Annie Giglio has lived in the same four-room apartment on Over-the-Rhine's Clay Street since 1928. Never married, the tiny 92-year-old walks to pray at nearby Old St. Mary's Church, to shop at Kroger on Vine. But “I wouldn't dare go out at night,” Miss Giglio confesses. “I'd be too scared.”

Jim Brown, a clerk at Cee Kay products across from Findlay Market, says drug sales are out in the open. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        A spree of gunplay and violence has so terrified some Over-the-Rhine residents that they're locking themselves in at night. The historic neighborhood north of downtown bore the brunt of April's riots and now roils in the turbulent aftereffects.

        Criminals, their attitudes hardened against police, have become increasingly brazen here, in the West End, Avondale and Bond Hill. At least 77 people have been shot in 59 incidents citywide since the April 9-12 riots. That's more than six times the number of shootings for the same time last year, and many have occurred in these close-in neighborhoods.

        Saturday night, five men standing on West 15th Street were hit in a drive-by shooting that left at least one in critical condition. The gunman got away.

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        “It's all about gangs, drugs, money and power, who's going to control what, who's going to control the neighborhood,” says Detective Brett Gleckler. Police say they've never seen so many powerful guns on the streets. High-powered rifles and semiautomatic handguns have become criminals' weapons of choice.

        “I have never seen this much gunplay without regard for life,” says Lt. Roger Wolf, a supervisor in the police Criminal Investigations Section.

        As the Cincinnati Police Division organizes a Violent Crimes Task Force, residents are eager for anything that might bring back some order to their neighborhood.

        “I worry for the kids,” says Dee Dee Campbell, 59, who lives on East 12th Street. “They see these people hanging out, drinking, doing drugs, selling drugs, playing craps, getting in fights, shooting guns — it's dangerous and it teaches kids that it's OK to do the things that are wrong.”

At night, a different world

        The pace in Over-the-Rhine is slow in the sultry heat of a July afternoon.

        Children play in city pools. Women and men relax in chairs or lounge on steps along streets. Merchants lean against doorways of small businesses waiting for customers. Curtains dangle limply from screenless windows of century-old apartment buildings.

        But at night the neighborhood's Dr. Jekyll gives way to an urban Mr. Hyde.

        It's just before 1 a.m. Thursday on Vine Street, and for blocks, teens and 20-somethings gather to listen to car stereos and boom boxes, drink beer or malt liquor, and peer closely into any car that passes by.

        Men are sleeping, or passed out, on benches and the sidewalk. Women push baby strollers. Little kids jump and run around.

        As the bars close, people pour from The Warehouse, a club in the 1300 block of Vine Street that caters to the Goth crowd. Nearly everyone is dressed in black and has some type of body piercing. Many of the men appear to be wearing makeup.

        Along Liberty Street, prostitutes and transvestites — known as “he-shes” in street slang — walk up and down the street or stand on corners peddling sex.

        A white woman and a black man scream obscenities at each other near the corner of Walnut and Liberty. Two men stumble out of a Court Street bar. Cars and SUVs with stereos throbbing cruise the neighborhood.

        “It's like this all night long,” Officer Stephanie Ballamah, 32, says as she rolls her cruiser up Vine.

        “Most of them are just hanging out. A lot of them are drinking. But that's the way it is down here at night. Hanging out and drinking.”

"It's too dangerous'

        For years a high-crime area, Over-the-Rhine has become a far more dangerous place since the riots, residents and business owners say.

        It's Thursday afternoon and Lanya Holly, who lives on Republic Street, sits on the small rock wall that surrounds portions of Washington Park. Her 1-year-old great-grandson, Dion, rests in a stroller, finishing a bottle of milk.

        She fidgetswaiting for her bus and glancing at the young men crowding around a nearby park bench. Their conversation is loud as they pass a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag.

        “I won't bring him out at night,” Mrs. Holly, 64, says as she drops her eyes to Dion. “It's too dangerous.”

        Police say drug dealers who used to shuffle away from a street corner or hide in an alley if a police cruiser approached are now making eye contact with officers.

        “Some of the dealers are more open and mocking of police and more confrontational,” says Capt. Greg Snider, commander of District 1, which patrols Over-the-Rhine, the West End and parts of Mount Adams.

        Investigators say a half-dozen of this year's 22 homicides have happened since the riots and at least one may be gang-related. Others likely involved drugs, Lt. Wolf says. Four homicides occurred in Over-the-Rhine.

        Criminals have more high-caliber guns on the streets than ever before. Evidence, police say, includes the large number of spent rounds at shooting scenes and the types of guns they've confiscated from criminals — sawed-off shotguns and 9 mms, instead of the usual .22s.

        In a July 4 drive-by shooting in Bond Hill, a man sat on the passenger-side door of an older car as it headed north on Reading Road and shot over the roof, hitting a man in the back. Investigators found more than 20 spent rounds from .25-caliber, .380-caliber and .45-caliber weapons on the street.

        The next night, an officer tried to stop a man near the same area and found a loaded .25-caliber weapon in his hand, Detective Gleckler says.

        Officers also found a loaded Tech 9 and a 12-gauge shotgun on the ground near a crowd of people.

        In a recent black-market gun bust in Over-the-Rhine, officers recovered eight rifles and semiautomatic handguns and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

        What's more, Cincinnati investigators confiscated 407 weapons from January through June, compared with 362 during the same period last year.

        Residents are concerned that a growing number of well-armed gangs are fighting to control the street-level drug trade.

        Officer Eric Smoot, the police division's gang intelligence coordinator, confirms an increase in gang activity. The riots solidified the mentality that police are the enemy, he says. Recent major incidents have been disputes over territory, he explains.

        “Gang members have very fragile egos, and with a gun in their hands, that's a dangerous situation,” Officer Smoot says.

        Most of Cincinnati's 54 active gangs are loosely knit cliques involved in drug sales. But sometimes, gang members move into other crimes if there is an opportunity.

        Some recent shootings, Officer Smoot says, have strong marks of gang activity. Indicators include involvement by admitted or suspected gang members, multiple crime scenes and multiple offenders.

        The July 3 shooting in which Officer Calvin Johnson was nearly hit in the leg involved a gang called the Tot Lot Posse, police say.

        “They say, "This is who we are. We can sell drugs here if we want to, and you better join us or you're going to be eliminated by a rival gang or the police,'” Officer Smoot says

"The police are still here'

        Despite the perception that the police and community are clashing over African-Americans dying at the hands of officers — the killing of Timothy Thomas by Officer Stephen Roach touched off the April riots — only two of 37 residents interviewed cited police as the problem.

        “It's not police's fault,” says Amos Wilbon, 46, a Main Street resident, sitting with a half-dozen other men on a stoop along East 12th Street Wednesday afternoon.

        “They ain't the ones doing all the shooting. It's people shooting each other,” Mr. Wilbon says as three officers on bikes roll slowly by.

        “The police are just doing their jobs. It's up to the residents and the people who live down here to change things.”

        An unofficial police slowdown in the months since the riots resulted in 35 percent fewer arrests in May and June than a year ago. But many Over-the-Rhine residents say they've seen little evidence of a slowdown and welcome a stepped-up police presence.

        “If anything, we see more police now,” says Marco Brown, 22, a manager at Mr. Pig's barbecue in Findlay Market. “It's just that the riots got people going. They think they can get away with more.”

        Police and city leaders have called on the community for support. The 60-some members of the police division's new Violent Crimes Task Force may be on the streets as soon as this week.

        “It's a vulnerable time for the city and police right now, and (criminals) are trying to capitalize on that,” Detective Gleckler says. “(But) the police are still here, and we're not going to let them take over the city.”

Drugs? Just ask

        For nine years Ana Fillis has operated the Alabama Fish Bar at Race and Liberty streets in Over-the-Rhine, where customers line up daily for baskets of deep-fried cod and perch.

        “I don't know if it's the unrest, it could be the heat, it could be a lot of things,” Ms. Fillis says as she sits at a small table in the rear of her restaurant.

        “But even the people who have lived and worked here a long time, and who are used to a lot of this stuff, they are scared because things just seemed to have gotten worse,” she says.

        Residents and police say it's easy to find drugs for sale among the groups that gather nightly on the streets. “All you have to do is ask,” says Joe Brown, 38, a clerk at the Cee Kay ethnic hair-products store across from Findlay Market. “Heck, walk down the street, and (the dealers) will ask you.”

        A self-described drug dealer operating out of an alley near Findlay Market reports almost a shopping mall for drugs.

        Elm Street for heroin. Race for cocaine, pot and OxyContin, the powerful prescription painkiller. Vine Street has crack, says the dealer, who wouldn't allow his name to be used and wouldn't say what he had to sell.

        As he chats, a Honda Accord with Montgomery County plates rolls by. It quickly drives off after spotting a reporter and photographer. Later, a Lincoln Navigator with tinted windows pulls up and waits until the dealer is alone.

        Drugs are cheaper and more accessible, residents say. They flow into Cincinnati from larger cities and provide the mostly young men who sell them a quick way to make a couple hundred on a good night or a busy afternoon.

        “A lot of guys around here can make money at a job, but not money like you can selling” drugs, the dealer explains. “I don't do a lot. Enough to put some money in my pocket and pay the rent. I don't want to get too more involved. It gets too dangerous.”

        Martin Smith, 35, wiped his oily hands on a dirty blue rag after pulling himself from under a 1992 Cadillac. Drugs, he says, are a symptom but not the root of problems in Over-the-Rhine.

        “It's economics,” Mr. Smith explains. “You have people who can't make much money at a job, who have to pay a lot of their paycheck on child support, who have gotten kicked off welfare.

        “They start selling drugs to make a little money, but they don't know what they are doing,” he says. “So they get caught up with people who know what they are doing, and that gets them into trouble. Pretty soon, somebody starts shooting.”

        Mr. Smith repairs cars for people in the neighborhood. He'll make $300 for rebuilding the Cadillac engine, working in a parking lot on Pleasant Street.

        “I can make more working on my own than I can working hourly for somebody else,” he says. “And down here it's all about making enough money to get by or even get out.”

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