Despite
Report After Report, Unrest Endures in Cincinnati
By KEVIN SACK
| For a fascinating analysis of the social background to the Cincinnati riots, read "Did Integration Cause the Cincinnati Riots? by Michelle Cottle in the New Republic, 05/07/2001. |  |
CINCINNATI,
April 15 — For some
residents of this racially embattled city,
the Justice Department's decision to open a
preliminary investigation into the police
department's treatment of minorities follows a
familiar pattern. A black man is killed, an
investigation is conducted, hearings are held,
a report is written and then promptly
forgotten.
Rather than investigate, the residents say,
Justice Department lawyers could simply
read. They could start with the report of the
Kerner Commission, which studied race riots
in Cincinnati and seven other cities in 1968.
They could move on to the report of a
mayoral community relations panel that
concluded in 1979 that police and city
officials "neither really care nor are willing to
do anything about reported incidents of
misconduct."
They could leaf through the 1981 report of
the United States Commission on Civil Rights,
which accused the Cincinnati police of
discriminatory hiring practices and criticized
their lack of standards for using force. In
1981 and again in 1987, the city signed
consent decrees, under federal pressure, to
improve the hiring and promotion of black
officers. In 1995, after a brutality case
involving a black student, the city manager appointed a police review panel
that
concluded that racism persisted in the department because of "a reluctance
to
institute necessary organizational and procedural reforms."
Despite all the study, the problems have endured in Cincinnati, which,
like Los
Angeles, New York and other American cities, has had recurring racial problems
involving its police force.
Since 1995, there have been 15 fatal police shootings of black men,
and none of
whites. In 1999, the city's black police officers' association issued a
report detailing
more than 150 complaints from black citizens about racial profiling and
the use of
excessive force. Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union
incorporated
many of those complaints in a federal lawsuit accusing the police department
of an
array of discriminatory practices.
And so, it was not just the report of a police officer's gunshot, but also
its echo, that
incited civil unrest in Cincinnati last week.
When a white officer killed an unarmed black man on April 7, it revived
the lingering
distrust that has riven this city's black community from its predominantly
white police
force for more than three decades, long enough for frustrations to have
been passed
from one generation to the next.
"The anger in this city has been building to a boiling point for years,"
said
Scotty
Johnson, a 15-year-veteran of the police department and the president of
the
Sentinel Police Association, a group of about 250 black officers formed
in 1968.
"Everybody has warned city officials and the police department that you're
going to
have an explosion in Cincinnati if you keep up the same practices."
Some of the studies conducted over the years virtually predicted that their
recommendations would be ignored. The 1995 report by the city manager's
review
panel, which urged a renewed commitment to diversity in hiring, promotions
and
training, warned against lip service.
"Pious words without resolute and continuous implementation are widely
recognized
to be the kind of official hypocrisy which generates public cynicism and
anger," the
report said. "This alienates large sectors of the population."
That shot over the bow never landed, said former Gov. John J. Gilligan,
who
headed the panel. "We had a lot of recommendations in there for which we
were
profoundly thanked," Mr. Gilligan said. "And that was the end of that."
Obviously, the nature and racial disparity of the police shootings have
created the
most concern, though prominent blacks acknowledge that many have been
justifiable. They also recognize that the officers involved in several
shootings are
black. Of the 15 killings since 1995, six of the suspects had guns, one
took an
officer's gun, one wielded a knife, one a brick and one a nail- studded
board. Two
were in vehicles.
But three of the suspects, including 19-year-old Timothy Thomas, who was
killed
on April 7, were unarmed, and at least four of the shootings are considered
questionable. In addition to the Thomas case, which will be examined by
a grand
jury this week, the incidents include the Nov. 7, 2000, death of Roger
Owensby Jr.,
29, an unarmed man who died of asphyxiation after being subdued by several
officers; the March 19, 1999, death of Michael Carpenter, 30, who was shot
at nine
times through a car window; and the Feb. 23, 1997, shooting of Lorenzo
Collins, an
escaped psychiatric patient who, armed with a brick, was shot after being
surrounded by 15 officers.
Only one of the cases, that of Mr. Carpenter, prompted a reprimand of any
officer
involved. No police officer in Cincinnati has ever been convicted of killing
a citizen,
though two have been indicted in the Owensby case.
The perceived toothlessness of the police department's disciplinary process
grates
on many black residents. "There's this automatic defensiveness that nothing
they do
is ever questionable," said Marian A. Spencer, a civil rights leader who
was
Cincinnati's first black city councilwoman.
The city's civilian review panel does not have subpoena powers. And each
of the
last 10 officers who have appealed disciplinary measures have persuaded
arbitrators
to overturn their punishments. The police chief has said he feels he has
little power to
rid the department of bad apples.
In one recent case, Officer Robert Hill was fired by the city last year
after a
convenience store's security camera captured him throwing a 68- year-old
Alzheimer's patient to the floor. The patient, who is white, was armed
with only a
paint brush and a cordless drill. He broke several bones.
Mr. Hill appealed his dismissal through an arbitration process that is
allowed under
the police department's contract with its officers' union, the Fraternal
Order of
Police. The arbitrator reinstated Mr. Hill, and he is now in line to be
promoted to
sergeant after scoring well on a civil service examination.
"We've got a chief that can't really mete out discipline, officers committing
misconduct with impunity, and a discipline arbitration process that takes
years and is
incredibly frustrating," said Robert Harrod, the executive director of
Cincinnati's
chapter of the National Conference for Community and Justice.
Lt. Col. Richard S. Biehl, one of four
assistant chiefs, said the shootings must be
considered individually and not as part of a
pattern. Colonel Biehl also said the killings of
three police officers over the last four years,
two of them black, seemed to have been lost
in the debate over the use of force.
Colonel Biehl also said the department had
made strides in recent years by adopting a
stricter policy regarding the use of deadly
force on suspects in moving vehicles, by
encouraging the use of Mace and stun guns
instead of bullets and by buying high-tech
training equipment. As in other cities, the
department is also moving toward a
community policing approach, though critics
say the movement has been slow.
The minority composition of the police force, though it has grown substantially
since
the consent decrees were signed, continues to trail that of the population.
About 28
percent of officers are black in a city where 43 percent of the 331,000
residents are
black. The number of blacks on the force has increased to 290 today, from
115 in
1986, and there is one black assistant chief and one black captain. By
comparison,
about 14 percent of New York City's police officers are black, while 25
percent of
the approximately eight million residents are black.
But in Cincinnati there has never been a black police chief, a job that
has almost
always gone to a white career officer from the city's west side. Some blacks
fault an
unusual civil service system that requires the chief to be selected from
among other
high-ranking officers who pass a test. They also complain that city officials
have little
power over police policy because the chief reports directly to a public
safety
director and not to the city manager or the mayor.
Critics of the department also charge that its diversity training is inadequate,
and that
the city has yet to establish a database that would enable easy tracking
of every
officer's disciplinary record. The department had committed to doing so
as part of a
1998 consent decree.
It was not just the shooting of Mr. Thomas that struck a chord in the black
community. The incident also resonated because the police were trying to
arrest him
for 12 misdemeanor traffic citations and 2 warrants charging him with running
from
the police. For many blacks who have become accustomed to regular traffic
stops,
the nature of those warrants raised the specter of racial profiling.
Several prominent blacks also said they could understand Mr. Thomas's decision
to
run from officers when he was stopped. The Rev. Damon Lynch III said blacks
often run from the police because "they're thinking, `If I don't run, I
get beat up, get
my head pushed into the ground, I get hit with the sticks, I get pushed
into the car
door.' "
A number of city leaders said Cincinnati's entrenched residential segregation
was to
blame for much of the fear and distrust. The city is the eighth-most segregated
in the
country, according to newly released census figures, and young whites and
blacks
learn to be wary of each other and each other's neighborhoods, civic leaders
said.
"You have frightened citizens and frightened police," said Alphonse A.
Gerhardstein,
one of the A.C.L.U. lawyers suing the city. "And that's a dangerous combination."
------
April 14, 2001
Blacks in Cincinnati Hear Echoes Amid the
Violence
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
INCINNATI, April 13 — Charles
Wimms looked back today from some
fresh scars on storefronts in the black
Avondale neighborhood to the old, still
chilling memories of the last time local youths
erupted in violent protest, when the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated more
than three decades ago.
"This wouldn't have happened if they had
listened to us in those years back then," said
Mr. Wimms, a 39- year-old construction
worker, recalling that police treatment of
black Cincinnatians — the issue that drove
the wave of protest and vandalism by clusters
of angry blacks this week — was also a
principal issue in the 1968 violence.
"So now we have a new generation of young
black men running the streets again to stir
things up for what is right," he sadly
contended.
Mr. Wimms stood before broken windows
where youths looted a sneaker store on
Wednesday night, at the height of protests
over a white police officer's fatal shooting of
an unarmed black teenager last Saturday.
Blacks maintain that the killing, the fourth of a
black by the police since November, resulted
from racial profiling that they say has long
been rampant here.
While an investigation into the killing
proceeds, officers quoted in the local press
have disputed that version of events. They say
the slain teenager, Timothy Thomas, was
pursued by officers in the first place not
because he was black but because the
officers had recognized him as someone
against whom a total of 14 warrants were
outstanding, although most related to traffic
charges.
With Easter-season allusions to resurrection
and regrets at the damage to this city's streets
and reputation, people like Mr. Wimms warily greeted the return of civil
order after
an all-night curfew took hold, with no clear idea of when it might be safe
to end it.
"This all feels kind of strange, like a return to the 60's, you know?"
said Todd
Bigger, a 39-year-old black resident who said the 1968 violence was remembered
as a frightening benchmark among blacks, but also as a desperate symbol
of
demand for change that, he said, still has not been accomplished.
"But when stuff like this goes on, I guess authorities have to act," Mr.
Bigger said,
looking uncertain on a sunny spring day that city officials vowed was the
turning
point as they ordered a second night of curfew.
This patchwork city of black and white enclaves did indeed offer time-
warp facets
of the old ways of street protest and official crackdown. Black clergy
members
once more worked their congregations, pleading for an end both to what
they
described as decades of police abuse and to the angry violence that has
mainly
redounded upon the blacks' own neighborhoods. At the same time, white officials
looked for something more creative than the sweeping 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew,
which on Thursday night and into this morning substituted eerie scenes
of urban
emptiness for the hit-and-run confrontations of earlier this week, when
protesting
youths vandalized stores and the police responded with rubber bullets and
tear gas.
More than 200 people have been arrested, and more than 50 treated at hospitals.
In the debate over what to do, pointed criticism of the police was offered
by the
Ohio secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former Cincinnati mayor
respected
as a careful, conservative Republican.
"The truth is, we have a real pathology in police community and race relations
in
Cincinnati," Mr. Blackwell said in calling for a review of procedures for
applying
deadly force. There is no public confidence, he said, that officials sworn
to root out
crime will "just as swiftly act on rooting out folks — officers — who are
in violation
of policy and procedures."
But the police union defended its own, as Keith Fangman, president of the
local
Fraternal Order of Police, warned against concessions to violent protest.
"If we give
one inch to these terrorists in the form of negotiations, then we've got
no one to
blame but ourselves when we turn into another Detroit or Washington, D.C.,"
Mr.
Fangman said.
The shooting of the 19-year-old Mr. Thomas brought to 15 the number of
suspects,
all of them black, slain by the police here in the last six years.
Officers say that Mr. Thomas had a clear history of fleeing efforts to
detain him for
traffic violations and that Steven Roach, the 29-year-old officer who shot
him,
thought he was reaching for a gun. No gun was found, however, and Mayor
Charlie
Luken has said there are official doubts about that account.
"We have not done ourselves any favors in terms of our image in the last
few days,"
a weary-looking Mayor Luken declared after the first night's curfew, in
which local
officers and state troopers enforced a virtual lockdown on Cincinnati streets.
That
step netted 153 scattered violators, the police said, but stopped the wave
of violent
protest and vandalism. As the city turned to Mr. Thomas's funeral on Saturday
as its
next test of civility, plans for a special grand jury to look into his
death were
announced, and the mayor met with Justice Department officials monitoring
the
troubles.
"Make this Good Friday a better Friday," a clergyman prayed before a crowd
of
worshipers attending the annual Way of the Cross pilgrimage downtown. A
truncated version of the outdoor Crucifixion ritual, it avoided outlying
hot spots
where groups of young blacks had raided stores, set fires and alarmed whites
before
the police took the streets back with the curfew.
As city leaders took stock, those familiar with the thorny, long-running
problem of
race relations and police behavior said that for all the urgent national
attention drawn
by fresh images of violence, there could be no quick fixes.
"Simply tinkering with the infrastructure won't do it," said Barbara Glueck,
chairwoman of the Citizens Police Advisory Commission, who has worked on
interracial problems for years. "Firing people won't change the great disparity
here,"
she said of the deep gulf between whites and blacks on crucial issues,
including the
racial profiling that blacks allege.
Change is not easy under city laws, Ms. Glueck said, noting that the police
union has
a powerful arbitration procedure under which 10 officers whom the city
had sought
to fire were recently reinstated. Beyond that, black leaders complain of
a law
requiring that the police chief come from the ranks and not from outside
the city; a
proposal to change that was rejected by voters.
But even more basic is the need for people on the two sides of these issues
to "begin
to talk to each other," emphasized Ms. Glueck, who volunteers in the Hands
Across
the Campus program of teaching young students to discuss and face racial
problems.
Tom Diskin, a 79-year-old retired carpenter from the city's white West
Side, said
the solution was as simple as the lesson he learned in childhood.
"When the police tell you to stop, you stop," Mr. Diskin said outside Holy
Cross-Immaculata Church's hilltop shrine, where worshipers quietly prayed
on a
Good Friday pilgrimage. "I mean, that guy had 14 warrants out," said Mr.
Diskin.
"But how would the cop know they were misdemeanors?"
"And now here's the media's open mike, the chance of a lifetime for those
people,"
he said of the protesters.
But Lori Hawkins, a white resident attending the Way of the Cross gathering
downtown, said it was sad to note that "this city counts sports teams and
stadiums
more important than social justice" and racial equality.
"There's been a lot of lip service to the problem in recent years," Ms.
Hawkins said.
"But why does it always take violence and property destruction for a problem
to be
taken seriously?" she asked as crowds moved freely in the workday sunshine
that
bathed the city before the curfew's return.
-------------------
| Keith Fangman, right, a police officer and president of the police union in Cincinnati, warned against concessions to "these terrorists," as he called violent protesters. |  |
NYT April 14, 2001
Old Wounds in Cincinnati
By ARTHUR ALLEN
WASHINGTON -- This week's riots give Cincinnati
expatriates of a certain age an eerie feeling. In 1968 I
was 9 years old and heard on the radio that someone named
Martin Luther King had been shot. I remember yelling the news
to my mother upstairs, and hearing her groan with sadness. We
lived — my parents still live — in North Avondale, a liberal
paradise, as I've come to realize. It was lower- to
upper-middle-class and black and white, with subtle
boundaries, to be sure — but we all went together to elementary
school and played in each other's backyards and basements.
When the riots started, some of my playmates offered to put a
"Soul Brother" sign on the lawn below our house so the mob,
like the angel of death, would pass this Jewish family by.
On
the worst night, after a white doctor we knew almost died
— smashed with a brick on his way to the hospital — the
co-leader (with my mother) of the local Girl Scout troop, a
black woman named Betty, offered to pick up my older brother.
He was stranded with a date in a movie theater on a bad corner.
Betty also said her husband was armed and ready for any
strangers nearing our cul-de-sac.
Then as now, Cincinnati's West Side was German Catholic, the
East Side vaguely WASP, with plenty of blacks and Jews in the
middle. We didn't know from the West Side, and vice versa. I
often think that Marge Schott, who shocked everyone with her
pro-Hitler remarks a few years back when she still owned the
Cincinnati Reds, most likely came by her ideas innocently in a
community so sealed off that the views of the 1930's German
Bund went unchallenged.
Traditions lazily persist in Cincinnati, some for the better, some
for the worse. Mayor Charlie Luken's dad, Tom Luken, was on
the City Council in 1968 and was elected mayor in 1971.
Charlie himself served earlier terms as mayor from 1984 to
1990, later becoming a TV journalist and then returning to
politics.
Over-the-Rhine, where officer Steve Roach shot 19-year-old
Timothy Thomas and provoked this Easter recess free-for-all,
stretched from the university to downtown, a couple of miles of
tenements with doors and windows on a strangely tiny scale.
John Sayles chose Cincinnati to film "Eight Men Out," set in
1919, because his backdrops were ready-made.
In my Cincinnati, power is pure. The politicians and judges and
prosecutors tend to get big campaign contributions from the
same wealthy guys who've run things for decades. The famously
prudish Simon Leis, who was county sheriff in the 1960's when
he busted my teenage brother for pot, is prosecutor now. If he
doesn't like your art gallery's exhibit, he'll bust you. His
inflexibility helps make Cincinnati the ideal launching pad for a
career of notoriety. Shock the bourgeoisie in my hometown and
the rebound might land you in the big time. Think of Larry Flynt,
publisher of Hustler, who made his name fighting Mr. Leis; or
Dennis Barrie, director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who
tried to show Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs at a small
Cincinnati gallery; or Jerry Springer, who lost his job as mayor
after writing a check to a Kentucky prostitute and then found
fame on TV.
The gadflies prosper, and the power structure remains the same.
Where but Cincinnati would a newspaper pay $10 million, as
the Cincinnati Enquirer did a few years ago, to a billionaire
businessman (Carl Lindner) and pull a long investigative series
about his banana company without so much as an explanation of
what, if anything, was untruthful in the story? Around that time
Mr. Lindner defeated a grass- roots effort to build a new
baseball stadium in Over-the-Rhine, where residents hoped it
could spark a community revival. Now the whole area is
boarded up and littered with broken glass.
After the riots in 1968, the two synagogues in our neighborhood
packed up and resettled in the pale suburbs. The city ignored a
commission's recommendations that it look into charges of
police brutality. The neighborhood's commercial strip was
trashed and never really recovered — Newark or Detroit in
miniature. But our scout dens continued to meet, and our school
stayed integrated.
When I visit my parents today, I see that not much has really
changed in the neighborhood. Downtown Cincinnati has had its
troubles, but it never became a ghost town. The department
stores closed, but hotels and a convention center and a lovely
addition to the public library were built. The fountain on
landmark Fountain Square was refurbished. The city's past as a
pork shipment center has been put to use in creating a tacky, but
memorable, city "brand." There are flying pigs at the entrance to
the riverfront park. Pig sculptures were all over the sidewalks
last time I was in town.
"We were just getting people to come downtown at night and
now this," says Nat Comisar, the owner of La Maisonette, a
venerable French joint. The riots complicate the Chamber of
Commerce's ever- delicate task of convincing suburbanites to
patronize a city rich with history and beauty and stirring
topography. I hope they succeed. I hope certain cops learn to
recognize black people as human beings. I hope the pigs keep
flying.
Arthur Allen is a freelance writer.
-----------------
April 13, 2001
Cincinnati Mayor Imposes Curfew to
Quell Violence
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
CINCINNATI, April 12 —
This racially tense city was
placed under a strict nightlong
curfew today as the authorities
struggled to stop sporadic
vandalism and the confrontations
with police officers that followed
the fatal shooting of a black
teenager by the police.
"Despite the best efforts of the
good citizens of our city, the
violence on our streets is
uncontrolled and it runs rampant,"
Mayor Charlie Luken declared as
he announced a state of emergency
and ordered that the streets be kept
clear of most people from 8 p.m.
until 6 a.m. until further notice.
Acting after four days of
confrontation between the police
and roving crowds of protesters
and vandals, Mayor Luken
conceded that there might be "very
legitimate" validity to complaints
by blacks about racial profiling by
the police. But he said the more
immediate problem was to restore
civil order.
"Knock it off now," the mayor, a
Democrat, told violent protesters
who have emerged among groups
of young black men protesting the
shooting on Saturday of an
unarmed teenager in an alley by a
pursuing officer. He was the 15th
black suspect killed by police
officers here in the last six years
and the fourth since November.
In the first hours of the curfew, the
city was a ghost town under
lockdown. Police reported a few
violent incidents and more than a score of arrests of curfew
violators, while the mayor, claiming initial success, cautioned
that a long weekend lay ahead.
The White House announced that President Bush had asked
Attorney General John Ashcroft to "help calm and resolve the
situation" by dispatching two Justice Department mediators to
investigate the trouble.
With the city's 1,030-member police force working 12-hour
shifts, the mayor said there was "active consultation" with Gov.
Bob Taft about the use of National Guard troops, if necessary,
to provide relief.
"I don't expect that situation will arise," Governor Taft said
tonight in a broadcast interview. Seventy-five State Police
officers have been ordered to assist the local police.
Through the day, political and church leaders met, emphasizing
the need for order.
"We are trying to keep our youth in tonight," said Juleana
Frierson, an assistant to the Rev. Damon Lynch III, the
influential pastor of New Prospect Baptist church, who traveled
from meeting to meeting.
Some families left Over-the-Rhine, a black neighborhood where
much of the vandalism has occurred, to seek refuge in calmer
neighborhoods, complaining of violent young people
compounding the problem.
"We don't want any of this," one resident, Fantasy Keahana,
said as she left.
"Cincinnati's a microcosm, the belly of the whale," said Kweisi
Mfume, national president of the N.A.A.C.P., who addressed
community leaders on the need to solve the problem of racial
profiling by the police. "It's important for the nation to focus
here on ground zero. If we can fix it here, we can fix it
elsewhere. But if it doesn't get fixed here, it turns into anarchy
and all of us are left wondering, Is justice blind?"
No deaths have occurred in the four days of street violence in
which groups of vandals have staged hit- and-run raids on
dozens of stores, looting some of them. More than 40 people
have sought treatment at hospitals, including some struck by the
rubber bullets, beanbags and tear gas the police have fired in
efforts at crowd control. The police made more than 100
arrests, most of them on Monday and Tuesday.
Shopkeepers in some of the quieter parts of the city could be
seen boarding their windows as the curfew was announced. The
police were instructed to allow only people going to and from
work to pass on the streets.
With property damage mounting, violence reported in additional
neighborhoods and a police officer reported grazed by a
sniper's bullet overnight, the mayor used emphatic language in
announcing the curfew and citing a new development, civilian
gunfire, in some incidents.
"Gunfire went off like you might hear in Beirut or some other
place," Mr. Luken told the city of 331,000, which is 43 percent
black.
As he spoke, protesters heckled him with accusations of police
brutality. "We have been telling you for two years about the
brutality!" one person shouted.
The mayor emphasized that the immediate need was to restore
order "without regard to what anger and frustration any citizen
might be feeling."
Only a week ago, the mayor said, a curfew was "unthinkable."
Some of the city administration's leading critics did not
disagree.
"The fringe has taken over the protest," said Scott Greenwood,
a Cincinnati resident and general counsel for the American
Civil Liberties Union. The A.C.L.U. and prominent blacks filed
a federal lawsuit against the city last month accusing the police
of systematically violating the rights of black residents for 30
years with frivolous arrests and the excessive use of deadly
force.
"We can't negotiate about police behavior while the entire city
is under siege," Mr. Greenwood said, citing the fatal shooting
on Saturday of Timothy Thomas, 19, as an example of "the very
conditions that led us to file a lawsuit."
The police said Mr. Thomas was shot when Officer Steven
Roach, who is white, thought he was about to draw a weapon.
No weapon was found, and on Tuesday, Mayor Luken said of
Officer Roach's account that "the initial finding don't back him
up."
The police said Mr. Thomas had 14 outstanding warrants when
he was shot. But Mr. Greenwood said all were for
misdemeanors or for traffic infractions.
"Five of them for not wearing a seat belt while driving," Mr.
Greenwood said.
"That's a charge of last resort when they can't get you for
something else," he said, contending that countless blacks had
been similarly stopped by police officers.
The last racial protests that attracted outside attention in this
city were in 1968, in the aftermath of the assassination of the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
April 12, 2001
Appeals for Peace in Ohio After Two
Days of Protests
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
CINCINNATI, April 11 —
This city's clergy and
political leaders pleaded for
peace on the streets today after
two days of sporadic protests and
vandalism that followed the fatal
shooting of an unarmed black
teenager by a white policeman.
"This situation has been festering
for over five years," City
Councilwoman Alicia Reece said.
She surveyed the 66 arrests and
damage to dozens of city stores as
evidence of deepening tensions
between the police and black
residents who have long
complained of racial profiling by
officers.
"It is a time bomb that has
exploded," Ms. Reece said,
standing outside City Hall, which
was unusually quiet at midday,
cordoned off by mounted police
officers with riot gear.
Twenty-five people were reported
to have received hospital
treatment, some struck by the
nonlethal ammunition the police
used.
Today's calm was broken at
nightfall as small bands broke
windows at businesses, threw
stones and bottles at automobiles
and looted stores. A police officer
was shot, but a bulletproof vest
deflected the shot, The Associated
Press reported.
Mayor Charlie Luken said the city
might request help of the National
Guard if the trouble continued, The
A.P. said.
Last
month, a coalition of black
civil rights groups and the
American Civil Liberties Union of
Ohio filed suit in federal court in
Cleveland accusing Cincinnati of a
"30-year pattern of racial profiling." The suit says that blacks
are routinely singled out by the police for minor offenses far
more than whites are and that police officers "tend to use
excessive and deadly force against African-Americans more
readily than against whites."
The suit said that from 1995 to 2000, the Cincinnati police
killed 13 suspects, all of them black. Timothy Thomas, the
19-year-old killed on Saturday, was the fourth black killed by
the police since November.
At the height of the trouble Monday night and Tuesday, ranks of
police officers fired rubber bullets, beanbags and tear gas to
turn back scores of protesters and vandals who set fires and
threw bricks at cars and store windows. The outbreak came
after black leaders demanded an explanation for the use of
deadly force against Mr. Thomas.
Police officers said the pursuing officer fired when Mr. Thomas
was cornered in an alley and the officer thought he was reaching
for a gun. But no weapon was found, and Mayor Luken told
reporters on Tuesday that ranking officers were privately
expressing doubts.
"I have been told they are troubled by the story they are getting,"
Mayor Luken said. "The initial findings don't back him up."
Prominent blacks called for a federal investigation of the
shooting for possible violations of civil rights. The lack of
detailed information kept frustration high in this city of 331,000,
which is 43 percent black.
Some city officials said the need for calm would be served by
the release from grand jury subpoena of a police videotape that
might show part of the encounter between the officer and the
teenager and the release of an initial interview with the officer,
Steven Roach.
"I demand to know why," Mr. Thomas's mother, Angela Leisure,
exclaimed at a hearing before city officials Monday. Police
officers said Mr. Thomas was pursued because he had 14
outstanding warrants, all of them in misdemeanors and most of
them for traffic offenses.
"They keep asking me why did my son run," Ms. Leisure said.
"If you are an African male, you will run."
This view was supported emphatically today in interviews in
the predominantly black neighborhood known as
Over-the-Rhine, where the protests originated and where
merchants in the historic Finlay Market suffered the brunt of the
vandalism and looting.
"The problem is basically racial profiling," said Geneo
Sweeten, a 47- year-old black construction worker. "These
cops have been escalating the pressure ever since two of their
own were shot, allegedly by a black, and they began pouring all
their resources into cracking down on us, without asking who's
guilty or innocent. It's at the point now where we talk of D.W.B.
arrests — the crime of driving while black."
Broken glass crunched underfoot on Elder Street in
Over-the-Rhine this morning as cleanup crews arrived before a
mayoral visit.
"Brother, let reason and judgment prevail!" boomed the voice of
the Rev. Isaiah Gaines, a retired judge and black leader who
walked the streets near the New Prospect Baptist Church,
greeting black residents and white and black merchants.
Mayor Luken emphasized the need to bolster trust between
residents and the police force. "We've got a long way to go," he
admitted in a scene reminiscent of the 1960's, a white mayor in
shirt-sleeves trying to calm black residents before a phalanx of
television cameras.
The city's airwaves crackled with a virtual duel of talk radio
programs. "Most of my friends will run from police," said a
caller to "The Buzz" on WBDZ, a station favored by black
residents. "They just don't respect us."
Defenders of the police called WLW, denouncing "that wimp of
a mayor" and complaining that blacks kill most of the city
police slain in the line of duty.
"Call out the National Guard," demanded one caller. Gov. Bob
Taft, a Republican, declined to take that step, urging the city in a
statement to "cool and calm the rhetoric."
-----------
April 18, 2001
Session of Cincinnati Council Draws a Crowd
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
CINCINNATI, April 17
— About 500
Cincinnati residents today packed the
City Council's first public meeting after a
curfew was rescinded to speak out about the
April 7 killing of an unarmed 19-year-old
Cincinnati man by a city police officer.
One City Council member, John Booth,
announced late today that he would introduce
a motion on Wednesday that the city review
its policy on the use of deadly force by police
officers.
Earlier in the day, four black members of the
city's police force resigned their membership
in the Fraternal Order of Police. The Sentinel
Police Association, which claims virtually all
of the city's 250 black police officers, will
meet next week to review the situation.
In addition, the Hamilton County prosecutor's
office announced that probably by the end of
the week it would take to a grand jury its
information about the shooting, which
involved Officer Steven Roach. The executive
director of the city's Human Relations
Commission, Cecil Thomas, said that no
police officer had ever been punished for shooting a civilian, black or
white.
The declared purpose of the City Council meeting today was to consider
changes in
the city's charter that would exempt the chiefs of the police and fire
departments
from being covered by civil service, a circumstance that virtually dictates
they be
promoted from within their departments. In 1997, a similar motion was passed
by
the Council, only to be defeated at the polls in the election required
to amend the
charter.
But today's meeting provided an opportunity for a long line of residents
to air their
grievances against the city. The session was shown on a local cable television
station
and members of the public were allowed into at least three other rooms
in City Hall
to watch the proceedings.
The complaints included accusations of excessive use of force and racial
profiling by
the city's Police Department, poor housing and complaints that major cost
overruns
in the city's new football stadium were tolerated but not incidental discrepancies
in
programs for the poor.
Nearly 70 people spoke during the nearly five-hour session presided over
by the
Cincinnati mayor, Charlie Luken. Only occasionally did either Mayor Luken
or any
member of the Council speak. While the mayor was unfailingly polite to
each
speaker, the criticisms clearly took their toll on the Council members
as the session
wore on.
About three-quarters of the speakers were African-American, about the same
proportion as in the crowd. One white speaker, Heidi Bruins, a financial
manager
with Procter & Gamble, made one of the strongest impressions. Ms. Bruins
said she
had been moved to attend last Saturday's funeral of Timothy Thomas, the
youth slain
by Officer Roach. Soon after leaving the church, she said, she witnessed
police
officers shoot "bean bags" at a peaceful crowd. The officers, she said,
shot only at
blacks, adding that she and her companions, all white, were not interfered
with.
The officers drove off, then returned. At this point, Ms. Bruins said,
several bottles
were thrown at the cruisers. The police left a second time, she said, and
a few
minutes later 20 or more police cars were on the scene.
"I felt it was important to make a statement," Ms. Bruins said later. "It
is far to easy
for white people to turn a blind eye when it's an issue about race. I felt
if I didn't
come to the meeting, I wouldn't be able to blame anybody else."
Many of those speaking clearly had no difficulty casting blame in the direction
of
Mayor Luken and his administration.
One woman complained that officials dismissed complaints. "You're ignoring
us,"
she said. "Just puffed up with pride." And pride, she added, joined by
those in the
crowd who had caught her drift, "goes before the fall."
--------
Wednesday, April 18, 2001 200 urge changes in Cincinnati
Philadelphia Inquirer
By James Hannah
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CINCINNATI - Angry residents packed a City Council meeting yesterday
to speak out against the police shooting of an unarmed black man and to
call for changes
in police hiring and disciplinary practices.
City leaders hope changes to the department will quell the anger that
sparked riots last week after the death of 19-year-old Timothy Thomas,
who was killed by a
white officer. About 200 people filled the council chambers during
the meeting to consider a change to the way the city hires its police chief.
Norma Payne said that when she looked at city officials, she saw "the same old slave masters" and "the same Gestapo of Hitler's regime."
"When I look at you, I think you may be the KKK in disguise," the black
woman said. Six of Cincinnati's nine City Council members are white; the
city of 331,000
is 43 percent black.
Currently, the chief's job goes to one of the city's assistant chiefs,
but many black leaders say a national search could yield a chief who is
more receptive to change
and not beholden to officers.
Brian Loewe, a student at Xavier University, also called for new leadership.
"There is nothing more profane than having black children killed by police," Loewe said.
After hearing citizens' comments for five hours, the council referred
the charter changes to a committee for more study. Any charter changes
would have to be
approved by voters.
Three days of arson, looting, and attacks on motorists followed the
April 7 shooting death of Thomas, who was running from officers who were
trying to arrest him
on misdemeanor and traffic warrants.
Police arrested more than 800 people during demonstrations, and a citywide curfew - lifted Monday - was put in place for the first time since the race riots of 1968.
The FBI, police and the county prosecutor are investigating the shooting.
Fifteen blacks have died in confrontations with police since 1995, four
of them since
November.
Officer Stephen Roach, who shot Thomas, is on paid administrative leave.
The president of the police union has said Roach believed that Thomas had
a gun and that
his life was in danger.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Wednesday, April 18, 2001
Exaggerated fear of blacks at root of Cincinnati unrest
By Claude Lewis
A few years ago, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson enjoyed greater credibility, he confessed he felt relieved when a young man walking behind him on a dark street turned out to be white.
Jackson's statement proves you don't have to be white to share the fear
so prevalent in our society. Nearly all of us grow apprehensive when a
group of young
blacks approaches, especially at night. Judging from the experience
of a relatively few, such a circumstance can be dangerous indeed.
But that doesn't explain why so many Americans extend these feelings
to African Americans as a group. It does not explain why well-dressed black
businessmen,
lawyers, off-duty police officers and others have been abused or killed
by police officers.
It is nearly impossible for whites to understand what African Americans
experience daily all over America. Whites know little or nothing about
the slights blacks
encounter when they walk into a restaurant, shopping mall or even library.
Few whites ever know what it does to a person inside when you cross a street
and hear
the inevitable sound of electric automobile door locks snapping shut.
There's no way whites can know what it's like for one's children to be
judged solely by their
skin color. Police officers, black and white, engaging in racial profiling,
often stop and arrest many well-dressed, law-abiding African Americans
guilty of nothing
more than their skin color.
It's no secret that many young African Americans are aggressive and
appear ominous wherever they go. Truth is, however, that the overwhelming
majority of blacks
aren't. The argument, however, is that people don't have the time to
differentiate between those who are dangerous and those who are not. Citizens
may enjoy the
luxury of such judgments; police officers should not. The difference
is that all officers carry weapons that too many are willing to use at
the slightest or even a
perceived provocation.
Examples proliferate. Recall, if you will, the experience of Amadou
Diallo, an unarmed black street vendor who died after being struck by 19
of 41 bullets fired by
four white New York City police officers. As it turned out, Diallo
was guilty of nothing. Remember the depraved episode after Abner Louima
was forced into a
men's room by at least two white officers in a Brooklyn precinct?
In Cincinnati, the fatal police shooting of an unarmed 19-year-old black
man, the fourth since November in that city, has sparked unrest during
the last two weeks.
Such behavior cannot be justified, but certainly people should understand
the fear and frustration on the part of blacks there. One tearful Cincinnati
resident, Loria
Artis, put it simply: "We're tired, we're tired."
And why shouldn't they be tired after civil rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union alleged a 30-year pattern of racial profiling in Cincinnati?
True, the victim, Timothy Thomas, was no innocent. He was wanted on
multiple misdemeanor charges including traffic violations, driving without
a license and driving
while not wearing a seat belt. Should he have lost his life because
he attempted to run from officers, knowing the police as he did?
Many years ago I was stopped on my front lawn by a police officer who,
without checking my identification, informed me that I had "no business
in this
neighborhood." I was not behaving aggressively, nor was I in any way
disorderly. Still, the officer placed his hand on his weapon and ordered
me to stop. Had I
attempted to flee, he might well have shot me. My neighbor promptly
informed the officer he was mistaken. The officer, now red-faced, didn't
apologize but charged
me with "disorderly conduct" because I didn't freeze when he ordered
me to stop. The case was later thrown out.
I don't deny that too many blacks are involved in illegalities. Too
many whites are, too. The disparity between the reputations of blacks and
whites is much too great.
That often leads to fear, which in turn leads to disastrous consequences,
including police abuse and civil outbursts as in Cincinnati. The surprise,
however, is not that
there are so many of them, but that there are so few.
------------------------------
July 19, 2001.
Police
in Cincinnati Pull Back in Wake of Riots
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
CINCINNATI,
July 17 — Three months after this city was traumatized by street clashes
and vandalism, the police
have retreated from "proactive" patrols in black
neighborhoods, saying they fear fresh charges of racism.
During this period, there has been a six-fold increase in shooting incidents
citywide, with all but one victim black,
further polarizing the city since the three days of confrontations
in April between black protesters and the police.
"We're seeing an epidemic rise in violent crime," said Keith A. Fangman,
the president of the Fraternal Order of Police
union.
Since the protests, there have been 59 shooting incidents in the city
with 77 gunshot victims, compared with 9 shootings
and 11 victims in the comparable three months last year.
"The aftermath of the riots has actually been more harmful to the city than the riots themselves," Mr. Fangman said.
Arrests have dropped 50 percent since mid-April, he said, insisting
that it was not a job action and that his officers
wanted to be proactive.
But, Mr. Fangman said, they were "shellshocked" by a lack of political
support and a rising tide of investigations and
complaints.
There has also been a decline of nearly 55 percent in traffic stops,
a tactic that the union chief defended as crucial to
policing but that blacks often call harassment rooted in racial profiling.
On Saturday, a group of black leaders denounced Mr. Fangman and the
police union as derelict and called for a boycott
of the city by business conventions until there were tangible improvements
in economic opportunities and police
relations in impoverished black neighborhoods.
Black civic and church leaders, who have organized nightly street patrols
of those neighborhoods, accuse the police of
shirking their duty — a consequence, they say, of police resentment
toward investigations by the Department of Justice
and the F.B.I. into accusations of brutality, as well as toward the
growing docket of civil lawsuits that allege abuses.
"Everything is now polarized," the Rev. Damon Lynch III, the chairman
of the city's Black United Front, said of the
worsening relations between tense black neighborhoods and the 1,020-member
police force, which is 28 percent black.
As a result of whites moving to the suburbs, Cincinnati's population
dropped by 35,000, to 330,000, in the last decade,
while the city's black minority grew to 43 percent.
"The sense of desperation is still there that existed in April," Mr.
Lynch said. "The anger in the African-American
community is festering again."
Last week, after a night of gun violence in which six people were shot,
Mayor Charlie Luken, backed by a half-dozen
City Council members, said a violent-crimes task force of perhaps 60
officers would be formed to focus on high-crime
neighborhoods that bore the brunt of the shootings.
"Cincinnatians now must stand up and take back our streets," Mr. Luken declared.
He made a point of adding, "Acts of kindness to police officers in the street would be appropriate at this time."
The police chief, Tom Streicher, has expressed sympathy for his officers,
describing an "air of permissiveness after the
riots and it carried over." In a local newspaper interview Chief Streicher
said the police were experiencing a "tough
time."
"They're just not feeling a lot of support," he said.
Civil rights protests by blacks turned violent in April after a white
patrolman fatally shot an unarmed black male in a
street chase. Black leaders said the use of force by the officer, who
was later indicted on misdemeanor charges of
negligent homicide, was part of a prejudicial pattern; all 15 suspects
killed by police officers in the last six years have
been black.
Mr. Lynch's group and the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties
Union brought a civil rights lawsuit against the
city contending racial profiling by the police. The suit is the subject
of an unusual mediation effort supported by both
sides in which thousands of residents are to be consulted about the
city's racial divide in an effort to find common
ground for healing.
"We're not anti-police; we're anti- bad policing," Mr. Lynch said.
He said that with the planned police task force, black communities faced
the prospect of "an occupying force or no
police presence at all."
Discussing the fact that 76 of the 77 gunshot cases since the riots
involved black victims and black suspects, Mr. Lynch
said that "black-on- black violence is not acceptable."
But he called the incidents "an aberration that arose after the April
unrest," and speculated that more guns might have
flooded the city after pawn shops were looted.
"They're on the streets now," he said. "They're being used."
After touring black neighborhoods with other leaders for seven straight
nights, Mr. Lynch described some young black
men as "falling back into a sense of hopelessness," once the attention
to their grievances faded after the street protests
ended.
"They turned on themselves," he said, adding that the rationale seemed
to be that "if somehow you get hold of a gun,
now you've got power," and that "all power is to be exercised" — especially
on the less powerful near to home.
"What has to be taught to the community," Mr. Lynch continued, "is that
worth doesn't come from gym shoes, gold
chains, cars and stereos. And power doesn't come from a gun."
Still, no less important a lesson, Mr. Lynch said, was that the city
had to stand up to power plays by police officers
who, he contended, were intent on a job "slowdown."
"So the mayor says hug a cop today," Mr. Lynch said. "That's ridiculous."
Mr. Fangman, the union chief, said that officers had "been afraid to
take enforcement action in black neighborhoods,"
contending that they faced a "lynch-mob mentality" by local politicians
and the news media.
"It's not a physical fear," Mr. Fangman said of the officers. "They
are simply hesitant for fear of being labeled a racist,
especially if it's a white officer."
But Mr. Lynch said the police had long been routinely aggressive and
built no close relationships with the city's blacks;
even now, he said, the department was not reaching out to black leaders
to help create the neighborhood task force.
After the protests, black residents were encouraged by plans for a charter
change that would let the city search
nationally for a police chief instead of being limited to candidates
from the local police force.
But Mr. Lynch said the charter change proposal had foundered, with next
month's City Council meeting the last chance
to revive it in time for the November elections. No politician, he
said, was speaking up for it in this year of municipal
elections. "The political will so vocal in April is not there now,"
he said.
Mr. Fangman said the police needed the city's leaders to show the political
will to support its police force after months
of "sitting by and saying nothing."
He noted that Cincinnati had registered some of the lowest crime rates
across the last four decades for a city its size.
But, he said, enforcement had become more passive since the riots because
of officers' "plummeting morale" and fear of
being prosecuted for "any clear-cut justified police shooting."
---------
September 27, 2001
Cincinnati Officer Acquitted in Killing That Ignited Riots
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CINCINNATI,
Sept. 26 (AP) — A white police officer was acquitted today in the killing
of an unarmed black
man in April, an incident that sparked the city's
worst racial unrest in three decades.
The officer, Stephen Roach, had been charged with negligent homicide
and obstructing official business in the death
of Timothy Thomas, 19, whom he shot in a dark alley early on April
7.
Judge Ralph E. Winkler of Hamilton County Municipal Court pronounced
sentence after hearing the trial without a
jury. Officer Roach did not testify.
"This shooting was a split-second reaction to a very dangerous situation
created by Timothy Thomas," Judge
Winkler said. "Police Officer Roach's action was reasonable."
The judge said Officer Roach had an unblemished record, while Mr. Thomas
had been wanted on a variety of
warrants and did not respond to an order to show his hands.
Protesters gathered outside the courthouse and at a City Hall meeting
after the verdict, shouting and chanting, "No
justice, no peace."
Later, near a vigil for the victim where hundreds of people had gathered,
some cars were pelted with rocks and
bottles and trash cans were set afire, officials said. There were no
reports of serious injuries.
Mayor Charles Luken declared a state of emergency and imposed an overnight curfew after the violence.
A police spokesman, Lt. Kurt Byrd, said officers responding to the disturbance were wearing helmets and shields.
Officer Roach, 27, a city policeman since 1997, had faced up to nine
months in jail if convicted of both charges. He
still faces departmental administrative proceedings under which he
could face penalties that include firing, the police
said.
In three nights of disturbances that followed the shooting, dozens of
people were injured and more than 800 were
arrested before a citywide curfew was imposed. The city had not seen
such racial unrest since the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968.
Officer Roach glanced down while the verdicts were read today, and his wife, Erin, sobbed into her hands.
"Unfortunately, this is a tragedy for everybody involved," Officer Roach
said later outside the courtroom, holding
hands with his wife. "I would give anything to change the outcome of
what happened that night, but unfortunately I
can't."
Mr. Thomas' mother, Angela Leisure, said the verdict was unfair.
"Why is it that officers are not responsible for their acts when other citizens are?" she asked.
Mr. Thomas was the 15th black man killed by the Cincinnati police since
1995. The police union has noted that 10
of those men had fired or pointed guns at police officers, and that
two of the victims drove at officers or dragged
them from cars.
Officer Roach was believed to be the first Cincinnati police officer
to go to trial on charges of killing a suspect, the
police officials said.
Mr. Thomas had been wanted on 14 warrants, including traffic charges
and fleeing the police. On the night of the
shooting, he ran from three other officers and scaled fences in a neighborhood
plagued by drugs and violence,
Officer Roach's lawyer said.
The prosecutor, Stephen McIntosh, said Officer Roach ran after Mr. Thomas
with his finger on the pistol's trigger,
in a departure from the training of the Cincinnati Police Department.
--------
September 28, 2001
Curfew Ends in Cincinnati
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:47 a.m. ET
CINCINNATI (AP) -- After a night of relative calm, the mayor ended a
two-night citywide curfew Friday morning
and urged residents to ``Go out and go to dinner. ... Go have fun.''
Mayor Charlie Luken imposed the curfew Wednesday night to help keep
peace after a judge cleared a white police
officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man.
Police said several fires were set in trash bins and in a car Thursday
night and early Friday, and there were at least
eight reports of gunfire, but no injuries. The curfew ran from 11 p.m.
to 6 a.m.
The riots came after police officer Stephen Roach shot Timothy Thomas,
19, on April 7 as the black man fled
Roach and other officers. Thomas was wanted on 14 misdemeanor warrants,
including driving without a license and
previously fleeing police.
A judge Wednesday acquitted Roach, 27, of misdemeanor charges of negligent
homicide and obstructing official
business. While unrest broke out Wednesday evening, officials said
it was nowhere near as bad as the April riots.
Luken, aware that the curfew was keeping customers from downtown restaurants
and bars, said Friday he wanted to
be sure the city had stabilized before opening it up for the weekend.
``Go out and go to dinner, watch a movie, go to a play,'' he urged citizens
during an interview on WLW-AM radio.
``Go have fun.''
Roach, a city officer since 1997, had faced up to nine months in jail
if convicted of both charges. He still faces
departmental administrative proceedings under which he could face penalties
including dismissal, police said.