| Curfew restores calm to Cincinnati streets for one night 04/13/2001 Associated Press CINCINNATI – Scores of people were arrested overnight for curfew violations, but peace was largely restored to the city's streets after three days of rioting over the shooting death of a black man. Officials said today that the curfew would extend at least one more night.
There had been sporadic reports of rock and bottle throwing and gunfire overnight, and a fire at a delicatessen caused $100,000 damage, Police Chief Thomas Streicher said.
But overall, "we believe we are returning to a great sense of normalcy," Streicher said. He said the decision on how long to extend the curfew will be evaluated daily.
There were 153 arrests related to the curfew that lasted from 8 p.m. Thursday to 6 a.m. Friday and drastically changed routines in the city of 331,000. There also were 54 adults and nine juveniles arrested for other charges, Streicher said.
Mayor Charles Luken had reluctantly declared a state of emergency and imposed the dusk-to-dawn curfew Thursday to halt Cincinnati's worst racial violence since Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968.
"I have lived in this city all of my life and I love it to death," Luken said. "I never thought I would sign an emergency order because of civil unrest."
Businesses closed early, concerts and sports events were rescheduled and Holy Thursday services were called off.
"We understand this is a holy week," Luken said. "We ask those citizens whose services are affected to stay in their houses and pray."
Some blacks initially vowed to break the curfew. Less than an hour before it went into effect, NAACP national President Kweisi Mfume used a bullhorn on the steps of a Baptist church and urged a reluctant crowd to go home.
"We've got to protect our young brothers in the community tonight," said Mfume, who visited the riot-torn city for the day.
Speaking on ABC's Good Morning America on Friday, Mfume called Cincinnati "ground zero" in race relations.
"If it's not solved here, it won't be solved anywhere," he said. "When police officers, particularly good officers, get tainted by those who take the law into their own hands, it's up to the police to break the blue wall of silence."
Streicher, also appearing on "Good Morning America," said the shootings need to be looked at in context. He cited an example of a woman officer who was shot three times and kidnapped before she managed to shoot her assailant. She is permanently disabled, he said.
Forty-three percent of Cincinnati's population is black.
|
