Hell No, They Won't Go - my suggestion was to send in black officers to patrol these areas, but oh no - they want old whitey to save them from themselves? So Cincinnati is loaded for bear and all will be peaceful unless someone crosses what some might call, the Mason Dixon Line - Regardless it seems blacks want old whitey back to patrol their streets - why not get old blackie for surely, these criminals in the streets could not accuse the police of "profiling" which was the charge prior to the Civil Rights Fights. What I loved is the black scream BOYCOTT - boycott the hotels - they should do well to remember how Castro solved the problems - he took over the hotels and made orphanages - but then where would all these people meet like the Bilderbergers? And even that, started in a hotel room no doubt with a Bible open as a cover. Who needs motels and hotels? They pulled that one down south .... We have a black mayor in Columbus now, seems like a nice guy - but Columbus is dying for lack of let us say a social life so this guy wants it wide open day and night now - 24 hours of playtime when after twilight time, all the street people come out to play...... Saba 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. Mike Simons for The New York Times "Everything is now polarized," the Rev. Damon Lynch III said of the tensions between blacks in Cincinnati and the city's police force. Mike Simons for The New York Times Keith A. Fangman, president of the Cincinnati police force's union, says the force wants to be proactive but has had little support. 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." Home | Back to National | Search | Help Back to Top Click Here to Receive 50% Off Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
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