April 8, 2025 • 37 mins
Brian is joined by Peter Bronson, author of "Behind the Lines - The Untold Stories of the Cincinnati Riots" to talk about tomorrow's 24th anniversary of the Timothy Thomas shooting.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Seven oh five at fifty five ker CD talk Station.
A very happy Tuesday. I hope you're as happy as
I am. And it's Tuesday because Peter Bronson is in studio.
Of course, author, he is a publisher. Chili Dog Press
dot COM's where you find his publishing company, and maybe
an opportunity to get your book if you're someone in
the listening audience that's interested in publishing. Does a wonderful job.
(00:36):
He's also a terrific author, former columnist for the Cincinnion
Inquiry and an award winning columnist back when the editorial
page used to win awards. Things have changed over at
the Inquire a little bit. I'm going to miss them
too much. But Peter Bronson, you always did such a
wonderful job. And I just got done asking you. Your
very very first book was a compilation of your columns.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yes, that was called Cincinnati for Peace for Pete's Yeah,
and then you segued over and actually your first book book,
and it's a book.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's work of nonfiction, of course, behind the lines the
untold stories plural of the Cincinnati Riots, and believe it
or not, it has been twenty four years. Tomorrow's the
anniversary of the outset of the Cincinnati riots. It took place,
and you know, maybe people don't remember these specific facts,
and I will fall into that category. I remember sort
(01:30):
of about them when they happened. It led to that
consent decree that got worked down. Yeah, yeah, we'll get
some details.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Consultants that flew in like vultures to feed on Cincinnati.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah yeah, But what kicked it off? What was the
impetus for all this? Like George Floyd. Everybody remembers George
Floyd and M and BLM and defund the police and everything.
This was sort of a precursor to that type of reaction.
It was.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
This was the first major incident of its in ten
years after the Rodney King incident, which goes back ten
years previously, right, So when you go all the way
back to that, you can look at this pattern that occurred.
And I have to say compliments to you for bringing
this topic up again, because I would wager that very few,
(02:17):
if any of the other media platforms in this city
will even mention it today that this is all these
twenty four years since this happened, and it was a
huge cataclysmic event in the history of our city.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Well, that's why it's worthy of bringing up. I mean,
did we learn lessons? Are things better now? I mean,
it's a point of a moment of reflection. That's why
you think about anniversaryes. What's theal line. If you don't
learn from it, you repete it. So well. I just
I remember reading about and my dad telling me stories
about the sixties riots, the Watts riots. Yeah, and the
(02:51):
National Guard had to be parked out in front of Detroit.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
They had tanks rolling down the streets of Detroit nineteen
sixty seven, and they had a fifty caliber machine guns
mounted on the tops of those tanks that were firing
at rooftops in Detroit because there were snipers up there
trying to kill the National Guard and the police.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
See and can you believe that these are the facts
that I was not aware of. Dad told me a
story about locally, when these studios used to be at
nineteen or six Highland Avenue, that they had to have
a National Guard vehicle posted out there because they were
concerned about maybe either studio is getting stormed or something
along those lines. Because the television studios as well as
the radio studios were all into that, you know, WKRC Moniker.
(03:33):
So things are different now than they were then, but
that's the one story remember back then. But we felt
the effects of that eras riots as well.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It was really bad in Avondale in sixty seven, But
when you look at what happened in two thousand and
one was certainly not as bad as those sixty seven riots.
But it is such a template of what has occurred
in all these cities since. What occurred in the Rodney kincase,
what occurred and Ferguson, Missouri, what occurred in Baltimore with
(04:02):
fed Freddie Gray, what occurred with as you point, George Floyd,
but so many other cases. All of these patterns fit
right back to Cincinnati in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
How about that? And I think about somebody's gonna say
scream with the radio and say, Thomas, you're full of it.
But there seemed to have been in some cases, some
of these cases, a gross mischaracterization of what happened and
people's reaction immediately blaming the police, when you know, police
(04:35):
were following the way they had been trained, and they
didn't do anything necessarily untoward, but it led to bad outcomes,
you know, the you know, I mean you can't defend
them literally beating the crap out of Rodney King. If
you watch that video, it's like, I mean, come on.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, except in my research, I was really surprised to
find this in the Rodney King incident that when the
jurors were shown the entire tape, ah, then they came
up with a verdict that kicked off the riots. So
the tape that we saw on television was heavily edited
to only show the police responding to him and his attacks.
(05:16):
He refused to be subdued. The actual transcript of what
happened is shocking. I mean, they tried everything. Now, did
they go too far? Of course, yes they did. Police
are not inhuman when their adrenaline gets pumping after a
police chase, right, they're just like you and me. They're
capable of all kinds of.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Things, especially if their safety is in jeopardy because the
behavior of the purp in this particular tax. Yeah, if
he's attacked them, or you know, if they use a taser,
if I don't even know if there's existed back then,
but if the taser doesn't work and the guy continues
to become aggressive.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
And they tried tasers, they tried everything was short of
firing their revolvers and killing him.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, exactly, and.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
They did not do that. Now, if you mentioned that,
the first and the initial reactions are often sort of
a shoot ready aim, especially in the media, and this
was especially true in Cincinnati. Now, the actual shooting occurred
on April seventh. On April eighth, a young black men
had been shot by a police officer. On April eighth,
(06:18):
the headlines in the Cincinnati Enquirer and in the media
throughout Cincinnati, but mainly in the Inquirer, included the words
police brutality, no facts are in Remember police brutality, trigger
happy and excessive force. Yeah, I mean, this was absolutely
just setting the table. And it reminded me when I
was coming in this morning, Brian, that today our judgment,
(06:43):
I respect, our esteem of the media is at a
record low. It's at eleven percent set. But in these days,
bringing up the idea that the media might be wrong,
that they might be pushing an agenda was heresy. This
was immediately suppressed or smothered by any platform of media
because they just thought anybody would suggest bias was a
(07:03):
tinfoil hat kook.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Right, And now we sort of default to that. Well,
this is obvious media bias that we waited around and
find out what the real facts are down the road. Okay,
so yeah, you have to remember context is everything. This
is twenty four years ago, yes, and this is I
guess that's before social media as well, very much.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
So you didn't have the drivers on this. One of
the main drivers was WDBZ. If you remember the Black
Ross Love station that was in Avondale, I think, yeah.
I used to go up there for interviews from time
to time and it was a wild, wild trip. But
that's another story. But they just poured kerosene on this
(07:47):
around the clock. Remember all of CPS schools were out
for spring break, so there are all these kids hanging
around with nothing to do, and the radio just kept
pouring out this police brutality story. How they're out there
killing young black men. Cincinnati police are hunting down and
killing young black men. This is the story they were
broadcasting constantly, and our paper that where I was working
(08:09):
at the Inquirer, had done this. It was a prize
package designed to win some kind of a pulitzer or something,
you know, in their dreams. But the prize package was
this long report that really massaged the data to come
up with this narrative of police brutality in Cincinnati. So
(08:31):
this was like this incident was just kind of they're
just waiting for the one to come along where this
this whole thing can be.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Well, as a journalist, then you come from the responsible
factual reporting journalism era. You know, you don't draw conclusions,
you don't jump the gun. Now, editorial pages are different,
But when you're just doing general reporting, did you ever
look into and in your research doing behind the lines
the until it's sort of this insant, right, what the
(09:00):
motivations were for them doing that and painting such a
salacious headline and such a well a headline was guaranteed
to generate this kind of response.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, it was a lot of things that combined and
contributed to this, maybe a perfect storm of incendiary reporting
that contributed to the violence. I would say part of
it was ideological. The people that were being brought into
the newsroom had this attitude. A lot of it was
the Rodney King case, which everybody, let's face it, people
(09:37):
in the news business they like to follow the herd,
the herd animals, and if somebody gets a lot of
attention for a story. Then all over the nation we're
seeing these another Rodney King. Every confrontation between police and
a black suspect. All over the nation, you'd see headlines
another Rodney King, without anything that necessarily matched up. So
(10:00):
there's this whole kind of copycat.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It's called clickbait now online, but back then it sells newspapers,
Yes it did.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And there's that there's the whole prize. I get under
that in the book. I was looking back at it
this morning, and I get into that the whole prize,
like every newspaper was kind of shameless in their pursuit
of prizes, of whatever kind of prize they could get
from the National Conference of Investigative Reporters, or it might
(10:36):
be the Ohio Press Association, whatever it is. Pulletrer is
of course the moby Dick, that's the holy grail. But
it was kind of I thought it was kind of
shameful the way these packages were often designed with the
prize committee in mind and not the readers or not
the community.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
All right, we'll pause right now. On the twenty fourth
anniversary tomorrow of the Cincinni Riots kickoff, Peter Bronson was there,
and he saw it all and wrote the book about it.
Behind the lines, the un told the story of the Cincinnairiots,
which you can get of course on Amazon. Widely received
and big thumbs up on that book. Will continue in
a moment, but if you wake up with joint pain
and seven twenty year fIF five KRCD talk station by
(11:20):
the Timas with Peter Bronson, author, publisher, former editor of
the since An Inquirer and of course a man who
remembers all the facts behind the riots that started Cincinnati
on April ninth, and as Peter explained, really kicked off
and went ballistic when the Cincinnai Inquirer posted the headlines
(11:42):
that it was all you know, rogue cop, there'll be
a bad sho, trigger happy.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Police, brutality excessive for us.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
But that was before any of the information had been
looked into. There had been no internal investigation, and the.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Police chief was out of town, so they didn't even
have a press that was a sue striker right as
it was. And he was at a conference in Indianapolis,
and so he was shocked when he's driving home and
he and I think it was Vince Demasi was in
charge of me. He said, by the way.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Next door events.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, he said, by the way, chief, Oh
what so who was responding?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Who was responsible for addressing the public right after it happened,
because it's always you know, at least a lieutenant on
the scene, unless it's you know, really a chief level
respond That would have been the case in this one
had the chief Striker been in town exactly. So who
had the laboring ore of dealing with the press and
the immediate aftermath.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Well, it probably should have been Demassi who would have
checked in with Striker and said, how do you want
to handle this? And Striker said, I'll be back in
two hours, right, and we will hold a press conference.
They did discover that one of the keys to preventing
this kind of outbreak of violence is to get everything
out there in the public as.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Fast as possible. Amen, If you got a.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Guy that's involved in a confrontation with police, he said,
he was carrying a weapon. You want that weapon on
the evening news, the morning news, any place you can
show it, Okay, And that really does diffuse the whole
well violence, it does.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
For it explains the justification for the shooting. I had
a back and forth this morning. There was a recent
police shooting and Hamilton County prosecutor said the police were
okay on this one. The facts are a little questionable
and we're still sort of waiting for the full all
the information to come out. But you have to provide
(13:33):
the public with the information along the lines of, you know,
police shootings are justified much in the same way I
am entitled to defend myself with deadly force if I
am faced with the eminent apprehension of grievous bodily harm
or still death. And you know, for example, if I've
been through the process of trying to command a person
to you know, not resist and settle down, get on
your knees, put your hands on your head, they stop
(13:54):
doing that, and they get aggressive toward me. Of course,
face two now in modern policing is use your taser
if pop. And if they continue to be aggressive and
that doesn't work and they continue to come out with you,
most notably if they are armed, then you have a
legitimate justification for using deadly force. It all makes sense.
It's like put yourself in the same damn position, you
would have done it as well. Exactly now, in this
(14:16):
particular case, what specifically happened, I think it's worthy that
we go over ultimately what was concluded, happened, how the
confrontation started, and that what led to the deadly force.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Well, you had this kid who was wanted on I
think of his nineteen different warrants for mainly minor stuff
like being out past curfew. He was an nor failure
to appear again and again and again, so they spotted him.
The officer Officer Roach gets out of his squad car
(14:52):
and goes around into an alley because they're going to
head him off because they knew where he was running.
As soon as he saw the police, he ran and
the kid comes over around the corner and he's probably
as far as we can tell, the best explanation is
that he was pulling up his sweatpants or his jeans
and Roach thought he was going for a gun and
(15:12):
fired and shot him, killed him. Beyond that, what really
was another I don't know if you remember this, but
there was a period when the refrain or the battle
cry of the protesters riders was fifteen black men killed fifteen.
This went out nationally and was a major reason for
(15:35):
the boycotts that really crippled Cincinnati for a while. And
the fifteen black men killed. Was came directly from that
excessive force series in the Inquirer. And what I did
is I circled back to say, Okay, who are these fifteen?
I can read you just a couple examples here very shortly.
One of them was Daniel Williams, who flagged down Cincinnati
(15:57):
police officer Kathleen Conway in nineteen ninety eight, slugged her
in the face, and shot her four times in the
legs and abdomen with a three point fifty seven magnum
Holy is he carjacked a police car? Okay, it's one
of the fifteen victims of police brutality victim? Yeah, another one?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Is you spent on victim? Isn't it? Really?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You have Harry Price, who brutally raped a fifteen year
old girl in nineteen ninety five, beheaded her with an
axe and held off police for four hours, attacking them
with a steak knife after being hit repeatedly with mace
and stun guns. He was shot when he lunged at
the police with a knife.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
All right, Since in the interested time we go to
take a break, I mean, we get some more of those.
But what you're suggesting is in this reporting this fifteen
black Man. The narrative that was presented that they were
all innocent people who were not justifiably shot by the police. Yes,
and the two you just read there just really kind
of burst the bubble of that narrative, don't they.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, all but about three were not even questionable.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Let's pause, We'll bring back Peter bro seven twenty nine.
If you about KRCD talk station Brian Thomas with Peter Bronson,
author of many, many books, all worthy of reading. Just
go to Amazon dot com and you find Peter Bronson's
page and you can see how The Sin City and
the other wonderful books he's written, they're just they're just
really genuine page turners. And uh, that's one of the
(17:22):
things I love about it. I'll put you in a
category like a bill O'Reilly. Once you get going Peter,
you just can't put him down. And the fact that
it's so local, we all have a connection with it,
you know, Yeah, you were mentioned, you know, like, uh
the Junkyard Dog alligation. You know, Ken Lawson is in
your book, and I actually went to law school with Ken.
(17:43):
I think it was a year two ahead. I mean,
we know what a troubled problem in the difficult time
he had with his you know, the drug issues and
the I guess disbarment or whatever he went through. But
he was integrally involved in this and maybe they was
made a bit of a scene.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Oh my gosh. Yes, but yea of all places the
law and public safety. Yeah, many where it was completely
lawless in.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
A riot broke out, and a riot broke out, yeah,
behind the lines, the untold stories of the since in
riots the name of the book, So I imagine, you know,
and at least again, going back twenty four years, we
have evolved as a society, and I think in many
cases for the better, you know. You know, a light
(18:26):
has been exposed on some of the terrible problems that
we've had with police departments. Yes, there have been instances
of racism. Yes, there have been instances of brutality, and
I think so one of the positive steps we've gone
through in spite of the fact that maybe none of
this outrage in any given instances was justified. There was
a percolating general anger between members of certain communities and
(18:51):
the police department that was built in what we called
the unrest. Yeah, the unrest was there. Yes, everybody knew
somebody who had been pulled over for they always say
drive while black. You know, they're just hassling me and
shaking me down. You know, my buddy Rudy was, you know,
being clubbed over the police officer with PR twenty four
that I know that kind of thing existed. So when
(19:12):
a pretext comes along as inaccurate as the details were,
as you talk about in your book, and as you
pointed out this morning, it's like, Okay, the kindling's already there.
It just takes a spark. And even if the spark
is not the one that should have started it. And
I'm not going to justify political or violence in the streets,
and the extent of the reaction, you can kind of
(19:34):
understand on the level where it came from.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yes, And so much was done after during right after
the riots, we had the can Commission, which was Cincinnati Action.
Now it was largely ineffective. We had a federal consent
decree that came in for about a year or more.
We had federal monitors that were in the back pocket
of every police officer, looking over the shoulders of all
(19:59):
the police. It drove Striker crazy because I couldn't do
his job and really, I think what changed was the
police learned some things out of this, almost independent of
the ten or fifteen million or whatever it was the
city spent on all these consultants. A lot of these
consultants just came here to shake the city down, and
(20:19):
of course, yeah it was crazy.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Nothing's changed, nothing has changed. We need a non governmental
organization and here taking a look at this, right, you know, yeah,
I five hundred thousand dollars a year working for an NGO. Yes,
I'll be happy to do the work.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well, yeah, what city elected official isn't glad to shift
the blame and let somebody else take responsibility for something
by giving him a million dollars. So, but the police
learned some key lessons, which one of them we discussed
was getting the weapons or any kind of evidence out
there as soon as possible, get out in public, have
a press conference, tell everybody what happened as much as
(20:52):
you know, to correct these myths that are perpetrated by
the media in many cases. The next thing they found out,
which was very surprising, was that curfews work on the
fourth day of violence, when they were they had just
experienced the worst day of violence on the eleventh, with
people being dragged. An elderly couple was dragged out of
(21:14):
the car and beaten severely. We had this happening pretty
regularly in the streets, and the police and the mayor
declared a curfew and it worked, and everybody's like, wow,
that's kind of a surprise. People are burning down businesses,
smashing windows, throwing rocks at the police. But you tell
them that that, you know, eleven o'clock everything ends.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it worked. It's like parents know that
about young people. Most of the problems occurved sort of
after eleven pm. Start worrying about what your kids are
up to.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
But there were a lot of lessons like that that
were applied. But we went through a really bad period too,
where the police they they layered on so many layers
of review, of second guessing for the cop, they had
seven layers of oversight, so if they couldn't really do
anything and they kind of backed off. They called it
(22:07):
drive by policing, of course, and.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
We saw that a lot of the aftermath of Black
Lives Matter riots through it any worth it.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yes, it was kind of a self defunding of the
police without the defunding part, and it took about a
year year and a half before, Striker had a big
meeting with all the cops and said, look, do your job.
Get back on the street and do your job, and
I'll back you up one hundred percent. And I got
a credit Mark Mallory too as the new Mara. He
came in and said, look, I will play it fair,
(22:38):
i will look at the evidence and I'm not gonna
throw kerosene on any fires unless i know there's something there.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Well see, and I will call that responsible leadership because again,
moving over to the post, let's say George Floyd area,
you had politicians that were joining in the ridicule of
the police departments and not supporting them at all. And
you know what that does the morale within a police department.
(23:04):
You can't even get your elected officials on your side
when your job is to try to keep the community safe.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
And it was terrible at Cincinnati City Hall. I mean
we had the Law and Public Safety Committee on April
ninth was literally taken over. They were held hostage in
that room by protesters who filled the entire room, stood
on their desks, took their chairs from them, and they
were completely intimidated and not even allowed to leave the
(23:30):
room for a rest break. And what happened then is
that the city council just kind of adopted this whole
idea that it was all the police fault.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Capitulated.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
They capitulated it was a lot easier.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Well, and I must observe the other development we have
and you know, no Orwellian fanom I at least these
days we have body camera footage. Yes, and that has
burst the bubble of so many people who claim it
was police were in the wrong. It's the police who
did this. It's reduced the number of complaints that there
was police brutality. Come and no, here's the body camera things.
(24:04):
You go ahead and draw your own conclusions. Yeah, so
it's it's I think it's solved more problems for the
police department than it has well provided, you know, documented
proof that the police were in the wrong.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And there's been improvements in technology for non lethal force.
So the tasers were a huge breakthrough because that gave
them an option short of the club.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, you know, and when the taser showed up, the
PR twenty fours went the way of the Dodo exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
And so but the other interesting thing is that tasers
were absolutely considered like a horrible cruel and unusual tool
for the police by the media, and the police had
to weather that storm of all these bogus reports about
how many people were going to die. And this is
absolutely you know, it's a deadly jolt of electricity.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
And that's hilarious because all the all the cadets of
the police department go through they get tasered, that's they
get shot with a taser, so they know damn well
how it feels and what it does to you exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
And you don't hear of anybody getting killed or going
into the hospital.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
No, no, you know. Pause, we'll bring Peter back. Got
a couple more segments with him. I'm really enjoying this, teacher.
If you about case talk station taking a walk through
history not one of the high points in Greater Cincinnati's history,
but one's certainly worthy of exploring. In Peter Bronson's in studio,
his book Behind the Lines, the Untold Stories of the
(25:29):
Cincinnati Riots, and we're kind of walking through the practical
reality of what happened and then sort of paralleling it
with or comparing it to how the media just twisted
the narrative on it and actually fed the fuel for
these riots and fed the fuel for the fire. And
it's just been a real eye opener because you know, honestly, Peter,
(25:51):
it's been so long, and I'm not quite sure how
close closely connected I was with the facts at the
time it was going on. But which count older year
was this again? Two thousand and one, two thousand and one, Yeah,
I had been back in town. We came back in
ninety eight from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
And everything that happened, remember, is completely eclipsed by the
World Trade Center attack, which followed shortly thereafter. So this
was in April, and that happens in September. So for Cincinnati,
this was still huge, and the effects lingered for about
two or three years. I don't know if you were
here then, but we had a thriving entertainment district on
(26:32):
Main Street that was pretty much just died from the
boycotts and from the violence, and that kind of went away.
Now it's kind of over it in OTR it's but
I mean a lot of cool places like Neons were there,
and yeah, all kinds of places. But you know, the city,
(26:52):
a lot of restaurants failed. There was really terrible boycotts
and a lot of confrontations and nasty. The whole city
was just in a terrible kind of hostile, divided climate.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
This you know, go back to go back to Watts,
and go back to you know, Rodney King, and it
seems to have like a cyclical effect. Yes, I don't
know if there's any connection with the political environment generally
speaking and this type of rioting behavior happening, because you know,
you could see with anti fo now they had their
own separate issues, but a lot of fires and looting
(27:32):
and destruction and anti police activity.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I think, same thing, and just burning police stations. It's
just another escalation on this ladder that we saw and
it's pretty much the same things that happened in Cincinnati,
but in a little bit more expanded scale, and it
keeps getting Worrise and Morris and I really, because I'm
in the media, maybe yeah, Well, you know the guy
(27:56):
who has a hammer looks at everything like a nail,
maybe that's me. But I think the media, with many
good intentions perhaps of trying to unite the country, has
done more to divide us on the issues of race
than anyone.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Well again, it goes back to clickbait, you know, unification
uniting speaking a message of you know, enjoying and living
under collectively in peace, in the name of freedom and
liberty and respecting your neighbors. You know, that doesn't that
doesn't get clicks. It doesn't get people buying you know, murder, mayhem, ray, pestilens, police, brutality, brutality.
(28:34):
You know you're going to buy a paper. You know,
It's like you can go back to the movies in
the nineteen thirties and forties, headlines headlines murder of so
and so, and that of course is why people would
buy papers. Absolutely so. Yeah, well, human nature is what
it is. It is, at least I think I have.
I'm as much of as much problems as many problems
(28:55):
rather are created by the Internet. And this way that
the Internet has a being to reach so many people
in such short period of time that you can get
a whole bunch of idiots and don't know what they're
talking about, showing up on a Saturday to protest cutting
out ridiculous government ways and claiming that medicaid is somehow
being gutted, when in fact the polar opposite is happening.
(29:15):
That's a downside. An upside is though that you and
I actually can go out into the world and get
a broader view and more opinions and a broader swath
of how the information is being presented, which if you're
smart enough, you'll get a clear picture of what reality is. Well.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
I think you make a great point. And social media
and the online websites have really it's like giving the
most irresponsible people in the media back in two thousand
and one an amplifier and a bull horn. Yeah, and
now they can spread it even faster with less research,
(29:57):
less reporting, less.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Evidence, less accountability.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
And it's like you said, it's clickbase. So if they
have to correct if the next day, who cares? Because
they got the income that they can show advertisers from
those million clicks.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Let's puzzle worring Peter back for one more. I'll be
right back after these brief words here fifty five kerc
Detak Station and I have been thoroughly enjoying his look
back in history with Peter Bronson regarding the riots which
took place tomorrow twenty four years April ninth to kick
(30:31):
off of the riots here in the Cincinnati if you
want to read about it. He wrote the book along
a while back two thousand and six was the published
date behind the lines, the untold story of the Cincinnati riots,
And you brought up some great elements about this that
I'm sure so many people have forgotten, but all the
parallels that we can draw with other almost identical situations.
(30:52):
To me, it's been rather fascinating connecting the dots and
showing the parallels, and most notably the idea that quite
often these things are if not only tiny bit baked,
but half baked at best, when people start flying off
the handle and drawing conclusions and engaging in outright acts
of destruction and violence, when they themselves. While they may
(31:14):
be angry at this system, or they may be angry
at you know, law enforcement generally, in these particulars, many
of these circumstances, the anger isn't justified.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
No, as you pointed out, there may be a background
climate that is contributing to this, but I think by now,
by now, after we've been through this so many times,
we've seen this rodeo before, that climate, especially in police practices,
is for all intents and purposes gone. Will there be exceptions,
(31:46):
Oh sure, of course, ye. That's human nature, that's life.
But the idea that there is a systemic racism and
a police department or that police are out there looking
for excuses to be racist and kill or arrest or
beat people because of their ethnicity. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I think it is too. And you know, there was
a guy named Corey that called in and he said
he just through these broadbrush conclusions cops want to be
costs because they want to go out and shoot somebody,
that they're all trigger happy. And I'm listening to this
thinking about my sister, who, after twenty five years, you know,
served since I police department and her community. Well, she
had stories that she used to talk about being spit on, punched,
(32:29):
having to get you know, wrestle people to the ground,
getting abused herbally and orally all and never once did
she had to pull her firearmar to the best of
my knowledge, I know she never had to shoot anybody.
But he was being insistent upon this, and so I looked.
I looked up the fun fact. In twenty twenty four,
in the United States, they were over one point two
eight million sworn law enforcement officers, with about one hundred
(32:51):
and thirty seven thousand of them working for federal agencies
and the rest at state, local levels, and I see
you know, of course there are going to be jerks
in there, yea, just like the general populations. That's why
in prison, that's why they find murderers and rapists are
the vast majority of people murders and rapists. Do we
have this collective mindset that we're all, you know, justifying
(33:14):
committing these horrific acts. No, they're always going to be
a few bad apples. But going back to the social
media part, they do make the headlines. Yes, And when
you have this mentality of the George Floyd mentality, this
particular mentality what comes from the riots and people you know,
immediately using it as a vehicle to attack the entire
(33:36):
police department, No one thinks contextually about it.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
It's sensationalism has been monetized. It has That's what we
look at in our media today at all levels. I'm
talking about network news, cable news, everything, especially social media
and online platforms. The more sensationalists, the more readers click it,
the more money you make.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Well listeners, uh, you can still get a copy behind
the lines, the untold stories of the Cincinna riots. Also
the man who saves Cincinnati promised Land, how the Midwest
was one forbidden fruit, sin City, the Underworld, and the
supper Club Inferno not in our town. The Queen City
versus The King of Smut, which of course talks about
(34:21):
hustler publisher Larry Flint and the whole I mean, you
even did the Cincinnati Art Museum Maplethorpe thing in that one.
It's all great stuff. Peter writes a hell of a book.
They're all there. You can get him at Chili Dogpress
dot com. That's his publishing company. So I recommend you
buy him from there, as opposed to getting him through
wherever you might get him, like Amazon. But I can't
(34:42):
recommend him enough. He writes a terrific book and a
great storyteller. You are, and you want to I don't
want you to give it up. And if you don't
want to say anything, I know you're working on a
new book.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yes I am, and I won't say anything.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Okay, I won't give it up then, But you know, suspicious,
you know this is going to be a fascinating book.
You got. I don't want to. I can't tease it
too much because I'll give away the subject matter. But
another really locally based story, and since we brought up
Ken Lawson earlier in all his troubles, Oh gosh, man,
he had a really serious problem going on at the
time of these riots.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Absolutely, he's cleaned himself up. He has. The last time
I talked to him, he was clean, had been for
a long time. He was in Hawaii and he was practicing.
He was teaching at the University of Hawaii, teaching legal ethics, which.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
It just sounds hilarious nas irony, But the off air
you mentioned, I think it is we're pointing out since
we're closing out the segment here. Ken was one of
the people at that law and Public safety meeting during
the riot that he was.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
One of the instigators along with the Reverend Damon Lynch.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
He admitted to you at that time that he was, Oh.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, he was deep into his opioid addiction at that
time and doing all all kinds of terribly unethical and
illegal things to keep feeding his habit. When you watch
the tape of that was I went back when I
researched the book, Uh yeah, his behavior definitely backs that
up about that, and he kept he knew better, and
(36:17):
we now know that he did know better that the
police couldn't release what he kept telling them he wanted
to get, and they couldn't do it. It was it was
just not available or it was not legally proper, and
so he kind of exploited the situation too to cause
a lot of violence. And that's where the riot really
(36:38):
erupted right there. In law and public safety.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
What a shame anyway, read about in Peter's book, Peter,
It's been a real pleasure. I can't think you if
we're coming to the studio and talk always with pleasure.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
It's always pleasure, man, You always enjoyed this.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
You're always welcome here. Man. We'll have something else to
talk about real soon. I am certain. Seven to fifty
five come up with seven fifty six Inside Scoop London
Bureau Chief Oliver Lane returns to the program. He's learning
to power Youse semon Art later this evening seven for
that what's going on in Europe and what it means
for us? Daniel Davis deep dive at the bottom of
the next hour plus. Kesey cares with the Fabulous Cancer
Doctors from OHC Today Doctor Joseph Shaughnessy in studio to
(37:12):
talk about head and neck cancer stick around,
Seven oh five at fifty five ker CD talk Station.
A very happy Tuesday. I hope you're as happy as
I am. And it's Tuesday because Peter Bronson is in studio.
Of course, author, he is a publisher. Chili Dog Press
dot COM's where you find his publishing company, and maybe
an opportunity to get your book if you're someone in
the listening audience that's interested in publishing. Does a wonderful job.
(00:36):
He's also a terrific author, former columnist for the Cincinnion
Inquiry and an award winning columnist back when the editorial
page used to win awards. Things have changed over at
the Inquire a little bit. I'm going to miss them
too much. But Peter Bronson, you always did such a
wonderful job. And I just got done asking you. Your
very very first book was a compilation of your columns.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yes, that was called Cincinnati for Peace for Pete's Yeah,
and then you segued over and actually your first book book,
and it's a book.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's work of nonfiction, of course, behind the lines the
untold stories plural of the Cincinnati Riots, and believe it
or not, it has been twenty four years. Tomorrow's the
anniversary of the outset of the Cincinnati riots. It took place,
and you know, maybe people don't remember these specific facts,
and I will fall into that category. I remember sort
(01:30):
of about them when they happened. It led to that
consent decree that got worked down. Yeah, yeah, we'll get
some details.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Consultants that flew in like vultures to feed on Cincinnati.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah yeah, But what kicked it off? What was the
impetus for all this? Like George Floyd. Everybody remembers George
Floyd and M and BLM and defund the police and everything.
This was sort of a precursor to that type of reaction.
It was.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
This was the first major incident of its in ten
years after the Rodney King incident, which goes back ten
years previously, right, So when you go all the way
back to that, you can look at this pattern that occurred.
And I have to say compliments to you for bringing
this topic up again, because I would wager that very few,
(02:17):
if any of the other media platforms in this city
will even mention it today that this is all these
twenty four years since this happened, and it was a
huge cataclysmic event in the history of our city.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Well, that's why it's worthy of bringing up. I mean,
did we learn lessons? Are things better now? I mean,
it's a point of a moment of reflection. That's why
you think about anniversaryes. What's theal line. If you don't
learn from it, you repete it. So well. I just
I remember reading about and my dad telling me stories
about the sixties riots, the Watts riots. Yeah, and the
(02:51):
National Guard had to be parked out in front of Detroit.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
They had tanks rolling down the streets of Detroit nineteen
sixty seven, and they had a fifty caliber machine guns
mounted on the tops of those tanks that were firing
at rooftops in Detroit because there were snipers up there
trying to kill the National Guard and the police.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
See and can you believe that these are the facts
that I was not aware of. Dad told me a
story about locally, when these studios used to be at
nineteen or six Highland Avenue, that they had to have
a National Guard vehicle posted out there because they were
concerned about maybe either studio is getting stormed or something
along those lines. Because the television studios as well as
the radio studios were all into that, you know, WKRC Moniker.
(03:33):
So things are different now than they were then, but
that's the one story remember back then. But we felt
the effects of that eras riots as well.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It was really bad in Avondale in sixty seven, But
when you look at what happened in two thousand and
one was certainly not as bad as those sixty seven riots.
But it is such a template of what has occurred
in all these cities since. What occurred in the Rodney kincase,
what occurred and Ferguson, Missouri, what occurred in Baltimore with
(04:02):
fed Freddie Gray, what occurred with as you point, George Floyd,
but so many other cases. All of these patterns fit
right back to Cincinnati in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
How about that? And I think about somebody's gonna say
scream with the radio and say, Thomas, you're full of it.
But there seemed to have been in some cases, some
of these cases, a gross mischaracterization of what happened and
people's reaction immediately blaming the police, when you know, police
(04:35):
were following the way they had been trained, and they
didn't do anything necessarily untoward, but it led to bad outcomes,
you know, the you know, I mean you can't defend
them literally beating the crap out of Rodney King. If
you watch that video, it's like, I mean, come on.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, except in my research, I was really surprised to
find this in the Rodney King incident that when the
jurors were shown the entire tape, ah, then they came
up with a verdict that kicked off the riots. So
the tape that we saw on television was heavily edited
to only show the police responding to him and his attacks.
(05:16):
He refused to be subdued. The actual transcript of what
happened is shocking. I mean, they tried everything. Now, did
they go too far? Of course, yes they did. Police
are not inhuman when their adrenaline gets pumping after a
police chase, right, they're just like you and me. They're
capable of all kinds of.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Things, especially if their safety is in jeopardy because the
behavior of the purp in this particular tax. Yeah, if
he's attacked them, or you know, if they use a taser,
if I don't even know if there's existed back then,
but if the taser doesn't work and the guy continues
to become aggressive.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
And they tried tasers, they tried everything was short of
firing their revolvers and killing him.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, exactly, and.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
They did not do that. Now, if you mentioned that,
the first and the initial reactions are often sort of
a shoot ready aim, especially in the media, and this
was especially true in Cincinnati. Now, the actual shooting occurred
on April seventh. On April eighth, a young black men
had been shot by a police officer. On April eighth,
(06:18):
the headlines in the Cincinnati Enquirer and in the media
throughout Cincinnati, but mainly in the Inquirer, included the words
police brutality, no facts are in Remember police brutality, trigger
happy and excessive force. Yeah, I mean, this was absolutely
just setting the table. And it reminded me when I
was coming in this morning, Brian, that today our judgment,
(06:43):
I respect, our esteem of the media is at a
record low. It's at eleven percent set. But in these days,
bringing up the idea that the media might be wrong,
that they might be pushing an agenda was heresy. This
was immediately suppressed or smothered by any platform of media
because they just thought anybody would suggest bias was a
(07:03):
tinfoil hat kook.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Right, And now we sort of default to that. Well,
this is obvious media bias that we waited around and
find out what the real facts are down the road. Okay,
so yeah, you have to remember context is everything. This
is twenty four years ago, yes, and this is I
guess that's before social media as well, very much.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
So you didn't have the drivers on this. One of
the main drivers was WDBZ. If you remember the Black
Ross Love station that was in Avondale, I think, yeah.
I used to go up there for interviews from time
to time and it was a wild, wild trip. But
that's another story. But they just poured kerosene on this
(07:47):
around the clock. Remember all of CPS schools were out
for spring break, so there are all these kids hanging
around with nothing to do, and the radio just kept
pouring out this police brutality story. How they're out there
killing young black men. Cincinnati police are hunting down and
killing young black men. This is the story they were
broadcasting constantly, and our paper that where I was working
(08:09):
at the Inquirer, had done this. It was a prize
package designed to win some kind of a pulitzer or something,
you know, in their dreams. But the prize package was
this long report that really massaged the data to come
up with this narrative of police brutality in Cincinnati. So
(08:31):
this was like this incident was just kind of they're
just waiting for the one to come along where this
this whole thing can be.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Well, as a journalist, then you come from the responsible
factual reporting journalism era. You know, you don't draw conclusions,
you don't jump the gun. Now, editorial pages are different,
But when you're just doing general reporting, did you ever
look into and in your research doing behind the lines
the until it's sort of this insant, right, what the
(09:00):
motivations were for them doing that and painting such a
salacious headline and such a well a headline was guaranteed
to generate this kind of response.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, it was a lot of things that combined and
contributed to this, maybe a perfect storm of incendiary reporting
that contributed to the violence. I would say part of
it was ideological. The people that were being brought into
the newsroom had this attitude. A lot of it was
the Rodney King case, which everybody, let's face it, people
(09:37):
in the news business they like to follow the herd,
the herd animals, and if somebody gets a lot of
attention for a story. Then all over the nation we're
seeing these another Rodney King. Every confrontation between police and
a black suspect. All over the nation, you'd see headlines
another Rodney King, without anything that necessarily matched up. So
(10:00):
there's this whole kind of copycat.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It's called clickbait now online, but back then it sells newspapers,
Yes it did.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And there's that there's the whole prize. I get under
that in the book. I was looking back at it
this morning, and I get into that the whole prize,
like every newspaper was kind of shameless in their pursuit
of prizes, of whatever kind of prize they could get
from the National Conference of Investigative Reporters, or it might
(10:36):
be the Ohio Press Association, whatever it is. Pulletrer is
of course the moby Dick, that's the holy grail. But
it was kind of I thought it was kind of
shameful the way these packages were often designed with the
prize committee in mind and not the readers or not
the community.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
All right, we'll pause right now. On the twenty fourth
anniversary tomorrow of the Cincinni Riots kickoff, Peter Bronson was there,
and he saw it all and wrote the book about it.
Behind the lines, the un told the story of the Cincinnairiots,
which you can get of course on Amazon. Widely received
and big thumbs up on that book. Will continue in
a moment, but if you wake up with joint pain
and seven twenty year fIF five KRCD talk station by
(11:20):
the Timas with Peter Bronson, author, publisher, former editor of
the since An Inquirer and of course a man who
remembers all the facts behind the riots that started Cincinnati
on April ninth, and as Peter explained, really kicked off
and went ballistic when the Cincinnai Inquirer posted the headlines
(11:42):
that it was all you know, rogue cop, there'll be
a bad sho, trigger happy.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Police, brutality excessive for us.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
But that was before any of the information had been
looked into. There had been no internal investigation, and the.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Police chief was out of town, so they didn't even
have a press that was a sue striker right as
it was. And he was at a conference in Indianapolis,
and so he was shocked when he's driving home and
he and I think it was Vince Demasi was in
charge of me. He said, by the way.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Next door events.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, he said, by the way, chief, Oh
what so who was responding?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Who was responsible for addressing the public right after it happened,
because it's always you know, at least a lieutenant on
the scene, unless it's you know, really a chief level
respond That would have been the case in this one
had the chief Striker been in town exactly. So who
had the laboring ore of dealing with the press and
the immediate aftermath.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Well, it probably should have been Demassi who would have
checked in with Striker and said, how do you want
to handle this? And Striker said, I'll be back in
two hours, right, and we will hold a press conference.
They did discover that one of the keys to preventing
this kind of outbreak of violence is to get everything
out there in the public as.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Fast as possible. Amen, If you got a.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Guy that's involved in a confrontation with police, he said,
he was carrying a weapon. You want that weapon on
the evening news, the morning news, any place you can
show it, Okay, And that really does diffuse the whole
well violence, it does.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
For it explains the justification for the shooting. I had
a back and forth this morning. There was a recent
police shooting and Hamilton County prosecutor said the police were
okay on this one. The facts are a little questionable
and we're still sort of waiting for the full all
the information to come out. But you have to provide
(13:33):
the public with the information along the lines of, you know,
police shootings are justified much in the same way I
am entitled to defend myself with deadly force if I
am faced with the eminent apprehension of grievous bodily harm
or still death. And you know, for example, if I've
been through the process of trying to command a person
to you know, not resist and settle down, get on
your knees, put your hands on your head, they stop
(13:54):
doing that, and they get aggressive toward me. Of course,
face two now in modern policing is use your taser
if pop. And if they continue to be aggressive and
that doesn't work and they continue to come out with you,
most notably if they are armed, then you have a
legitimate justification for using deadly force. It all makes sense.
It's like put yourself in the same damn position, you
would have done it as well. Exactly now, in this
(14:16):
particular case, what specifically happened, I think it's worthy that
we go over ultimately what was concluded, happened, how the
confrontation started, and that what led to the deadly force.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Well, you had this kid who was wanted on I
think of his nineteen different warrants for mainly minor stuff
like being out past curfew. He was an nor failure
to appear again and again and again, so they spotted him.
The officer Officer Roach gets out of his squad car
(14:52):
and goes around into an alley because they're going to
head him off because they knew where he was running.
As soon as he saw the police, he ran and
the kid comes over around the corner and he's probably
as far as we can tell, the best explanation is
that he was pulling up his sweatpants or his jeans
and Roach thought he was going for a gun and
(15:12):
fired and shot him, killed him. Beyond that, what really
was another I don't know if you remember this, but
there was a period when the refrain or the battle
cry of the protesters riders was fifteen black men killed fifteen.
This went out nationally and was a major reason for
(15:35):
the boycotts that really crippled Cincinnati for a while. And
the fifteen black men killed. Was came directly from that
excessive force series in the Inquirer. And what I did
is I circled back to say, Okay, who are these fifteen?
I can read you just a couple examples here very shortly.
One of them was Daniel Williams, who flagged down Cincinnati
(15:57):
police officer Kathleen Conway in nineteen ninety eight, slugged her
in the face, and shot her four times in the
legs and abdomen with a three point fifty seven magnum
Holy is he carjacked a police car? Okay, it's one
of the fifteen victims of police brutality victim? Yeah, another one?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Is you spent on victim? Isn't it? Really?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You have Harry Price, who brutally raped a fifteen year
old girl in nineteen ninety five, beheaded her with an
axe and held off police for four hours, attacking them
with a steak knife after being hit repeatedly with mace
and stun guns. He was shot when he lunged at
the police with a knife.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
All right, Since in the interested time we go to
take a break, I mean, we get some more of those.
But what you're suggesting is in this reporting this fifteen
black Man. The narrative that was presented that they were
all innocent people who were not justifiably shot by the police. Yes,
and the two you just read there just really kind
of burst the bubble of that narrative, don't they.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, all but about three were not even questionable.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Let's pause, We'll bring back Peter bro seven twenty nine.
If you about KRCD talk station Brian Thomas with Peter Bronson,
author of many, many books, all worthy of reading. Just
go to Amazon dot com and you find Peter Bronson's
page and you can see how The Sin City and
the other wonderful books he's written, they're just they're just
really genuine page turners. And uh, that's one of the
(17:22):
things I love about it. I'll put you in a
category like a bill O'Reilly. Once you get going Peter,
you just can't put him down. And the fact that
it's so local, we all have a connection with it,
you know, Yeah, you were mentioned, you know, like, uh
the Junkyard Dog alligation. You know, Ken Lawson is in
your book, and I actually went to law school with Ken.
(17:43):
I think it was a year two ahead. I mean,
we know what a troubled problem in the difficult time
he had with his you know, the drug issues and
the I guess disbarment or whatever he went through. But
he was integrally involved in this and maybe they was
made a bit of a scene.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Oh my gosh. Yes, but yea of all places the
law and public safety. Yeah, many where it was completely
lawless in.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
A riot broke out, and a riot broke out, yeah,
behind the lines, the untold stories of the since in
riots the name of the book, So I imagine, you know,
and at least again, going back twenty four years, we
have evolved as a society, and I think in many
cases for the better, you know. You know, a light
(18:26):
has been exposed on some of the terrible problems that
we've had with police departments. Yes, there have been instances
of racism. Yes, there have been instances of brutality, and
I think so one of the positive steps we've gone
through in spite of the fact that maybe none of
this outrage in any given instances was justified. There was
a percolating general anger between members of certain communities and
(18:51):
the police department that was built in what we called
the unrest. Yeah, the unrest was there. Yes, everybody knew
somebody who had been pulled over for they always say
drive while black. You know, they're just hassling me and
shaking me down. You know, my buddy Rudy was, you know,
being clubbed over the police officer with PR twenty four
that I know that kind of thing existed. So when
(19:12):
a pretext comes along as inaccurate as the details were,
as you talk about in your book, and as you
pointed out this morning, it's like, Okay, the kindling's already there.
It just takes a spark. And even if the spark
is not the one that should have started it. And
I'm not going to justify political or violence in the streets,
and the extent of the reaction, you can kind of
(19:34):
understand on the level where it came from.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yes, And so much was done after during right after
the riots, we had the can Commission, which was Cincinnati Action.
Now it was largely ineffective. We had a federal consent
decree that came in for about a year or more.
We had federal monitors that were in the back pocket
of every police officer, looking over the shoulders of all
(19:59):
the police. It drove Striker crazy because I couldn't do
his job and really, I think what changed was the
police learned some things out of this, almost independent of
the ten or fifteen million or whatever it was the
city spent on all these consultants. A lot of these
consultants just came here to shake the city down, and
(20:19):
of course, yeah it was crazy.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Nothing's changed, nothing has changed. We need a non governmental
organization and here taking a look at this, right, you know, yeah,
I five hundred thousand dollars a year working for an NGO. Yes,
I'll be happy to do the work.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well, yeah, what city elected official isn't glad to shift
the blame and let somebody else take responsibility for something
by giving him a million dollars. So, but the police
learned some key lessons, which one of them we discussed
was getting the weapons or any kind of evidence out
there as soon as possible, get out in public, have
a press conference, tell everybody what happened as much as
(20:52):
you know, to correct these myths that are perpetrated by
the media in many cases. The next thing they found out,
which was very surprising, was that curfews work on the
fourth day of violence, when they were they had just
experienced the worst day of violence on the eleventh, with
people being dragged. An elderly couple was dragged out of
(21:14):
the car and beaten severely. We had this happening pretty
regularly in the streets, and the police and the mayor
declared a curfew and it worked, and everybody's like, wow,
that's kind of a surprise. People are burning down businesses,
smashing windows, throwing rocks at the police. But you tell
them that that, you know, eleven o'clock everything ends.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it worked. It's like parents know that
about young people. Most of the problems occurved sort of
after eleven pm. Start worrying about what your kids are
up to.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
But there were a lot of lessons like that that
were applied. But we went through a really bad period too,
where the police they they layered on so many layers
of review, of second guessing for the cop, they had
seven layers of oversight, so if they couldn't really do
anything and they kind of backed off. They called it
(22:07):
drive by policing, of course, and.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
We saw that a lot of the aftermath of Black
Lives Matter riots through it any worth it.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yes, it was kind of a self defunding of the
police without the defunding part, and it took about a
year year and a half before, Striker had a big
meeting with all the cops and said, look, do your job.
Get back on the street and do your job, and
I'll back you up one hundred percent. And I got
a credit Mark Mallory too as the new Mara. He
came in and said, look, I will play it fair,
(22:38):
i will look at the evidence and I'm not gonna
throw kerosene on any fires unless i know there's something there.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Well see, and I will call that responsible leadership because again,
moving over to the post, let's say George Floyd area,
you had politicians that were joining in the ridicule of
the police departments and not supporting them at all. And
you know what that does the morale within a police department.
(23:04):
You can't even get your elected officials on your side
when your job is to try to keep the community safe.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
And it was terrible at Cincinnati City Hall. I mean
we had the Law and Public Safety Committee on April
ninth was literally taken over. They were held hostage in
that room by protesters who filled the entire room, stood
on their desks, took their chairs from them, and they
were completely intimidated and not even allowed to leave the
(23:30):
room for a rest break. And what happened then is
that the city council just kind of adopted this whole
idea that it was all the police fault.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Capitulated.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
They capitulated it was a lot easier.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Well, and I must observe the other development we have
and you know, no Orwellian fanom I at least these
days we have body camera footage. Yes, and that has
burst the bubble of so many people who claim it
was police were in the wrong. It's the police who
did this. It's reduced the number of complaints that there
was police brutality. Come and no, here's the body camera things.
(24:04):
You go ahead and draw your own conclusions. Yeah, so
it's it's I think it's solved more problems for the
police department than it has well provided, you know, documented
proof that the police were in the wrong.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And there's been improvements in technology for non lethal force.
So the tasers were a huge breakthrough because that gave
them an option short of the club.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, you know, and when the taser showed up, the
PR twenty fours went the way of the Dodo exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
And so but the other interesting thing is that tasers
were absolutely considered like a horrible cruel and unusual tool
for the police by the media, and the police had
to weather that storm of all these bogus reports about
how many people were going to die. And this is
absolutely you know, it's a deadly jolt of electricity.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
And that's hilarious because all the all the cadets of
the police department go through they get tasered, that's they
get shot with a taser, so they know damn well
how it feels and what it does to you exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
And you don't hear of anybody getting killed or going
into the hospital.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
No, no, you know. Pause, we'll bring Peter back. Got
a couple more segments with him. I'm really enjoying this, teacher.
If you about case talk station taking a walk through
history not one of the high points in Greater Cincinnati's history,
but one's certainly worthy of exploring. In Peter Bronson's in studio,
his book Behind the Lines, the Untold Stories of the
(25:29):
Cincinnati Riots, and we're kind of walking through the practical
reality of what happened and then sort of paralleling it
with or comparing it to how the media just twisted
the narrative on it and actually fed the fuel for
these riots and fed the fuel for the fire. And
it's just been a real eye opener because you know, honestly, Peter,
(25:51):
it's been so long, and I'm not quite sure how
close closely connected I was with the facts at the
time it was going on. But which count older year
was this again? Two thousand and one, two thousand and one, Yeah,
I had been back in town. We came back in
ninety eight from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
And everything that happened, remember, is completely eclipsed by the
World Trade Center attack, which followed shortly thereafter. So this
was in April, and that happens in September. So for Cincinnati,
this was still huge, and the effects lingered for about
two or three years. I don't know if you were
here then, but we had a thriving entertainment district on
(26:32):
Main Street that was pretty much just died from the
boycotts and from the violence, and that kind of went away.
Now it's kind of over it in OTR it's but
I mean a lot of cool places like Neons were there,
and yeah, all kinds of places. But you know, the city,
(26:52):
a lot of restaurants failed. There was really terrible boycotts
and a lot of confrontations and nasty. The whole city
was just in a terrible kind of hostile, divided climate.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
This you know, go back to go back to Watts,
and go back to you know, Rodney King, and it
seems to have like a cyclical effect. Yes, I don't
know if there's any connection with the political environment generally
speaking and this type of rioting behavior happening, because you know,
you could see with anti fo now they had their
own separate issues, but a lot of fires and looting
(27:32):
and destruction and anti police activity.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I think, same thing, and just burning police stations. It's
just another escalation on this ladder that we saw and
it's pretty much the same things that happened in Cincinnati,
but in a little bit more expanded scale, and it
keeps getting Worrise and Morris and I really, because I'm
in the media, maybe yeah, Well, you know the guy
(27:56):
who has a hammer looks at everything like a nail,
maybe that's me. But I think the media, with many
good intentions perhaps of trying to unite the country, has
done more to divide us on the issues of race
than anyone.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Well again, it goes back to clickbait, you know, unification
uniting speaking a message of you know, enjoying and living
under collectively in peace, in the name of freedom and
liberty and respecting your neighbors. You know, that doesn't that
doesn't get clicks. It doesn't get people buying you know, murder, mayhem, ray, pestilens, police, brutality, brutality.
(28:34):
You know you're going to buy a paper. You know,
It's like you can go back to the movies in
the nineteen thirties and forties, headlines headlines murder of so
and so, and that of course is why people would
buy papers. Absolutely so. Yeah, well, human nature is what
it is. It is, at least I think I have.
I'm as much of as much problems as many problems
(28:55):
rather are created by the Internet. And this way that
the Internet has a being to reach so many people
in such short period of time that you can get
a whole bunch of idiots and don't know what they're
talking about, showing up on a Saturday to protest cutting
out ridiculous government ways and claiming that medicaid is somehow
being gutted, when in fact the polar opposite is happening.
(29:15):
That's a downside. An upside is though that you and
I actually can go out into the world and get
a broader view and more opinions and a broader swath
of how the information is being presented, which if you're
smart enough, you'll get a clear picture of what reality is. Well.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
I think you make a great point. And social media
and the online websites have really it's like giving the
most irresponsible people in the media back in two thousand
and one an amplifier and a bull horn. Yeah, and
now they can spread it even faster with less research,
(29:57):
less reporting, less.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Evidence, less accountability.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
And it's like you said, it's clickbase. So if they
have to correct if the next day, who cares? Because
they got the income that they can show advertisers from
those million clicks.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Let's puzzle worring Peter back for one more. I'll be
right back after these brief words here fifty five kerc
Detak Station and I have been thoroughly enjoying his look
back in history with Peter Bronson regarding the riots which
took place tomorrow twenty four years April ninth to kick
(30:31):
off of the riots here in the Cincinnati if you
want to read about it. He wrote the book along
a while back two thousand and six was the published
date behind the lines, the untold story of the Cincinnati riots,
And you brought up some great elements about this that
I'm sure so many people have forgotten, but all the
parallels that we can draw with other almost identical situations.
(30:52):
To me, it's been rather fascinating connecting the dots and
showing the parallels, and most notably the idea that quite
often these things are if not only tiny bit baked,
but half baked at best, when people start flying off
the handle and drawing conclusions and engaging in outright acts
of destruction and violence, when they themselves. While they may
(31:14):
be angry at this system, or they may be angry
at you know, law enforcement generally, in these particulars, many
of these circumstances, the anger isn't justified.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
No, as you pointed out, there may be a background
climate that is contributing to this, but I think by now,
by now, after we've been through this so many times,
we've seen this rodeo before, that climate, especially in police practices,
is for all intents and purposes gone. Will there be exceptions,
(31:46):
Oh sure, of course, ye. That's human nature, that's life.
But the idea that there is a systemic racism and
a police department or that police are out there looking
for excuses to be racist and kill or arrest or
beat people because of their ethnicity. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I think it is too. And you know, there was
a guy named Corey that called in and he said
he just through these broadbrush conclusions cops want to be
costs because they want to go out and shoot somebody,
that they're all trigger happy. And I'm listening to this
thinking about my sister, who, after twenty five years, you know,
served since I police department and her community. Well, she
had stories that she used to talk about being spit on, punched,
(32:29):
having to get you know, wrestle people to the ground,
getting abused herbally and orally all and never once did
she had to pull her firearmar to the best of
my knowledge, I know she never had to shoot anybody.
But he was being insistent upon this, and so I looked.
I looked up the fun fact. In twenty twenty four,
in the United States, they were over one point two
eight million sworn law enforcement officers, with about one hundred
(32:51):
and thirty seven thousand of them working for federal agencies
and the rest at state, local levels, and I see
you know, of course there are going to be jerks
in there, yea, just like the general populations. That's why
in prison, that's why they find murderers and rapists are
the vast majority of people murders and rapists. Do we
have this collective mindset that we're all, you know, justifying
(33:14):
committing these horrific acts. No, they're always going to be
a few bad apples. But going back to the social
media part, they do make the headlines. Yes, And when
you have this mentality of the George Floyd mentality, this
particular mentality what comes from the riots and people you know,
immediately using it as a vehicle to attack the entire
(33:36):
police department, No one thinks contextually about it.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
It's sensationalism has been monetized. It has That's what we
look at in our media today at all levels. I'm
talking about network news, cable news, everything, especially social media
and online platforms. The more sensationalists, the more readers click it,
the more money you make.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Well listeners, uh, you can still get a copy behind
the lines, the untold stories of the Cincinna riots. Also
the man who saves Cincinnati promised Land, how the Midwest
was one forbidden fruit, sin City, the Underworld, and the
supper Club Inferno not in our town. The Queen City
versus The King of Smut, which of course talks about
(34:21):
hustler publisher Larry Flint and the whole I mean, you
even did the Cincinnati Art Museum Maplethorpe thing in that one.
It's all great stuff. Peter writes a hell of a book.
They're all there. You can get him at Chili Dogpress
dot com. That's his publishing company. So I recommend you
buy him from there, as opposed to getting him through
wherever you might get him, like Amazon. But I can't
(34:42):
recommend him enough. He writes a terrific book and a
great storyteller. You are, and you want to I don't
want you to give it up. And if you don't
want to say anything, I know you're working on a
new book.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yes I am, and I won't say anything.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Okay, I won't give it up then, But you know, suspicious,
you know this is going to be a fascinating book.
You got. I don't want to. I can't tease it
too much because I'll give away the subject matter. But
another really locally based story, and since we brought up
Ken Lawson earlier in all his troubles, Oh gosh, man,
he had a really serious problem going on at the
time of these riots.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Absolutely, he's cleaned himself up. He has. The last time
I talked to him, he was clean, had been for
a long time. He was in Hawaii and he was practicing.
He was teaching at the University of Hawaii, teaching legal ethics, which.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
It just sounds hilarious nas irony, But the off air
you mentioned, I think it is we're pointing out since
we're closing out the segment here. Ken was one of
the people at that law and Public safety meeting during
the riot that he was.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
One of the instigators along with the Reverend Damon Lynch.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
He admitted to you at that time that he was, Oh.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, he was deep into his opioid addiction at that
time and doing all all kinds of terribly unethical and
illegal things to keep feeding his habit. When you watch
the tape of that was I went back when I
researched the book, Uh yeah, his behavior definitely backs that
up about that, and he kept he knew better, and
(36:17):
we now know that he did know better that the
police couldn't release what he kept telling them he wanted
to get, and they couldn't do it. It was it was
just not available or it was not legally proper, and
so he kind of exploited the situation too to cause
a lot of violence. And that's where the riot really
(36:38):
erupted right there. In law and public safety.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
What a shame anyway, read about in Peter's book, Peter,
It's been a real pleasure. I can't think you if
we're coming to the studio and talk always with pleasure.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
It's always pleasure, man, You always enjoyed this.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
You're always welcome here. Man. We'll have something else to
talk about real soon. I am certain. Seven to fifty
five come up with seven fifty six Inside Scoop London
Bureau Chief Oliver Lane returns to the program. He's learning
to power Youse semon Art later this evening seven for
that what's going on in Europe and what it means
for us? Daniel Davis deep dive at the bottom of
the next hour plus. Kesey cares with the Fabulous Cancer
Doctors from OHC Today Doctor Joseph Shaughnessy in studio to
(37:12):
talk about head and neck cancer stick around,
Brian Thomas News
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