From correspondents in Cincinnati, Ohio December 4, 2003
A CORONER has issued a homicide ruling in the case of a black man whose death, following a videotaped beating by police officers, has spotlighted the US city of Cincinnati's troubled history of race relations.
A medical examiner said 41-year-old Nathaniel Jones died of an irregular heartbeat, brought on by the stress of the struggle with officers in the southern Ohio city of Cincinnati early on Sunday.
Hamilton county coroner Carl Parrott said Jones's obesity, heart disease and drug consumption that night contributed to his sudden death.
The 159kg father of two was high on cocaine, angel dust and marijuana joints apparently dipped in methanol when he got into a confrontation with the officers after resisting arrest, according to blood tests carried out by the coroner's office.
"Absent the struggle, however, Mr Jones would not have died at that precise moment in time and the struggle therefore is the primary cause of his death," Parrott said.
Blacks civil rights groups have challenged the police tactics, questioning whether the officers needed to use as much force as they did. A tape of the incident shows the two officers repeatedly striking Jones with their batons after he swung at and punched one of them.
It took six officers to eventually subdue him. The batons left tracks on Jones's skin, but did not inflict any organ damage, according to the autopsy report.
The nation's largest black civil rights' group the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) has demanded the US Justice Department carry out an inquiry into the incident independent of the two probes by the Cincinnati police department.
Relatives of Jones said they would commission an independent autopsy of the 41-year-old.
But Parrott was quick to distance himself from the controversy, saying the homicide finding should not be construed to mean the police officers had used excessive force.
"It is merely a characterisation of the circumstances in which the cause of death came to be," he said.
But the incident has reopened old wounds in a city with a history of troubled race relations and where the death of an unarmed black teen at the hands of a white officer sparked three days of rioting in 2001.
It also has drawn the attention of national black civil rights groups who said the beating, footage of which has aired repeatedly on national television here, fits a pattern of police brutality going back years.
"The sight of police officers repeatedly beating Nathaniel Jones with metal night sticks is sickening and appears well outside of the norm for subduing an unarmed suspect," Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, said.
Cincinnati Mayor Charles Luken and the city's police chief have insisted the officers acted properly.
"It was a violent assault by a very large man" and given the circumstances the officers acted "consistent with our training procedures", Police Lieutenant Colonel Richard Janke said.
But relatives of Jones, who was affectionately known as Skipper, insisted he was a peaceful man who has been made to look bad by the police. They have lashed out at authorities for releasing Jones' criminal rap sheet, including convictions for cocaine possession.
"Police talked about Skip like he was an animal," Jones' grandmother, Bessie Jones, said. "But he was wasn't. Skipper was just a good, old, fat, jolly fella."
"It is extremely difficult to sit back and have a nation look at your loved one like he's an animal," family lawyer Ken Lawson said at a news conference with members of Jones' grieving family.
All six police officers in the case have been placed on administrative leave, pending the results of two internal probes, in line with standard procedure, the police department said.
Agence France-Presse
<http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8061732%255E1702,00.html> -- Yoshie
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