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If you're a fifty five KRC DE talk station, I'm very very happy Friday e to you. Of course that means Dave, are that Jay Rattle? If I heart media aviation experts coming up at bottom of the hour. Always love those conversations, Jay and I always love to talking with FOP President Ken Coverer. He is a head of the Cincinni Police Departments Union Chapter sixty nine. Welcome back, Cancober. It's pleasure to have you on the program again.
Hey Brian, how are you? Thanks for having me.
I'm doing really well. I guess I don't know if you've got a near full or people are supportive of what you said. I know you're I believe your word was frustrated or you believe it's frustrating that Donald Trump pardoned the pretty much all of the J six rioters. Can you explain how why it is you take that position, because you know, people look at Biden's pardons of you know, all kinds of criminals, of all sorts of sentence. If not pardons outright. He did it thousands of them before
he left office. And I don't know if Donald Trump just felt he was obligated to pardon these folks. But I think many people in my listening the audience believe that while there were some violent people in there, and no one can excuse violence, most notably against police officers, but that a lot of them were being prosecuted or at least face prosecution for something as simple as walking through the capital doors and wandering around, which I think,
under the circumstances, is a reasonable thing to do. The thing got out of hand, and I never was supportive of what was going on there. I want you to be very clear on that, and I do not support anyone being violent toward police officers. My sister was a retired police officer. I wouldn't want it happened to her. So what's your take on this, Ken.
Well, And that's where I think you have some things that were said yesterday were completely misconstrued because I made it very very clear what I spoke about was people that assaulted police officers have no business being pardoned. The rest of them, that's their business, that's that's politics, that's things for them. What I focus on is law enforcement and those that were getting you know, hit over the head with metal bats and things like that.
Yeah, those folks shouldn't be pardoned. The rest of them.
You just walk through the capitol and you have what trespassing at best. Should they spend three and a half four years in prison? Absolutely not. But that's that's one of the things that I focused on yesterday. And like I said, maybe there was some some misconstruing of words that I said, but I focus narrowly on what the national FOP stance was, which was those that assaulted law enforcement officers that caused injuries.
It's it's disappointing that they would be pardoned.
The sweeping of just pardoning everybody, to me was frustrating primarily because you're talking.
About all suits that were assaulted fair enough, and I think that adequately responds to it. And I share your position about no one who is violent toward a police officers should be let off. I have no problem with that because I think under any circumstance it is inappropriate. But you know, but the problem with this conversation because it causes and allows people to go off on a
tangent and I've seen it mentioned. Of course, the Fox nineteen article which is the genesis of this mentioned CNN said it also led directly and indirectly to the deaths of four Trump supporters and five police officers. Well, if you look behind the veneer of that, yes, Officer sick Nick was struck by a fire extinguisher, but the medical examiner said he did not die from that. He died of a stroke after he went back to the building.
He did not die of blunt force trauma. And the other four officers, sad as it may be, died of suicide, and their families claim it's because of the trauma they experienced having to deal with the Capitol Hill drunken fraternity party, and they some of them were injured. But again, I'm not going to excuse anybody being violence toward the police. But you know, Ken, you signed up for the job,
you knew what you were in store for. And yeah, as a police officer, you might be in a situation where you got to deal with riot control.
Oh, there's no doubt. I mean we've dealt with in our careers. We saw it in twenty twenty here, we saw it in two thousand and one. It is part of the job. Now, this is the hard part about policing, and you're right, we all signed up for it. Is sometimes police officers and certainly officers that have died, you know, whether it was directly related or not, become political pawns.
And unfortunately, that's what's happened here as you have all these political sides going back and forth and they decide, well, you know what, let's try to exploit an officer who committed suicide and let's just say, well, it's because of this. And that's that's what's frustrating about this is, you know, this is all just some political nonsense going on on both sides, and cops end up getting stuck in the middle.
And that's that's unfortunate that that's how it is, but it's a reality that we have to live with every day.
Yeah, and I know that there are line of duty benefits that are available. But my understanding is from the folks that did commit suicide trying to claim that the suicides were approximately caused by the riots, either the cases are still pending or some of them have been denied saying no, this is not related to the riots. It has no directques correlation no proximate causation ergo, no death
benefits allowed. Do the CINCINNT Police Department enjoy line of duty benefits if they are injured or killed in the line of duty?
Yeah, absolutely, there's statewide benefits. There's also national benefits that officers get, like Sunny Kim's family he was murdered in the line of duty back in twenty fifteen. There are benefits that the family gets ensure to ensure that they're taken care of. But it is a fine line, especially when it's a death that occurs after the fact. You
know it's off duty. And we had a friend of mine that was injured in the line of duty several years ago, about eighteen months later, he ends up passing away. You could probably draw that connection because he had a pretty severe.
Injury, but there's no proof of it.
You couldn't prove that this is exactly what it was related to, and therefore your family doesn't get benefits.
Well, cann Of, you're missing my obligations to the police, which I thoroughly support. If I did point out how stressful the job is, I mean, I will never ever forget the level of stress my sister was under when she was working special crimes and had to deal with all those child molesters. I mean having to go in every day to the office and look at the horror that those perverts commit on children. I mean talk about a bubble burst and stress inducer.
Oh, there's no doubt. You know.
I spent four and a half years in our fugitive unit, and you know we would go looking for murders, rapists, robbers, all these people are shooting people. The ones that affected me the most, the hardest ones to go and arrest, or the pedophiles or the one you know, sex crimes against kids, of violence against these little kids. Those were the worst ones because that's the father and me the human and death wants to just take these people and
just strangle them, but you can't. Those those were the by far the most difficult ones for me to deal with.
I can imagine the other component to that. Then people cut off and might not think about It's why I bring it up. The purpose that you know are responsible for molesting children, maybe in the process of ongoing molestation. While you're busy doing the evidence gathering, you know that that is still going on or could be still going on,
and you're sort of you can't do anything about it. God, that would just I couldn't sleep if I was if I was aware of that kind of thing and I was responsible for going after him.
No, no, it was certainly.
It's a frustrating thing to deal with, but you have to keep in the back of your mind that justice is going to be served and that we have a job to do. We have to be professional, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of our personal feelings.
And we have a job to do.
It is to go arrest these people, bring them to the investigators, let the investigators do their thing. That way, these people can spend the rest of their lives, hopefully under the prison.
Oh yeah, and feeling the wrath of their fellow prisoners. Anyhow, real quick here, I saw that WCPO reported it may have been reported elsewhere. Response times are down in the city of Cincinnati about thirty seconds more calendar year over for the police to arrive. And I so people know the average response time over eight minutes compared to seven minutes and thirty seconds and twenty twenty three. Part of the problem the closing a district five. Do you agree with that?
Well, there's no doubt.
I mean, you look at the numbers and I went over on with WCPO yesterday. The districts that have the biggest response times were District three and District four, which are the ones that absorbed the lion's share of District five by its closing. And it's something that I hear from officers constantly. They're frustrated about. You know, it takes me this much longer to get to a radio run because I'm going from this beat and I'm covering an officer, you know, up in College Hill or up in Mount Area.
It takes longer because the district's that much bigger, and it is certainly something that has been a source of frustration since it's closed.
Well, I guess I have to ask, and I think I know the answer to this, Ken, what's the likelihood they're going to reopen a district?
Be honest with you, I don't think it's very good.
I think if they had the money for it, maybe, but of course you know they're they're going to say that they don't have the money for it, and it's something that it is frustrating. I think you look at the numbers and you see that it's a problem. But what are you going to do to fix it? And that's that's yet to be seen. I guess we'll I'll hold out hope that maybe they'll come to their senses and see that you know, we need to change this, but who knows.
You just have to wait.
It's called the allocation of scarce resources. And one of the most important things for a city to live, thrive, and survive is to have an efficient, good of well oiled machine in the police department. Safety is paramount for a city that wants to grow. And you know, we don't need a streetcar. What we need are enough officers to get to you if you are in peril or a crime is being committed in a very short period
of time. And clearly that's not the direction we go when we shut down police districts.
Now.
That's the other part too, is you know we're still one hundred and almost one hundred and forty officer a short Oh we keep on having recruit classes.
We have one in now.
But you have a recruit recruit class that graduates here in May has about forty one officers and we're going to lose.
Probably sixty or seventy this year. Oh No, it's an uphill battle.
We talk about recruit classes. The one thing everybody has to keep in mind, I guess, is the number of officers that are retiring. It happens every year, and sometimes it happens at a faster pace than other years. I get the impression from the officers that I know, and I won't name names, and I want to put you on the spot, but I get the impression morale isn't exactly high within the cincint Police Department right now.
Well, it's it's just a challenge, it is.
I mean, you're dealing with, you know, being short staffed all the time, You're dealing with the increased radio runs, increased violence, all those things come into play, you know, and we're going to get ready to go back into our events season where off days are going to be canceled constantly, and it's just it's frustrating. I think a lot of these things will be sold if we ever do get back to our full compliment. I just don't see it, you know, happening in the next five to
ten years. As much as the city trying to hire people, you got to you gotta, you gotta make this job more attractive. You know, and until things turn around politically, you know, whether it's locally, state or nationally, which hopefully things will be on the on the uptick now, and you know, hopefully we'll be able to get more people in here.
Amen to that, because that just adds to the already stressful reality of your lives, which that component doesn't have to be there. If we had appropriately funded in staff police force, you could at least take that element of stress out of your lives. Ken, Cober, appreciate you being on the program. FOP President, keep up the great work, and I appreciate you explaining what you had to say
about the Jay sixers. I agree that violence against police officers should never be excused, and hopefully that would be the order of the day if it helps it all, Trump, pardon the former DC police officer that was convicted the death of the Andrews, the bad his name, convicted the conspiracy and obstruction of justice in connection with the It was a Trayvon Martin situation or something like that, but anyway, he believed he was wrongfully convicted, so at least he
tried to make up a little bit with that one line of duty incident. Ken, I won't hold you on the spot on that one. But I do appreciate your time this morning, and I look forward to having you on the program.
Down the road. All right, Thanks Brian, thanks for having me.
My pleasure coming up in eight eighteen fifty five KRCD talk station.
Stick around.
We got a little bit more time to talk. And then, of course I always look forward to Friday or Thursday, Friday Eve at a thirty because you get to talk to Jay Rat left a bunch of topics with Jay this morning, So please stick around fifty five car the talk station.
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