Group: We’ll cancel conferences if Blackwell fired

The National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice is threatening to cancel its state and national conferences in Cincinnati if Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell is fired.

The group is scheduled to be here over the next two years.

“If the intentional efforts to undermine the chief’s authority continue, and he is removed from office without cause, we are prepared to move our state conference ... and our national convention ... out of Cincinnati to broadcast our dismay for unjust treatment of Chief Jeffrey Blackwell,” Carlyle I. Holder, the group’s national president, wrote in a letter to the mayor, City Council and Fraternal Order of President Kathy Harrell.

The letter is dated Sept. 4, but was released to the media Tuesday evening. The group has more than 5,000 members.

The letter estimates moving both conferences would result in the city losing revenue in excess of $1 million and would serve as a “vote of no confidence in providing fair and just treatment of administrators who are people of color.” Blackwell is black.

Major John Cranley and City Manager Harry Black said Tuesday night they had not read the letter and could not comment on it.

The criminal justice group has booked two conventions: one in July 2016 for 300 hotel rooms and another in July 2017 for 1,135 rooms.

Combined, the conventions would deliver an economic impact of $546,000, the Cincinnati USA Convention and Visitors Bureau anticipates.

“Conventions are a serious business in Cincinnati,” said Julie Calvert, a vice president at the Visitors Bureau. “We have enjoyed a very good relationship with this group since we began the process to host them. We continue to believe we are a good host city and want them to continue with that plan.”

It’s not just economics. Conventions, Calvert said, are good platforms for discussing community issues.

The threat to pull the conference harks back to the boycott after the 2001 riots that occurred after an unarmed black man was killed by a police officer. In 2002 there was a call for a boycott, mostly by religious and cultural groups. It wasn’t until 2004, when the National Baptist Convention signed to meet in Cincinnati, that the boycott dissipated.

The decision to fire a department head is up to Black, who himself is African-American. Nobody has said Blackwell is getting fired. But there are issues.

The police union has called a special meeting for Sept. 14, when a vote of no confidence is expected to taken. And a climate assessment of the department, initiated after complaints of low morale came to Black’s attention, has been underway since June.

Holder, leader of the criminal justice organization, has requested his team of researchers be allowed to review how the assessment was done.

“It does not appear that Chief Blackwell is being given a fair and impartial review of his performance,” Holder wrote. His group, he said, was founded in 1974 to “ensure people of color were among the leadership ranks within criminal justice organizations and were also fully supported by their administration.”

The group urged city officials to take Blackwell’s outreach initiatives into consideration and pointed out Cincinnati is not alone in seeing increased violence this year.

“So before there is a public proclamation that there was a ‘botched anti-crime plan,’ it is highly recommended that the city collect the appropriate data other than increasing crime rates to support such an assertion,” Holder wrote.

The letter is referring to a 90-day summer safety initiative, ordered by Black and developed by Blackwell. The plan, rolled out to much fanfare, morphed three times. As it wound down last month, the city manager and Blackwell disagreed over whether it was ever really implemented.