Nights Of Rage

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Cincinnati, Ohio, police chief Thomas Streicher Jr. said he wanted his city to be a model of racial justice. Cincinnati could push beyond platitudes about racial profiling, he told the city council last month, and "get at what's in the officer's heart." Soon after, the council banned racial profiling, the practice of stopping suspects on the basis of race, and ordered officers to record the race of people they stop. But two weeks later, Cincinnati's streets were littered with the familiar iconography of failure: fiery Dumpsters, splintered storefronts and citizens sitting on the curb, weeping from tear gas. Police in riot gear ringed city hall, and Mayor Charlie Luken appeared on TV--shaken and anxious--to announce a strict curfew. While many American cities wrestle with the same slippery problems, Cincinnati had become a model of racial injustice.

Like all riots, the tumult that plagued Cincinnati for three days last week defies a single explanation. But the causes are scattered over the past weeks and years. In the city's short-term memory, there lies an unarmed 19-year-old African-American man named Timothy Thomas, killed by a white officer last Saturday. Thomas was wanted for 14 misdemeanor violations, most of them small-time traffic charges. His bigger mistake was to run from the police. Surrounded by 12 officers, Thomas was killed by one bullet. The officer who fired, Steven Roach, has said he thought Thomas had a gun.

Then there's the longer-term memory. Thomas joined a list of 15 men who died while being apprehended by Cincinnati police since 1995. That's more than four times the fatal-shooting rate of New York City's cops in the same time period. And all the suspects killed by Cincinnati police were black--in a city that's 57% white. Last month a coalition of civil-rights groups filed suit in federal court, accusing Cincinnati of a "30-year pattern of racial profiling" and excessive force. So the latest shooting--possibly the most egregious yet--put match to tinder. On Monday, Thomas' mother and 200 other protesters left a three-hour meeting at city hall infuriated by all the unanswered questions. The group began shouting at police. Soon, rocks and bottles were flying. At the center square, people hurled garbage cans into the Tyler Davidson Fountain, where locals have historically gathered to celebrate the end of wars.

By Tuesday afternoon, police were firing rubber bullets and tear gas. On Wednesday, a group of ministers linked arms and--for one glorious hour--physically separated more than 300 protesters from a battalion of 200 police. By nightfall, though, the violence was spilling into other neighborhoods--crashing through blocks still scarred from the 1968 riots. A white motorist was dragged from her car and beaten. Police arrested more than 500 people by week's end; more than 60 were injured.

The curfew Luken imposed on Thursday had a calming effect. The mayor has called for reform and a Justice Department investigation. "There are deep racial divisions in this city," he admitted Friday. "There is a lack of trust."