2001 riots led to top-down change for Cincinnati police

CINCINNATI — When Timothy Thomas was shot by a Cincinnati police officer in April 2001, sparking riots in the city's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, officers only knew from a dispatcher that Thomas had more than a dozen warrants.

Today, they would know that the warrants were for minor infractions, things such as failure to wear a seat belt.

Also today, they could call for help from an officer specially trained in handling people with mental health problems. They carry Tasers to use as an alternative option to their guns. And they're reminded of a new police department culture that stresses customer service as much as it does catching bad guys.

In the rioting that followed Thomas' death, fires were set around Over-the-Rhine, a police officer was shot but unhurt when the bullet hit his belt buckle, and a citywide curfew was imposed — the first in more than 30 years.

The changes since Thomas' death and the ensuing riots are many. The results have been dramatic.

In the six years before the riots, 15 men — all African-American — died in confrontations with police. In the last 10 years? Eight, six of them black.

Cincinnati officers have been involved in fewer police shootings since 2004 than their counterparts in the larger cities of Cleveland and Columbus as well as Dayton, Toledo and Akron.

The reasons for that decline include everything from technology and training to luck.

Cops are still cops, as Chief Tom Streicher said just before he retired in March. They're adrenaline junkies who have to think fast in dangerous situations.

But the 1,068 working in Cincinnati now, he said, are better trained, more carefully watched and more mindful of the power they wield and the effect it can have on people.

"There's no one single thing you can point to," Streicher said. "There's an improved approach to how we conduct business and it starts with training. We've continued to ask ourselves: Even if an action is right, is there a better way to do business?"

Christopher Smitherman, president of the Cincinnati branch of the NAACP, said the department's foremost change was that it began to understand that "cultural competency" —the ability to interact with people of different cultures — is key.

"You have to start there," he said. "They acknowledged that it's important, that it's not just political correctness."

Tension pre-dated riots

The April 2001 riots often are viewed by many as the beginning of the poor relationship between Cincinnati's black community and the police department. But the tension pre-dated the riots by years, as did a call for police reform.

Harvey Price was the first in a list of what would grow to 15 black men — some of them unarmed — killed in confrontations with police in six years leading up to the riots.

He was shot to death in February 1995 after he killed a 15-year-old girl with an ax and held police at bay for hours. Two months later, the arrest of Pharon Crosby, 18, would exacerbate tensions. Caught on video, it prompted complaints that officers used excessive force.

Police commanders knew distrust was brewing. They started talking about some problems, including racial profiling. In March 2001, Streicher acknowledged that some officers did practice biased policing.

That admission was momentous, a signal that department leadership was willing to listen, said ACLU attorney Scott Greenwood.

The department in 2002 lifted its requirement that recruits be under 35, with officials saying they wanted to diversify the force and boost its maturity.

The riots neither initiated the racial tension nor the police reforms, but accelerated both.

There were several incidents after the riots, too, that fanned the flames, including the 2002 forced retirement of the department's highest-ranking black officer, after he lied about an accident in his city-owned car.

About 30% of Cincinnati officers are African-American now, just slightly more than in 2001. The force's makeup has changed in other ways, though: New hires are encouraged to have college degrees. The 2004 recruit class of 50 included 25 with some post-high school education. In the 2006 class of 50 recruits, 42 had attended college. There have been no recruits since 2008 because of budget cuts.

Change didn't come easily

In March 2001, a month before the riots, the ACLU and local groups joined a 1999 lawsuit filed by Bomani Tyehimba, claiming police had discriminated against black people in Cincinnati for decades.

That lawsuit led to the Collaborative Agreement in 2002 between the ACLU, Cincinnati Black United Front, city and police union, which required police to adopt community-oriented policing as a strategy. A Memorandum of Understanding, a deal signed with the U.S. Department of Justice, required many more concrete reforms, including in the way uses of force are recorded and tracked. U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott appointed a federal monitor who oversaw compliance for the next six years.

Though lauded now, the reforms got off to a rough start.

Police leadership felt federal officials were cramming reforms down their throats.

But changes came anyway. Among them:

• Training officers in low-light situations, like the alley where Thomas died, and in dealing with suspects with mental health issues

• Training in how to recognize possible mental health issues in suspects and to better handle mentally ill people.

• Computers in officers' cruisers to give them access to a person's detailed criminal record, complete .

• Foot pursuit policy changed to require that officers assess whether a pursuit is appropriate, taking into consideration the seriousness of the offense, whether the suspect is armed and their ability to apprehend at a later date.

• In late 2003 the city bought updated Tasers for all officers after the death of Nathaniel Jones, an African-American man with drugs in his system. Officers hit him repeatedly with their batons.

• Officers are now required to fill out "contact cards" when they stop vehicles. The cards include details about those in the car, including their race. The cards grew out of allegations that Cincinnati officers stopped more minority drivers than whites.

• The Citizens Complaint Authority was created in 2002 to do independent reviews of all serious uses of force by police officers.

Officers balked at the CCA, insisting the department's internal reviews were enough and that the agency would be just another way their actions could be misunderstood and used against them.

But it seems to have had the opposite effect. CCA data show improvement in the number of investigations against officers and a reduction in the number of complaints sustained against officers. In 2004, the first year the CCA started keeping data, it investigated 193 complaints, some with multiple allegations of misconduct. The CCA sustained 92 allegations, or almost half, exonerating officers in 119 allegations. Last year, 83 were investigated, with 17% sustained and 51% exonerated.

With a new police chief coming in and continuing budget deficits, maintaining the reforms might be a challenge.

Saul Green, the court-ordered federal monitor who oversaw Cincinnati's police reforms for six years, was "greatly impressed" with the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence, started in 2007 to identify groups committing crimes and target them. But City Council cut CIRV's budget for this year, and the streetworkers — who walked neighborhoods talking to people after incidents to promote calm — were cut. The complaint authority was merged last year with the city's internal audit department to save money on support staff. Despite the cuts, city officials say they remain committed to reform.

The advertisement for a new chief to replace Streicher who retired on March 26, written by City Manager Milton Dohoney's office, specifies that the city is seeking someone who will keep the improvements and strive for more.

"They're clearly a lot better," the Rev. Damon Lynch III said of Cincinnati officers. He was former president of the Black United Front and led calls for a boycott of downtown Cincinnati after the riots.

"I think they've given it a good try," Lynch said. "I think they've made a good faith effort. It's important that the new chief buys into the collaborative and moves it even further down the road."