hundred and forty officers now working and UH with the police with actively with the police department. Would this would these community responders even be necessary?
I mean, aren't they supposed to? And this sounds like a band aid solution they came up with to avoid hiring more police officers.
That's exactly what we suspect is going on.
Well, and that's where your union contract comes in, right.
Well, sure, you know the collective bargaining agreement that we have says that the work that is traditionally of a if they want someone else to do that work, then it has to be negotiated. So I sent a season desist order last August when they came up with this plan and told them that if this is something that you want to do, you must first negotiate it with the FOP. They just turned a blind eye to it
once they started hiring people. Is when we decided to take action and we filed an unfair labor practice.
FOP president can cover. I'm going to keep you a hold over the breaker. I got a few more questions to dive on into on this one. Let's pause and we'll continue this conversation. After I mentioned oder exit, which won't get rid of the stenchion of politics tends to come
up a lot, but no it doesn't. But a hump comes with a one hundred percent satisfaction guarantee to get rid of the odors that are common around households and cars wherever oders might be smoke, mold, mildew, human owners, pet oders, skunk spray, all of that and so much more dead rodent kind of stuff. Yeah, oder exit has a product for all of that. So check out odor
exit dot com od o r XIT. It's so easy to figure out which are the products that you need, or just buy all of them so you have them in the house and when you for when you need them, use as directed. If it doesn't work, then you get your money back. I mean, you know you can buy with confidence with a program like that and buy it online because it'll be delivered to your front door tomorrow if you order before three pm, or go out and buy it locally one of the many many local establishments
that sell the odor Exit products. I mean, we've got a a cab around the corner from us and they carry them. But there's a search engine on the website odo exit dot com where you can do that. Been in business for twenty five years, and they are a local company. So support the local company and put a smile on your face knowing you get rid of the odors that you've been trying to get rid of odor Exit dot.
Com fifty five car the talk station. Most people think they'll spend less money in.
Acre's You're nine first morning with a forecasts slick out there to be real careful.
Today's side just twenty two degrees.
And it'll be cloudy all day today. If you've flirted, maybe this morning overnight time to thirteen with clouds. I have thirty tomorrow with some sun and the flood warning ending at one thirty pm over nineteen to thirteen with clouds and a clear Saturday Saturday going up to thirty seven degrees.
Right now it's fifteen degrees in time for traffic.
From the UCLP Traffic Center. And do you see health.
You'll find comprehensive care that's so personal and make sure best tomorrow possible. That's boundless care for better outcomes. Expect more at youseehealth dot com. We'rell morning on seventy five southbound shutdown with traffic being diverted off at Paddock. HiT's over a half hour delay out of Lachlan northbound seventy five. Let lane's blocked with an accident above seventy four. Chuck Ingram on fifty five KRSNE theme talk Station.
Six thirty eighth about krc Detalk station Brian Thomas with FOP President Kencobe. We're talking about this greater since a community responder program where they sends civilians out on what otherwise we'd be normally a police run after someone calls in the complaint. Really troubled by that whole automobile accident thing because you anticipated exactly where I was going, because it could be an ov I situation. Are these are these citizen responders? Are they trained on any level?
Ken?
Do you know?
So? They're given some kind of bare bones training. I think the training was like six weeks total to cover a myriad of things. But one thing that they're not equipped to handle is defending themselves if they get into a rather violent situation.
Yeah.
Across the country, we hear all the time about officers that show up to a minor auto accent they get ambushed. I was gonna say, yeah, means to offend themselves.
You Quite often situations can devolve from the mundane to the violent. I mean, people can just kind of lose their wits on a moment's notice. So so these citizen responders are themselves maybe in peril. Let me ask you this. Do they wear body cameras ken.
No, of course not.
Why would they need to do that. That's just reserved for the police.
Do they have radios so they can call in for backup with more citizens to show up if there's a problem.
Right exactly. And that's the other part of this. If they get into a situation that they're ill equipped to handle and they come over screaming on the radio. Now you have the police that are going to be driving lights and sirens at high speech, trying to get there to protect somebody that has no way to protect themselves, and it's only putting the police in even more danger.
I guess I have to ask this sort of out loud. Did the city ever contemplate any of these problems when they shove this thing through? Do they consult with the police department? And I know this supplies to the firefighters because the firefighters union apparently is a little miffed about this as well.
Well.
I can only assume that they did not or they just didn't care what the response was.
But you're right.
I mean that's the same way the fire department now following suit with the FOP, and they're following unfair labor practice themselves.
Do you have any idea how much these citizen responders are paid.
I looked at I think their average salary is somewhere between sixty and ninety thousand a year.
Holy crap, I mean that's you're in You're in police wage territory, there are you not?
Yeah, they're getting close. And this is the this is the biggest problem aside from the safety aspect. They're really not lightening the load for the police because they show up to an auto accident, they don't investigate it, and they look at the people that are involved and go, hey, just show up at the district. But here's the problem. So you have two people that are involved in an auto accident, they say, hey, just show up, you go
to your local police district finer report. They're only telling one person that they need to go, which, of course then only one person shows up. And you know, I got one side of the story. You don't have the other person's information. But let me just say for a second and that they actually tell both people to go to a police district. And you have one person that lives on the west side, they go to District three. You have a person that lives on the east side
and they go to District two. How do you merge those police reports and the answers You can't. Well, so you have two different police reports going on, and you know the same, the facts are different. It's an absolute disservice to the people that live, work, and play in Cincinnati that they have to even deal with this kind of thing.
Well do they issue citations.
No, they don't even investigate the crash. They just show up and say.
Oh, that's a pretty valuable piece of information for someone who's going to make an insurance claim that guy hit me, he owes me and needs to pay me back for my out of pocket responsibilities under my autobile insurance. Or if you don't have any for the damage done by the accident, Oh my god, my neck hurts, I've got medical bills. Now, all these things become critical questions in an automobile accident, even if it doesn't involve into violence and they're not in a position to issue a citation.
Or make a determination as the responsibility. Oh great, then you're never going to get one. Sure, this is the most ill conceit. Well, I can't say I've ever heard of, because we all know things from government. We can go down and spend hours and hours talking about stupidity.
You know, And I guess.
One of them is going to get hurt someday too, and that's going to be a real problem.
There's no doubt.
Yeah, that's that's so me looking at us from the human side of this. You're notwithstanding the legal side, They're going to get somebody hurt. They're going to get somebody killed, whether it's a citizen, whether it's one of these community responders. And that's just something that it's going to happen. It's inevitable.
That's a shame.
Now, where is it in terms of I know, you send a cease and desist order to stop this program from going through. It went through anyway, and I guess they're actively using this program right now.
It's correct.
So what's the next step for the union for the Police and Firefighters Union in this process?
So we filed the unfair labor practice with the State Employment Relations Board. They've investigated it, and they've ordered us to go to mediation. So next month I'll be going up to Columbus and We'll be trying to mediate the situation.
All right.
Well, and if the mediation doesn't work, because you're not bound by any mediation unless you both mutually agreed to resolve it under the terms of the mediation, do you go to arbitration then or do you end up in front of a judge?
Well, to go back to the state Employment Relations Board for them to investigate further and decide how they wanted to get it resolved.
All right, Well, I hope they resolved. To point out to the city since saying this sounds like a really bad idea. Do you know where the funds came from to hire these people? This is just comes out of the city, the general fund. All right.
They've got some really.
Nice vehicles too. I mean, we can't get we can't get new police cars. But yeah, they've got an electric Mustang. They've got some nice Chevy Silverados. And that's certainly a little bit of reb on the police as well as they are driving cars that they have two hundred and fifty thousand miles on them and they're going but these people have brand new cars.
That's kind of neat.
Well, and do you know how many of them there are before we part company today, Ken.
I think there's like a half dozen so far.
So far?
Yeah, so far?
Wow.
Well, this just sounds like stupid all across it. And I hope for some reason this does violate the terms of your collective bargaining agreement, so we can put it into this program and maybe save lives and also help people resolve their insurance claims during automobile accidents. Ken, I feel for you, man, keep up the great work you're doing on behalf of the police department, and God bless all of the members of the Cincinnati Police Department and for what you do each and every day.
Sure well, thanks, Brian, appreciate you having me.
It's my pleasure, man. I get this information out for my listeners can find out about it. And another information I want to get out affordable imaging. Yeah, it's not affordable at a hospital. Your imaging department at the hospital will charge you maybe thirty five hundred dollars for an echo cardiogram, and that's a lot of money. A lot of people need echo cardiograms. You're always going to need
some image at some point and some time. I've had multiples in my life, MRI, CT scans, echo cardiograms, how about an ultrasound or a lung screening or a cardiac scoring. They're just all outrageously priced at a hospital because you can do a comparison and you can go any place you want when it comes to your medical care. And Affordable imaging Services for more than forty years has been using the same type of equipment hospitals used to provide these images for a fraction, I mean a really really
small fraction of what a cost of a hospital. Let's use the echo cardigram for example, Affordable imaging services five hundred dollars with an enhancement. It's eight hundred with an enhancement. So you want to pay thirty five hundred dollars or five hundred dollars and Affordable imaging services. Every image they do comes with a board certified radiologist report, which both you and your doctor will get within forty eight hours. I've gone down there several times. I got my next
CT scan scheduled. Affordable Imaging services in April. Expect low overhead eal bells and whistles. But when you got medical professionals in the same kind of hospital equipment. What do you care whether there's marble flooring or not. Right, that's my take on it anyway, So save heap loads of money. The number to call five one three seven, five three eight thousand and they can get you right in. There's no you know, three week four week delay at affordable
five one three seven five three eight thousand. Online you can learn more at affordable Medimaging
Dot com fifty five KRC dot com