Streicher a momma's boy?

After he left this morning’s CrimeStoppers awards breakfast early, Cincinnati Police Chief Tom Streicher had a story told on him.

Channel 12 reporter Deb Dixon was speaking during the awards ceremony – where CrimeStoppers named the Cincinnati Police Department the law enforcement agency of the year-- and talked about all of the support the program has received through the years from area police.

Then she mentioned Streicher and noted he’d told her he was one of 15 police chiefs from across the country invited to the White House to discuss crime issues.

After he told her that, Dixon said, the chief had an urgent task.

“He said, ‘I gotta go. I’ve got to tell my mom’ “ about the invitation, Dixon told the audience.

“Don’t tell him I said that,” Dixon added.

The last time Streicher went to Washington, D.C, he created a controversy when he returned to Cincinnati by saying in a Sept. 6 press conference that Cincinnati was “one of the safest cities in the country.”

That statement didn’t correspond with federal statistics that show the Queen City with the 15th highest homicide rate per capita and the 34th most incidents of violent crime on a list of the 254 largest cities.

Serious crimes rates in Cincinnati have decreased for three straight years but still are higher than in 1999 and 2000 before the 2001 race riots.