Evendale Police have responded to criticism following an obvious display of neo-Nazis near Lincoln Heights on Feb. 7.
Highway traffic cameras pointed at the Vision Way overpass over I-75 showed masked neo-Nazi demonstrators lining the overpass sidewalk waving large swastika-emblazoned flags. Photos shared online also showed a banner that said “America is for the White Man.”
It took mere minutes for residents of the historically Black Lincoln Heights village to rush to the overpass and drive out the neo-Nazis. Reshares of an Instagram Live video from the clash appeared widely on TikTok. The video shows residents burning one of the swastika flags left on the overpass.
Destiny, who did not provide her last name to CityBeat, was still in her pajamas and bonnet when she rushed to help shut down the racist display.
“I was 13 minutes away,” she told CityBeat during a demonstration in nearby Lockland on Monday, Feb. 10. “[Police] did not disperse the neo-Nazis until the protesters took it in their own hands to fight against them. They were definitely protecting the neo-Nazis that were up on the bridge that day.”
The Monday demonstration, organized by Cincinnati Socialists, was one of two community gatherings that day. Both begged the same question: Why didn’t police arrest any of the Nazis on that overpass?
The village of Lincoln Heights also held a town hall on Monday where residents called for an investigation into Evendale Police and Lockland Police for allegedly protecting and escorting the neo-Nazi demonstrators away from the overpass. Videos circulated online of an officer ushering the neo-Nazis into a U-Haul truck parked on the overpass.
“The police officer shown [in photos] with the U-Haul was following the vehicle southbound on I-75 after it left the demonstration site and observed it exit into Lockland,” said Lockland Mayor Mark Mason Sr. in a public statement released Sunday. “The officer made contact with the individuals and advised them to leave the area.”
Hamilton County Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey was the only law enforcement representative present at Monday’s town hall in Lincoln Heights. She told the frustrated crowd that the responding officers did what they could to prevent violence from erupting between the armed neo-Nazi demonstrators and the counter-protesting Lincoln Heights residents.
“This has shocked every one of us,” McGuffey said. “They acted in fast, quick manner that they could. They got those men back in that truck and they moved them along.”
Tuesday evening, Evendale Chief of Police Tim Holloway released a “statement of facts regarding [the] Nazi demonstration.” Holloway’s review of the officers’ conduct emphasized preventing an eruption of physical violence.
“Evendale officers assessed that the demonstration was not unlawful,” Holloway said. “Evendale officers and other officers present also assessed that the demonstration may lead to confrontations between the demonstrators and other members of the public. These officers then began formulating contingencies to address controlling vehicle and pedestrian traffic in the area to limit the likelihood of direct violent confrontations between the demonstrators and any members of the public. These efforts to limit interactions between groups likely to be hostile toward one another are consistent with law enforcement best practices.”
Holloway also addressed the public’s calls for criminal charges against the neo-Nazis, saying a minor traffic charge for demonstrators riding in the back of a U-Haul was the only possible option, but the ticket wasn’t issued.
“There is a relevant Ohio Revised Code statute, 4511.51 that prohibits the driver of a vehicle from allowing passengers to ride in a cargo area,” Holloway said. “However, only the driver of the subject cargo vehicle could have been cited for this offense, a minor misdemeanor traffic charge. The overwhelming public safety concerns of this situation outweighed any potential positives associated with issuing a single traffic violation.”
Read the full statement below:
How police respond to protesters
Tia Evans is a Lincoln Heights resident. She said the Nazi demonstrators were being deliberate in their decision to target the Lincoln Heights neighborhood.
“You have to understand the background of Lincoln Heights,” she said. “This is where, when the slaves were free, this is where my ancestors went to start a new life, in Lincoln Heights, Ohio.”
Less than five years after the George Floyd protests, Evans said she sees a major disparity in the way Evendale and Lockland police responded to these Nazi demonstrators.
“When we was protesting [for] George Floyd, why was it they didn’t have the same aggression?” Evans said. “I just don’t understand why they peacefully let them get in a U-Haul and drive away. No, they are terrorists, and they should have been arrested for what they did.”
But a legal expert told CityBeat that arresting a Nazi for being a public Nazi – an armed one, at that – isn’t that straightforward.
Ryan Thoreson is an assistant professor of constitutional law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.
“I think, as a general matter, the Supreme Court has been very permissive toward hateful speech that is likely to offend and even to deeply offend the general public or particular communities,” Thoreson said. “A lot of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence has been particularly wary of what it calls a hecklers veto, this idea that if an audience strongly disagrees with a message, that they should be able to override the speaker’s right to convey that message, and that applies even when the speech is particularly upsetting to the audience who hears it.”
But Thoreson said there are some exceptions that illustrate how police or the state may be able to intervene to restrict speech, including from Nazis.
Fighting words
“The first is a doctrine known as the fighting words doctrine,” Thoreson said. “This goes back to an old case Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, where the court found that states can ban the use of what they call fighting words, words that are personally directed at another person and are likely to provoke a violent reaction from them. That’s kind of been watered down a bit over the years, but in instances where a person is using a derogatory epithet at another person, and the circumstances show that it’s likely to prompt the other person to respond violently, police can intervene in circumstances like that, and often you see [the speaker] charged for like disorderly conduct in those kinds of circumstances.”
True threats
“The second thing that can be a second kind of speech that can be policed is true threats,” Thoreson said. “Those are expressions where the speaker is intending to communicate a very serious intent to commit an act of unlawful violence against somebody or group of people. So there’s a case called Virginia v. Black where the Supreme Court said, in some instances, cross burnings are true threats, right? They’re designed to communicate this intent to inflict violence on a group. And if you can show that that’s what the person intended, that speech can be restricted, consistent with the First Amendment.”
Incitement to violence
“The third is a famous Ohio case, Brandenburg v. Ohio, which allows speech to be restricted when it amounts to incitement to violence,” Thoreson said. “But there’s a very high bar for what constitutes incitement to violence. You have to show that the advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and that it’s likely to actually incite or produce that lawless action. So there’s kind of two prongs there, where there has to be the intent to incite lawlessness, and then that it’s actually likely to do that. But a lot of speech that falls short of those categories is protected, even though it’s kind of unquestionably offensive and derogatory to minority groups.”
Nazi marches are becoming more frequent
Media outlets and advocacy organizations have chronicled an uptick in neo-Nazi demonstrations in recent years.
Ohio in particular has seen recent high-profile neo-Nazi marches and public displays of Nazi ideology.
In November, a dozen neo-Nazis from a group called Hate Club 1488 marched through the Short North neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, prompting condemnation from then-President Joe Biden.
In March, a large sign that said, “Save Ireland from the Jews” (a Star of David was drawn in place of the “e”) was hung from a pedestrian bridge in downtown Cincinnati.
The white nationalist group White Lives Matter posted “The White Flame will rise again” on Telegram following Elon Musk’s apparent Nazi salute during President Donald Trump’s inauguration celebration.
Destiny told CityBeat she sees a direct line between Musk’s Inauguration Day display and what happened in Lincoln Heights on Friday.
“Elon Musk and billionaires were at [President Trump’s] inauguration, and a lot of people look up to them, unfortunately,” Destiny said. “For us to see a literal Nazi salute on live TV, it kind of gave them that gall, the balls to do it. Especially with it being a historically Black town in Black History Month, it was very planned.”
Rhino, who didn’t provide his last name to CityBeat, held a sign during the Lockland demonstration that said “AMERICA HAS BEEN HIJACKED, RESIST FASCISM.”
“I would like to see what they do in Europe, all right?” he told CityBeat. “In Europe, you cannot fly a Nazi flag. You cannot throw the sieg heil like Elon Musk, you cannot openly tout this type of hate speech.”
Thoreson said such laws are unlikely to evolve in the United States because of the First Amendment.
“The United States has a very speech-protective approach because of the First Amendment, and the First Amendment makes it very difficult to enact laws like that in the United States and have them upheld by the court,” he said. “I think it’s important to underscore that harmful speech still does real harm, and that the First Amendment’s protection for expression should not be taken to kind of diminish the real harm that these kinds of demonstrations do, and they do real harm.”
Expect the (not so) unexpected
With rising displays of Nazi imagery and little legal recourse for neo-Nazi demonstrators, CityBeat asked Thoreson what counter-protesters should keep in mind for the future.
“I think a lot of the [white nationalist] organizations that have engaged in offensive protests have the advantage of coming into it kind of clear-eyed about their goals and what they intend to convey,” he said. “Whereas counter protesters do not, right? They are in a deeply emotionally charged moment where they are being confronted with awful and offensive messages, without coordination among the people who are there – I think that does often set people up to respond in ways that might not be [legally] protected in the way that the original protesters are.”
Thoreson points to another seasoned American agitator – the Westboro Baptist Church.
The Topeka, Kansas church of less than 100 (mostly family) members has spent decades protesting a litany of identities and ideologies, but anti-gay vitriol is their specialty. The church has become widely reviled for displaying signs that say “God Hates F—” and “God Hates Jews” at funerals of American soldiers and at funerals of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting victims.
“They are incredibly good at waiting for counter protesters or for police to do something that might violate their First Amendment rights, and then turning around suing them for restricting their free expression,” Thoreson said. “I think that is certainly a feature of a lot of these protest-counter protest dynamics. I think it’s something for people to be aware of and careful about, because I think there are some groups that use that very strategically to bate people into breaking the law.”
Follow CityBeat’s staff news writer Madeline Fening on Instagram. Got a news tip? Email mfening@citybeat.com.
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This article appears in Feb 5-18, 2025.