“I was out of town at the time and saw it on national television. I thought the whole area was involved in the riots, but it was pretty much confined to one area,” recalls Jim Verdin, founder of the Pendelton art centers in Cincinnati and Middletown, and the owner of several businesses in Over-the-Rhine where the riots began.
“I didn’t think of the property as much as how many people would be killed, because it didn’t look good. I thought, ‘my goodness, the whole city is going to burn down.’ ”
For four days, the city’s hidden racial divide erupted in violence and was on televisions worldwide after 19-year-old Timothy Thomas was shot and killed April 7, 2001 by then Cincinnati police officer Stephen D. Roach, a Talawanda High School graduate and current Butler County resident. Roach, who said he feared for his life when he thought Thomas was reaching for a weapon, later was acquitted of any wrongdoing.
The shooting caused racial tensions that had been building for about a decade to explode in a neighborhood near the city’s economic epicenter downtown.
On April 9, protesters took to the streets and broke City Hall windows after city officials refused to provide details of Thomas’ shooting.
The unrest grew more violent in the coming days as some angry residents began looting and setting fires to businesses and beating white motorists and passers-by caught in the crossfire.
The violence ended April 12 after then-Mayor Charlie Luken declared a state of emergency and imposed a citywide curfew.
Since 2001, 10 men have been killed in police involved shootings in Cincinnati; nine of them were black, according to Cincinnati police records.
The views a decade later of how the riots shaped the Over-the-Rhine district and the city of Cincinnati differ widely and fall largely along economic lines.
One view is that police reform and the millions invested into OTR have eased tensions and brought hope to a neighborhood in economic despair.
Another view is that investments in the neighborhood are an attempt by whites to push out poor blacks and that racial tensions lurk underneath the calm.
However, most agree the riots were a much-needed wakeup call that forced city leaders to pay attention to a community that had been neglected for years.
“Prior to the riots there was serious division (between the business district and OTR). Central Parkway was a divider,” Verdin said. “But this is a part of the city. There’s no dividing point. Not to say we want another riot, but people did pay attention.”
Since the riots, more than $162 million has been poured into OTR via 3CDC, Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation, an agency established by city leaders after the riots to revitalize the neighborhood.
Many abandoned buildings and apartments run by slumlords have been replaced by 56 new market-rate apartments, 179 upscale condominiums, and plans are in place for about 1,000 affordable housing units for low-income residents.
At least 135 of the condos — or 75 percent — are already sold, said Christy Samad, a spokeswoman for 3CDC.
3CDC also has invested $48 million in renovating Washington Park near Cincinnati Music Hall.
The park, once used largely by the homeless, is slated to open in 2012 as a dog park equipped with water jets and a 450-space underground parking garage.
The agency also has completed a $2.6 million streetscape project that includes new lighting, curbs, trees, signage and landscaping on Vine Street.
“This is going to do a lot for the neighborhood. It’s going to be a safe community for everyone,” Samad said.
The city’s investment is already paying off, Samad and others say.
Police calls in OTR have dropped 43 percent since 2000 and Part I and Part II crimes (violent crime and misdemeanors) have decreased 51 percent, according to Cincinnati police.
Verdin, who purchased and rehabbed a church in OTR 30 years ago, said he is pleased with the economic rebuilding process.
“What they’ve done on Vine Street is amazing. There are condominiums, nice restaurants. They have provided jobs. They went right at the heart of the trouble. Right at the center of it. I commend them for doing that,” Verdin said.
But black males who were standing on Vine Street and a group of black and white women at a business in OTR last week view what’s occurred in the neighborhood differently.
A 63-year-old black business owner in the neighborhood said racial profiling still exists. She also said she’s angered by claims that investments in OTR have helped OTR residents, when their efforts will likely raise her rent and force her to move.
“Anytime you do development or make improvements it’s a good thing. It’s just the way that they’re going about it that I don’t like,” said the OTR resident who asked not to be identified.
“I want crime to go down, too. I’m not a violent person. I don’t do drugs so why are you going to move me out? Why do I have to leave?”
Will Harris, 32, who lives in OTR, echoed her statements.
“It’s still the same. They still don’t have jobs for nobody,” Harris said.
“They’re bringing in their own people. They’re doing construction everywhere, but they’re not hiring the people who live here.”
Harris and others who live and work in Over-the-Rhine fear that the city’s investment is code for gentrification and an attempt to force the low-income residents out to make way for suburban whites.
“They’re moving everybody out of here. They’re going to have the rent all high and it seems like they’re just going to push everybody out,” Harris said.
He also said young black males continue to die at an alarming rate in the city, where homicides spiked to a record 88 in 2006 and are up 83 percent citywide since 2000.
Harris also claims police put little effort in finding killers of black men, compared to homicide cases involving women and whites.
“It seems like if you’re female or white they’re on it. But they want us to kill each other,” Harris said.
Luken agrees in part with OTR residents like Harris and others who say little has changed.
“People think the change is more dramatic than it is. For the average person in poverty to say nothing has changed, I can’t argue with them,” Luken said.
“But I will say that race relations are better and community policing is better. But for the average person in poverty, their lives are still the same.”
Still, Luken argues that Cincinnati a is better place to live since the riots.
Prior to the riots, Luken recalls, race relations were palpable, noting specifically that OTR had become “poorer and poorer.”
Take the Feb. 23, 1997, death of a Lorenzo Collins, one of 15 black males killed in police involved shootings between 1986 to 2001. Collins was a 25-year-old mentally ill black man wearing pajamas who was reportedly chased down, cornered, and shot to death by police.
Luken said most of the police-involved shootings were legitimate, but admits a few such as Collins’ were questionable.
He said police reform agreements, requiring better community policing, increased use of the Taser stun device over guns, the creation of a Citizens Complaint Authority and mental health training for officers has improved police interactions with the public, especially in stressful situations.
He and Cincinnati City Councilman Cecil Thomas said city and business leaders’ economic investment means that OTR is no longer a “dumping ground” for welfare services, check cashing stores, poorly supplied food markets and liquor stores.
“We realized that we cannot compact a large segment of a certain population in one area and ignore them because in any city it’s a prescription for civil unrest and all it takes is something to ignite those frustrations,” Thomas said.
Thomas and other city and business leaders as well as residents say high unemployment, crime and drug activity in the area continues to plague the community and threaten to derail revitalization efforts.
But they expect crime to continue to drop as abandoned buildings are filled with families and the neighborhood changes.
“Nobody likes to admit that a riot did something good. But it happened and I certainly wasn’t happy about it. But I would argue that it led us to a better place. It got us off our butts and we went to work.”
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