Cincinnati, OH

The Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) has paid $16.6 million in documented police misconduct settlements from 2003 to 2026. Cincinnati is one of a small number of cities in this dataset operating under a federal consent decree - a distinction that reflects both the severity of the department's historical misconduct and the relative success of the reform process that followed.

The consent decree - formally a Collaborative Agreement - was the direct result of the 2001 Cincinnati riots. On April 7, 2001, CPD Officer Stephen Roach shot and killed Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old unarmed Black man, while attempting to arrest him on misdemeanor warrants. Thomas was the 15th Black man killed by CPD in six years. The killing triggered three days of riots - the most significant civil unrest in the United States since the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The city settled the Thomas family's lawsuit for $4.5 million in 2003 as part of a broader global settlement for race-based policing.

The DOJ opened a pattern-or-practice investigation and negotiated a Collaborative Agreement in 2002 - a landmark document that became a model for consent decree reform nationwide. Unlike traditional consent decrees, the Cincinnati agreement was developed collaboratively with community organizations, the police union, and city officials. The agreement required CPD to implement community policing, bias-free policing training, and an early intervention system for officers with repeated complaints.

The most recent major settlement is the $8.14 million paid in 2025 to resolve claims arising from CPD's response to the 2020 George Floyd protests. The settlement covered 316 individual claimants - the largest protest settlement in Ohio history. A separate $316,000 settlement resolved additional protest-related claims.

For insurance underwriters, the Cincinnati dataset illustrates the long-term actuarial impact of a consent decree: the department's daily settlement rate ($2,493/day) is lower than many non-consent-decree cities, suggesting that the reform process has reduced ongoing liability. However, the 2025 protest settlement demonstrates that even reformed departments retain significant event-driven exposure that standard pricing models may not adequately capture.