Cincinnati firefighters got a new contract Thursday, one that says about a quarter of them will be randomly tested each year for alcohol or drugs. Firefighters - about 800 work for the city - initially rejected the contract, but agreed after city officials changed the testing wording to specify exactly how many. Those numbers: 80 for alcohol, 120 for drugs. City Council members approved the contract. Members of the International Association of Firefighters Local 48 already had. The random alcohol testing is new, an idea City Manager Milton Dohoney pushed because he said it gives extra proof to the public that firefighters are ready for duty. [continues 112 words]
City Council could decide today whether to continue making people caught with small amounts of marijuana face tougher penalties than they do elsewhere. The city's ordinance that increased the penalty from a $100 ticket to a $250 fine and up to 30 days in jail expires at the end of this week. Council members are considering whether to extend it indefinitely. Police Chief Tom Streicher wants them to. He says it gives officers another avenue to get guns and drugs off the streets. [continues 171 words]
WALNUT HILLS - President Bush's drug czar wants parents and kids to know: Marijuana is as serious a drug as any other. John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, visited Cincinnati on Thursday as part of his push to convince Americans that marijuana isn't a "soft" drug. Too many young people start smoking marijuana because they think it's harmless, he said. "The single biggest enemy is cynicism," he said in a speech at First Step Home, a substance-abuse treatment shelter for women in Walnut Hills. "We have to pay attention. We have to correct misinformation. This is not a joke." [continues 197 words]
Undercover Drug Investigation Led To Arrests At Milford High MIAMI TWP. - Milford High School took a high-profile step in an attempt to curb a drug problem, paying an undercover private investigator to conduct a seven-month investigation that ended Friday with 16 students arrested on charges of selling drugs. The students - four of them 18 years old - were accused of selling marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms, the stimulant Extacy and the prescription anti-seizure medication Klonopin to the female investigator who posed as a student. The drug sales took place inside the school, on school grounds and at a business nearby, but all of the transactions started as conversations at the school, said Valerie Miller, spokeswoman for the Milford Exempted Village School District. And some of the money changed hands at the school, she said. [continues 501 words]
Victim Complained About Drug Dealers OVER-THE-RHINE - He was days away from getting a new place to live, from moving away from the corner where he repeatedly complained that drug dealers made his life miserable. Instead, Terrance Carlisle was shot to death Friday in his apartment on the first floor of a 120-year-old brick building at McMicken Avenue and Lang Street. It's a corner infested with drugs. In Carlisle's front door, after the 10:30 a.m. shooting: three bullet holes. [continues 476 words]
Bribed or Intimidated, Victims Often Won't Help OVER-THE-RHINE - In Cincinnati's most violent neighborhoods, 94 people were shot and wounded last year in robberies, drug deals and street disputes. That's one gunshot victim every four days in District 1, a region of less than five square miles near the city's urban core. But here's the startling number: Only two of the gunmen ever went to jail. While police confiscate increasing numbers of illegal guns, shootings continue and shooters slip away. On the city's most dangerous streets, people who shoot others are rarely caught, prosecuted or sent to jail, an Enquirer analysis of police and court records shows. [continues 1625 words]
Officials Look to Get Prostitutes Off Streets, into Rehab Concern about the Hamilton County jail's ban on holding female suspects accused of nonviolent crimes prompted officials Thursday to look for alternatives for those they say cause most of the crowding - accused prostitutes. Cincinnati police commanders, worried about the impact of making the jail a revolving door for prostitutes, met Thursday with members of the Local Corrections Planning Board. Chairman Mike Walton said the group, made up of law enforcement officers, judges, court employees and social service workers, agreed to: [continues 626 words]
On the street with the Violent Crime Squads The guy in the No. 9 baseball jersey hangs out by a beat-up LTD on a steep Mount Auburn street. A tattooed man in a do-rag pulls up in a Jeep. He's an undercover cop and he buys 20 bucks worth of crack. He drives off; uniformed officers move in. No. 9 sprints past a little girl in pink playing with her purse, past teenagers shooting basketball, past a woman tending her garden. He strips off the jersey, hoping the plain white T-shirt underneath melts better into the background. Officers tackle him a block later. [continues 2441 words]
At Main And McMicken, 'The Drive-Through's Open' There's a corner drug drive-through in Over-the-Rhine so well situated and user-friendly that Northern Kentucky buyers can drive over, get their crack or pot, and be back in the Bluegrass in under five minutes. The intersection of Main Street and McMicken Avenue sits just over 3 miles from Kentucky via Interstate 471. A difference in state drug laws adds to the intersection's attractiveness: In Ohio, people don't get arrested if caught with anything less than 100 grams of pot. They just get a "weed ticket" citation to court. In Kentucky, they can go to jail. [continues 326 words]
Appeal Would Go To U.S. Supreme Court Cincinnati officials are mulling whether to appeal the Ohio Supreme Court's rejection of a law intended to curb drugs in Over-the-Rhine. The city could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to tackle the drug-exclusion zone issue. The 1996 law that allowed police officers to arrest convicted drug offenders if they were spotted back in the neighborhood within 90 days also attacked innocent behavior, the chief justice wrote in a 6-1 decision. [continues 243 words]
