Cincinnati - Blacks riot after police shoot suspect - mini-L.A.

[JimR]

CINCINNATI, April 10 (UPI) -- For the second straight day, hundreds of rioters protested the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man, throwing rocks and bottles in downtown Cincinnati.

The rioters set fire Tuesday night to a market in a historic area of Cincinnati and looted buildings, CNN reported. Police said 20 people have been arrested in two days for rioting and disorderly conduct.

Police in riot gear used beanbag guns to try to break up and subdue the crowd. Streets around City Hall and police headquarters were blocked off as a precaution.

This picture is worth a thousand words:

Two threads on FreeRepublic.com with many more images, including burning storefronts, whites assaulted and bleeding profusely for being in the wrong place / wrong time.
FreeRepublic Thread #1
FreeRepublic Thread #2

A case summary of the 15 Black men killed by Cincy police since 1995. Most of these look like Darwin at work.

This story hits on a many issues related to firearms and discussed here frequently:

Self defense (no CCW in Ohio).

Police brutality / police shooting of violent thugs.

The War on Some Drugs and the heightening of violence it causes (many of the 15 were drug dealers).


If a black cop had shot a white citizen, and White males were rioting and attacking innocent Black passers-by, including women, the press would be going berserk. Instead, the tone of the press reports is that this isn't even that surprising.

 

[PRIDEFANS]

Well, obviously nobody wants to comment on this because if you say what you think then you're a racist.
A picture IS worth a thousand words, though.

 

[paratrooper]

My info is that the guy had 14 warrants for his arrest . He was running from police . Evading arrest . # 15 ? If the cop didn't shoot him today his drug dealing neighbor would have tomorrow . Then the cops would have to take blame for failure to protect him . I saw the tapes . It was a contest of who could do the most damage to other peoples property .

 

[JimR]

Apparently there is widescale rioting going on right now. The Cincy police scanner has a feed to the Internet, and the guys on Free Republic are posting updates on a couple of threads.

This ought to be all over the news tomorrow. Well, later today, as I see it's now past midnight here (and in Cincy).

 

[BAB]

They're shooting cops now, are they?

*************************

http://www.cincinow.com/specials/city_in_distress/news/story11.shtml

A man is on top of a building firing gunshots at police.

This is taking place in the 1800 block of Vine Street near Walnut Street in Cincinnati.

In order to maintain safety, police have locked down the block

Police are also looking for a gunman who shot a Cincinnati police officer tonight.

The man shot the officer around 11:00 Wednesday night.

The officer was shot on the corner of 17th and Vine Streets in downtown Cincinnati.

Police describe the male suspect as 6 ft tall, heavy set in a grey sleeveless tee shirt with the sleeves cut off and shorts.

Police said the suspect was firing shots as he walked down the street.

The officer is in stable condition and is going to be transported to the hospital by police crews.

The officer's bulletproof vest stopped the suspect's bullet, according to police.

The officer's injuries are not life-threatening.

More details as they come in...

***************************

BTW, this article was posted at 11:46 EDT.

 

[Hal]

Strange isn't it?

Cincinnati, with it's ban on all semi automatics and Ohio with no CCW is having riots, while across the Ohio River in Kentucky I imagin it was a warm spring evening.

 

[duck hunt]

Having been smack in the middle of the LA riots (I lived on Normandie Avenue, the street where they started), I can truly say there is nothing more terrifying.

Watching the footage of Cininnati this morning made me kind of sorry we've got due process. I mean, can't we just rescind it for a day or two? You've got a crowd of hoodlums dancing in front of a looted store, mugging for the camera, then the camera picks up a group of cops moving in, opening fire...pretty effective deterrent to anyone watching, I'd think.

Or maybe I'm just a little fascist.

 

[JimR]

I just heard on the radio that the mayor has declared "a State of Emergency" (whatever that means) and is talking about calling in the National Guard.

Update on the sentence above:

CINCINNATI (AP) — The mayor declared a state of emergency and announced a citywide curfew as riots over the police shooting of an unarmed black man stretched into a fourth day Thursday.

Only people going to and from work will be allowed on the streets between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., Mayor Charles Luken said.

``Despite the best efforts of the good citizens of our city, the violence on our streets is uncontrolled and it runs rampant,'' Luken said at a news conference at City Hall.

Here are a whole bunch of links, some of which I posted before. Sorry, I'm not going to nicely title and link, just bare HTML links.

Threads 4 and 5 have a bunch of posts by people listening to Cincy police scanners while things were hot and heavy.

Free Republic Thread #1 "Fresh Rioting Erupts in Cincinnati" UPI
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad3d2df6453.htm

Free Republic Thread #2
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad3d1a36230.htm

Free Republic Thread #3
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad513e37c5c.htm

Free Republic Thread #4
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad51f470f39.htm

Free Republic Thread #5
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad53f103641.htm

Free Republic Thread #5a
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad53f3d3665.htm

Free Republic Thread #6
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad5771f4fa7.htm

Free Republic "15 black men killed since 1995" Cincy Post
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad411491b30.htm

Free Republic "Protest erupts in day of rage" Cincy Post
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad51e920e7a.htm

Free Republic "Fresh rioting erupts in Cincinnati" UPI
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad3d2df6453.htm

WCPO "Days of Distress"
http://www.cincinow.com/specials/city_in_distress/news/story6.shtml

Free Republic "Police Officer Shot in Cincinnati Rioting" Yahoo/Reuters
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad54d31410d.htm

This thing has been totally overshadowed by the EP-3. I expect we'll be hearing much more in the next couple of days.





[Edited by JimR on 04-12-2001 at 12:40 PM]

 

[IronBalls]

Last night i saw a Reginal Denny type thing- 2 blacks fought thier way into a big rig, and beat the white driver out through the passenger side into a group of about 15 more blacks,then the coverage stopped. I hope that guy got away ok.

 

[duck hunt]

Ironballs, that was the absolute worst part of the riots for me...seeing that live on TV as it was happening. The news copter guy just kept repeating "we don't know why the police aren't responding...we've called them several times and it doesn't look like they're coming." I couldn't believe that they were gonna let that poor guy get his head bashed in like that...but I had to because I was watching it happen.

*shudder*

 

[Tall Man]

RE: This thread's picture being worth a thousand words...

What about just six words? --

"That is a target rich environment."

Tall Man

Taking aim.

 

[LawDog]

One of the benefits of living in Small Town Texas: people don't riot.

Despite the joke, the "He needed killin'" defense is still somewhat valid around here.

LawDog

 

[Coronach]

Racism

I don't think being 'racist' has anything to do with the offensiveness of that picture. If you could alter the race of everyone in that photo to caucasian, I think every one of us would be just as upset and disgusted. "Yeah, baby...a chance to loot and drink beer on top of cars and act like a fool."

Its the attitude and the action, not the race.

Also, on another minor point: who is more racist, the cop who, in an split second, has to decide if this guy with 14 warrants might be pulling a gun, or the rioter who goes out looking for white motorists to beat?

Oh yeah, sorry. I forgot. Thats called pent-up anger.

Whatever.

Mike

 

[Oleg Volk]

What gets me about this and similar riots...

...is that most victims are neighbors of the rioters and generally of the same race (look at the images of people doing the cleanup). Was just discussing this with a TFL friend by phone and we were wondering why Mr.00buck hasn't made an appearance on the side of the regular citizens fending for themselves.

 

[Don Gwinn]

Gee, I wonder why the cops weren't responding, Mr. Evening News? Could it be that sometimes there are more bad guys than there are police?

I wonder what the average citizen should do about that?

 

[Coronach]

The cops aren't responding becuase they're completely overwhelmed. Cincy only has about 1000 officers, and God only knows what percentage of them are line officers and how many are REMFs that couldn't put down a distrurbance in their own underpants.

I too wonder why there haven't been many (any?) defensive shootings.

Mike

 

[Oleg Volk]

In order for us to learnof defensive shootings, someone has to report them (defender) or someone has to miss a rioter (and they might not be missed by anyone)...hence no reports yet but the rats may well be fattening up already.

 

[folkbabe]

I don't think being 'racist' has anything to do with the offensiveness of that picture. If you could alter the race of everyone in that photo to caucasian, I think every one of us would be just as upset and disgusted. "Yeah, baby...a chance to loot and drink beer on top of cars and act like a fool."

Well, when University of Maryland students trashed College Park after the Terps got into the Final Four I didn't see people calling for the students to be shot. They did ask why there was _no_ police present in the town (despite assurances by the Montgomery County police department earlier in the day) but they didn't ask for the "rioters" to be shot (damage, mostly from fires and damage to cars, is estimated at something close to $1 million--less than Cincinatti, but still significant for a small commercial area). And Baltimore's local TV stations ran pictures of frat boys dancing on cars drinking beers after the Superbowl and nobody in power condemned it. The press coverage was overwhelmingly positive to the "street revelers."

The obvious difference between the sports situations and the Cincinatti situation is that in the Maryland cases the people taking the illegal actions are a part of the class that is "protected and served" and they weren't making any statement to challenge the status quo so their actions are just harmless revelery. In the Cincinatti case the people engaging in illegal action are a part of the "policed" class and have at least some challenge of the socio-political situation and so their actions are seen as dangerous and serious.


That said, I would hope that if Baltimore folks engaged in rebellion at some point we would do so in a more clear and well-thought-out manner. Attacking your neighbors or destroying the property of small business owners is failing to identify and go after the real enemy and just hurts those who should be your allies. And, no matter your motives, hurting people, especially "innocents," is never an acceptable method of protest and should be condemned.

Um, I don't want to get into a debate over that last sentence. I put it in to make it clear that I don't support attacking random people in the streets during riots/rebellions. I realize some people do support hurting people (usually people defined as "combatants") for political causes but I really don't want to derail this thread into that debate.

 

[Oleg Volk]

No one advocated shooting people for...

...burning cars. I was merely wondering why no one got stopped while trying to firebomb an occupied dwelling or while engaging in assault on persons.

FWIW, I don't think the unifying factor is race but rather age+gender combination. Young males can be a nasty lot.

Personally, I am not even sure the news footage is all that accurate though the police scanners seem to be supporting it.

 

[moa]

Folkbabe, I believe you are thinking of the Prince Georges County Police, and not the Montgomery County Police. The main Maryland U. campus is in PG County.

Also, there is absolutely no way you can compare the Cincinnati riots with the Maryland U. ruckus. There is a difference when there is mostly vandalism and disorderly conduct versus looting, assault, sniping, probably attempted murder, etc.