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1/3 of Cincinnati’s Budget Goes to Police

 1/3 of Cincinnati’s Budget Goes to Police

In the quiet before the storm, an acquaintance of Timothy Thomas lights a candle at a makeshift memorial. Thomas was the 13th African-American male killed during contact with Cincinnati Police in recent years. An unarmed Thomas was shot in this spot while being pursude by police for outstanding warrants. Protestors took to the streets in the following days resulting in civil unrest.

This seems to be a great time to review the cost/benefit ratio of Cincinnati’s Police budget, some 151.7 million dollars annually goes to our police force. What do we get for that? Sure we know the traditional values of policing, but in modern times ‘policing’ seems to amount to a good ol’ boy’s club.

The city has 1,059 sworn in officers, about 1 for every 285 people, pretty typical for big cities in Ohio. So what exactly makes sense of these numbers?

It’s telling that in Cincinnati, the black police officers have their own union, The Sentinels, because they’ve been mistreated for years by Cincinnati’s FOP (Fraternal Order of Police). And while the murder of Sam DuBois for a missing front license plate was accomplished by University of Cincinnati policeman Ray Tensing, not city police, the culture is obviously very similar. And it doesn’t account for the death of Timothy Thomas.

A period of unrest was sparked in 2001 after 19-year-old Timothy Thomas, an unarmed African American man, was shot and killed by Cincinnati Police Department Patrolman Stephen Roach during an attempt to arrest him for non-violent misdemeanors, most of which were traffic citations. Tensions were already high in the city following a series of other incidents involving police brutality and racial profiling, including thirteen deaths. Protests erupted into four nights of unrest, with incidences of recorded property destruction in Cincinnati, objects thrown at police officers by demonstrators, and vandalism and looting of businesses before a city-imposed curfew eventually ended the unrest.

It was ultimately determined that the period of unrest caused $3.6 million in damage to businesses and another $1.5 to $2 million to the city. A subsequent community boycott of downtown businesses had an estimated adverse impact of $10 million on the area. Incidents of violent crime rose in the downtown area for several years thereafter. The city worked with the community and police to improve training and policies to prevent incidents like that in which Thomas was killed.

African American men wrongly killed by Cincinnati Police

At least this year’s new budget allows for more money to be used for youth job opps and more training. Still, what our local police and police union [FOP] have shown is that they are not universally good actors, but often are instigators of violence against minority citizens.

We can only hope continue to protest and press our politicians to rid ourselves of bad cops. They may be a minority, but they’ve been institutionally supported for 150 years. This must end.

Jim Prues