The killing of Timothy Thomas is only the latest in a string of police crimes in the US against working class victims, for the most part blacks or other minorities. According to recent press reports, the Detroit police force has been carrying out mass arrests in homicide cases in order to coerce witnesses into talking. In 1998 Detroit police arrested 1,310 people while investigating 430 murders, an unheard of ratio. Revelations of systematic police violence and corruption have emerged in a whole number of major US cities over the past decade, and police killings of minority workers or youth occur with almost mind-numbing frequency. The rioting in Cincinnati reveals the enormous social tensions lying just beneath the surface of American society.
Social conditions are similar in every major urban area.
The police violence and murders are themselves a function of social inequality, as the worsening conditions make further repression by the authorities inevitable. The events in Cincinnati, coming as they do at the onset of a sharp economic downturn, could herald social eruptions in other US cities this spring and summer.