As the debate rages over relations between African-Americans and Cincinnati police officers, many advocates suggest a way to bridge the divide:

        Hire more black cops.

        Twenty-eight percent of the 1,020 officers working in the Cincinnati Police Division are black, largely because of a 20-year-old federal court order that requires a third of all recruits be minorities.

Cincinnati Police recruits at the Police Academy. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        While the percentage of black officers is relatively high compared with other big cities in the region, it falls short of matching Cincinnati's African-American population of 43 percent.

        And that, advocates say, is the goal to be met.

        “The administration needs to get serious about hiring more African-Americans,” says Cecil Thomas, director of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission, a group that advises city officials on race relations and improvements. “We need to recruit better.”

        From Charles English's view through his Evanston barbershop window, more black officers would help in his predominantly black neighborhood.

        But he doesn't see black cops as the only fix.

        “You have to have a guy who's actually willing to get out of his car and talk to these kids,” Mr. English says between customers. “It's the personality, too. You can't get to know people if you don't talk to them. You have to be comfortable doing that.”

        The comfort level between Cincinnati police and the city's African-American residents hit a three-decade low after the fatal shooting April 7 of an unarmed black man, Timothy Thomas, by Officer Steve Roach. Mr. Thomas, 19, was wanted on 12 misdemeanor traffic charges and two warrants for previously running from police.

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• Comparing police forces

        The shooting sparked three days of violence, a citywide curfew and millions in damage to burned and looted businesses.

        Chief Tom Streicher says he is open to all suggestions, including changes in hiring, to improve his police division's relationship with the community.

        “None of this is going to be a quick fix,” he says. “But we're willing to work with the community to get the job done.”

        Not one of 10 black Cincinnati officers interviewed for this story would talk publicly about the issue. Times are too volatile right now, they say, for them to feel comfortable giving Chief Streicher or City Hall ideas for fixing police-community relations in the city.

        But privately they say that officers who grew up in Madisonville, go to church in Bond Hill or have friends in Over-the-Rhine feel more comfortable around people in similar, predominantly black neighborhoods. The officers are more likely than white cops who grew up in white neighborhoods to understand black residents' issues, the black officers say.

        Scotty Johnson, president of the Sentinels, a group of black officers, agrees. During the aftermath of the riots, he and Cecil Thomas were among those suggesting that more black officers would help.

        “It just makes sense,” he says. “It's that simple.”

        Keith Fangman, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, sees it differently. The 1981 court order on recruitment remains in place, and the division continues to follow it. That makes the question of having more black officers moot, Mr. Fangman says.

        He also says it's unwise to think that only black cops can work in black neighborhoods and only white cops can work in white neighborhoods.

        “That is an inflammatory and insulting statement,” Mr. Fangman says. “That's ridiculous, and it's racist and it's not going to happen.”
       

A national problem
        The whiteness of policing isn't just a Cincinnati issue.

        In Columbus, where the U.S. Department of Justice is suing the city because of alleged police abuse, the force is almost 14 percent black. In Indianapolis, black officers are 16 percent of the force. Both of those cities have black populations of about 25 percent.

        Overcoming the disparity is difficult for departments in a time when many can't find enough recruits in general, experts say.

        “This profession is under fire right now,” says Ron Davis , a police captain in Oakland, Calif., and a regional vice president with the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. “What minority wants to join an organization that is constantly being accused of discrimination and racial profiling?”

        The Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition of Cincinnati has been studying the racial makeup of the Cincinnati force as part of its continuing project to determine what clergy might do to help relieve the city's racial tension.

        The group's executive director, the Rev. Duane Holm, considers the current numbers “a great success story.”

        Before Cincinnati's consent decree, 90 percent of officers were white, and 95 percent were male. Today, 70 percent of officers are white, 28 percent are black and 20 percent are female.

        “There have been some definite strides made here,” the Rev. Mr. Holm says. “God is in the details.”
       

Decades of imbalances
        Diversity among police ranks became a hot topic in 1968, says Bob Reinertsen, a former FBI agent who teaches criminal justice at Keuka College in Keuka Park, N.Y.

        That year, President Lyndon Johnson's Kerner Commission, formed to assess the causes of urban race riots, found that violence was exacerbated by the lack of diversity among police officers involved.

        It also warned that racism was causing America to move “toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”

        When the professor started with the FBI around the same time, only about a dozen of 8,000 agents were black, he says, and most were assigned to a Washington, D.C., unit targeting the black radical movement..

        “There's been a lot of progress since then,” Mr. Reinertsen says. “Departments everywhere have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into this racial diversity.”

        Exactly what population percentage forces should match is up for debate. Some experts say the department's share of black officers should match its city's population. Others say it's only fair to compare the police division with a different, and lower, percentage — the adult labor force.

        Still others say the city's population shouldn't be such a significant factor because police departments draw people from areas outside the city. Hamilton County, for example, is 23 percent African-American.

        “The makeup of the police department should reflect the makeup of the community,” Mr. Reinertsen says. “That's absolutely essential. That should be your absolute requirement.”
       

Recruiting challenges
        Getting there is difficult, says Capt. Davis of the national black law enforcement group.

        Recruiting cops, in general, has become harder. The strong economy of recent years has offered jobs with better pay and less danger. In New York City last fall, too few people showed up to take the initial police test to fill the number of jobs expected to be open.

        Representatives from departments as far as away as Los Angeles and Seattle have even come to Cincinnati looking for recruits.

        Boston boasts one of the best success rates in the country for matching its percentage of black officers to its citizens. A 1973 federal court order requires that city to select new officers from a list that's half white and half black.

        Almost 30 years after the court order took effect, Boston's police force is almost 25 percent black in a city that's 22 percent African-American.

        Cincinnati recruiters have changed some of their ways, in part to attract more African-Americans. They recruited at more historically black colleges last year. The city also relaxed its age cap, now allowing recruits to be older than 35.

        Administrators still fight, however, the perception that the force is mostly white men from the city's west side.

        “The face of the agency has changed over the last 20 years,” says Lt. Col. Rick Biehl, a 21-year veteran.

        The federal government has tried to help. The U.S. Department of Justice offers scholarships for black students to use to study criminal justice.

        “It's very difficult to sell putting your life on the line every day when you can go make double or triple someplace else,” says Lt. Gary Lewis, spokesman for the Ohio State Highway Patrol. About 11 percent of troopers are black; Ohio is 11.5 percent African-American.

        The obstacles will have to be overcome, says the Rev. Damon Lynch III, leader of Cincinnati Black United Front, a civil-rights group among those alleging widespread, long-term police discrimination in a lawsuit against the city. Lawyers helping the group, Al Gerhardstein and ACLU general counsel Scott Greenwood, agree.

        “It would go a long way,” Mr. Greenwood says, “to addressing some of these issues.”

        For Antonio Lewis, a black computer technician from Winton Terrace, Cincinnati's race relations problem strikes much deeper than the color of the cops' skin. Although he says hiring more African-American officers is a good idea in theory, the city needs to do everything from finding a new chief and union leader to improving education to providing more jobs for low-income people.

        “Cincinnati has a lot of issues that people just aren't willing to deal with,” he says. “You can't expect the cops to do it all.”

        Carrie Johnson, president of the Over-the-Rhine Community Council, also thinks having more black officers would help. But she has what she thinks is an even better idea.

        “It'd be more effective if you have one black and one white,” she says. “And have them walking the beat together.

        “That's what would work. That's what they need to do.”

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