Come to Macedonia....was the call heard loud and clear? So read more on Planet of the Apes" Saba Welcome, saba22 April 14, 2001 Blacks in Cincinnati Hear Echoes Amid the Violence By FRANCIS X. CLINES Agence France-Presse Crystal Brown and her son Demitri attended a Good Friday gathering downtown. Peace Is Largely Restored to Cincinnati Streets After Violent Wake of Police Shooting Cincinnati Mayor Imposes Curfew to Quell Violence (April 13, 2001) Appeals for Peace in Ohio After Two Days of Protests (April 12, 2001) The Associated Press Keith Fangman, above, a police officer and president of the police union in Cincinnati, warned against concessions to "these terrorists," as he called violent protesters. CINCINNATI, 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. Home | Back to National | Search | HelpBack to Top Special offer from Ameritrade. Learn more. $7 Trades and 130 Offices. Find the office near you! Don't miss the 2Q Mutual Funds Report Post a Job on NYTimes.com Search NYTimes.com Classifieds Browse the NYT Store Explore Shopping at NYTimes.com 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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