A private hearing last Monday in Hamilton County Probate Court finalizing the $4.5 million settlement of Cincinnati's police shooting cases and racial profiling lawsuits brought to a close a tumultuous period in Cincinnati history and should allow the families and the city to move ahead.

The settlement apportioned $1.5 million to the family of Timothy Thomas for the 2001 police shooting death that sparked four days of rioting mostly in Over-the-Rhine. Another $1.6 million goes to the estate of Michael D. Carpenter on a wrongful death claim arising out of a 1999 police shooting in Northside. The remaining $1.4 million goes to 14 plaintiffs who alleged in a federal lawsuit that Cincinnati police officers engaged in racial profiling on traffic stops. Although the city admitted no wrongdoing in any of the cases, neither Thomas nor Carpenter should have been killed in those circumstances. City Council further demonstrated its good-faith intentions to keep its side of the April 2002 collaborative agreement by approving a bond issue to borrow the $4.5 million for the settlement.

That vote itself has had a healing effect in communicating the city's willingness to make amends and pursue reforms to reduce the chances that other young black males might be injured or killed at the hands of police. Both Thomas and Carpenter may have contributed to their own deaths by fleeing, and had their cases gone to civil trial, it was no sure thing that jurors would have found against the city. But a settlement avoids reawakening at trial any of the rancor of 2001. We are all better for that.