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Cincinnati Officer Faces Charges Over Shooting
CINCINNATI, Ohio, May 7 (News Agencies) - A grand jury Monday returned a two-count indictment on minor charges against a Cincinnati police officer who last month fatally shot a fleeing unarmed black teenager sparking three days of civil unrest.
The charges of negligent homicide and obstructing official business could produce a maximum jail sentence of only nine months, and immediately provoked an angry reaction from a predominantly black crowd gathered outside the courthouse where the grand jury had convened.
"No justice, no peace!" shouted some of the hundred-strong crowd outside the Hamilton County Courthouse in downtown Cincinnati.
With some African-American leaders having warned for weeks that anything short of felony homicide charges against officer Stephen Roach would be widely seen as an injustice by many in the local black community, there were concerns that the indictment could spur the kind of street violence seen in mid-April after the death of 19-year-old Timothy Thomas.
But Hamilton county prosecutor Michael Allen said: "To those who say the charges are too light and to those who say the charges are too severe, my response is the same. Please withhold your judgment until you know all of the facts."
Roach's shooting of Thomas - the 15th black male to die at the hands of Cincinnati police since 1995 - occurred in the early-morning hours of April 7th, when the officer chased the youth down an alley in Over-the-Rhine, a majority black neighborhood north of downtown Cincinnati.
Although Thomas was unarmed, Roach has told homicide investigators that he believed the teen - wanted on more than a dozen misdemeanor citations, many of them for minor driving infractions - appeared to be reaching into the waistband of his pants.
Fearing that Thomas was reaching for a weapon, Roach fired one shot, killing the youth.
Thomas' death spawned three nights of looting and violence, followed by a four-night curfew, in which dozens were injured, hundreds arrested and many businesses had their windows broken and property damaged.
Earlier Monday, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it plans to open a civil rights investigation into whether Cincinnati police officers use excessive force and routinely violate individuals' constitutional rights, as some local black leaders and others contend.
The Justice Department's intervention in the case could help defuse tensions over the grand jury's decision, said one local black leader, Bishop Nathaniel Linsey, co-chairman of Cincinnati's Faith Community Alliance, who urged the community to remain calm.
Most of the 15 suspects killed by police were armed, with several having wounded police officers before they were shot.
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