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Price Hill residents flooded City Hall Oct. 13 to demand that council pass a motion put forth by their neighbor, Councilman John Cranley, to lock council into funding two police recruit classes in both 2005 and 2006. That way council could fulfill its 2001 pledge to add 75 officers to Cincinnati Police Department's 1,000-strong force.
Cranley's motion and the standing-room-only turnout of supporters came in the wake of two recent shootings in traditionally quiet, conservative and Caucasian Price Hill.
Some who spoke before council directly blamed Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority for closing Laurel Homes and pushing those residents, most of whom are both low-income and African-American, into other parts of the city — notably their own Price Hill neighborhood. Anti-tax crusader Tom Brinkman turned out to plug the property tax elimination measure that will appear on the city's Nov. 2 ballot as Issue 4.
"We need to do things to encourage people to buy homes, maintain their homes and stabilize the city," he said.
One woman had her own legislative suggestion.
"If we could instill some kind of law where parents are accountable for the actions of their kids, maybe we'd have parents that care," she told council.
A few speakers railed against council for taking action only when crime encroached on their own backyards. Familiar protester and boycott proponent Nate Livingston said council shortchanges his West side friends just as it does his own Over-the-Rhine neighbors.
"The reason we have not enough money for our cops is you've been giving it away to Convergys, to Krogers, to Saks, to Tall Stacks," he said. "Please stop pandering and dividing us West side versus West End."
A woman from Evanston had another idea for addressing crime: The city should ask Hamilton County to help it designate land to build a reservation to house law-breakers.
"Taking these people and putting them in areas where they can be trained to take jobs and be accountable, we'd be much safer," she said, eliciting the same enthusiastic clapping as other speakers.
"We need to remember that we have many, many communities in Cincinnati, not just Over-the-Rhine," said a lifelong resident of Price Hill, perhaps mistaking a $12 million Kroger parking garage for investment in the inner city neighborhood.
"I want to thank the people standing behind me — the eyes, the faces and the voices of the middle class," said Price Hill Civic Club President and former City Council candidate Pete Witte. "The affluent have their place in the city."
While expensive condominiums are selling downtown, the numbers of low-income people in his neighborhood have shot up in the last five years, he said.
"Things are going fine at the top end and the bottom end," Witte said. "The middle class are being squeezed out. This time, let's do it. Let's draw a line in the sand and say, 'No more.' Because if we don't do that, people are going to keep fleeing."
Despite the impassioned pleas of Cranley's supporters, council rejected his proposal in a 5-4 vote, largely out of fear of locking council into budgetary obligations at a time when the city is deep in the red.
Witte hasn't given up, though, as he and Councilman David Pepper stepped up plans for a safety summit planned in conjunction with council's Law and Public Safety Committee. Elder High School will host a series of presentations to address crime in Price Hill at 7 p.m. Thursday.
Citizens on Patrol recruits have been steadily declining, so there will be a push for new members "to get more eyes and ears out on the street," Witte says. "We need to discuss block by block and encourage people to know their neighbors, to turn on porch lights, to be vigilant and aware of things going around them, changes that might kind of signal oncoming crime."
There will also be a presentation about Price Hill's inclusion among the five communities chosen by the University of Cincinnati for an intensive study on crime hot spots, according to Witte.
But Guardian Angels will not be among the groups at the safety summit, he says. "I think they generate such interest on both sides, for and against, that they would almost maybe wreck what we're trying to do here."
Boycott Leaders Meet the Next Mayor
The Rev. Damon Lynch III and City Councilman and mayoral candidate David Pepper went head to head about the Cincinnati boycott Oct. 18 during Playhouse in the Park's Alteractive Speaks series. At one point, a slightly paternal Lynch seemed to hand Pepper the key to the city.
"This young man wants to be the next mayor of your city," Lynch told a full audience assembled in the Playhouse's lobby. "All of the boycott leadership is in the room. Let's do what we should have done years ago."
He urged Pepper to sit down and talk with the boycott leaders, something Mayor Charlie Luken has long refused to do.
Activist Victoria Straughn of Concerned Citizens for Justice and Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Kevin Aldridge joined Lynch and Pepper in a civic discussion assembled by InkTank. Straughn rejected the idea that boycott groups were fractured.
"There are the same fights going on in city council," she said. "Our disagreements are on strategy, not the issues."
Pepper disagreed, pointing out that one of the boycott leaders in the room, Black Fist Five Star Gen. Kabaka Oba, often criticizes fellow boycott proponent Lynch.
"I wasn't sure when Gen. Kabaka spoke if he'd be mad at me or the Rev. Lynch," Pepper said.
He also didn't understand how hurting a city already in economic peril could help anything.
Yet Lynch said the boycott must remain in place. Though it hasn't accomplished what he'd hoped, he attributed $4.5 million in city settlements for police brutality and the passage of a living wage ordinance to the boycotters' efforts.
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