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Cincinnati Police "Nonlethal" Ammunition Use Raises Tension
CINCINNATI, Ohio, April 15 (News Agencies) - Police use of "nonlethal" ammunition on marchers in an apparently unprovoked use of force triggered fresh criticism of this city's police department on Sunday, just as authorities appeared to have defused tensions over the death of a black teenager.
Four people, including a seven-year-old girl, were hit by beanbag ammunition on Saturday shortly after the funeral service for Timothy Thomas, the teenager whose fatal shooting by a white police officer plunged this city into racial turmoil this week.
"Police opened fire on people," Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told Fox News Sunday.
"There was absolutely no reason to do that. And many of the police officers there were absolutely distraught at some of those who decided to do that," added Mfume, who was just a block away when the shooting took place.
The Cincinnati police force, which has endured a firestorm of criticism since the unarmed Thomas was gunned down on April 7th in a dark alley, was tight-lipped about the incident.
"It's the subject of an internal investigation," said police spokesman Paul Byers, declining to give any other details.
The episode was the only event to mar an otherwise peaceful day, as hundreds of mourners - but far less than the thousands anticipated by authorities - turned out to pay their last respects to the fallen teen.
Officials had feared it could prove a flash point for the black community, following three days of looting, arson and sporadic attacks on white motorists that erupted earlier this week in protest over the 19-year-old's death.
But it was a good-humored crowd that packed into a downtown Cincinnati Baptist church and spilled out onto its surrounding streets, just blocks from the alley where Thomas perished.
And with the exception of a call by New Black Panther Party leader Malik Shabazz to continue the "righteous rebellion," a march by protesters after the funeral service passed off virtually without incident.
But there was no mistaking the black community's hostility toward Cincinnati's overwhelmingly white police force, which it argues is racist and unfairly targets black youths.
"If it had been one of us, we would be sitting in jail," 41-year-old Reginald Delano Jacobs said, summing up the widespread sense of resentment over white officer Steve Roach's being given paid administrative leave while local and federal probes of the shooting wind their way through the system.
"This man has a license to kill," Jacobs said in disgust.
Overnight, some 187 people were arrested for curfew violations, but this southern Ohio city - which Mfume has dubbed "ground zero for race relations" in America - was "relatively calm," police spokesman Byers said.
The city has pared back the lockdown in deference to churchgoers who want to attend services this Easter Sunday, moving the starting time from 8:00 pm (0000 GMT) to 11:00 pm (0300 GMT).
But even as many journalists packed up and prepared to leave town as a result of the sudden lull in violence, more black leadership figures came to town offering their own version of fire and brimstone.
"We must distinguish between those who are calling for quiet and those who are calling for peace," the Reverend Al Sharpton told a black congregation at a Baptist church here on Sunday, warning that the black community would not be muzzled.
Sharpton arrived in town Sunday and was making the rounds of churches. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson was reportedly expected later in the week.
Mfume avoided charging the Cincinnati police department - which has killed some 15 black men since 1995 - of systematic racism on Sunday, but reiterated that the department needed a thorough overhaul.
"There is something woefully wrong with this police department - even police officers say that," he told Fox News Sunday.
"Do you believe that when an unarmed suspect is running from police, has no weapon, makes no deadly move, [he] should be shot down in a dark alley like a dog, like a pig, like an animal?" Mfume asked rhetorically.
Keith Fangman, the head of Cincinnati's police union, argued in an interview with Fox News that in 12 of the 15 cases in which police officers had killed black men, the individuals were armed.
"Do you actually believe that if a Cincinnati police officer, or any police officer, encounters a suspect with a deadly weapon who attempts to kill an officer with that deadly weapon ... that our officers should not have the right to use deadly force in a deadly force encounter?" he asked.
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