Cincinnati Police Officer Robert “Blaine” Jorg quit the force Wednesday, becoming the second controversial officer to resign before answering all questions from internal investigators.

        Officer Jorg took a job last week with Pierce Township in Clermont County, but said he would remain a Cincinnati officer until April 1. He changed that Wednesday to an immediate resignation.

Jorg

        Now the city cannot order him to submit to the interview he had scheduled Wednesday with the Office of Municipal Investigation and a second conversation he had set up for today with the department's Internal Investigations Section (IIS).

        That leaves another hole in another internal investigation — the process City Council members griped about during a three-hour session with Chief Tom Streicher on Tuesday.

        Chief Streicher said the investigations into the November 2000 death of Roger Owensby Jr., which involved officers Jorg and Patrick Caton, likely will take another 30 to 60 days.

        City Council members have expressed frustration about why internal reviews take so long that officers like Mr. Jorg and Stephen Roach are able to leave before discipline can be leveled.

        “I'm frustrated that we're not doing these investigations more quickly,” said Councilman Pat DeWine, chairman of council's Law and Public Safety committee and a lawyer. “I just don't understand it, it doesn't make sense to me.”

        Chief Streicher said some “complexities” have come up that he cannot yet explain publicly.

        “There are some things we know now that we didn't know,” the chief said.

        That's why investigators wanted to talk to Officer Jorg again, he said.

        Now, Officer Caton is the only one of the three who remains on the force. He works second shift in District 1.

        He was acquitted in November of assaulting Mr. Owensby, who was asphyxiated during an arrest in a Roselawn parking lot. Officer Jorg was acquitted on an assault charge, but the jury could not decide on the more serious allegation of involuntary manslaughter. He was not retried.

        Mayor Charlie Luken, in an e-mail last week to City Manager Tim Riordan, demanded that the administration stick to its own schedule for the discipline. That time line called for the investigations to be completed by mid-March and, as Mr. Luken noted, “April is nearly here.”

        “This issue is of highest importance to many of our residents, many of whom do not understand why things take so long, or why the issues are not simpler than they really are,” the mayor wrote. “This is one we need to give the very highest priority. No excuses.”

        The internal report in the shooting of Timothy Thomas by Officer Roach, made public Tuesday, found that the former Cincinnati officer, now working in Evendale, should not have had his finger on the trigger of his gun, and that he lied when he gave homicide detectives his first version of what happened.

        He also was not interviewed by the department's internal investigators, but for an additional reason — the U.S. Department of Justice halted the interview plan, the chief said, so it would not interfere with an ongoing federal criminal investigation.

        The department did have two other conversations with Officer Roach, however — hours after the shooting and then three days later. Officer Jorg has not spoken to any investigators. Some of his explanation, however, was captured on cruiser videocamera that night and played at his trial.

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