jj

We have the receipts. @FranklinU professor, and Vice Chair of the "independent" @ColumbusGov Civilian Police Review Board Dr. Chenelle Jones has managed to turn her board seat into a for-profit enterprise. Dr. Jones is billing @ColumbusPolice $150 per hour, up to $49,950 between now and November to provide "CompStat" data to the Division and to "Facilitate" CompStat meetings with Commanders and Executive Staff. There are so many problems with this and I'm not sure I've even thought through the complete extent of the corruption, back room dealing, ethical problems and governance issues that arise from this deal, but I'll begin to unpack them here. More will come out regarding this corrupt deal and I know more will follow. 1) You may ask yourself, "why such an odd total amount of $49,950". The answer is simple. This is the maximum amount of money that @ColumbusSafety Director Pishotti can spend without having to craft legislation and send the request to @cbuscitycouncil. Sending this to Council would have provided a public accounting of the plan to pay Dr. Jones for the work that Crime Analysts and Intelligence Analysts already do for the Division. There would have been legislation and agenda minutes informing the public of the intent to have a sitting Review Board member being paid by the Division of Police to help the Division incarcerate more criminals. 2) Which leads us to why the Division is paying Dr. Jones to do the work that nearly a dozen Civil Servants classified as Crime Analysts and Intelligence Analysts already do. And, it makes you wonder why $200,000/year Commanders and $250,000/year Chiefs can't "facilitate" their own CompStat meetings. Nobody should be promoted into these roles if they are incapable of understanding and operationalizing crime stat data for the purpose of crime reduction. It's literally their job. 3) Which also leads us to how Dr. Jones got this work to begin with. She didn't respond to an open bid for this work. She isn't uniquely qualified to "facilitate" meetings for $150/hour. There are hundreds of people equally qualified in Columbus and probably dozens of people who are far more qualified, yet the City didn't put this out to bid to find the best qualified person. They chose Dr. Jones because she's BFFs with the Chief and @1stACPotts. 4) Did anyone who argued for an "independent" Review Board ever imagine that members of the board would literally wind up being paid to do work for the Police Division they were expected to oversee, hold accountable and scrutinize. It's a remarkable conflict of interest to expect a board member to look at the Division with a critical lens and spot problems - especially problems associated with the high level leaders who are paying that person's bills. Do you think that faced with calling out a problem at the Division that might cost Dr. Jones this lucrative contract, she would do that? I'd like to believe she's ethical enough to do it, but it's very reasonable to be highly skeptical which is exactly why nobody would ever expect a member of such and important independent body to be paid such an exorbitant amount of money to do work for the organization they are supposed to be monitoring. The mission of the board is "This Board allows for independent investigations – and review of internal investigations – as well as recommendations for discipline and policy changes outside the chain of command." No rational person would believe that Dr. Jones would bite the hands that feed her. She's a nice person and I suspect too naive to recognized that Potts especially would hold her feet to the fire with the threat of terminating this contract if Dr. Jones ever threatened Bryant's power or challenged her. 5) That isn't the only conflict of interest however. Additionally, Dr. Jones, who owes her allegiance to Chief Bryant and Ass. Chief Potts for securing the lucrative payday for her, can't be expected to make fair rulings or recommendations regarding the police complaint/discipline cases she's expected to rule on. The existence of this contract came to my attention because members of the Division, who know that Potts and Bryant will go to the ends of the earth to destroy officers who they don't like, recognized that Dr. Jones will likely rule from the Board in the manner she's told to by Bryant and Potts. We already saw this play out with an officer who was unlawfully terminated, and had their job reinstated by an arbitrator who wrote the most stinging ruling in decades against the city. Dr. Jones was an early advocate for heavy discipline and accountability for the officer after Bryant and Potts set their sights on him because he dared to publicly express opinions with which Bryant and Potts disagreed. Dr. Jones cannot be expected to make rulings and determinations from her board seat that are at odds with Bryant and Potts without jeopardizing the $49,950 she expects to be paid this year by Bryant and Potts. Ruling against their wishes would be financially devastating for Dr. Jones. The @capcityfop should demand answers for the conflict of interest so blatantly obvious here. 6) The contract has laughable deliverables. There is no expectation that the work Dr. Jones does will actually accomplish a reduction in crime. She isn't being measured and paid for success or any metric at all other than holding meetings and "analyzing data". If crime goes up as a result of her work, she gets paid. If she makes things worse, she gets paid. She gets paid for "facilitating meetings" "analyzing data" and "coaching sessions". $150 per hour with zero expectations other than that. 7) It's almost certainly illegal under Ohio Ethics Law. The entire shady deal was done with the full knowledge of @CityAttyKlein, but he also oversaw the unlawful termination of the officer mentioned above and the unlawful discrimination of a police sergeant for which the Department of Public Safety recently paid $750,000 in damages to the sergeant. The entire contract is available at the link below. I will continue to provide additional updates to follow and I'm sure I'll think of additional issues and problems with this contract. drive.google.com/file/d/1oR4AZH…