Saturday, January 22, 2011

In Cincinnati, the Police are Always Presumed Guilty: The Nathaniel Jones Case

By Nicholas Stix

(See also: “Cincinnati Burning”; “Cincinnati: Recipe for a Riot”; and “Cincinnati, 2002: Return of the Lynch Mob.”)

January, 2004
(This is a much longer version of an article that appeared in the January, 2004 edition of Middle American News.)


It was “a modern day lynching.” “He was unarmed.” “Skipper was just a good old, fat jolly fella. He wasn't violent.” “18 black men murdered …” “The police must be arrested.”

The above statements from civilians, race organizations, and journalists alike, have resounded across the country, since the November 30 death of Nathaniel Jones in the “Queen City.” Once the junction of the best of Southern, Middle Western, and Northern culture, Cincinnati has in recent years been best known for its black supremacist subculture.

Jones, a 5’6,” 41-year-old black man described as weighing 350-400 pounds, was high on the drugs pcp, cocaine, and methanol, when he attacked two policemen outside of a White Castle restaurant at 6 a.m. Jones shouted racial epithets, swung at officers, and refused to submit, despite 16 separate orders to do so and despite being maced. Six officers had to hit Jones 40 times on the lower body with metal nightsticks (never on the head), in order to subdue him.

Immediately following the fight, Nathaniel Jones died from the combination of his poor health (high blood pressure), extreme intoxication, and the struggle, NOT from being hit by the officers, a fact that was obscured and confused by Hamilton County Coroner Carl L. Parrott Jr.’s calling the case a “homicide.” [Postscript, 2011: In common parlance, “homicide” and “murder” are used synonymously, but they are not synonyms.]

Not that the truth mattered in the least to racist black Cincinnatians or the racist, black media, who redefined Jones’ death due to the “struggle” (his attack on police) into a case of police beating to death an unarmed, “gentle giant.” BET “reporter” Ed Wiley III lied outright, when he wrote that “… Wednesday's announcement by Hamilton County Coroner Carl L. Parrott that even though Nathaniel Jones was overweight, high on drugs and beset by high blood pressure, he'd still be alive if not for the beating he took from Cincinnati Police on Sunday.”

Wiley also lied about the chain of events, reversing what happened. He misrepresents police as having first violently attacked Jones, causing him to become aggressive, instead of the real case, in which Jones first screamed racial epithets at police, as he violently assaulted them. Why didn't Wiley just go all the way, and claim that police called Jones the “n-word,” and insulted his mother?

Cincinnati Police Department Public Information officer, Lt. Kurt Byrd, told me that the officers involved in the Nathaniel Jones case are all back on the job, with their weapons. “Anytime an officer is involved in a death, the chief puts them on administrative leave for five days and then combining with that, there are two off days which would be for a seven-day period. During that time he requires them to see a psychologist, a police psychologist, to make sure that the officers are capable of coming back to work.”

Lt. Byrd added that the case is undergoing five separate investigations: By the Cincinnati Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Section; the P.D. Inspection Section (Internal Investigations); the Citizens’ Community Advisory Board (CCA); the Hamilton County Prosecutors’ Office; and the Justice Department, which was invited in by Chief Thomas Streicher. Note that such redundant local and federal investigations are now increasingly routine, when black suspects die in confrontations with police.

While the fight was caught on police videotape, the Rev. Damon Lynch III demanded to know what had transpired in the 97 seconds before the videotape was turned on, and suggested the police had somehow provoked Jones. Black leaders in the 43% black city have demanded that Democrat Mayor Charlie Luken be recalled, and police Chief Streicher resign. Black civilians have demanded that police being assaulted by black suspects run away. Ever since, Cincinnati has been on riot watch.

It’s all depressingly familiar.

Critics immediately drew parallels to the fatal, April 7, 2001 police shooting of fleeing Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old, unarmed black man with 14 outstanding misdemeanor warrants and a history of running from police. Black thugs in Cincinnati’s black, Over-the-Rhine neighborhood responded then by rioting for several days—looting and burning down businesses, dragging white motorists out of their cars and beating them within an inch of their lives, and shooting at police officers.

The face of urban race relations on display in Cincinnati is being mass-produced across today’s brave, new, multicultural America. Your town could be next.

The 2001 riots were called out by a group of black supremacist leaders, most notably the Rev. Lynch, pastor of Over-the-Rhine’s New Prospect Baptist Church and leader of the Cincinnati Black United Front, and then-city Councilwoman Alicia Reece. Lynch and Reece are Cincinnati’s answers to Al Sharpton and Los Angeles Cong. Maxine Waters (D-Ca.), respectively.

The Cincinnati Black United Front is the local affiliate of the Chicago-based Black United Front, whose leader, Conrad Worrill, has demanded that every black in America be paid as much as $1 million in “reparations.”

In April, 2001, the Rev. Lynch exhorted, "Stand up black men, stand up for black rights! Stand up for black children!” During the riot, he demanded all manner of patronage jobs for black gangbangers, and spoke of the white businessmen who sought to help the city recover, as if they were insects, “coming out of the woodwork.” Afterwards, he thanked the rioters.

In 2002, following a series of articles I’d published on Cincinnati, the Rev. Lynch sent me the following e-mail:

Nick you have a lot of anger misconceptions and hatred. I'm sorry justice is such a foreign concept. I wish you well in your struggle.

During an April 9, 2001 City Council meeting following the Thomas shooting, but before the riot, black leaders briefly kidnapped white leaders, including the police chief, telling them they would not permit them to leave, and not permitting them to speak. That night, then-Councilwoman Reece said, in a thinly veiled racial threat, “Every member of the council, from the mayor on down, needs to be here today. Leadership needs to deal with the diversity that exists in the city.”

Rather than standing up to the demagogues, craven, white Democrat Mayor Charlie Luken prostrated himself before them. Appearing on Ted Koppel's show, Nightline, on April 12, 2001 with the Rev. Lynch, Mayor Luken did everything but say, “Yassuh, Massa,” to Lynch.

“It's unthinkable,” Mayor Luken said of Cincinnati's race relations. “It's unthinkable that 15 men could have died in five years” at the hands of the police.

Agreeing with his echo, the Rev. Lynch maintained that, “fundamental and systematic changes have to be made.... The city faces a number of events by next summer.... For the good of the community, I think it is necessary that some people resign.... The most pressing problem Cincinnati has is race relations.” [For Lynch, “race relations” is a code for “white surrender” to black supremacy.]

Mayor Echo: “I think that because of the rash of shootings, this is on the surface.... Obviously, something substantive is going to have to happen this weekend.... Many of the issues Rev. Lynch has identified, we agree with at City Hall.”

During the 2001 riot, New York Times reporter Francis X. Clines refused to report on the violence. Redefining the rioters as “demonstrators,” the violence as “vandalism,” and the white victims as “alarmed,” Clines approvingly quoted racist, black Cincinnatians who praised the black thugs who had perpetrated the city’s 2001 and 1968 race riots alike.

The national media parroted the rationalization of the rioters and their black supremacist supporters, that the riot was a response to the police “murdering” 15 unarmed black men since 1995. In fact, all but one of the dead black males (one cop-killer was only 12 years old) had attacked police officers, with everything from bricks to automobiles to guns, and had variously maimed and murdered white and black police and civilians alike. Timothy Thomas’ mother, Angela Leisure, seemed to speak for much of Cincinnati’s black community, when she waxed wistful for the dead criminals, but not for wounded or murdered police officers or civilians, and rationalized her son’s habit of running from police: “These people might have been insignificant in y’all’s life, but they were significant in our lives…. People keep asking me, why did my son run. If you are an African male, you will run.”

What kind of parents teach their children to refuse to follow a policeman’s orders, to spit on him, and even to murder him?

In the three months following the 2001 riots, demonized, handcuffed police engaged in “de-policing,” avoiding all confrontations with black men. As a result, shootings increased by 600 percent (from 11 to 77 victims) over the three months prior to the riots. The Rev. Lynch then demonized the police for not doing their job, just as he had demonized them when they did their job. And the Rev. Lynch—who had exhorted young black men to riot—responded to the riot by organizing a “boycott” against his own city, discouraging groups and performers from coming to town.

The economic boycott, which continues today, is purportedly in opposition to “economic apartheid” against black Cincinnatians.

Lynch's demands are fluid. In the spirit of communist organizer Saul Alinsky, Lynch makes impossible demands. Then, whenever city officials or businessmen surrender to him, he makes new, more grandiose demands. (The 1960s’ phrase describing such black racists was, “People who won’t take ‘yes’ for an answer.”) Lynch has succeeded in dissuading, among others, comedians Bill Cosby and Whoopi Goldberg, musician Wynton Marsalis, and thug-singer Wyclef Jean from performing in Cincinnati. Music festivals and religious conventions have been cancelled.

The boycott has resulted in over $50 million in losses in tourism, and as Lynch’s critic, the Rev. Raymond Jones has noted, in members of Rev. Lynch’s own church being laid off from their jobs.

The Rev. Lynch demanded and got tens of millions of dollars in worthless (often redundant) social services and wasteful police procedures, and a 25% black quota he will control of jobs redeveloping the city’s Riverfront. He has also demanded hundreds of patronage jobs that he would control for “community resource workers”; “training resources for black youth” that he would control; an additional $200 million worth of aid for black Cincinnati slums that he would control; punishment for all of the (surviving) police who have shot and killed black criminals, the law be damned; and amnesty for all rioters who were arrested in 2001. Lynch also co-signed, with two other boycott leaders, a letter to black celebrities claiming that “police are killing, raping, planting false evidence and, along with the prosecutor and the courts, are destroying the general self-respect for black citizens.”

While it might seem insane to burn down one’s own neighborhood, black criminals know that such acts, which once got perpetrators shot, today result in a windfall of federal tax money from predominantly white taxpayers.

Like other black supremacists, Lynch embraces a sadistic, zero-sum worldview, in which black progress is measured solely by the pain caused to whites, and black economics consists of no more than the robbing, extorting, and otherwise impoverishing of whites. The jobs Lynch has demanded, and which in many cases have been surrendered to him, are all “no-show” or “show-no” jobs, in which blacks (often gangbangers) will either get paid without even the formality of showing up for work, or without having to do any work (one can spend all day complaining to other blacks about “racism”). Any work that must be done will be carried out by white or Asian workers—just like under affirmative action.

The “training resources for black youth” Lynch has demanded, echoes the 1970s’ CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) program, and as with CETA, would consist of patronage for incompetent black “instructors,” “administrators,” and “staffers,” and worthless “training” programs for blacks who consider working to be beneath their dignity. As with CETA, “trainees” would spend years bouncing from one boondoggle to another. Meanwhile, as per the 1960s/70s community action programs that are Lynch’s model, the “community resource workers”—led by privileged, middle and upper-middle-class, black racists—will be professional, subsidized agitators who will spread racial hatred, and periodically threaten or organize race riots, in order to extort ever more money and power from white political elites.

“Black economics” has no conception of wealth creation; indeed, it must spread ever more poverty, ignorance, hatred and violence, in order to justify itself. Its eventual goal is the enslavement of the white race by blacks. What actually happens—and has been happening for forty years—is that white elites sacrifice ever more poor, working-class, and middle-class whites, in order to ingratiate themselves with black supremacist elites.

After the 2001 riots, Mayor Luken named the Rev. Lynch co-chair of his new, black-oriented, race commission, Cincinnati Community Action Now (CCAN), and appointed Councilwoman Reece vice mayor. Lynch’s lie-filled letter to black celebrities led to his December, 2002 ouster from CCAN.

According to CityBeat columnist Kathy Wilson, Vice Mayor Reece exploited her new power to bolster her father’s business, and according to CityBeat editor John Fox, Reece responded to criticism in the style of an African dictator. According to Fox, in April 2002, Reece threatened Wilson with violence at the hands of Reece’s personal army of 150 city firemen. As Fox recounted, “She said, ‘If you can't control her, I will.’ She said, ‘I have 150 firefighters who are willing to do anything I ask them.’”

CityBeat writer Gregory Flannery reported that Jeff Harris, the president of the Cincinnati African-American Firefighters Association, admitted that Reece had asked him to “approach” critics on her behalf, and that he had acceded to her request.

As for the notion that naming a racist demagogue vice mayor would help keep the peace, on April 15, 2002, a race riot broke out in broad daylight. The only journalist willing to honestly report on the riot was Cincinnati Enquirer columnist, Peter Bronson:

There was no police shooting, no reverends shouting for justice this time – just 300 black people blocking Vine Street on Monday night, pelting cars with rocks, bottles and eggs and yelling 'get whitey.'

Some cities would call that a riot. Cincinnati didn't even call it a “disturbance.” The headline over a 3-inch story in the Enquirer the next day said, “Fight draws crowd; police close street.”

Witnesses and police reports showed something worse: frightening attacks on cars driven by white people, while cars driven by blacks were waved through.

Police said it started when two girls, ages 14 and 17, started throwing punches in the street. As cops arrested the girls, the 14-year-old struggled and spit in the face of one officer. The 17-year-old's brother, 12, jumped on a cop – and it took two more to restrain him.

The crowd swelled to 300, and 20 to 50 people began throwing things. The cops backed off to regroup….

Such racist hatred takes years to inculcate in young people. In a glimpse of things to come, a mid-1990s videotape played across the nation on the TV news, showed a lone, white Cincinnati policeman trying to arrest a black man. A few feet away stood hundreds of black, teenaged students, one of whom aggressively argued with the police officer, in seeking to obstruct justice and incite a riot. Finally, the officer manhandled the student-criminal.

In the wake of the heavily edited, 1992 Rodney King videotape, anchormen presented this videotape as if it were evidence of a racist, violent, police officer, rather than a depiction of a white man in danger of being lynched, simply for doing his job.

And nothing has changed since. Consider the typical, December 7 story by John Riley in New York’s Newsday.

But Cincinnati is a city with a history – at least 18 black men killed in police encounters since 1995 and race riots in 2001 after the shooting of an unarmed African-American.…

But others warn that Cincinnati may just not have enough time for slow change if black men like [Nathaniel] Jones keep dying in encounters with police.

Like almost all of the national media, Riley refused to report on the violent attacks by all but one of the “at least 18 black men killed,” or to report what only some Cincinnati media did: That the racist Jones shouted, “White boy, red neck!” as he went after the officers. ([When Riley says, “at least 18…”] is Riley insinuating that there are dead black men the Cincinnati PD has secretly murdered that we don’t know about?)

To comfortable, smug, socialist newsmen and white political elites, police officers are expendable. But without such heroic policemen, who would save black Cincinnatians … from their own parents?

No comments: