Cincinnati's Police Chief Teresa Theetge made an unscheduled appearance at Monday's Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education meeting to call upon district leaders to address a rise in student-involved incidents with police at city transit centers.
During the public comment portion of Monday's meeting, Theetge gave a presentation to the Board outlining the issues her department is having with CPS students specifically. The chief told the Board although youth-involved crime across the city is down, incidents between students and police at four city transit centers, — Government Square, Oakley Station, Northside Transit Center, and Glenway Crossing — have spiked since the start of the school year.
Theetge says there have been more youth-involved criminal incidents at these four transit centers through the first nine months of 2024 than all of 2023. Seventy-four incidents have been reported so far this year, compared to 62 reported incidents last year. Theetge claims many of them involve CPS students.
The chief told the Board these incidents often involve 10 or more students and have put students and police in increasingly dangerous situations. She added the issue has spread to CPS property, referencing shootings near Taft High School and Hughes High School in the past 30 days. Theetge then warned the Board if CPS didn't start coming up with solutions soon, the situation could escalate.
"Let me tell you how it's going to end," she said. "We are going to have a critical incident, at a transit center, at a school, at a football game, or somewhere else where one of our highly skilled, well-trained Cincinnati police offers encounters a 12-, 13-, 14-, or 15-year-old CPS student with a firearm and most likely that is going to end with an officer having to decide to be shot or to shoot them."
Theetge also criticized the school district and Board for not doing enough to curb student violence across the city. She told Board members the presence of CPD officers at transit centers and school resource officers inside school buildings is sometimes criticized for contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline but said she blames the school board's policies for perpetuating the problem.
"I would challenge you that the policies of this board is feeding into the pipeline because we being the police are now left to deal with your students at these transit centers and most often, we have no recourse other than to make an arrest when we witness criminal activity," she said.
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While she didn't specify which policies were worsening the situation, Theetge mentioned that community leader Iris Roley and several volunteers have been at Government Square to act as a buffer between the youth and police and encouraged the school district to launch a similar effort.
"Be there out there with us. See what we're seeing. See what our officers are dealing with," Theetge said. "Share some of your resources to help our resources."
The chief then attempted to have more police officers speak, but her request was swiftly denied by Board President Eve Bolton.
"I appreciate what you've said, but we do not have time for the rest of your entourage to share with us more information," Bolton said.
Bolton claims she wasn't told before the meeting Chief Theetge was planning to make the presentation and that, typically, the Board doesn't directly respond to comments during a hearing of the public. Bolton said Board members will discuss the issue further with city leaders at another time.
