A Death Too Far
Anger fills City Hall after cops kill another black man
By Maria Rogers
What draws a crowd of more than 150 people to a Law and Public Safety Committee meeting on a Monday afternoon -- and more important, what keeps them there for three hours?
If the crowd that gathered at City Hall April 9 is waiting for answers from the Cincinnati Police Division on why an officer shot and killed 19-year-old Timothy Thomas, they might be in for a long, hot summer.
Police officials refused April 9 to say why Officer Steve Roach shot the unarmed Thomas after chasing him through Over-the-Rhine at about 2:30 a.m. April 7. Police Chief Thomas Streicher says the matter is part of an ongoing investigation and information has been subpoenaed by the Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office for a grand jury.
Fraternal Order of Police President Keith Fangman says Roach was in fear of his life and Thomas made motions that led Roach to believe he was armed.
More than 150 people packed council chambers on short notice, community leaders say, because they wanted answers and needed to express outrage at the deaths of 15 African-American men at the hands of Cincinnati Police since 1995.
Members of the audience held signs declaring, "Stop Killing Us or Else," "Racism Will Not Be Tolerated" and -- alluding to allegations police use racial profiling in traffic stops -- "Wear Seat Belt or Be Executed."
People screamed, people cried, people chanted. When City Councilman John Cranley, committee chair, called for order, shouts erupted from the crowd in response: "Get your police department in order!"
Lavonda Moran -- sister of Roger Owensby Jr., killed by officers last year -- cried at the meeting. Two officers have been indicted in Owensby's death. Moran says officers are trained extensively to do their job, but in the end they turn too often to force.
"The only thing they go to from in their training is that weapon," Moran says.
Moran says she attended the committee meeting on behalf of Owensby's daughter, Naisha.
"We're fighting for her daddy," she says.
The noisy protest in council chambers served both to send a message and to vent emotions, according to Rev. Damon Lynch III, spokesman for Black United Front.
"Right now there's just extreme frustration," Lynch says. "We've been here before. The community is expressing its anger, its anguish, its pain."
If business and religious leaders got involved, things might start to change, Lynch says.
"It's not until the broader community sees this as an issue is it going to change," he says.
But, Lynch says, only issues that cost the city large sums of money get that kind of attention.
"Right now it doesn't cost anything to kill a black man," he says. "We're a little town on the river with some serious problems."
Bridgette Harrison, one of the people in City Hall for the meeting, says the crowd was full of people who were angry and hurt.
"They're still not telling why they shot this man," Harrison says.
What happened on Republic Street -- an area Streicher calls "not the most comfortable place in the city to be at 3 a.m." -- might not be known for a while. Streicher says he returned to Cincinnati late April 8 from a conference out of town.
By the next afternoon, when he met with the Law and Public Safety Committee, Streicher still hadn't listened to police broadcasts of the time period when Thomas was shot, hadn't talked to Roach and hadn't listened to the 911 tapes. He didn't know if other officers at the scene had drawn their weapons and didn't know if Roach and Thomas had struggled before the shooting.
What police did talk about April 9 was the route taken in the chase of Thomas and the misdemeanor warrants on which he was wanted.
Streicher also made a point of saying Roach once apprehended a carload of armed suspects without incident.
Streicher says he can't say, "Here's the answer. It's magic, and everything is just going away."
Assistant Police Chief Ronald Twitty says actions are being taken to help inform the community about the role of the police and to add new training methods. But the healing process will take time.
"I don't think we can make the community feel better about the police department in a day," Twitty says.
Twitty's words proved prescient. An estimated 1,000 people protested at the District 1 police station late April 9, leading to 10 arrests for rioting. Two officers sustained minor injuries from projectiles, and a window at the station was broken.
A rampage the next afternoon led to broken windows and overturned trash cans along Vine Street, downtown. Officers allegedly shot a pregnant woman with a rubber bullet in Over-the-Rhine during demonstrations that evening.©
<http://www.citybeat.com/current/news2.shtml> *****
Also in the CityBeat: "Web Feature: Tear Gas and Fear" at <http://www.citybeat.com/current/news.shtml>; and "Slinking Away: The 'Strong Mayor' Ducks an Angry Crowd" at <http://www.citybeat.com/current/news3.shtml>.
Yoshie