By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Cincinnati Citizen Complaint Authority will hire an outside investigator to oversee its review of a Feb. 9 police shooting in Northside, director Nathanael L. Ford said Wednesday.

Ford, who took over day-to-day operation of the city's new police watchdog agency Tuesday, said he wanted to find someone who could be fair and independent of the city to investigate the death of 34-year-old Andre Sherrer.

Police said Sherrer was fleeing the scene of a burglary when he got into a scuffle with Officer Michael Schulte and started beating the officer with his own baton. Schulte shot Sherrer about six times, police said.

Ford would not identify the outside investigator, saying he was still working out terms of the contract.

The agency has not yet hired any full-time investigators. Instead it is using holdovers from the old Office of Municipal Investigation.

Ford's report on the status of the shooting investigation came in his first meeting with the Citizen Complaint Authority, led by a seven-member board.

The authority heard complaints on Wednesday from five activists that the agency's startup wasn't moving quickly enough, and that its investigations were too secretive.

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com