Behind the riots is a discord between police and blacks that dates to the Civil War, when Cincinnati became a hotbed for runaway slaves. Blacks now make up 43 percent of the population but only 28 percent of the city's 1,000-member police force. Whites live in quaint historic districts or, more often, in distant suburbs outside the city of 331,000. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Cincinnati Black United Front sued Cincinnati, accusing the police department of failing to end 30 years of police harassment of blacks. City officials insist no bad practices or wrongheaded policies are involved.
City officials claim they have made strides in race relations.
They created a citizen police review board and last month adopted a requirement that officers record the race of every driver during traffic stops as a hedge against racial profiling. But members of the seven-member citizen board complain that the police do not communicate with them and that they lack authority to properly investigate complaints. The National Coalition for Police Accountability, a Chicago-based watchdog group, has fielded no more than a dozen complaints about Cincinnati police over the past decade. Those who study police practices give Cincinnati good ratings, and some observers say similar violence could break out in any big city because it is deeply rooted in national racial and economic problems. Cincinnati fulfilled the commission's standards for accreditation, which few big-city police departments do.