By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati police officers are using the ordinance against spitting on the sidewalk as a "punishment tool," targeting residents of high-crime neighborhoods with citations, according to a report by the city's new police watchdog agency.

The Citizen Complaint Authority report comes out of the first complaint filed with the authority, a product of Cincinnati's 2002 police reform agreements.

Clifford Lindsey Jr., a 37-year-old Westwood resident, complained of racial profiling after police stopped him on Race Street in Over-the-Rhine for spitting on the sidewalk Jan. 3.

Officers were doing a "zero tolerance" sweep of parts of Over-the-Rhine and the West End after an undercover police officer was stabbed on Central Parkway earlier that morning. Lindsey pleaded not guilty, was convicted and was fined $180.

The Citizen Complaint Authority concluded, by a vote of 6-0, that the allegation of racial profiling was unfounded in that case. But in researching the spitting case, investigators found:

• Police cited 12 people for spitting on the sidewalk from Jan. 1 to March 19. Three of them were on the same block of Race Street.

• Last year, police wrote 31 citations for illegal spitting. More than half were during specific "sweeps" in March, September and October, and were concentrated in a few inner-city neighborhoods. Those numbers call into question whether law enforcement in the city is "fair and impartial," said Nathanael L. Ford, the agency's executive director.

"I find it hard to believe that out of the hundreds of thousands of people who travel as pedestrians throughout the city of Cincinnati, that only 31 were observed violating this ordinance. It is also distressing that those observed appear to reside in specific areas of the city of Cincinnati," Ford said in his report.

Police said the zero tolerance policy - which also includes crimes such as jaywalking and littering - is a legitimate strategy to curb crime in targeted neighborhoods.

"One of the things a drug dealer does to show defiance of a police officer is to spit at the officer's feet," said Police Chief Thomas H. Streicher Jr. "If you're going to defy any and all laws, we're going to apply any and all laws to you."

The authority's report now goes to City Manager Valerie Lemmie.

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com