by Charlene Muhammad and
Dora Muhammad

What amounted to a low level "work slow down" in the Queen City was the police response to several days of uprising after police shot and killed a Black man, Timothy Thomas, 19, in April. Cincinnati police, according to reports, slacked on writing tickets and making arrests.

Meanwhile, violent crime rose by 29 percent in May compared to the same period a year ago, and arrests have dropped by more that 55 percent in April and May compared with the same period a year ago, according to police statistics.

"What is happening is disappointing," said Delacy Davis, a 16-year veteran with the East Orange, N.J., police force and founder of Black Cops Against Police Brutality (BCAPB).

"We�ve been working in Cincinnati since 1999. There�s a hostile relationship [between community and police]. What�s more disappointing is the arrogance that we see displayed by law enforcement leaders who believe that we should accept police service at all costs without any criticism of how it�s delivered."

Police were roundly criticized following the April 7 shooting of Mr. Thomas, the 15th Black man in the city shot by police officers since 1995. And while some of those killed were armed, the community exploded into several days of violent unrest after the shooting of Mr. Thomas, who was unarmed and wanted only on several misdemeanor traffic warrants.

To make Cincinnati�s fragile condition even worse, the week the police department decided to descend on Black communities in the city with a 70-member Violent Crimes Task Force was the same week another Black man was shot and killed by a police officer. Also around that time, a local newspaper published 33 photos of "Cincinnati�s Most Wanted." Critics claim that 30 of the photos were Blacks accused of committing misdemeanors while only three whites were depicted.

"What disturbs me most is the audacity of the police to try to remove themselves as paid servants into a position of equal partners or overseers of a community by putting forth the need to negotiate on an equal playing field," said Michael Zinzun, founder of the Los Angeles-based Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA).

Mr. Zinzun said officers have a duty, as employees, to carry out the requirements of their assignments civilly and lawfully. If they do not agree with the community�s demand for fair policing, he said, they should seek employment elsewhere. For him, the Cincinnati Police officers� "pouting attitudes" represent an attempt to hold a community hostage based on their own racist politics.

"It smacks of the same type of �us-against-them� mentality that has resulted in rebellion and uprising in other parts of the country," he added.

Mr. Zinzun and other police activists argue that officers should understand that people are not anti-police, just anti-police abuse. The Black community doesn�t want police isolation, he said, they are just growing weary of paying millions of dollars in lawsuits to cover up unjust police crimes that are called "justifiable," especially when Blacks are the victims, he continued.

Cincinnati�s Rev. Rousseau O�Neal agrees.

"I can�t imagine who started this idea that Black folks don�t support the police," said Rev. O�Neal, a pastor at Rockdale Baptist church. "Everybody I know calls the police when there is trouble. They want protection. But they want righteous protection."

Officer Thomas Haas responded to Cincinnati�s Millvale community in the early morning on July 27 after getting a call of a man with a gun. Shortly thereafter, Rickey Moore, 21, lay dead from several gunshot wounds.

Mr. Moore, a known schizophrenic who suffered manic depression, had a death wish, according to his mother Essie Mae Hurt. She had just gotten off work when she saw her son with the gun and urged him to put it down. "Mama, I want to die. I want the police to kill me," Ms. Hurt said her son told her. "My son was sick," she said.

Residents said they had seen the man with the gun over several days and had called 911, but got no response. Ms. Hurt said police were familiar with her son�s condition and the officer should not have shot to kill.

But residents and political leaders backed the shooting, with one Black leader who has been critical of police, saying, "It needs to be made clear that if you use a weapon, point a weapon at a police officer or another citizen, that the consequences can be fatal."

"There�s a lot of hostility and hatred," John Wilson, a monitor for Cincinnati�s Human Relations Commission, told a reporter as he walked through the neighborhood of the latest shooting talking to residents. "They aren�t afraid of anybody. What these kids in the street are saying is, �We have more guns than the police. If they want a civil war, we can have a war.� "

Nation of Islam Min. James Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque No. 5 in Cincinnati said dispatch and community acceptance of the Violent Crimes Task Force was like a police self-fulfilling effort.

"Police had stopped being aggressive in the community, like telling the brothers on the corners to move on," Min. James said. "Then, the Task Force was formed because police said they were seeing an increase in gangs and gun activity.

"It looks like the atmosphere was allowed to be created � and quite naturally the community will welcome any force that will help reduce the crime," Min. James said.

Activists and Black officers advocate a cooperative approach to policing the Black community similar to how white communities are policed. What stands in the way, they argue, are racist attitudes white officers bring with them and hardened attitudes developed by some Black officers toward their own communities.

Those attitudes are played out over and over again in high profile cases like the beating of Rodney King; the shooting 19-times in a hail of 41 bullets of Amadou Diallo in New York; the sodomization of Abner Louima by white officers in New York; shootings of Latino and Black teens in New Jersey. Meanwhile, a white gunman can shoot up office buildings and police come and arrest them, activist charge.

"There needs to be prevention through partnership and projects with the community," said Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association. "There is a different patrolling philosophy in the Black community. They are policing us. They want to come in and think that everyone is a criminal. In the white community, they are protecting," he said.

Under community policing, an officer responds to a burglary call by not only taking a report, but referring the victim to security consultants. Community policing involves officers waving at residents as they walk the neighborhoods. It involves working with a youth who is trying to get out of a gang and providing alternatives, even going to the gang.

"Community police partnerships breed an element of familiarity and trust. It�s hard to be mad at someone you know," argued Leonard Supenski, program director of the Community Policing Consortium, a coalition of several police groups, including the National Organization of Black Law Executives and the Association of Chiefs of Police.

But, he said, the advent of the 911 system and other technological improvements "allowed the community instant access to the police. The difficulty is you now started to become captured by the calls for service."

Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, told The Final Call that accusations from a community can have a "chilling effect" on the relationship between police and citizens.

"If police officers are going to be accused of some racial abuse every time they have contact with a citizen, then it flows that they are going to limit contact with the residents of that community.

"That does not mean that they are not going to do their job; that means there is going to be less interaction," he said.

Officer Davis of BCAPB argues that a relationship similar to what his group has with the Nation of Islam is a model that should be built upon. He said the Nation of Islam has assisted his group all over the country.

"When Minister [Louis] Farrakhan asked me what he could do to help, I said make the relationship of BCAPB with the mosque a model for the country," he said. "If you�re not connected to the mosque in your city, you�re a fool. It takes the stakeholders in the community to police it and the Nation [of Islam] is a stakeholder.

"When there is a brother on the corner selling The Final Call, there isn�t anyone on the other three corners selling their body or drugs. Why would I not take that piece and involve it in any strategy that I have in policing the community?" he asked.