Few of us had heard of him until a police bullet pierced his chest in an Over-the-Rhine alley on a Friday night that had already turned into Saturday morning.
Timothy Thomas was no saint, but he has most assuredly become a martyr. Seldom does a 19-year-old command the attention of an entire city, but Thomas did that and more. He not only made Cincinnati examine issues it had long ignored -- he also made us do it under circumstances that turned the city into a byword for oppression in newspapers and broadcasts as far away as Beijing, London and Stockholm.
He did it by the way he died -- shot down for avoiding capture on warrants charging him with failure to wear a seat belt and carry a driver license. By the time of his funeral one week later, a riot and a curfew had already passed, but his legacy was just beginning.
'The language of the unheard'
What happened in the alley near 12th and Republic streets April 7 is the easiest part to understand -- except that it defies understanding. That's because Officer Stephen Roach, the man who killed Thomas, gave differing versions of the shooting. But the hardest part to comprehend is the impact Thomas' death continues to have on Cincinnati.
The flash of Roach's firearm in that dark alley has affected nearly every aspect of life in this city: The downtown economy, police operations, the mayoral election, perceptions about safety and more. Thousands have marched downtown, carrying pictures of Thomas and demanding justice in his name. The mayor attended his funeral, publicly apologizing for his death. New political coalitions have formed, changing the content and the style of political discourse here.
 |
Photo By Jymi Bolden
|
The death of Timothy Thomas proved to be the
breaking point for many African Americans in
Cincinnati.
|
Task forces too numerous to name -- and many too irrelevant to remember -- have formed in the wake of Thomas' death. Businesses have closed. Interracial dialogue is in vogue. Campaigns both to boost downtown Cincinnati and to boycott it chug along.
Thomas' death set off events that revealed Cincinnati's racial divide and challenged its leadership to help close it. Their performance has sometimes been disconcerting. A series of missteps and missed opportunities aggravated the furor over Thomas' death.
"A riot," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "is at bottom the language of the unheard."
Timothy Thomas' name will forever be associated with a riot for which he had no responsibility. The violence started exactly as King predicted, after city council seemed unresponsive to a crowd demanding answers about Thomas' death (see Slinking Away: The 'Strong Mayor' Ducks an Angry Crowd issue of April 12-18).
Once begun, the three days of mayhem -- a matter of trashcan fires, frightening assaults and looting, but no deaths -- played out like a worst-case scenario for reclaiming civic pride. Police attacks on demonstrators who were alleging police brutality proved the protesters' very point, with cameras recording cops making war whoops as they fired rubber bullets on a crowd (see Standoff in Cincinnati issue of April 12-18).
 |
Photo By Jymi Bolden
|
Officer Stephen Roach (right) stood trial for negligent
homicide.
|
On the very day Thomas was buried, police officers opened fire with beanbag shotguns on a peaceful crowd, injuring several people as city officials, reporters and a corporate executive watched in horror. The FBI almost immediately opened a criminal investigation of the attack (see Firing on Children issue of April 19-25).
Serious talk is still just talk
It would be inaccurate to say Cincinnati lost its innocence in April. Indeed, some would argue the city's sense of its own moral superiority masked long-simmering problems, especially in the police division. Three months before Timothy Thomas died, a grand jury had indicted two Cincinnati cops in the death of Roger Owensby Jr., another unarmed African-American man (see Educating Officer Keith issue of Jan. 11-17).
What Cincinnati lost in April was its illusions. Black people don't have it good here. Police officers do, in fact, hurt innocent people here. What we saw and heard in our own neighborhoods left no doubt of the urgency of the problem. In that sense, Thomas' death precipitated a tumult that was good because it was necessary.
Serious talk began as a result of Thomas' death. Mayor Charlie Luken formed a task force on racial relations (see Tick ... Tick ... Tick issue of June 28-July 4). Colleges, churches, community organizations, business groups and news media have been on an orgy of interracial dialogue (see We Have to Talk About This issue of July 5-11).
But sometimes the talk has been almost humiliating in its superficiality. When the Black United Front called for a boycott of summer festivals and succeeded in shutting down Pepsi Jammin' on Main, Luken took on the task of municipal showman, trying to get a nationally known black musical act -- anybody! -- to play at Taste of Cincinnati (see Godfather of 'Sold' issue of May 31-June 6).
 |
Photo By Jymi Bolden
|
Mary Ann Meredith was injured by police in the April
unrest.
|
In early June, a large civil rights march filled downtown Cincinnati streets, and police again played bully boy (see Gettin' Wacked issue of June 8-14). But the March for Justice succeeded in bringing national attention once more to the issue of local police violence.
The march also gave Cincinnati activists additional experience in organizing, a skill they continue to hone (see So You Say You Want a Revolution issue of Dec. 6-12). The committee that organized the March for Justice is already planning for an event to mark the first anniversary of Thomas' death in April 2002.
By summer, the prospect of serious political upheaval started to seem inevitable. Within hours of the filing deadline for the city election, TV news anchor Courtis Fuller jumped into the race for mayor, gathering thousands more signatures than needed. When Fuller trounced Luken in the Sept. 11 primary, it seemed Thomas' death had forever changed local politics.
If not for Timothy Thomas
But the first-ever mayoral runoff in Cincinnati turned out to be the lesser event of Sept. 11, and the impact of what happened in New York City and Washington, D.C. that day had an inescapable effect on local events.
Three police officers indicted in the deaths of Owensby and Thomas went to trial in mid-September. All three cops walked. Roach's verdict -- in Judge Ralph Winkler's hands, almost a tribute to the defendant -- caused a minor stir (see More of the Same issue of Sept. 27-Oct. 3).
 |
Photo By Jymi Bolden
|
Andre Wilson formed CopWatch late in 2001 to
monitor Cincinnati Police arrests.
|
A surprisingly restrained crowd attended a city council meeting the day Roach was acquitted, and a candlelight vigil formed that night in the alley where Thomas was killed. The two gatherings spooked Luken enough to declare another curfew.
Fuller's presence at that vigil gave Luken an image he used in campaign commercials to savage the challenger: A photograph of Fuller standing next to a masked protester. Luken ably used the shot to play on white racial fears and the insecurities raised by the terrorist attacks in September.
Fuller didn't win the election; when the votes were counted Nov. 6, the race wasn't even close. But if it hadn't been for Timothy Thomas' death, Luken would have run altogether unopposed.
If it hadn't been for Timothy Thomas, the U.S. Justice Department would not be investigating the Cincinnati Police Division.
If it hadn't been for Timothy Thomas, voters might not have passed civil service reform on Nov. 6.
Cincinnati will be remembering Timothy Thomas for years to come. ©
