Cincinnati Police Chased an Alleged Kidnapper Into Green Township

Cincinnati police chased a car connected to a reported kidnapping from Westwood into Green Township Saturday afternoon, and the pursuit ended in gunfire on South Road.

Officers shot the suspect after the pursuit ended; police have not publicly explained what prompted the gunfire or released the suspect’s condition.

The reported kidnapping fell within the types of offenses Cincinnati’s police pursuit policy permits officers to pursue. No outlet has reported a death as of this story’s publication. Cincinnati police took both the suspect and the person they describe as the abduction victim to hospitals, and officials haven’t released either person’s condition. How officers managed the pursuit once it crossed into Green Township remains an open question, as does what prompted them to open fire.

What Happened Saturday

Cincinnati police responded to a reported abduction around 4 p.m. Saturday. Officers located a vehicle connected to the report at Boudinot and Ramona Avenues in Westwood and tried to stop it. The driver fled instead. Officers pursued the car out of the city and into Green Township, a separate jurisdiction with its own police department. The chase ended on South Road near Werk Road, where the vehicle came to a stop. Interim Police Chief Adam Hennie said officers then fired at the suspect. No officers suffered injuries. Police have not publicly identified the suspect, and no outlet has reported charges.

WCPO reports that Cincinnati police said officers fired at and struck the suspect. Police have not released his condition. CPD has not publicly identified the officers who fired, or said whether Green Township officers discharged weapons too. That distinction determines whose use-of-force policy applies and which department’s investigators review the shooting first.

Photos of the scene reviewed by Cincinnati Exchange, drawn from social media posts and news coverage of Saturday’s incident, show a marked Cincinnati police SWAT vehicle positioned near the crashed car, behind crime-scene tape. CPD has not said when the SWAT unit arrived relative to the shooting, or what role it played once the pursuit ended.

Local 12 reported that Cincinnati police took both the suspect and the person they call the victim to hospitals. Fox19 described one person hospitalized and another in custody. No outlet reviewed for this story reports a death.

Why Cincinnati’s Police Pursuit Policy Allowed This Pursuit

Cincinnati’s police pursuit policy is Procedure 12.535. CPD’s website currently shows a version dated May 30, 2019, and this story describes that version; it can’t rule out a more recent unpublished revision.

The procedure authorizes an on-site pursuit of a “known or suspected person with a felony conviction” or certain on-site misdemeanors. It also allows a pursuit when there’s reasonable suspicion that a vehicle’s occupants committed a criminal misdemeanor. An outstanding criminal warrant qualifies too. It bars pursuits for traffic offenses alone. The policy specifically calls out OVI, driving under suspension, and reckless operation as offenses that don’t qualify on their own. Kidnapping is a first-degree felony under Ohio law in most circumstances. A reported kidnapping falls squarely within the offenses CPD policy permits a pursuit for.

The same procedure, in a section titled “Pursuits Leaving Cincinnati,” lets a pursuit continue outside the city under three conditions. Officers must have arrest authority in the other jurisdiction. The pursuit must have started inside Cincinnati without unreasonable delay, and the underlying offense must be a felony or a first- or second-degree misdemeanor. An alleged kidnapping would satisfy the offense requirement.

What CPD Policy Required During and After It

None of that guarantees officers actually followed Cincinnati’s police pursuit policy. A CPD memo obtained by WCPO’s I-Team found that 50 of the department’s 127 vehicle pursuits in 2021 violated its own pursuit rules. That’s about 40%, on issues like speed, siren use, and body-camera activation. That history is part of why the policy builds in its own compliance check.

The procedure assigns a supervisor, the pursuit Officer in Charge, to run the chase in real time. That supervisor must “continually monitor and assess” the situation and can order specific units “in or out of the pursuit,” or end it outright. The procedure separately requires officers to break off “whenever the risks… outweigh the consequences of the suspect’s escape.” Along the way, the policy lists specific factors officers must weigh. Those include road and weather conditions, as well as traffic volume. They also include the type of vehicle officers are chasing. One more: “whether the identity of the suspect is known to the point that later apprehension is possible.”

CPD’s procedure also puts a numerical limit on emergency driving. Officers may not exceed the speed limit by more than 20 mph. They must also slow down safely when entering an intersection against a red light or a stop sign. Separately, no more than two police vehicles may actively join a pursuit unless the OIC authorizes more. The department hasn’t released the speeds officers reached during Saturday’s chase. Nor has it said how many Cincinnati units actively pursued the car, rather than merely responding to the scene once it ended.

After a pursuit ends, the OIC must file Form 34, a Vehicle Pursuit Report. That report requires reviewing in-car video. It also requires an explicit finding: “Yes – No Violations,” “Yes – Equipment Violation Only,” “No – Operational Violation,” or “No – Administrative Violation.” That review results in the department’s formal compliance finding regarding the pursuit. CPD hasn’t said whether that review is complete or what it concluded.

Saturday’s chase crossed into another department’s jurisdiction, but that doesn’t automatically change whose rules applied. CPD’s procedure specifically governs Cincinnati officers who pursue suspects beyond city limits. Green Township’s own pursuit rules would apply to this incident if township officers joined the pursuit, which police haven’t yet clarified.

A pursuit crossed between the same two jurisdictions less than two years earlier, with fatal consequences. On October 8, 2024, Green Township police chased a stolen vehicle a 15-year-old was driving. The pursuit crossed into Cincinnati’s Mount Airy neighborhood, where the teen ran a red light and struck two other cars on North Bend Road. Yoshua Humphrey, a 28-year-old father of two driving home from work, died at UC Medical Center. The departments and direction were the reverse of Saturday’s chase. The case doesn’t suggest anything about how officers ran Saturday’s pursuit; it’s a reminder of why the policy’s cross-jurisdictional rules exist.

What Remains Unanswered About the Shooting

Cincinnati police haven’t disclosed whether the suspect displayed a weapon, or whether officers believed he had one. They also haven’t said whether officers considered the vehicle itself a threat, or how many of them fired. Nor have they said where the alleged victim was during the shooting. It’s also unclear why a SWAT unit responded to a pursuit that had reportedly already ended in gunfire, or whether it played any role beyond securing the scene afterward.

That last point carries real weight. This started as a reported abduction, which raises an obvious question: did the alleged victim ride inside the fleeing vehicle during the chase? No police statement reviewed for this story confirms that either way. If the alleged victim was in the car, officers weren’t just weighing the danger of a fleeing suspect against the risk of a pursuit. They were weighing that against the danger of a crash or gunfire involving someone they believed the suspect was holding against their will. If the alleged victim wasn’t in the vehicle, the calculus looks different.

Cincinnati Exchange could not independently confirm which scenario applies. Readers should treat any claim to the contrary, including secondhand accounts drawn from police-scanner traffic, with real caution until police say so directly. One detail this story is deliberately not using: an unconfirmed report that the abduction originated at a Mercy West Hospital parking lot. No police statement or published report reviewed for this piece supports that specific claim. A direct check also turned up no hospital security response, lockdown, or statement tied to this incident.

Previous CPD officer-involved shootings have involved a Homicide Unit investigation and an internal department review. They have also involved an independent review by the Citizens Complaint Authority, a civilian oversight body created after the 2001 unrest following the killing of Timothy Thomas. The department has also released body-camera footage quickly in some recent cases. CPD had not made any footage from Saturday’s shooting public as of this story’s publication.

Nothing in the public record so far suggests the decision to pursue a car tied to an alleged kidnapping violated Cincinnati’s police pursuit policy. The offense fits squarely within what the policy allows. How officers managed the pursuit once it left the city remains unclear. So does what prompted the gunfire at its end, which department’s officers fired, and what CPD’s mandatory post-pursuit review ultimately concludes. Those are the questions that would actually determine whether officers handled Saturday’s outcome as the department’s own procedure requires.

Cincinnati Exchange will update this story as Cincinnati police release additional information.