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Cincinnati just fired its police chief after a disastrous run marked by skyrocketing crime and tone-deaf leadership.
A termination announcement revealed that Teresa Theetge was "begged" to put more officers on the streets during a crime-riddled summer last year. She was removed from her role as the city's top law enforcement officer on Thursday after only about three years on the job. She previously served as a police officer in Cincinnati for 35 years.
City Manager Sheryl Long made Theetge's termination announcement.
"I recognize Chief Theetge’s more than 35 years of service to the Cincinnati Police Department and to this City. At the same time, after completing this review, it’s become clear that a change in leadership is necessary for the department moving forward," Long said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
In a scathing termination letter, Long blasted Theetge for what she viewed as ineffective leadership and poor communication, including failing to adhere to a summer anti-violence plan."As just one example, you admitted you did not agree with the City’s Summer Safety Plan, which included more police coverage in the urban core, and you admitted that I begged you to fill the police work details called for in the summer plan."
This is the kind of accountability cities desperately need but rarely deliver when progressive experiments in policing go off the rails.
Cincinnati found itself under national scrutiny last August after a viral beatdown in the city's downtown left a woman with neurological damage. In the early-morning hours of July 26, a confrontation outside the LoVe nightclub in the downtown business district led to a horrific beatdown captured on video. The footage spread like wildfire on social media, showing at least two White victims pummeled into the ground by a group of Black suspects. Even after the victims were down, the attackers kept stomping away, leaving one with a possibly life-altering brain injury.
Over the next month, seven people were arrested and charged in connection with the beating. Long also ripped Theetge for two shootings in the Fountain Square area downtown last October, saying she "failed to provide leadership in response to two shootings" in the area that month.
"You further admitted that on October 14 (the day after the second shooting) you chose to go to a play rather than attend a public safety town hall meeting . . . " Long wrote in the termination letter, later adding that Theetge "should not need to be told to attend a public safety meeting . . . the night after a shooting on Fountain Square."
Priorities like that speak volumes.
Adding to the mess, in May of last year four White male officers filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Theetge, the city's first female police chief and a woman as white as milk. They accused her of passing them over for promotions and preferred assignments because of their race and sex.
"Defendants’ intentional and discriminatory practices in assigning Lieutenants to preferred assignments has disproportionately favored non-White males and/or females, without legitimate, non-discriminatory justification, thereby denying Plaintiffs equal employment opportunities," the suit says in part.
"The City and Chief Theetge have actively and systemically undertaken efforts to promote, advance, and make promotion and assignment decisions that are preferable to women and minorities, and to the exclusion of white men, including through hiring, diversity initiatives, outreach programs, promotional processes, and other steps that demonstrate both a systemic practice of discrimination against white males, and that there are background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority," the lawsuit also says.
Another blue city learns the hard way that DEI policing and weak leadership produce exactly the chaos you would expect.
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