The Greater Cincinnati Police Museum
“Preserving the History of Law Enforcement in the Greater Cincinnati Area”
The Greater Cincinnati Police Historical Society, especially its Director, Curator, Historian, Registrar, and a half-dozen Researchers, for 18 years, has researched all aspects of law enforcement for every one of about 20,000 law enforcement officers serving more than 160 law enforcement agencies in 8 Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio counties that make up Greater Cincinnati, for the last 219 years. The following are not editorial opinions – just the facts!
We know of no instance in Greater Cincinnati history where a law enforcement officer was charged with Murder due to an on-duty incident. It was, at one time, commonplace to charge for Manslaughter in any death case and one Cincinnati Police Officer was even convicted of Manslaughter in the early 20th Century; but he was not imprisoned or even dismissed from the force (probably an accidental shooting).
We know of no other conviction for any on duty law enforcement officer criminally killing a person. One officer missed a criminal and killed a bystander. At least 4 officers, who already had their weapons out due to perceived life threatening circumstances, accidentally pulled the trigger and killed someone; including twice another police officer.
If you multiply the thousands of Greater Cincinnati law enforcement officers by the tens of thousands of contacts each officer makes in a career, that’s a wrongful death rate of about 0.0000006% (six ten millionths of a percent). The death rate, including accidents, of 205 police officers in the Greater Cincinnati area is more than 34 times greater and the criminal death rate of officers is 133 times greater.
The Greater Cincinnati Police Historical society deals only in facts and ‘getting it right’ is extremely important to us. If anyone can add to our knowledge base about historically criminal or errant killings by law enforcement officers in the Greater Cincinnati, please contact the Greater Cincinnati Police Museum Director at memorial@police-museum.org.
-By Lieutenant Stephen R. Kramer (Retired)
Greater Cincinnati Police Museum Director