Lincoln Heights police, fire runs dropped over insurance

You can't call the cops in Lincoln Heights. The police department in the mile-square municipality of 3,200 is on hold until further notice.

Police and firefighters stopped responding to calls at midnight Wednesday after the departments were dropped by their insurance carrier.

And, while the fire department was back in business by 7 a.m. Friday, the police department's return is unclear. After spending six minutes shy of two hours in executive session Thursday night, the village's council took no action to put Lincoln Heights' officers back on the streets.

Neighboring police agencies received three hours' notice of the village's latest law-enforcement problem. That's not much time to rearrange schedules and figure out who's paying for overtime. The village knew two months ago that it could come to this.

"The citizens of Lincoln Heights are not going to go without police protection," Capt. Rick Neville of the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office insisted.

After a Thursday task-force meeting, he began coordinating police services for the village among the sheriff's office as well as the police departments of Springfield Township, Lockland, Wyoming and Evendale.

"The sheriff's office is here and working hard," Lincoln Heights Village Manager Stephanie Summerow Dumas said late Thursday afternoon.

This is the latest on a long list of incidents associated with the police department of this hard-luck community that once saw drug dealers firebomb the police station.

Still, the pickle in which Lincoln Heights finds itself was a first for Neville as well as Tammy Moore, a dispatch supervisor for Hamilton County emergency communications, who was prepared to dispatch fire crews from neighboring communities to the village if the need arose.

"It's definitely different," she said. "I've never experienced anything like this before."

At Thursday night's council meeting, Mayor Laverne Mitchell cited "frivolous lawsuits" filed in connection with village police as the reason for the department losing insurance coverage. She then announced the fire department was again insured.

Dumas told council and the standing room only crowd of residents that the village had received a bid from a new insurance carrier. The annual police premium would be $82,897.55 and the village would be required to create a retention fund of $100,000 "per incident" per officer.

After that, council went into executive session. One hour and 54 minutes later, the mayor said: "We are still ... exploring our options."

Irate residents feel they have run out of options. Tess Collier has lost her faith in the village's police.

"Cincinnati (police) should take over," she said. "We have so many unsolved murders out here that should have been solved. It's sad."

Longtime resident Adrienne Howard, 62, is steamed that village leaders let something as important as the community's police and fire insurance lapse. "Who dropped the ball?" Howard said. "We have enough problems here already. Somebody's head should roll."