ANOTHER OUTRAGEOUS DECISION

In the past five years the city of Cincinnati has tried to fire 11 police
officers for misconduct.

One had shown up drunk, in uniform, for a security detail at a soccer
field. Another had solicited sex from female suspects in exchange for
promises of leniency. Another had, in the words of Cincinnati's city
manager, "body-slammed" an unarmed, 68-year-old Alzheimer's victim. Some of
the other incidents were even worse.

Yet every single one of those officers got their jobs back when their
appeals were heard by arbitrators.

It is against this backdrop - and, of course, the backdrop of the April
riots and the enduring tensions between police and the civilians they are
sworn to protect - that Cincinnatians must endure yet another insult: this
week's ruling by an unelected, unaccountable arbitrator ordering the
reinstatement of an officer, John Sess, who admitted planting drugs on a
suspect.

The latest decision may well be the most poorly written, ill-reasoned of
the lot.

Even so, we're not holding our breath the city will prevail if it chooses
to pursue an appeal to the courts. Its track record is so poor, and the
underlying defects in the disciplinary system for police officers are so
deep, there's little reason to believe the arbitrator's ruling will be
reversed.

The pertinent facts appear to be these:

In 1997 Sess, as part of his pending transfer to an elite anti-drug unit,
was facing a lie detector test. In a conversation with the drug- unit
supervisor preliminary to that test, Sess was asked if he ever had done
anything improper as a police officer.

He admitted to the supervisor that he had, in 1984, planted marijuana on a
suspect who had tossed aside his drugs while being chased. He said he had
found the marijuana on a rear seat of his police vehicle during an
inspection, but rather than turning it in he had kept it.

During his arbitration hearing, Sess asserted that he had put the bag of
marijuana in the suspect's pocket as a way of tricking him into admitting
that he had thrown away another, larger bag of marijuana during a pursuit
that had just ended. (The ruse apparently worked: the suspect denied the
marijuana Sess had planted was his, but admitted ownership of the other
bag. He later pleaded guilty and received a short sentence.)

Sess also acknowledged in the 1997 conversation with the drug unit
supervisor that in 1979 or 1980, after becoming a police officer, he had
smoked marijuana with two other officers while off duty on a fishing trip.

Under police regulations that have been upheld by the courts, Sess could
not be criminally prosecuted for responding truthfully to a direct question
from a supervisor.

But he could face administrative discipline, and that is what the city,
rightly, proceeded to do. In fact, city tried to have him dismissed from
the force. Sess appealed, and the appeal was heard by an arbitrator jointly
selected by the city and the Fraternal Order of Police.

After indulging in a gratuitous (though impassioned) condemnation of press
accounts of Sess' case, arbitrator Harry Berns reached these stunning
conclusions:

It's OK for police officers to keep marijuana that they find on the job, as
long as they turn it in before they leave the force.

It's a "minor incident" when an officer who wants to join an elite
anti-drug police unit admits that he himself has used illegal drugs
recreationally.

It is nothing more than "trickery," and appropriate trickery at that, for a
police officer to plant an illegal drug on a suspect.

This is an outrage.

And we take no comfort in the fact that the victim of Sess' officer's
"trickery" was a suspected drug dealer. If such police behavior is
sanctioned, how can anyone have any confidence that other officers won't
start planting drugs on genuine innocents because they don't say "Yes,
officer" fast enough or loud enough?

It would be a mistake to blame this on a lone, misguided arbitrator.

You don't lose 11 cases in a row, as the city has, because of bad
arbitrators. The problems run far deeper than that.

They start with a collective bargaining agreement that allows disciplinary
reports to be periodically expunged.

They include the city's miserable track record in building a proper case
against bad officers, and its penchant for meting out disparate punishments
in similar types of cases.

And it bears noting that it was the city administration, not the Fraternal
Order of Police, which sought the arbitration approach because it was
unhappy with the results it was getting when appeals of disciplinary cases
were heard by the Cincinnati Civil Service Commission.

Ultimately, the particulars matter little to those of us who live and work
in the city.

We support our police force, and we believe there must be a fair,
even-handed system that allows officers to appeal disciplinary actions
against them.

But we also need an effective way to get bad cops off the force. It's that
simple.