Cincinnati Riots of 2001 - Background of Tensions

Background of Tensions

In Cincinnati between February 1995 and April 2001, fifteen black males under the age of 40 were killed by police or died in custody. Of the fifteen, three (including Thomas) did not possess or employ any weapons against police during the confrontations. During these confrontations four police officers were killed or wounded. No police were ever found guilty through any civil or criminal trials as a result of these incidents, and in only one case were the police officers involved reprimanded and given extra training (officers Michael Miller III and Brent McCurley, in the case of the death of Michael Carpenter). Michael Carpenter had attempted to drive away while a police officer reached into his car to take his car keys during an arrest.

Those deaths, although often cited as the most dramatic aspect of the situation, were not the only factor. A local independent magazine, City Beat, published research that an "analysis of 141,000 traffic citations written by Cincinnati Police in a 22-month period found black drivers twice as likely as whites to be cited for driving without a license, twice as likely to be cited for not wearing a seat belt and four times as likely to be cited for driving without proof of insurance." The NAACP argued that such statistics were the result of police targeting "driving while black," rather than differences in offending between-groups.