CINCINNATI — A new addendum to Campaign Zero’s report on Cincinnati police contact cards is intensifying debate over racial disparities in policing, this time with a sharper focus on the city’s specialized police units and task forces.
The addendum builds on Campaign Zero’s original June report, which analyzed police stop data collected under Cincinnati’s Collaborative Agreement reforms. The original report concluded Black residents were stopped, searched, arrested and subjected to force at disproportionately higher rates than white residents from 2009 through 2025.
The new analysis drills deeper into which units inside the Cincinnati Police Department were making those stops.
Using officer assignment data from the city’s contact card system, Campaign Zero grouped officers into categories including patrol, investigative, traffic, specialty units and task forces. Those categories included narcotics, vice, violent crimes, fugitive apprehension and SWAT-related units.
WATCH: We break down Campaign Zero's add-on to it's orginal report released in early June
The addendum found task-force stops accounted for just over 3% of all stops analyzed. But according to the report, those units showed some of the largest disparities in the data.
Campaign Zero said Black residents were stopped by task forces 6.29 times more often than white residents relative to population — significantly higher than the citywide disparities outlined in the original report.
The original report found that:
- Black residents were stopped 3.4 times more often than white residents overall.
- Black pedestrians were stopped 5.4 times more often than white pedestrians.
- Black residents were 2.1 times more likely to be searched once stopped.
- Black residents were 1.9 times more likely to have force used against them.
- Black residents were 1.8 times more likely to be arrested.
The addendum argues specialized enforcement units may be disproportionately driving some of those disparities.
Campaign Zero also found task forces conducted discretionary searches at much higher rates than patrol officers.
According to the report's addendum:
- 39.6% of task-force stops involved discretionary searches.
- Patrol units conducted discretionary searches in about 9% of stops.
- Task forces also showed the highest arrest rates among reporting categories.
The report uses “discretionary” to describe situations where officers have greater judgment in deciding whether to stop or search someone, including subjective enforcement decisions or lower-level violations.
The addendum introduced several new analyses that were not included in the original report.
Among them was a concentration analysis examining how stops were distributed among officers within specialized units. Campaign Zero said some task-force activity appeared heavily concentrated among a small number of officers.
In one example, the report said nearly 90% of Narcotics Unit stops came from five officers and nearly 60% came from a single officer.
The addendum also expanded on one of the original report’s central conclusions: that disparities tended to increase in neighborhoods with larger white populations.
Campaign Zero said the correlation remained strong even when isolating only task-force activity.
The original report had already found that crime rates did not explain the disparities identified in the data. Researchers said neighborhood racial composition was a stronger predictor of stop disparities than reported crime rates.
The addendum did not revise or retract the original findings. Instead, it narrowed the focus from department-wide patterns to the role specialized enforcement units may play within them.
The report comes as city officials prepare to launch an independent review of Cincinnati police contact-card data.
City Manager Sheryl Long announced last month the city is seeking proposals for a third-party contractor to conduct an independent analysis of the data. Long also said the Citizen Complaint Authority will lead a broader community problem-solving process alongside Collaborative Agreement leaders.
The Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police and city leaders have previously questioned Campaign Zero’s methodology and conclusions.
“If there’s a perception that there’s a problem, let’s look at it. Let’s tackle it,” Cincinnati FOP President Ken Kober said. “Let’s see if there really is a problem.”
Hamilton County Chief Public Defender Angela Chang defended the broader purpose of the analysis.
“We want to make sure that policing is safe and fair for everybody and that that is felt by the Black community,” Chang said.
Campaign Zero founder DeRay Mckesson defended the report after its release, pointing to the focus on discretionary policing practices.
“I would be shocked that people think that people stopping people for spitting is making Cincinnati safer,” Mckesson said.
It remains unclear who will conduct the city’s independent review or how much it will cost.
The contact card system was created as part of Cincinnati’s Collaborative Agreement reforms following the 2001 police killing of Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old Black man shot by a Cincinnati police officer.
