Friday, April 14, 2000
Louisville remains upset as Cincinnati calms down
BY Perry Brothers
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LOUISVILLE — Just a few miles from the Ohio River, City Hall is steeped in controversy stemming from the fatal shooting of a citizen by police.
Activists demand answers and change. Police demand support. The public demands resolution to tensions between the police force and the black community.
A simple change of skyline and this story could describe Cincinnati less than a year ago. Just two months before the fatal shooting of an unarmed black motorist in Louisville, Cincinnati police fatally shot an unarmed black motorist in Northside.
The two police shootings occurred in cities just 100 miles apart. Each city experienced building tensions, community outrage and protests over police use of deadly force.
So why, one year later, is Cincinnati relatively calm while Louisville deals with some of its biggest rallies since the 1975 busing riots?
The answers, experts say, are complex and have as much to do with a city's subtle makeup as with its history in police-community relations.
But a community's official, post-shooting response is crucial, experts add. As city after American city faces ugly fallout from fatal police shootings, those that act swiftly to dispel rumors and dispense impartial justice fare the best.
A review of the two Ohio River city shootings shows:
• Louisville police erred in the early investigation and were criticized for releasing inaccurate information. Cincinnati police were criticized for delaying the release of information, but the details weren't found to be wrong.
• Cincinnati police investigations were completed by the end of last summer, exonerating the officers of criminal misconduct but finding them guilty of tactical errors. The Louisville officers have been cleared of criminal misconduct, too. But Louisville's internal investigation is ongoing.
• Independent investigations by Cincinnati's Office of Municipal Investigations and a Citizens Police Review Panel gave outsiders a chance to study the shooting. Louisville has no independent review.
Full disclosure
“It is critical that the public must understand what happened and why it happened,” says Lt. Col. Richard Biehl, a Cincinnati assistant police chief. “Ultimately, the question becomes one of maintaining and promoting public confidence, and that doesn't come without full disclosure.”
In Cincinnati, Michael Carpenter, 30, was stopped on March 19, 1999, for having expired tags. Police say he was uncooperative. When an officer reached into the car to detain him, Mr. Carpenter started driving his vehicle and the officer was dragged.
Another officer fired nine shots into the Pontiac's rear window. The first officer, who had pulled free from the car, fired once because he thought Mr. Carpenter was shooting at him. Mr. Carpenter died from gunshot wounds at the scene.
Two months later in Louisville, a stolen car report led detectives to a house in the city's West End. Desmond Rudolph, 18, fled and attempted to drive away in the stolen Chevrolet Blazer.
Back-up patrol officers surrounded the Blazer in an alley and ordered Mr. Rudolph out. The truck was stuck on a utility pole and its wheels were spinning in mud. The officers say Mr. Rudolph was revving the engine. They say they believed that Mr. Rudolph would steer the car free and attempt to run them down.
The two officers fired 22 shots into the truck, hitting Mr. Rudolph at least 10 times. He died in a Louisville hospital four days later.
In each case, police department policy allowed officers to shoot at or into a vehicle if they considered it to be used as a deadly weapon. Cincinnati has since banned the practice unless the occupant is using a weapon other than the vehicle.
Citizens in each city, claiming the police used excessive force, protested at city hall. Police clashed with city hall, too, over what they viewed as a lack of support for the officers.
Two outcomes
Although they had similar beginnings, the cases differ in the way the two cities dealt with each shooting.
In Cincinnati, where nine people have been shot to death by police since 1994, four mandatory investigations were launched.
By the end of last summer, the police homicide and internal investigations units, as well as the Hamilton County prosecutor's office, had found the officers were justified in shooting because they feared for their lives.
A fourth investigation, by the city's Office of Municipal Investigations, found the officers were wrong to shoot and cited tactical errors. That investigation allowed an independent airing of the case, even though its findings were non-binding on city officials.
The Carpenter shooting also was the first controversial case reviewed by the newly formed Citizens Police Review Panel. It also found the officers unjustified in shooting.
In the days following the shooting, Cincinnati City Manager John Shirey put the officers on desk duty. Officer Michael B. Miller II has since resigned; Officer Brent McCurley remains on the force.
Although questions and criticisms remain, the Cincinnati protests stopped by late summer.
“I wonder, if we did not have the opportunity for citizen input here, how much worse the outcome would have been?” says the Rev. Paula Jackson, a Cincinnati citizens panel member from Paddock Hills.
In Louisville, unrest continues. Late last monththe Rev. Jesse Jackson led 200 in a rally for community unity. Another march is planned for Easter.
Louisville authorities concede mistakes in the case almost from the start.
First, a police spokesman erroneously reported that Mr. Rudolph's car was coming at the officers when they fired. Then, the homicide division failed to interview at least half a dozen witnesses who lived near the shooting scene.
“It's obvious the Louisville police did not have a banner day in investigation,” Col. Ronald A. Ricucci, Louisville's public safety director, says. “The chief raised holy hell with the homicide unit.”
But Chief Gene Sherrard ran into trouble himself when he approved commendations for the shooting officers before the department's internal affairs report was completed.
Louisville Mayor David Armstrong demoted the chief in March because of the commendations, and police still are protesting the demotion.
The mayor and former chief aren't commenting. But Col. Ricucci says the three of them had planned to address police-community relations at about the time Mr. Rudolph was shot. The shooting, he says, and now the firing of the chief, have delayed those plans, which included a greater emphasis on beat patrols and community rapport.
Since the chief's demotion, Mr. Armstrong has called for a task force to examine race relations in the city and between the black community and police.
Col. Ricucci acknowledges “a lack of trust that has built up over the year.”
“We've been a lot more open in this administration. But problems surrounding the shooting created a bad perception in the community,” he says. “A lot of people dropped the ball that day.”
The future
Louisville activists say mistakes made after the shooting demonstrate the need for outside oversight of police activities, such as provided by Cincinnati's Office of Municipal Investigations.
“The most significant thing that Cincinnati has in place is an independent investigation that is not conducted by the police department,” says Tom Moffett of the Kentucky Alliance against Racial and Political Repression.
Mr. Moffett and other activists also are pushing for a civilian review board. Mr. Armstrong and Col. Ricucci oppose a citizens panel, saying police can effectively police themselves.
Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken says a key question after any police shooting is, “Can the public have confidence that there will be fairness in the investigative process?”
“With (the Office of Municipal Investigations) and the citizens review panel, I, at least, have some confidence that unbiased people will look at it and evaluate it fairly,” Mr. Luken says.
Even Keith Fangman, president of the Cincinnati police union and a vocal critic of the citizens review panel, says the independent reviews “have helped in increasing the trust level with the majority of our citizens, black and white.”
Cincinnati activists, though, say the city still has work to do to build trust citywide.
“Cincinnati is to be commended for what they've done, but we still have a long way to go,” says the Rev. Damon Lynch, who helped create the citizens panel after the controversial 1997 shooting of Lorenzo Collins, an escaped mental patient who threatened officers with a brick.
Rev. Lynch says Cincinnati must focus on better training to reduce police shootings. It also should increase the number of neighborhood officers. Cincinnati's force of 1,045 has 57 officers assigned to walk neighborhood beats.
“We need to find a way to deal with critical issues in a way that doesn't end in death of individuals,” says Sheila Adams, executive director of the Cincinnati Urban League.
“We have to use means to restrain other than killing someone. And, whether that means more training, whether it means being more sensitive to the people in the community — especially the African-American male — I don't know.”
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