At 3 a.m. in Over-the-Rhine, people don't care who Keith Fangman used to be.

        The predominantly black area is Cincinnati's poorest and most violent neighborhood, the scene of last year's riots.

Fangman draws his weapon to back up fellow officers on a confirmed stolen car. (Jeff Swinger photos) | ZOOM |

        Officer Fangman is the former Fraternal Order of Police president whose sound bites about embattled cops and rampant “black-on-black crime” inflamed many African-Americans. On network talk shows, he debated NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and the Rev. Al Sharpton about the deaths of black men at the hands of Cincinnati police officers.

        Officer Fangman became the nationally known white face of the Cincinnati cop. At the same time, young black men walked through the neighborhood carrying signs that read, “Beware of the Fang Men,” twisting his name to question the integrity of the entire force.

        Now, he's back on patrol, working nights on those same streets. And in spite of his high-profile history, most people he comes into contact with each night don't seem to know he's ever been anything but a beat cop.

        He requested the job switch after four years of sometimes 16-hour days, and took a lesser union job as first vice president. Soon, he'll start helping lead the negotiations toward a new contract for his 1,020 colleagues. But now, Officer Fangman, Badge No. 526, spends his shifts doing the usual things for an officer in Over-the-Rhine: responding to calls for family trouble, making traffic stops, chasing people with guns.

        “I love this job,” he says. “And I love working in Over-the-Rhine. Every day is different. Every 10 minutes is different.”

A shift in Over-the-Rhine

        His Father's Day shift starts just after 11 p.m. with roll call at District 1. Sgt. Richard Antwine reads off the things he wants officers to know for the night. Stolen cars to be on the look out for. A man wanted for domestic violence. Officers eat apple pie a la mode and a frozen chocolate dessert, both delivered by the dispatchers upstairs who will send them on their calls all night.

        At 11:51 p.m., Officer Fangman responds to the first of a dozen calls he'll take throughout the eight-hour shift ... to check out a suspicious person in the 1300 block of Vine Street. He doesn't find anyone, but someone does recognize him ... a cross-dresser well-known to the officers who work the neighborhood. He teasingly asks Officer Fangman to beat him with his nightstick.

        It's the only time all night anyone even asks his name.

        Next, he'll head over to Dayton Street in the West End to try to help find a man whose stepfather said fired a shot outside the house. Officers will look for the man off and on throughout the shift, unsuccessfully.

Officer Fangman talked to this young boy at 2:30 a.m. recently in the Shell gas station parking lot on Liberty Avenue, telling the boy he was wrong for sneaking out of his house. The boy and his younger brother "just wanted to get something to eat." | ZOOM |

        Just after 1 a.m., Officer Fangman is sent back to Vine Street to speak to a woman who says her boyfriend slammed her head into a wall. Tears run down her face. She says she knows she's stupid for putting up with the abuse; she's taken him back before. Officer Fangman interrupts: “You're not stupid. Don't say that.”

        He makes her promise she'll go to the courthouse the next day to take out a protective order against her boyfriend. He tells her the courthouse opens at 8 a.m. She promises.

        He'll make another woman promise the same thing later, after he responds to her Peete Street apartment because she says her ex is throwing rocks at her windows. She promises, too.

        Minutes later, Officer Fangman's on a “gun run,” helping chase a man in a white hat who, a tipster said, is carrying a gun in his waistband. Their guns drawn, they scream at him repeatedly to lie on the ground. He doesn't. Several officers tackle him. Officer Fangman cuts his knee and tears his uniform pants.

        But officers find the Titan .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol exactly where the tipster said it would be. And Kareem Weatherby, 27, of Mount Airy, is charged with carrying a concealed weapon.

        The call takes Officer Fangman back to last year and Officer Stephen Roach, the former colleague whose fatal shooting of Timothy Thomas touched off last April's riots. Mr. Thomas was not armed, but Officer Roach said he thought he was.

        That sends Officer Fangman back to his soapbox briefly:

Keith Fangman investigates a stolen vehicle. (Jeff Swinger photos) | ZOOM |

        On gun runs: “We're screaming at him to get down, get on the ground. And we can see him move his hand like he's going for his waistband, where the gun is. And it's very dark. You can't help but think of Steve Roach and Timothy Thomas.”

        On racial profiling: “We're not out here pulling people over because of the color of their skin. We're just not.”

        On racial profiling cards, which officers now must fill out for all traffic stops so the department can track the race of drivers stopped: They take officers off the street for too long.

        Just after 3 a.m., Officer Fangman stops a car on Vine Street because the driver didn't have his lights on. It turns out to be a 54-year-old Norwood man who admits he's looking for a prostitute. He's the only white suspect or victim with whom Officer Fangman has contact all night.

        Filling out the racial- profiling card takes Officer Fangman 14 minutes. “I didn't even notice what color his skin was. He was driving without his lights.”

        His last call, as the sun rises, is to Hearne House Inc., a home for young girls near Music Hall. Four have run away. He makes a report.

        The shift ends with one arrest, one completed racial- profiling card and one minor knee injury. And only one time anyone recognized his face.

Mostly pleasant greetings

SPEAKING OUT

Keith Fangman, former outspoken president of the Fraternal Order of Police, now patrols Over-the-Rhine on the overnight shift. After four years in the FOP position and running unopposed for a third term, he decided last fall he wanted to step away from the job to return to a beat and spend more time with his family. He has been back on patrol since January.    His thoughts on:    Being out of the spotlight: “Being the first vice president of the FOP is a very good fit for me right now. I'm still active in the FOP, especially on the political front. I'm co-chairman of our wage- negotiation team. I'm back to my true love, running a beat. And I get more time with my three kids. It's a good fit.”    Escalating violence: “The level of violence, specifically the shootings, is beyond belief. Four years ago really isn't all that long. But the difference in the level of violence and the number of bad guys armed with guns, that difference is like night and day compared to four years ago.”    “It's a nightly occurrence. It's only going to get worse until black leaders and white liberals pull their heads out of the sand and finally admit that professional, aggressive, proactive policing is not racial profiling and will reduce crime.”    Drugs: “It's an epidemic that, quite frankly, is out of control. The crack cocaine trade has devastated many of our neighborhoods. Frankly, many of us are at a loss as to how the situation will ever improve.”

        Coworkers say that's pretty much the routine, that people generally don't seem to know Officer Fangman's the one who used to be on TV all the time. The few who do, say other officers who work with him, greet them pleasantly.

        Occasionally, people mistake him for the police chief. Late one night last month, a woman came running out of her Race Street apartment, yelling, “Look! It's the chief of police!”

        “I couldn't believe it,” said Officer Carroll Todd. “She was so excited.”

        Officer Fangman, who won state FOP member of the year last week for his work as president, insists he had no worries about returning to the neighborhood where he was vilified a year ago. Some colleagues admit they did.

        On one of his first nights back in uniform, he and Officer Don Meece stopped to eat at Camp Washington Chili. When Officer Meece saw a man go into the restroom with Officer Fangman and the two didn't come out quickly, he thought his union leader might be in trouble and went to check.

        “He just told Keith that he didn't agree with him,” Officer Meece said, “but that he respected him for sticking up for his people.”

        Sgt. Roger Robbins first volunteered to walk Vine Street with Officer Fangman this spring in part because he thought there might be problems. Instead, he said, people approached them to shake their hands and thank them for the foot patrols.

        Officer Fangman says he knows the reception he gets here says more about the people who live in the neighborhood than it does about him.

        “I've said for years that 99 percent of the people in Over-the-Rhine don't hate the police,” he says. “It's just the criminals who do.”

        He has developed a stock answer for those who mistake him for Chief Tom Streicher.

        “I said, “Ma'am, I'm not the police chief,” Officer Fangman says. “The chief of police doesn't work in Over-the-Rhine at 3 o'clock in the morning.”

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