Friday, April 13, 2001

Police 'fed up,' union chief says

The Cincinnati Enquirer

As Cincinnati Police entered a fourth day of trying to control violent protesters, the president of the police union said officers are “fed up.”

“(City) council needs to come up with something really fast because this city is on the slippery slope, and if the police department doesn't get political support we're going to turn into another Detroit,” said Keith Fangman, Fraternal Order of Police president.

Mr. Fangman talked with the Enquirer after a 12-hour, 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. shift on the streets and a lengthy appearance on a radio talk show.

“It's going to come to a point where the officers are going to shut down and say we can't take it anymore,” he said.

Mr. Fangman expressed anger toward city council and Mayor Charlie Luken for not giving the police division the moral and financial support it deserves.

On the radio he said: “Quite frankly many of them on council have inflamed the situation in the past few months with talk about Cincinnati police officers murdering African-American males but not telling people the truth about all the officers that have been shot at by these African-American males. We're fed up.”

Mr. Fangman said the racial profiling ordinance passed by council March 28 was based on false and inaccurate information.

“The only thing to improve morale is for council to come forward and admit that the racial profiling ordinance was nothing more than a political stunt,” Mr. Fangman said. “We're in the middle of a riot and I can guarantee you we are stopping, detaining and questioning people in the neighborhoods where there is unrest.

“Two weeks ago council called that racial profiling. Now that the city is burning the council doesn't know what to say.”

Mr. Fangman also said the National Guard would not be needed if the mayor and council had done their jobs correctly.

“If they had hired more police officers instead of killing a 38-member police recruit class,” he said. “If they had brought us up to what it was in the 1970s - which was 1,250 instead of the measly 1,020 we have now - we wouldn't have to worry about needing the National Guard.”

Cincinnati Police now operate on a “daily code zero,” which means that there are often no police cars available to answer calls. Mr. Fangman said it happens every day.

He doesn't want sympathy from council or the mayor.

“We want tangible results,” Mr. Fangman said. “We want more officers in the neighborhoods. We want more two-man cars. It's safer.”

Yet despite his numerous frustrations with the lack of city support, Mr. Fangman said Cincinnati Police will maintain their professionalism.

“The citizens come first,” Mr. Fangman said. “We're going to do everything we need to do to protect the city from the grip of anarchy.”

Bits and pieces of that anarchy might already have arrived.

Earlier on WLW-AM, Mr. Fangman said, “The whole world has just been turned upside down and our officers are demanding that our members of council grow a backbone and grow a spine and say enough is enough.

“We are not going to negotiate with these terrorists and that's what they are. These are nothing but terrorists out here on the street.

“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.”

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2001

Answers

ET

Across America, politicians and civic leaders expressed concern. While comfortable with the rhetoric of race and social justice, many are less inclined to discuss the poverty and climate of violence which drove gangs of young black men to exploit protests in Cincinnati by looting shops in their own communities and burning neighbours' homes.

Cincinnati on knife edge for black funeral

By Philip Delves Broughton

HALF-EMPTY beer bottles, limp flowers and the letters RIP spray-painted on a wall mark the spot where Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old black, was shot dead by police in Cincinnati last weekend.

His death, however, has been marked by more than mere physical symbols, and there are fears that his funeral today may trigger more bloodshed. Hundreds of blacks have rioted throughout this city in Ohio for the past week. A curfew was still in place last night until first light this morning.

The reaction of blacks has not been dimmed by Thomas's seeming unsuitability for his unsought role as a martyr for racial divisions in contemporary America. Thomas was accused of traffic offences more than 20 times between March 17 and May 4 last year. Ten times he was cited for not having a driving licence; six times for not wearing a seatbelt; once for having tinted windows and driving an infant without a baby seat in his car. He was known to police as a troublemaker, and he had evaded them several times.

During riots this week several protesters carried signs which read: "No seatbelt = Death". Black leaders have descended on the city to protest about what they say is endemic police racism. It is a problem, they say, across America.

Kweisi Mfume, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, said: "Cincinnati is a microcosm. It's the belly of the whale. 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?"

After Thomas's death, several hundred black protesters gathered in the centre of Cincinnati to vent their feelings about the police. Thomas was the fourth black suspect to be killed by police in the last five months and the 15th in the last six years. A small band of violent young men turned what had been peaceful protests into a running battle with police. Shops were looted. Houses, cars and a police station burned down. Community centres were ransacked and the streets of poorer areas left in chaos.

After the imposition of the curfew on Thursday night, some peace was restored. Fathers and sons came out in Over-the-Rhine, the worst hit area of the city, and began playing chess on the streets again. Mothers came out with their children.

"Just trying to get them some fresh air before the curfew," said Rhonda Reyes said as she pushed her two sons towards a small park where the wire fence had been kicked in during the recent violence. In the centre of town a Christian band performed the Passion. At Catholic churches, worshippers who are used to attending church just after midnight on Good Friday, had to wait until the curfew ended at 6.30am.

On television news programmes, grainy film footage released by the police was played repeatedly, showing squad cars screeching to a halt and the sound of the shot that killed Thomas. Twice before on that day Thomas had run from police. This time he died trying. Stephen Roach, the officer who shot him, said he thought he saw Thomas reaching for a gun. No gun was found on Thomas's body.

His death caused outrage in this city which is 43 per cent black. Like many cities in northern America, it grew in the middle of the 20th century as blacks moved up to escape the racial inequalities of the South. Despite the civil rights movement, many blacks found themselves at the bottom of the economic and social ladder. Their anger intensified as new immigrant minority groups, notably Asians and Hispanics, began vaulting them economically.

Even new black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa have proved more upwardly mobile in cities like New York and Miami than the African Americans already here. For some time black leaders have accused police forces in many American cities of racial profiling: targeting blacks. Statistics which have shown arrests to be more frequent among blacks are cited by sociologists as evidence of a social malaise among America's blacks, but are used by black leaders to say that they are victimised by police.

In New York the deaths of two black men, Amadou Diallo, and Patrick Dorismond prompted big marches against the New York police department and the then mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Now Cincinnati's mayor, Charlie Luken, faces a similar problem. His police patrol large sections of the city with guns drawn ready for snipers after an officer was shot and wounded by an unseen gunman on Thursday.

After declaring a state of emergency, Mr Luken said: "I have lived in this city all of my life and I love it to death. I never thought I would sign an emergency order because of civil unrest." On Thursday he met members of the new Black Panther party who gave him a list of demands. He gave it back without looking it.

President Bush's chief of staff has told Mr Luken that the White House is monitoring the situation and is ready to offer help if required. This is an early test for Mr Bush, who campaigned for the presidency as a "compassionate conservative", but who was criticised for naming John Ashcroft as Attorney-General. During his confirmation hearings before the Senate, Mr Ashcroft had to answer charges that he discriminated against black judges as governor of Missouri.

Angela Leisure, the mother of Timothy Thomas, has called upon blacks in the city to stop the violence. "Let my son be the last one to die. If you let what you feel control and run you, only more people will get hurt," she said. "Stay away from violence and destruction."

The next challenge for the police is Thomas's funeral this morning. It has been moved from a small church close to his home to a larger one which can hold up to 500 people. Hundreds more are expected in the streets.

Tom Streicher, the city's police chief, said that the police department's interest in Thomas had nothing to do with the colour of his skin and everything to do with repeated misdemeanours.

Across America, politicians and civic leaders expressed concern. While comfortable with the rhetoric of race and social justice, many are less inclined to discuss the poverty and climate of violence which drove gangs of young black men to exploit protests in Cincinnati by looting shops in their own communities and burning neighbours' homes.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2001